That Little Boy's Smile

By:Heather G.

I still remember my first foray into scrapbooking. I was actually looking for cross-stitching supplies at my local craft store when I stumbled onto their measly scrapbook aisle. I had a beautiful son who was 10 months old at the time and I'd been lamenting that we'd taken all these pictures with a story behind them, but how would anyone ever make those connections with the stories written on the backs of pictures and in his "my first year" calendar. I couldn't pull stuff off the shelves fast enough.

Sheet protectors, colored paper, stickers, and ooh, the pens! I quickly accumulated quite the stash of goodies. I sat down to make those first pages, with nothing to help me but Creating Keepsakes second issue. I look at those first pages and I cringe. I didn't do what some early scrappers do -- cut my photos with decorative scissors or sticker anything that had a 1/2 inch of space, but they by no means are beautiful to anyone but myself.

On those first pages, I lovingly told the story of his birth, of his family meeting him for the first time, of those early, sleep-deprived nights, the only time my grandfather ever had the opportunity to hold him. So many things I would've forgotten if I hadn't written them down.

Now, that baby boy is almost seven, and he has two younger sisters. There are so many things this mommy brain would've forgotten had it not been for scrapbooking, so many stories that would've been left untold had I not had some method of recording them. And all those memories are so precious. I can't wait to see the expressions on HIS children's faces when they read all the things their daddy said.

How he told his (almost bald) granddad "Dad-Dad, you know you're still a mammal because you had hair once. You know, once a mammal, always a mammal!" Or how he at one time called my sister Puppy, Booby, and Boopy before he finally figured out her name was actually Brooke! All those ordinary, everyday things that you think you'll remember forever fade so much faster than you could possibly imagine.

And that's why scrapbooking's so important to me. Not so I can record the professional pictures, the birthdays, and the holidays, although I certainly do scrapbook those things. I want to remember as many ordinary things that are building upon each other to create what I hope will be one day be a terrific, God-fearing man.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: The Important "Little" Treasures of Scrapbooking, by Barb K.