Sweating to the pages

Phew, after almost 2 years of hard work, blood, sweat and no tears, I'm ready to order the kids scrapbook. Since the kids take so many pictures together, I have their memory books combined, with individual pages for each child throughout and many combined pages of the 2 of them. This was the only way I could wrap my wee little brain around keeping up with 2 kids and remembering every part of their precious & fleeting childhood. Instead of writing down the dates of every milestone like I used to, I started to write letters to each child every month to personalize it to Lily and Grady a bit more about funny things they've said or done, milestones they've reached, and any big events that happened to them that month. I also changed it up a bit by doing books every calendar year instead of year to year based on their birthday month which I was doing prior to Grady being born. That helped me conceptualize it a bit more too since we have a bday in April and the other in October.

Was it a lot of work? Hell to the yea! But it was fun and never felt laborious. Where did I find the time? I'd do just 1 spread every month or so, but I found myself able to keep up with it if I knew I didn't have a ton to do at each sitting. If I was behind (i.e. middle of moving, david gone, holidays, etc), i'd just do a spread or 2 at the most. MUCH easier to keep up with if I was just nibbling away at it versus feeling like I had to do it all at once. I use a myriad of programs together in a mishmash with most of them listed on bottom right panel of the blog.

Well, I just ordered it and can't wait to get my hands on it and peruse it; hiding it from grady for now who'll probably wanna munch on it and slowly showing lily every page reinforcing the mantra I want them to hear in their head everyday....you are special. you are loved. you are important.

Click here to view:

Lily, 3 Grady, 1

or here:

Click here to view this photo book larger

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