Jun 19, 2008

Has Scrapbooking Made Baby Books Obsolete?




I was at Barnes and Noble last night cruising the Bargain Book sections (my favorite hang-out at B&N) and I noticed one of those baby books with all the "first smile", "first step", "first pet" pages in them. I had one for each of my kids and my mother heaped tons of guilt on me for not dutifully recording every momentous event in them. I was so busy that I hardly had time to go to the bathroom during the day and at night, after the baby was in bed, I was too exhausted to try to write something cute about the day. My mom had filled out every detail in mine. But that was a different era.

This young generation is the most photographically documented ever. One mother admits to taking 65,000 photos of her daughter in her first year of life. How is that possible? She watched her daughter grow up in a little screen on her digital camera - it's almost sad in a way. But, I looked at my photo files last week and so far this year, I have taken over 2000 photos myself.

We document the momentous events of our children's lives photographically more now than ever. It's not uncommon to have the camera within arms reach every where you go. Scrapbooking has pretty much rendered these types of baby books obsolete. Now, instead of writing down the day they took their first step, we do a double page layout all about it.

Seeing that I have a scrapbook of my childrens' first year, I am going to toss the baby book on the shelf that is gathering dust. I think I wrote one thing in it after being chastised by my mom for not keeping up with it one day. I can't remember the EXACT day of their first steps. But I remember the month and I have about a dozen photos of them actually taking it. Good enough...

Even the traditional wedding guest book is taking a twist. My friend's daughter's reception didn't have the traditional guest book you signed. They had a photographer taking photos of everyone when they came in and each guest was handed a cutely decorated card on which they would write their name and then marital advice for the couple. The book would be put together for them later. Cute idea!

I've seen other couples make a photo book leaving lots of white space on the pages and then had guests sign the pages of the book. What a great and useful keepsake of your special day!

These are much more interesting and useful than the lined paper found in the "Wedding Book" that most of us had people sign. Honestly, I've been married nearly 21 years and I have yet to crack that dusty book open since the first year.

Scrapbooking has changed the way we document our lives and use photos. I am forever grateful for that. I think my children will have more meaningful documentation of their childhood than has been offered in the past.

The stories matter, but stories with photos are a thousand times better.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff.
I like your blog and all your scrappy things.

Look forward to reading more.
I love it!!!! Thank you very much

Creative Bug Christy said...

I don't have those "baby books" for my three kids - I just did scrapbooks with calendar pages to document all the great Firsts! We are evolving and moving on - scrapbook style ;-)

{S} said...

I was asked by my teenage son to let him bring his "baby book" to school with him for a project. I had no idea what he meant by saying, "baby book." I was correcting him saying, "you mean "scrapbook"... "right?" LOL!!