M.R.
If you visit a scrapbook store all your questions will be answered! They have books to choose from, usually with top-loading plastic pocket type pages you put the page you've created into. There will be all kinds of paper and stickers and other embellishments to choose from as well as lots of tools to help you get the look you want.
A word of caution though. I started doing full-on scrapbooks for my kids starting with my first and then with my second. It became so exceptionally time consuming and expensive that I recently stopped scrapbooking all together.
Now I use shutterfly to create books. Shutterfly has their books where it's just like scrapbooking - you can manipulate the page however you like, and it's MUCH, MUCH faster and less expensive. I'm doing my daughter's 5 year and my son's 2nd year right now and enjoy it much more.
One comparison and what finally prompted me to stop with all the scrapbook stuff - I went to the scrapbook store and bought one book, the plastic page incerts and enough paper/stickers etc for two holidays for both my kids. The cost was $80, and I was dreading sitting at my table cutting all this paper and doing it twice (one book for each kid). That's when I decided to stop and look at Shutterfly. Right now my Shutterfly book is at $110 and it's an ENTIRE year of activities, including many, many extra pages for a wedding our whole family participated in. Not to mention, Shutterfly often has great promotions, and I'll let my book sit and buy it when they are offering 40% off photo books. I expect to pay about $80 for the WHOLE book, compared to $80 for a binder and two holidays worth of materials.
I'd just suggest clicking around in Shutterfly before buying scrapbook stuff to see if it's what you are looking for. Also, I bought adhesive pockets to keep some mementos in that would you expect to put in a scrapbook, but we also have a scanner so I'm getting copies of most of the stuff on the pages themselves.
Anyway, you clearly hit a cord with me with your question and I'll stop typing now! :)