BabyLoving.com

One thing that is definitely worth an investment when your child is still a baby is a keepsake box. This can be as simple or elaborate as you want it to be, but you will be using it year after year to save all the treasures of your child's life.

If you are crafty you may wish to buy a plain box, perhaps covered in velvet (or cover it yourself!) and then embellish it with beads or cutouts that are generally sold in craft stores and used for scrapbooking. Make it look like the treasure chest it will become over the years. If you are starting this project when the child is older, by all means, allow him or her to help choose the embellishments.

What you decide to store in this treasure box is your own decision. A good place to start if you can't decide right away is to store the things that won't be going into your "everyday" scrapbook if you will have one. There will not probably be many pictures in the box because those store better in albums.

The items to store for a newborn are countless! In my own treasure box, I have my daughter's birth announcement from all those years ago along with the plastic "bracelets" we each wore in the hospital. I have the cards that were sent to welcome the baby and those first booties. Since she was born prematurely, I kept one of those extremely tiny specialized "preemie" diapers and it is in the treasure box along with a little outfit a friend in Illinois sent that was smaller than "0-3 months" size and labeled "preemie size." There is also an "It's a Girl!" cigar in the treasure box for the infancy years.

As the years go by you will adding other things of your choosing. Again the possibilities are endless and may include things like a favorite picture book or the baby's first doll or favorite security blanket. In later years you will be adding things such as blue ribbons won and A+ school papers, the shirt worn as he or she gave a public speech for the first time, newspapers for special days that will be remembered in history, etc.

This may also be a good place to store birthday cards that the child receives year after year. I always had a problem deciding what to do with birthday and Christmas cards, and this is a good solution. Don't forget to add a decoration or two from birthday parties or other celebrations. Remember to date everything! If you were writing a journal of your pregnancy to give to the baby "someday" this will be a good place to store it.

Another idea is to made cassette tapes of the child at various stages of life starting with the infant sounds. A micro cassette recorder works well for this. If you want to protect the data more than a cassette tape might do, keep those master copies, of course, but consider having them all transferred to CD as well.

Store the treasure box in a place that will not be getting too hot, cold, or damp because these are the types of items that you want to preserve in the best way you know how, so a damp basement or sweltering attic is not a good choice for storage.

Do not forget all those wonderful drawings that will be presented to you over the years. When they have served their stint on the refrigerator and become retired, put them into the keepsake box and you will always know where to find those masterpieces.

Still another idea to do annually is to store a growth book in the treasure box and then take the time to fill it in on each birthday. If you make your own and it is journal type, the sky is the limit for what you want to add. Certainly height and weight should be first, and then you will add all kinds of options such as "favorite food," "favorite music," "favorite television shows," "best friends," and so on. I had one of these books where the child was to add a signature on the birthday each year. Areas for trips taken, school grades, and special honors should be added to the journal book, too.