Mom blog: confessions of a scrapbook dropout

Scrapbook I'm finished! I'm done with my children's scrapbook.

One of my scrap-loving friends might ask, "Done with the preschool scrapbook? The family vacation book? The birthday party pages?"

No, I'm done with the whole darn thing — the book is complete until I add their wedding pictures in a couple of decades.

When I was first pregnant, I bought a lovely scrapbook, special colored paper, and fancy tape, planning to document every element of my little darling's life. Two years later, I only had seven poorly laid out pages.

Page 1: Birth announcement.

Page 2: Photos of the nursery attached to baby-themed card stock.

Page 3: Photos of the baby shower. No captions, but at least I used nice pastel paper.

Page 4: Footprints and bassinet card from the hospital. First day photo. It's still looking kind of respectable.

Page 5-6: Pictures with extended family. Standards are starting to slip and everything is pasted onto the plain placeholder liners that ship with the scrapbook.

Page 7: This is where it all went wrong. Photo of Baby's First Halloween and baby's First Christmas on the same page.

Pages 8 30: Blank. Clearly, paper decoration is not my gift.

One of my friends has scrapped every major event in her children's lives from when they were infants to their present teenage state. She's now working backwards through her own life — her wedding, college sorority years, into childhood and scrapbooking that too. She's an artist, and one determined lady.

I discovered I have no similar paper cutout/stencil/sticker goals, but I didn't want my second son to feel left out. So, when he was born, I doggedly created the exact same seven pages for him, which brought me to the current total of fourteen scrapbooked pages.

If I insert our Christmas photo card each year, I'll still have room for their graduation and wedding pictures in the same book. Maybe I should create a trendy term, like saying I'm a "single book" scrapbooker, or "green" scrapbooker, um, using fewer resources and preserving the earth's precious trees … or something like that.

Or maybe I'll just say, I'm a blogger!

This is an original post to Silicon Valley Moms Blog, www.svmoms.com. Monica writes about life, dance, and adventures with a preschooler and toddler at Lady M. She has some nice scrapbook paper to share because she's never gonna use it. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.