What The Heck Are Baby Memory Books?
Baby memory books are NOT books designed to improve your baby's memory capacity - not unless your baby can recite the periodic table of the elements while still in the womb. No, the people doing the remembering are the parents and other relatives of the baby. Taking care of babies is an incredibly hectic blur - so that the parents will need reminding of what their kids looked like as babies when they finally have time to sleep regularly. Baby memory books (also called baby keepsake books) are a great way to chronicle the first year or years of a child. You can also use them as blackmail for when the child eventually starts dating. ("Here's something your prom date would love to see, Junior." "Oh, please, not the naked baby pictures again!")
Organization Not Necessary
You don't have to be the world's most organized parent in order to use baby memory books. These books do all of the organizing for you. They are like templates for web pages, only in book form. All you do is fill in the blanks or paste a photo or newspaper clipping in. My parents got "Baby's First Five Years" because they knew they'd be too tired to keep a lot of detail for each year.
Baby memory books are a great place to keep information vitally important for your pediatrician, your baby and any genealogists in the family. They also are colorful, sturdy and good for a laugh. In Mom's baby memory book about me, there are different sheets for attaching my birth announcement from the paper, for writing down the foods I liked and disliked and for my medical records. A lock of hair from my first haircut is still in there, as well as a little family tree.
Where To Get Them
Baby memory books often look like large photo or wedding albums. They should be available in large discount stores, craft stores, stores that cater to baby supplies and places that sell photo albums. You can also find them from online stores. They cost more than a regular photo album, but they have a lot more in it than just blank pages to hold photos. Baby memory books come in themes - like Peter Rabbit, or Baby's First Christmas - and is usually made specifically for a boy or a girl, although unisex ones do exist. They have become more popular as the hobby of scrap booking has become more popular.
