Scrapbooks

I love to scrapbook.  Yet I never seem to find time.  I mean to - I really do.  I think I finished Sierra's scrapbook that included her first week in time for her first birthday!  I like to scrapbook when I have little momentos to include in it - hers contains her hospital bracelet (one is in her baby book since they wear two), my room sign, the tag from her bassinette, her footprints, cards from flowers we received, etc. 

 A sample page of Sierra's scrapbook.

The cover of Sierra's scrapbook.

I decided awhile back that I take too many pictures to do scrapbooks, and that I would save scrapbooking for special occassions where I have little things to put in it that couldn't go in photo albums.  So basically I thought the first week or so and then maybe first birthday and decide from there.  I was going to scrapbook for each birthday until I realized how many pictures I have from Sierra's second birthday.  It would take forever and be SO expensive to buy all the page refills!

A week or two before Adelyn's birthday, I decided that I wanted to make a scrapbook for her and finish it by her first birthday, even though I started but never finished Sierra's first birthday scrapbook.  I hate when I do things like that, but I have to be in a certain mood to work on it, and I was in an Adelyn mood.  I think I felt like I had to do all this before the new baby was born.

I  had one solid pink scrapbook that my aunt gave me, and since I decided I wasn't doing more for Sierra, I decided to use that one for Adelyn.  I printed out pictures, bought some paper, I was ready to do it.  But then I didn't get to it .  I think part of the problem is I want it to be perfect since it is all I will ever have for her.

Fast forward to this morning - for some reason I was thinking about scrapbooks.  I guess because now I need to do one for Coen.  I thought I lost his footprints, bracelet, and tag from his hospital bed, so I was really upset.  Turns out my husband put it up on the shelf in his room and I found it.  Relief - now I had something to put in his scrapbook, lol.  I remembered my aunt in law giving me one for Sierra's baptism.  Oh, wait, maybe that is why I was thinking about scrapbooks because I was thinking about what and when to do Coen's baptism.  Maybe it was because we got a thank you card from my nephew's baptism?  Or a little bit of all of it?

Anyway, I wondered what happened to that scrapbook (obviously I had yet to use it 3 years later - oops).  I had a pile of other scrapbook stuff on a shelf, but it wasn't there.  Then I realized there was a drawer underneath the shelf.  In it was that scrapbook.  But in that drawer, I found something I wasn't expecting: a pink striped scrapbook with three places for photos and under it a place to put the baby's name: 

I totally forgot I had bought this scrapbook for Adelyn.  It's very similar to the one I have for Sierra, in that you can put her name on it.  Seeing this so unexpectedly made my heart sink.  I wondered if I should go ahead and use that one for Adelyn's scrapbook, since that is what I intended on using.  But I don't think I can, because seeing it makes me SAD.  And it  has a place for 3 pictures and I don't really have 3 pictures I like of Adelyn.  There was also a pack of baby scrapbook paper, so I looked through and realized it is pretty neutral, so I could use it for Coen's scrapbook.  And of course some I can use for Adelyn's.  My new goal is to have it done by  her second birthday.  I will do it!!

I think that I might try to exchange the scrapbook for a blue one for Coen. It seems like the right thing to do.  I just can't use it.   I look at that scrapbook and it reminds me of the the happy, preparing for Adelyn times.  Those are some of the hardest memories for me.  I can't explain why - I guess because of how things turned out, those happy memories make me very sad.  It just doesn't seem right to use a scrapbook meant for happy baby pictures for a scrapbook about my baby who died.