Write it on Wednesday: Journalling babies

No, that doesn't mean get the babies to do the journalling!

Even if you haven't had babies of your own, you will have had babies in your family, and with luck you'll even have some pictures of yourself when an infant. Babies are very photogenic and photos generally make satisfying pages that everyone enjoys looking at.

So: how to scrap babies?

The cute things they say and do

If you have a baby or young child now - I know it's difficult when you're so busy - but for heaven's sake write down those cute things they say or the funny things they do. You WILL forget them later! I wish I'd been a scrapbooker when my babies were young. Luckily I was keeping a journal, so putting the text together with the photos isn't too hard.

And she toddled for two miles along the beach before we found her...

And write down too those apocryphal stories that you have been told all your life about things you did. There's a story about me when I was about two - the family had got lost on a trip out to the contry and we stopped the car to get out and see where we were. Apparently I got fed up and said "I'll find the way" and set off along the road determinedly, all by myself. They were laughing too much to stop me at first, and then they helpfully got the camera out.

Baby books

If you have a friend or relative about to give birth, a baby book is a lovely gift - not one of those that records weight and height and so on, although that might be part of it, but a themed scrapbook readymade for the mother to slot in the pics and the journalling as she goes along. A big space for hidden journalling may be best, so mum can write as much or as little as she chooses, but doesn't run out of space.

Possible themes for baby books:

• My first year: 12 pages, a pic for each month and plenty of journalling space (a great theme to remind mum)

• Nursery rhyme theme

• Animals theme

• Alphabet theme

• Colours theme: every page a different colour

• Definitions theme: baby, love, cute, motherhood, family, growing up etc.

• Play theme: teddies, bricks, dolls etc.

You could even make a book for the baby itself, with spaces for pictures and names of all the relatives - especially welcome if family are far away and the little one won't see relatives often enough to recognise them otherwise.

More Write it on Wednesday

Journalling - why is it so hard?

I often see beautiful scrapbook pages with quotations that seem so apt... so how do they match the pictures and the quotations?

Have you ever thought to do the journalling FIRST and then look for the pics to go with it?

I have done that a couple of times.

Last night I was helping my son turn out items he's grown out of. It's so difficult throwing away his childhood - last night it was Thunderbirds - he LOVED Thunderbirds (the SF puppet programme): he had years of magazines and loads of books and even wrote his own books about Thunderbirds - how can I throw all that away? And that's not even starting on the full set of episodes and films on DVD, and the vehicles themselves - oh and a Hood puppet!

It all meant so much to him - once. And that's what's important - the memories of what it meant to him. I need to do a LO on what Thunderbirds meant to him. There must be a photograph somewhere with him playing with/dressed as a Thunderbird character, all I have to do is find it.

Meanwhile, both he and I should write our thoughts about this aspect of his childhood, so it isn't "thrown away".

Thought for the day:

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."