Creating A Scrapbook For Your Baby's Early Years

The first time many people think about scrapbooking is when they are blessed with the birth of their first child. The desire to capture every precious move and moment takes on new meaning as parents of a newborn soon realize.

Keeping a photo archive and documenting events in a scrapbook of your beautiful new baby can be as easy as taking photographs and organizing them into a simple photo album.

For others interested in adding colored papers, stickers, and other popular scrapbooking embellishments, there are countless ways you can enhance your child's every captured movement.

For newborn additions to your family, a popular and timeless theme for both beginning and advanced scrapbookers is to create a scrapbook chronicling your child's 'firsts' - also often referred to as milestones.

A scrapbook of this kind would include notable events such as photos of baby's birth, first teeth, first bath, etc. You can include anything, but a short list of mainstays in any baby scrapbook would include any of the following:

- Baby's birth
- First feeding
- Being weighed at the hospital
- Baby's first bath
- Baby being introduced to siblings
- Meeting grandparents, aunts, uncles
- First car seat ride
- First time in a stroller
- First time eating solid food
- First time using a straw
- Holding head up
- Crawling
- Sitting up
- First time "cruising" - using furniture to walk
- First steps
- First teeth
- First hair-cut
- First holidays - Halloween, Christmas, Chanukah
- Baby's first birthday

This is an important time for any family and photographs only tell part of the story.

You can also enhance your baby scrapbook with short journal entries, captions underneath photographs, and details of the day - who came to hold your baby, how siblings might have reacted, what you were feeling, etc.

Even the simplest of scrapbooks will benefit from handwritten or typed notes that mark the event.

To add even more interest to your baby's firsts include mementos in your scrapbook such as a hospital bracelet, a lock of baby's hair, or a birth announcement.

You can easily incorporate them into a colorful scrapbook page with a pocket envelope. These can be purchased or created by hand with paper that matches the page's theme.

For those inclined to prepare a simple photo album you can use a plain envelope instead to hold the cherished item for safekeeping.

Another popular way to enhance your scrapbook is to add stickers that match in style, color, and theme to the rest of the page and event. The growth in popularity of the scrapbooking industry has produced a myriad of fantastic sticker embellishments ranging from simple one color stickers to multi-dimensional stickers of many colors.

A popular alternative to creating your own scrapbook is to purchase a pre-designed scrapbook. Many of these come with embellishments and there are selections for just about any popular event or theme.

You can also mimic a scrapbook page already created by someone else using your own supplies. Examples of page layouts can be found in scrapbook sketchbooks, online layout galleries, and most of the popular scrapbook magazines available at newsstands.

The most important aspect of creating a scrapbook for and about your baby is simply to capture and chronicle the precious moment of a blessed life. Getting started can sometimes be the toughest part so starting with a simple scrapbook is often the best choice. Follow the inspiration of your child's momentous journey and your scrapbooking tasks will soon turn into effortless moments of bliss.