Keeping a Baby Book for Your Child
Chronicling Children's Lives With Keepsakes, Photos, Milestones
You don't have to be a scrapbooking expert to keep a creative book of memories for each of your children.
With the rise in popularity of scrapbooking, the traditional baby book has gone the way of diaper pins and bottle boilers - a lot of young parents just don’t use them anymore.
But the fill-in-the-blanks type chronicling of your child’s early years is still a great way to keep memories recorded.
You can make your own custom-made baby book filled with milestones, photographs and keepsakes, by combining scrapbooking techniques with old fashioned baby book memories.
Decide on the Format
Take a look at a baby book in a store or one that belongs to a friend. What pages would you want to include in your child’s baby book and what pages would you leave blank? Perhaps you want a page that includes your baby’s footprint in the hospital and his wrist bracelet, but you don’t want a page on showers that were held for you. Use a store-bought baby book to get ideas for your custom-made baby book.
Make your Pages
If you haven’t been in the scrapbooking aisles of a craft store, you’re in for a treat. If you're not the crafty type, don't let it intimidate you. You don’t have to be a Martha Stewart to find something fun and easy in that department. You’ll also find the best papers, glue and other supplies perfect for your baby book.
First choose a scrapbook cover that you can decorate and personalize for your child. Be sure it can handle all the pages you want to include. Buy blank pages and then pick out some creative papers to serve as backgrounds for each page.
Type and print out sheets for different milestones, including graphics and borders and fill in the rest with your child’s information.
Some Baby Book Tips:
- Many baby books stop at age 5 or earlier. Make your baby book go beyond. You’re keeping memories here and there will be a lot of them for your child, even through high school. You’ll want to include the program from his first middle school band concert or basketball game, the scores to his SAT test and photos from her senior prom.
- Include some blank, lined sheets at the end of the book for you to make an occasional narrative written entry, at least once a year and more often if possible. These are the pages you’ll want to reread with your child when he’s grown up.
- There's something to be said for handwritten entries. A typed page with creative fonts and graphics is attractive, but keep some things in your own handwriting for a more personal touch.
- Pages with slots or envelope-type holders are great for keeping newspaper clippings and other large items that won’t fit in the book and must be folded. If you can’t find this type of page, glue an envelope onto a blank page.
- Don’t be afraid to cut photos. Most photographs can be cropped to save space on your page. Cut out background from your photos, making your finished photo a creative shape, either by cutting freehand or using shaped cutting tools in the scrapbooking section of your craft store.
- Don’t relegate your baby book to the attic or basement storage! Keep it with your photo albums or somewhere handy, so you can easily add to it. Remember, it’s a work in progress until your child is grown. Keep a decorative box or shoe box near your baby book to hold things to be put into the book, along with your glue, scissors and other supplies. When you sit down to work on your baby book, you’ll have everything handy.
