bookin' it

back in the olden days, when i was Mother of One, i scrapbooked. i wasn't ever one of those crazy-into-it types, taking part in weekend scrapping retreats or subscribing to scrapping magazines, but i did buy my occasional issue every now and then for ideas. i had several nifty tools and was known to go a little wild when 12x12 paper or ribbon was on sale. and while my sweet infant napped for three or four hours a day, i would painstakingly create double page spreads of each month (with an additional spread for special holidays) of his first two years of life. i still love to go look back through them -- they are, in their own small way, works of art that fully capture his milestones and escapades, complete with clever plays-on-words, creative embellishments, and pictures and journaling galore. if our house ever catches on fire, they seriously might be the only possessions i'd run back to get.

then Baby Two came along, and it all went downhill from there. there just wasn't time to devote to editing and cropping photos, designing layouts into which i'd affix them with acid-free mounts, printing the journaling (in a sassy font, no doubt) with the perfectly-measured margins on coordinating cardstock, and finding interesting ways to adorn the pages ... all while entertaining a toddler and breastfeeding a newborn. Mommy Guilt set in, as i fell further and further behind. i managed to finish susanna's one year album before her second birthday, but then, right after a spread on our first trip to the zoo, it abruptly stops. from my computer chair i can see a girly pink album sitting on my bookshelf, with dozens of clear page protectors yearning to be filled.

 susanna, admiring her one scrapbook with my mom, june 2007

BUT this is where the wonder of modern technology comes in. thanks to our blog, the kids' stories are still told. the memories are still documented, the pictures still shared. and when i discovered an online service that allows you to turn your blog into a book, i took full advantage of the downloadable program and put hours of effort into making it, in its own small way, a work of art. we now have a hardcover "blogbook" of 2008 sitting on our coffee table, complete with every post and every photo from our blog that year.

i share all this before i launch into my final posts of 2009 to explain that our blog is more than just a way to show to family and friends (and anyone else who stumbles upon it) what our children are up to. when i started, i hardly even knew what a blog was. i fully expected my interest to wane; i had no idea that a year and a half later, i would have amassed close to 200 posts (and, even more amazingly, upwards of 14,000 hits.) it's really become my way of time-capsuling our life. my way of creating something tangible that liam and susanna can pick up years down the road and relive their experiences, smile at their cute kiddie faces (have you ever met anyone who doesn't love seeing themselves at age three and five?), and learn things about us as a family that they might not have otherwise known. i know that much of what i write isn't terribly interesting and is certainly not earth-shattering. but pieced together, the posts do a pretty good job of describing our life as we live it.

even if it, sadly, doesn't have a cute polka dot ribbon tied in a jaunty bow.