Becoming a mother is the most blessed event in a woman’s life. Feeling the movement of another life inside of your body cannot be expressed in words. Every day brought a new challenge and a new discovery about my baby that brought sheer joy to my heart.

Let your pregnancy be a time of being proud of your expanding belly. Many men have said that their wives/significant others were never more beautiful than when they were carrying a child. So show off that big ball of baby!

Baby Photo Ideas:

Keep a photo record of each month of pregnancy by taking a belly shot. It seemed to me as if my belly grew overnight. But, pictures will tell the true story.

Take a camera to the doctor’s office with you at your monthly visits. Each time he rubs the gel on your belly to hear the heartbeat, take a picture. When you go for your ultrasound have the technician label the baby’s anatomy on the printout so that you can keep it to show friends and family.

Let daddy put his hands and ears to your belly to feel and hear his child. Ask someone take a picture to remember this bonding moment. If this is not your first baby, have your other children stand next to you or get a picture of them snuggling on your belly.

Baby Scrapbooking Ideas:

Don’t throw away the reminder cards for your doctor’s visits. Keep them to go along with the belly pictures you took each month. Incorporate the ultrasound picture into your scrapbook, too. Scrapbook paper with storks carrying babies would make a neat background for your belly photos.

Frame your pictures with colored cardboard to make them stand out. You may need to design more than one page for all of the monthly belly photos. When your child grows older and looks back over these photographs, he will see how much he was loved – even before birth.

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Over the course of baby’s first year, they will have many occasions to behave badly. During their daily explorations of the house, baby is bound to try a few things they shouldn’t. You must have a sense of humor about baby’s antics. As long as baby hasn’t done anything dangerous, it’s okay to capture it on camera.

My niece loves Cheerios. To keep her from eating too many at one time, I would hand them to her. One night I left the sandwich bag with the cereal in it open on the couch and went to check on dinner. When I returned, my niece was sitting in on the floor in a pile of cereal, stuffing them in her mouth. Then, she proceeded to stand up and stomp all over them. Grinding cereal into my carpet was definitely a no-no.

Turning over the trashcan would be another example of BBB – Baby Behaving Badly. Sometimes it’s hard to know if baby is purposely doing naughty things, but I would give them the benefit of the doubt.

Baby Photo Ideas:

Since you never know what baby may do, grab your camera whenever you notice them being really quiet. Given a chance, baby will pull the tablecloth off the table and everything along with it. The funniest naughty baby moments will be photographed at mealtimes and diaper changes. Giving baby a plate of their own is sure to bring out the “naughty” in them.

Be sure to take pictures of any large messes baby makes or any naughty climbing he does. Even though, at the moment you may be mad as a hen, years from now, you’ll love those “naughty baby” pictures.

Baby Scrapbooking Ideas:

When baby gets in trouble they are usually relegated to the playpen where they can’t escape. Construct a large playpen on the page. Paste your naughty baby pictures inside the playpen. You can even draw black and white bars on the playpen.

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You dreamed about this child for months but nothing prepared you for the love that welled up inside when you first laid eyes on your baby. Now, each day is a new opportunity to express that love. I loved watching my baby sleep in his crib. I would check on him several times a night just because I didn’t want to miss a thing.

His tiny face was the spitting image of his father’s and that made me smile. I couldn’t imagine what my life was like before I met my son. All I knew was that I wanted to be there for him every day from that time on.

Baby Photo Ideas:

Oftentimes new moms are so conscientious of their weight that they hide from the camera. Years later they look back at the photos of baby’s first year and don’t have the pictures they wished they had. It’s as if they weren’t there for the first year! Please don’t make that mistake.

When your mother comes to visit or when daddy isn’t too tired from work, make the most of their presence to enlist their help taking pictures. Mommy feeding baby in the rocking chair and mommy changing baby’s diaper are both good picture ideas.

Mother and baby’s first outing at church dressed in their Sunday best will make a peach of a picture. Even sleepy mom holding a cranky baby as she warms a bottle is a tender moment.

When you are well enough, go out with baby. Take daddy along to snap pictures of mommy and baby visiting people and places. Take along the camera to baby’s first “well baby” visit. Capture mommy and baby in the park on a summer’s day and even in the grocery store. Be creative.

Baby Scrapbooking Ideas:

Mommy and baby moments are worth remembering. Craft stores make silly quote stickers. Pretend baby is making comments in the photographs. If you and baby visited several places in the same day, use sticker footprints or a footprint stamp to connect the pictures showing your travels.

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Fathers are special people. Even the strongest, most macho man becomes an overgrown teddy bear around their own child. The most important part of dad’s life is resting in his arms. My husband was afraid to hold our son at first. When he got the hang of it, I would tiptoe around the house and catch him humming to our son as he rocked him to sleep. He was becoming every bit the caring and loving father our son would need throughout his life.

Baby Photo Ideas:

Since mommy is usually the one caring for baby during the first six weeks of life, whenever daddy steps in to help is a good time for a photograph. Shots of daddy and baby when neither of them is aware of your presence produce loving memories.

Let daddy get up one night and take care of baby. Watch him rub the sleep from his eyes and give his best zombie impression as he staggers off to the nursery. Grab the camera and follow him to the nursery. Watch him carry baby to the changing table. Is he awake enough to put baby’s diaper on correctly? If not, you’ll catch it on camera.

Be sure to take regular photos of baby with Daddy to show baby’s growth. Playtime is oftentimes the best time to catch daddy at his best.

Baby Scrapbooking Ideas:

Title your pages “Daddy’s Little Girl” or “Daddy’s Best Man”. If baby is a boy, design the scrapbook page with father and son activities in mind. Boys play catch with their fathers and build things. Let the decorations reflect all of the wonderful memories father and son will share in years to come.

Use stickers or foam in the shapes of basketballs, baseballs, and other sporting items. If your bouncing baby is a girl, decorate with father/daughter moments in mind: tea time, bike riding, ballet, and roller skating to name a few.

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It’s exciting to see how much a baby can change in a few short months. They gain a personality-quirkiness if you will. I was looking at my niece’s baby pictures the other day. She is thirteen months old now and she doesn’t even look the same way she did as a newborn. I can’t believe she was ever the gangly little thing I saw in those pictures.

Without those pictures, we wouldn’t be able to share laughs about those early days. My niece was so small once that she fit in the basket of my sister’s new chest freezer. They snapped a picture of her sleeping in the basket!

Baby Photo Ideas:

The first year of baby’s life will bring about the quickest changes. Baby will grow from a cute screaming machine into a walking explorer in twelve short months. Capture each moment. As the season’s change, photograph baby outdoors. Introduce baby to the snow in winter and the multicolored leaves in the fall. Show them tulips in the spring and beach sand in the summer.

Holidays during the year represent more photo opportunities. Baby Halloween costumes get more precious every year. Take photos of baby’s first Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dress baby in green for St. Patrick’s Day and pastel colors for Easter. If baby is still small at Easter time, photograph them lying in an Easter basket among the plastic eggs and fake grass.

One way to show your baby’s growth is to take her picture each month with the same stuffed animal. That way, your baby will start off much smaller than the toy and end up larger than it. You can even dress the baby and toy alike for certain holidays for fun.

Baby Scrapbooking Ideas:

To display all of baby’s nuances, give each month a page of its own. Each month should have its own theme, too. Highlight a particular event in that month to focus on with your designs. For example, July’s page can be filled with stars, stripes, and fireworks. Some months may need more than one page.

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