Baby Books

I have never kept an official baby book for any of my girls. You know, the kind with the blanks and the fill ins and the what happened whens? I do not like those books. It feels like an awful lot of pressure, especially after you have more than one sweet little person going through all of these momentous things. I have always kept a journal for each of the girls. Lilly's first volume is nearly full, and I am on the hunt for a new book to begin for her. The books I have are completely blank, and I like to write to them when something memory worthy occurs. The entries vary according to age, business, and of course, trouble making. When Allie was about two, she went through this phase where she thought that writing implements of any sort were fair game. She used a furniture touch up marker on nearly every piece of molding on the first floor of our house, and made a striped wall next to our fireplace. Where were we while she was doing this? Who knows... She also discovered a bottle of Ketchup on the kitchen shelf one day and proceeded to sneak it out of the room, and to the hallway, creating what can only be described as a crime scene re-enactment. Three quarters of a bottle of squeezy ketchup all over the floor. Nice. So that story is in there, along with some of her famous one liners, my most favorite of which was, "Mommy, this is a great fuckin' party!" At age 2. Thank You, Daddy. I also keep the obvious stuff like growth, milestones, and anything I think they might want to know about if they have kids of their own some day. I used to only write the good stuff, but I didn't want them thibkibg that having kids was all peaches and cream, so I started writing about the not so great stuff, the really hard stuff, and the times they drive me nuts, too. I have to admit, I only write in these books every couple months these days, and I am sure as they get older, they entries will become fewer, but I really enjoy putting down thoughts that I would otherwise forget, or things that I think may help them along the way. I am not sure when I will give them these books, but I hope the pages of their Mom's handwriting will be comforting to them in times of difficulty, and give them joy when I am gone. I love these girls so much and want them to feel it always.