Scrapbooking...

I always wanted to be a scrapbooker.  I bought the supplies and I even started one for each of my children.  I found the deadline of a pregnancy was a very good thing to get me motivated.  My first pregnancy I put together our wedding album (3 years late to the day as she shares her birthday with our anniversary).  I thought I would never have a spare minute again and if I didn't finish it wouldn't get done.  With the second pregnancy I worked on my first borns album.  I loved doing it.  Capturing memories, quotes, important moments.  It felt so important yet I never took the time to do it.  Unless I was pregnant.  With the third pregnancy I worked on the second babies album and so on.  Except there was no next pregnancy.  It's no wonder our 3rd has many pictures of her but very few of them are in an actual album.  Apparently I'm a deadline girl and I had no deadlines to motivate me.

When our 2nd turned 10 I decided it would be nice to have the nice hard covered books of each of my children in 10 year increments and decided to start with the middlest who never gets anything first.  I put all the pictures together and started to create the book but when you have that many pictures from that many years and that many sources it gets confusing and overwhelming and...I stopped.  But not before I made a slideshow of the prints.  She loved it.  Watched it over and over and over again.  There is something about seeing yourself as a baby and a toddler and to feel the love of the photographer behind all those lenses.  I will complete that someday.  Maybe when my youngest turns 10?  That's NEXT year!!  Wow! Where does the time go?  A birthday lasts 365 days.  They are one age for a whole year.  If you don't finish it for the actual birthdate you feel like you have 364 days to catch up.  To procrastinate.  To not get er done.

My oldest just completed 10 years of dance.  She LOVES to dance.  She spends every spare minute stretching and spinning and kicking and twirling.  She even dances while doing every day items.  We need milk.  Twirl, kick, split, here's the milk.  Let the dog out?  Sure.  Spin, jump, dance.  Out.  One of her friend's had her ten year last year.  HER mom made her an album.  So Kelsey requested one too.  Didn't say I had to. Just said hey maybe would you?  When your 13 daughter asks for something sentimental and you're a sentimental mom, how can you not?  Trouble was I didn't want her to know.  I wanted it to be a surprise.  I started collecting and sorting pictures while she was at school.  I had her dance friends and teachers emailing and texting me with the pictures I didn't have.  Then I decided to have family members and dance friends write her notes about her 10th year.  There were letters in the mail she could have intercepted and packages passed between friend and mom on carpooling days that she never asked about.  She has a lot of dance classes so I could work on it at night while she was at dance and know she wasn't going to walk in the door.  Her sisters and dad knew about it too.  Everyone did except our tiny dancer.

I decided to give it to her on the way to her first dance performance of her 10th year.  I wanted her to be able to share it with her dance friends and to know how proud we are of her before her medal was received, before she even danced.  Although in doing so I could only see her reaction in the rearview mirror of my car.  She opened it with her friend in the back seat of our car on the way there.  There was a lot of laughing.  They have danced together since they were little so her friend was in most of the pictures.  Then I looked back to see tears.  I forget that they are young women on the cusp of adulthood that now fight back tears when things make them happy and sentimental.  Don't wreck your makeup was my first thought.  Two beautiful girls, who don't need a stitch of make up to make them the beautiful dancers that they are.

Reminds me of a poem my mom wrote for me when I was a little girl.  Dancing in front of a mirror and admiring my reflection.  My mom is an artist.  A writer that makes me tear up almost every time she writes.  A sentimental person who makes others feel sentimental in the simplest of words in emails, texts, cards and poems.

And it's so true.  Children can not possibly see how beautiful they are to their parents.  It's not something you can see in a reflection or in the rearview mirror of the car.  Or even capture in a picture of a dancer on a stage.  

Happy 10th year of dancing K!  You are a beautiful dancer! 

It's so wonderful to see you find something that you love so much!  

Thanks for dancing and for giving me a deadline!
This book reminded me that I love keeping track of memories
and creating.  Similar to this blog.
It makes me so happy to watch you dance!