Making Memories w/ Samuel

I can't say that Memory Making is a real strong point in my creative mothering! But since I post every week, I figured I better chime in with the few things I've thought to do with Samuel to hopefully create good memories for him. I think the toughest thing about this week is that our children are still so young - we haven't had that many opportunities to create memories. I actually saved two Christmas letters this year from friends that each have four boys, aged 3 to 10 because they shared so many great ideas for me as to how they had created memories that year for their families. So, I can't promise anything spectacular, but here are the few things I've done so far:

1. I made a Pregnancy Album for when I was pregnant with Samuel. On each 8x8 spread the left side has a calendar and the right side has three pictures of me that month. I wrote things on the calendar like dr's appts and how I was feeling.

2. I started a scrapbook of Samuel's baby pictures. Now, notice I said started! I was feeling really ambitious in the beginning, but have decided to just limit myself to one page a month so that I might actually keep up with it!

3. I take Samuel to get his picture taken at The Picture People. If you haven't already, you can get on their mailing list (both postal and e-mail) and they send out coupons all the time. The coupon usually reads something like "Free 8x10 or 11x13 and 15% off orders". I take him in and get our free photo and sometimes I'll order just ONE extra sheet of 2-5x7s (to give to each set of grandparents) or a page of wallets to give out to aunts and uncles. This is a cheap way to have cute photos of your child - you just have to resolve ahead of time what you plan on buying and stick to it!

4. Blogging is of course an obvious way that I keep up with our daily/weekly to-dos. I'm not sure yet how this will translate into Memory Making for Samuel. People have suggested printing, but that is a lot of paper! I am still working on this one. If you haven't checked out our family blog, we're at www.paynefulmemories.blogspot.com.

5. Ever wonder what to do with all those pictures you receive in the mail? You know, prayer cards, Christmas cards, school pics, etc? Well, I cut all of these pictures into silohuettes and keep them in a gallon ziplock baggie for Samuel to play with. This provides great opportunities for me to tell Samuel about people and even pray for them as he touches them and plays with them. Cutting them into the silohuettes makes them more interesting for him.

6. Daddy-time is an important element of Samuel's growing up that Ed and I make sure he gets plenty of. Now, this is a lot easier for us than a lot of other people because Ed works second shift, meaning he's home during the day to play with Samuel. But I want Samuel to look back at his childhood and remember all the fun things he did with his Daddy.

7. We bought an Annual Pass to the local zoo. It wasn't that bad ($90 for 1 full year - it's open year-round b/c there are a lot of indoor displays). The benefit of doing this is that when we go to the zoo, we take our time in exhibits and just see a few things each time we go. I don't want to rush Samuel around just so we can see everything and "get our money's worth", which is definitely my tendency! Knowing that we can go as often as we want, we take our time and enjoy just a few things each visit.

That's all that I can think of for now. I really can't wait to hear what other readers have to share - especially those of you with older children. Thanks for sharing!