Petite Monet

Our little Ellen is quite the prolific artist. We have gobs and gobs of masterpieces that come home from school, and are made at home, and end up in piles in her playroom before I recycle them.

I really don't feel bad about throwing away the ones that are "scribbles", for lack of a better word. I do keep all the "project" type items that come home from school, and some especially nice paintings or the first drawings of people or letters, for example.

But, how to keep them for the long term?

I have seen tons of great ideas online and on Pinterest. Coffee table "art" books of your child's art. Or scanning the artwork and then creating a big poster. Rotating the pieces in and out of a wall of frames.

I really like the coffee table art book idea the best, though I am sort of paralyzed when it comes to taking a good quality photo of the art to begin with and getting the lighting correct and more or less standard from picture to picture. Our scanner is super old and smallish, so really won't work for this kind of project.

I also saw this new app on Cool Mom Tech this week - ArtKive. It sounds like a similar idea -you can take pictures of your child's artwork and it stores them in some way, then eventually you can make a book. I haven't figured it all out, but it's free to download for a short period of time, so I downloaded it and will figure it out later!

Take note!

Do you have some system for keeping track of the perfectly darling and/or amusing things your child says on a daily basis?

I'm really not that organized. But - I would like to be.

I sometimes note things on our family blog. And, I do keep a baby book for Ellen that I write in every now and then, but I always forget the best little quotes. Sometimes I'll text them to her Dad and I can retrieve them from my phone.

I recently started an "Ellen-isms" page in the little notebook I carry around in my purse for random notes ... it never fails that she blurts out something hilarious on our way to the grocery store.

Today I came across this free Quote Book download for organizing the funnies in a cute way at Kinderpendent (via Cool Mom Picks). A cute xmas gift for a new mom in your life, perhaps?

I think you could also make it something as simple as a perpetual calendar that you use to note kid-isms, or even a box of index cards you keep in your kitchen to collect the stories. I love reading the baby book my mom kept for me (thanks Mom! and, hooray for being the 1st child!) and these funny little things are so precious now that I have my own funny little thing living with me.

(And today - so timely! - a similar idea for a 2012 Best of My Days Notepad from Ashley at Under the Sycamore.)

In case you were wondering, the best of late ...
"It's not a secret. It's a tell thing."
"This fizzy water is pokey in my mouth."
"Are there any golfclubbers out today?" (such a better name than golfer)
"I don't have enough fingers. Just about 8. I want more. And purple ones."
"Can we work on a hug project today??"

If you're ambitious

We had a lot of fun with our monthly photos of Girly. It was especially great because she was born in December, so the month 1 photo was in January, just in time for the new calendar. In case you are wondering, I stole this idea from somewhere on the internets - feel free to steal it from me. The calendar is from Crate and Barrel.

I've recently started reading Young House Love. It's a great blog by a young couple who describe all kind of projects in renovating their house on a budget. Their newest project is a baby girl (!) and they had some fun projects today - find the details here.

This is a fun, homemade baby book that is customizable. (You can get the pdf's on their blog).

And here is their cute baby! I love this idea to keep track of her growth, but it requires: 1) photoshop skills, 2) 52 kinds of fabric, and 3) lots of clean white onesies.

I don't have any of those things, but you might?

I agree with them, though, that a photo book of just these 52 pictures would be really amazing.


By the by, I previously mentioned my plan for documenting Girly's first year. I did reasonably well with the monthly Blurb books, but just haven't quite gotten to November and December 2009. It has been on my to-do list for the last 6 months. Oh well, I think I'll get to it in 2010.

As an aside, how do you store your digital pictures? I upload them all to my laptop and periodically back-up to an external hard drive, but I am so fearful of losing them because I rarely print them or upload to an online site, like Snapfish. Parents magazine recently had an article about this and suggested an online service, like Mozy, Carbonite or Backblaze, that continuously runs software to back up your computer. Any of you use something like this?

Books

I am the kind of person that likes to read EVERYTHING about every topic, but sometimes it gets to be a bit much. Especially when it comes to pregnancy and parenting and the gajillions of theories and opinions out there. (And, now look at me, adding my own!)

When I was pregnant I got my hands on lots of books quickly - What To Expect, A Girlfriend's Guide, etc. - and then quickly became overwhelmed and stopped reading all together.

I've tried to be a little more selective with this new parenting thing.

In the 3rd trimester I began reading about getting your baby to sleep (!) as this was one of my greatest concerns. The two best books I read were Babywise and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. I found that Happiest Baby on the Block wasn't as helpful for sleep tips, but did have good soothing techniques (the 5 S's).

For new baby, I have liked Your Baby's First Year: Week by Week and Your Baby's First Year by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

And, if you are in search of the best baby book, here is my strategy: I am transferring our digital photos to http://www.blurb.com/ to make a book for the Girl each month. (Yes, this is ambitious). It allows you to customize it and add text and it is pretty inexpensive for the 7x7 inch book. This eliminates the need for scrapbooking or printing and transferring photos to albums. I will put all of the miscellaneous items (cards, artwork, etc.) into archival boxes for storage. Finally, my mom got me this cute little journal - Baby's Journal - that is perfect to jot down ALL of those cute things.