This is for A Million Memories September Kit.



Journaling Reads:
David, one of my biggest dreams is for you to love school.



To love learning as much as I do. I know that a big part of this is going to be the school you go to. The friends you have. The way you’re taught. And the teachers.



The teachers make a huge difference.



They can embarrass you, make you feel small, and too scared to explore, wonder, and ask.



Or they can make you soar.



They can make you look forward to getting up every morning and go to class. They can be the reason you can’t wait for Mondays to come. They can be the beginning of a lifelong desire to learn.



I always hoped that you’d get to be lucky enough to find one of those teachers. The one that you will remember forever. The one that instilled joy in your heart.



Maybe, right now, you’re too young for that. But that’s ok. I think, for now, I just hope that you have teachers who welcome you with open arms. Who listen to you and care about you. Who encourage your curiosity.



And you know what? Last year, we had all of that.



All of it.



These three women were the highlight of your days. They helped you learn. They helped you grow. They made you excited about showing up to school every single day.



Here’s to another twenty years of teachers just like that.

This is for A Million Memories September Kit.



Journaling Reads:
Before you came along,

Daddy thought he didn’t care

for babies.

“They don’t really do much for me,” he said.

He likes older boys.

Ones he can wrestle with.
Or throw balls with.

Ones he can talk to.

And then you came along.

And he fell in love.
Deeply, madly in love.

He’s so very confused about

the whole thing.
He doesn’t understand how

it could have happened.

How he could love this little baby

so very much.
That’s how magical you’ve been,

little Nathaniel.
How very loved you are.

Deeply. Madly. Loved.

Here is the last one of my layouts with this month’s A Million Memories kit.

Journaling Reads:


Little boy, today you are three months old. I can’t believe how quickly the last three months have passed. You have already grown so much. You weigh almost double what you did at birth. You are so strong and can hold your head up without any assistance. You can do tummy time like nobody’s business and you have just recently started grabbing things. Oh, and you laugh, you laugh so much and so magically that it makes everyone around you laugh.



Everyone says how much you look like me and I suppose they are right. You certainly look more like me than your brother does. You have my coloring, my face shape, and maybe even my eyes. But the one thing you have that I never did is the best attitude in the world. You are the most smiley baby I’ve ever met. It takes two seconds for you to break into a smile when someone looks at you. You meet their eyes and you smile so wide that the other person cannot resist smiling right back.



You’re not sleeping all that well just yet but I have hope for you. You’re already a better sleeper than your brother was at six months. I am hoping that, with time, that will just fall into place. Either way, before I know it, you’ll grow up and sleep in your big boy bed like your brother so I am going to enjoy these moments while they are still here and keep it all in perspective.



Happy three months, my son. I love you with all my heart.

Here is another one of my layouts with this month’s A Million Memories kit.



Love this boy.

Now that I’ve begun Nathaniel’s book, I wanted to share a little about my process. Months ago, I bought the baby kit from Lisa Bearnson’s KOTM, designed by Becky Higgins, thinking I would use it for Nathaniel.


I loved parts of the kit and wasn’t crazy about other parts so I made my own amalgamation of her ideas and mine.

I started with some of Becky’s cards and holders where I wrote his birth story, our tags from the hospital, the paper my sister-in-law Leila gave with the candles at my baby shower, etc. This is all the stories up to and day of Nathaniel’s birth.



Then comes one of the pregnancy tests I had taken. The only one that still shows the “pregnant” line. (Maybe it’s gross but I save these things.) and on the back is the paper where I kept track of Nathaniel’s pees and poops for the first few days.







Then comes the first piece of clothing they ever put him in. I also have his first hat and will put it in the back. And then one of Becky’s monthly cards to indicate the beginning of the first month.



And then the first layout welcoming Nathaniel to the world and finally a layout with one of the photos taken in his first week.







Next to the layouts is a page that has 4×6 photos from the other days on the first week. So I take photos of Nathaniel every day which means I have 7 photos a week. I scrap one and put the other six on a page that holds six 4×6’s. This way the spread shows the entire week.







So these are the first four weeks of his life. All the photos and all four (plus the one welcoming him) layouts. I do this for each month.







And finally, each month ends with this long journaling paper that came with the kit where I write about that month. Oh, and, each time we go to the doctor and he’s weighed, I use one of the stamps the kit came with and note his height/weight on the photo of the day when we went to the doctor.



that’s it!

And another page for Nathaniel.