Well, when our second child was born, I continued scrapbooking, but I started falling behind. I got so far behind that when I got pregnant with our third child, I made a goal to catch up. If it was this hard to scrapbook with two kids, I could only imagine the challenge with 3.
After our third was born, I put scrapbooking on hold. It was difficult to balance organizing old memories with making new ones with our kids. So I still printed photos, wrote down memories, and saved artwork. I tried my best to keep things organized as I was quickly learning that, as precious as they were, many of these early childhood memories are both forgotten and jumbled. I hoped one day I could put everything into scrapbooks for our kids to enjoy.
After my grandfather passed away, I found myself looking through old photos again. Our kids were very interested and all of them wanted to flip through albums with me. I loved their enthusiasm so much that I quickly put our best photos from the last 2 years into a handful of simple pocket photo albums. It wasn't my original plan. But it was fast. I didn't want to wait for fancy, organized scrapbooks. I needed something for our kids to look at and enjoy right now.
And I am so glad I did. Seeing our youngest get confused about which baby was in each photo. Showing our kids photos of my husband and I traveling together before the kids were born. Our kids realizing how much they have grown, changed and accomplished over the past few years. These were new memories in the making.
Maybe one day I'll take our photos out of these simple albums and create beautiful scrapbooks again. But, these simple pocket albums are growing on me. As we are now creating more happy memories together by simply reminiscing and chatting about the past.
