Guess I Like to Write More Than I Like to Cut & Paste

OK. I need something positive up on my blog. The last post weighed heavily on my soul all day.


(Warning, if you are a scrapbooker, please, please, please keep reading past my first sentence. Don't give up on me.)


I am not a scrapbooker. At all. One Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me a huge kit with everything needed to create scrapbooks. This was during the time when EVERYONE was into it. Remember a few years ago? I tried to create a book. I just could not get into it. I worked on it. It wasn't pretty. I just couldn't put my heart and soul into it. So when my second child complains about not having a book (thank goodness he is a boy and hopefully will not care), I will try to explain that there was a huge fad going on in the U.S. I felt forced by mother's guilt to create these books even though it wasn't my type. I didn't stop creating the book for Kyle because I loved him any less or that he was my second born. It was because I did not care for the art of scrap booking. It just isn't my thing.


When it was Ryan's first birthday, I let go of the guilt and realized that I couldn't force myself to create these books. Just couldn't do it. So, I created a journal for him. The perfect part of this journal? I only had to write one time a year. Once. So, in this journal, I write a letter to each boy on their birthday. I write the names of their friends, the type of birthday they had, what they like to eat, what they are learning in school, their personality, words they say a little funny that I don't want to forget. Things like that. I often catch myself writing at other times. I try to write down their Christmas list or their favorite gifts from Santa. But, I am only allowed to guilt myself into writing one time a year. And you know what else? They aren't perfect books. They have a few pages of scribbles from Ryan as I tried to write when he was playing beside me. I write quickly and they are probably a bunch of misspellings without spellcheck. They are real and they are from the heart.

Here is an excerpt from his birthday letter when he was two:

You are such a sweet little boy. You are gentle but at the same time, you have a fun spirit. You love to laugh, be goofy and dance. You move your head to music that you hear and smile like crazy. You are always smiling.

I am so glad that I wrote it down! I was so tired with a newborn at this time that I am shocked that there is actually something written down and that I can read it.

God willing, I will give each child their book when their wife is pregnant or when they are ready for it if they don't have children. The book captured the beauty of their age and shows how much they were loved. Yes, just like scrapbooks do for the artists that create them.

So, before I was a "blogger" I was creating a special place for my boys to read about their lives. I had no idea that I would ever write so many stories on Blogger about our life. I won't give up their birthday books. Hopefully, I will print out these stories and add them to their birthday books when they are ready. This is a hobby I can stick with. No guilt needed.