Amy Scott's Thoughts

As with any new mom, I’ve spent the last year documenting Owen’s life to the fullest. I’ve been taking lots of pictures and saving mementos. This last month, I’ve put a bit of effort into some projects that document Owen’s first year of life. From the very beginning of my pregnancy with Owen, I knew that I was going to be using photo books from Shutterfly as my main way of saving memories. I kept a pregnancy journal using a Shutterfly photo book and had that book printed after Owen was born. For all of you who that I took no “bump” pictures, you were wrong. I took plenty. Only about half are documented in this book. I never posted a lot of pictures to Facebook, but I have them saved for myself and my family. I like that the journal captures what I liked and disliked while I was pregnant. It shows the transformation of the nursery and photos from my baby showers. It also talks about how we shared our baby news and the process that went into naming Owen. To compliment this pregnancy photo book, I’ve spent the last year making a photo book of Owen month to month. It’s mainly pictures with just a few highlights of holidays, trips and milestones. I love that with each page you can see Owen growing and changing. This photo book was meant to be Owen’s “Baby Book”. I didn’t plan on getting a baby book to write in dates and weights and milestones. Creativity did hit me though and I just created my own version of baby book. But more on that in a little bit.

After the photo books, I have two photo boxes from Michaels. One is full of mementos. It has items from the hospital, items from my baby showers, invitations to the baby showers, invitations to Owen’s birthday party. It has the first hair cut certificate in it and Owen’s birthday boy t-shirt. I love this box because it’s full of little items that hold big memories. The second photo box is all prints from Owen’s first year. I have a baby box full of photos and I wanted Owen to have the same. It’s a very heavy box full. My guess is that it probably has over 600+ pictures in it. Maybe even a thousand. I don’t know. But it’s full. This kid can’t say I didn’t take his picture!

Like I said before, originally my plan was to leave it at just the two books and the two boxes, but inspiration hit and I ended making my own version of a baby book this weekend. It was partially inspired by my sister-in-law’s blog. She writes monthly updates on her littlest guy. I love these posts because it give a great look at the things Keegan is into and all the ways that he is changing month to month. She mentioned that these posts will come in handy when she someday needs to remember the monthly milestones for Keegan’s baby book. I thought about it and I decided that I have monthly updates from this blog that are all about Owen and I would use the blog posts to create a baby book. I started off by just printing the monthly posts, but then I went back and read through my posts for the last year. I decided that I would print any post that was mostly all about Owen. I also created a fact sheet page that had all kinds of little tidbits about Owen and his first year. I included all the stats from his doctors appointments and the milestones that I could remember. I also included a photo collage of Owen’s monthly pictures. I was going through my files and discovered that I had typed up Owen’s birth story while it was still fresh last year. I printed that birth story to include in this make-shift baby book. The result is pretty much a baby novel instead of a baby book. It’s a very detailed account of Owen’s first year and I used mostly pieces that I already created throughout the year. I know that I had a lot of this stuff in digital form on my computer, but I like that I now I have a printed hard copy of it. I threw all these pieces into a three-ring binder and printed a cover sheet. And that is the story behind how Owen’s baby book came to be.

I know that these items will get lots of use through the years. At first, I’m sure only I will be the one to grab them and look back through them. Sometime in the future, I hope that Owen will read them and flip through them. I hope he can see how loved he is through the written words and the absurd amount of photos that were taken of him. It’s so special to have these memories to share with him for a long time to come!

Boxes full of memories!

Pregnancy Photo Book and Owen’s First Year Photo Book

Owen’s Homemade Baby Book

I had fun! Owen month by month!