Special Traditions

I took a picture of my daughter every month on her b'day with the same two stuffed animals...I could see how much she grew over 24 months ( i stopped at 2 years old)

it's so hard to be creative when you are exhausted!! :-)

here are some things i have done...
when my son was really little - not newborn but a few months old - i made a clay impression of his hands and feet. i tried all kinds from pottery barn to craft stores - but none of them worked. they were all such a pain. then i discovered www.littlekeepsakes.com . they send you a packet of really easy to use modeling clay that can be redone if you mess up - you mail it back to them and they make a permanent clay impression. i have been doing it every year on my son's birthday (in addition to the newborn one) and they are so cool!! my son loves to put his hand on the impression to see how he has grown. (i only do his hand on the birthday ones and i have them write his name and the date on the back.)

another thing i did when he was little was take him to color me mine and make the sweetest gifts for mother's day! i bought these little heart dishes they had - and put his handprint on the heart. on the back i wrote which grandmother it was for along with his name and the date. i made one for myself too and i just cherish it!! they are only that little for a short time - so take advantage of it!

we also had beautiful black and white photos taken outdoors for the first couple years and will most likely continue to do that as well. we always make sure to get a family photo too.

and then some traditions are simpler - we all love to read and when we give books as gifts we always write a little note and the date inside - helps us to remember where we got it or from whom.

also - upload your photos to someplace like snapfish or shutterfly and you can make some really cool things! i have made coffee mugs, notepads and every year our gift to family is a calendar filled with pictures! i am working on a book for my husband right now - and plan to make one for my parents as well.

hope this helps and please share any more ideas you have - i love to hear them!!
J.

Since you are a scrapbooker, I will share my favorite tradition. Every fall we go to the local pumpkin farm and take a picture of each person in the family next to the "Watch me Grow" chart. We have a 7x7 scrapbook that is solely for putting these pictures in. Each year has a two page layout. It will hold just enough pages to go through our youngest's graduation year. We move around so much that we couldn't do the whole mark a door frame thing, so it has been really fun to watch the kids get taller each year, and we also compare how tall one is at a certain age, compared to the others. The boys especially like doing that...I guess its a competition thing.

We also have a weekly pizza night. Your 3 year old could really get involved with this. I make homemade pizza dough, and then each week we make a different kind of pizza, with a different kid helping out each week. We have honey mustard chicken, BBQ chicken, white garlic, western cheeseburger, pork BBQ, spicy garlic chicken, and then the more traditional kinds. I make sure that I get pictures of each kid making pizzas, not every time, but I do have photos of each one. I plan to put them in a cookbook that I am compiling and plan to give each child when they grow up.

Then there are the traditional summer day trips...we always go to Watkins Glen once a summer, Taughannock Falls, miniature golfing...try to find activities or places that you want to share with your child and then do them annually. My kids talk about our trip to Watkins Glen all year, and they look forward to it, and we have to do it the same every time...Donuts on the way, hike up the glen, picnic lunch at a different park down by the lake, relaxing at the lake, back to the Glen for their fabulous playground, then on the way home we stop for ice cream. Heaven forbid we try to alter that plan!

Your kids will not be too young to start traditions...what you do with them is more important than what you make for them, which eventually becomes clutter they feel bad or you feel bad about throwing away. Decide what you want them to look back on and enjoy, and then start doing it...do it twice and you can call it a tradition, do it every year, week, month, whatever and your kids will forever remember it! Traditions really bond a family together and make them special...something that you only have with each other. It's great that you are starting them early.

I made foot prints at 2 weeks old and handprints at 1 month old. Had them matted and framed and they are hanging in the kid's rooms. We also plant a tree shortly after their birth & photograph them next to it from when it is planted and every year.

Congratulations!

A.

I am in such agreement with you. I am very creative as well yet when kids come into the picture, the energy you fed that creativity goes elsewhere and before you know it you have no ideas, even if they are right in front of you. You can do footprints and hand prints every month for his first year or simply every year in that cement they sell at craft stores. My favorite was to make photo albums for the year or particular event. I would take my pictures to be developed
and when they were returned, I'd be given a free plastic photo album. Genovese now Rite aid, would do this. I found I had a box full of those things and began making personalized mini albums. Be it for Baby's First X-mas, Frst Step, Christening...etc. Take material remnants from your local fabric store and wrap the album in it. You can sew on them, add appliques with hot glue and before you know it you have organization in your pictures and something creative to do. I also love shadow boxes. You can make a memory filled treasure and display it. I do favors as well and have kept a collection of all my kids birthday favors. Creativity is such a gift and unfortunately, when the energy is moved away from it, it lays dormant. You will always have this gift, but it will sleep deep within you until you are ready to hone (sp?) in on it again. I know exactly how you feel. Good luck!

Hi! I have two beautiful boys - 2 1/2 years and 7 months. For my sons first birthday party we put together a special video with music that showed highlights from his first year. We used a really cute version of "somewhere over the rainbow" (the instrumental version was used in the special k commercials a couple of years ago). Each year we add to it with another song. We plan to use the same sequence of songs for our second sons video. It will be a nice keepsake for them and us. I picked the pictures and the music and my husband put them all together. When I saw the finished version, I cried! Good luck - if you think of any great songs, let me know!