**Ultimate Blog Swap**

Today I’m participating in the Ultimate Blog Swap. You’ll find me posting over at The Journey about Things in My Purse, and I’m excited to welcome Sarah (who was the perfect match for us, since she just had a son in August of 2011) from Spoon Fed Baby to Little Orso:

Hello there!  My name is Sarah and I blog over at Spoon Fed Baby.  I am super excited to be doing a guest post today here at Little Orso.  This blog speaks to my heart because I too have a little boy who is my everything.  Crazy that you can love someone so tiny, so much! 

I have come to learn that as a Mom, your life resides in the moment that you are in, and also in the next few moments to come.  I am so focused on what baby boy is doing and what he is about to do.  There isn’t much looking ahead OR back.  Because of that we have made it a focus to capture as many moments as possible through photography.  Just to give you an idea: we started using our new SLR camera around the time our son was born.  He is 9 months old and we are on photo 4,521.  Yikes!   

So that the moments that happen so fast can be saved forever, I want to share with you some ideas for capturing your child’s first year in photographs. 

The Big Day

As I load new photos on to our computer I will often look back on the pictures of the day our son was born.  I thought I wanted the perfect picture of my son immediately after he was born being held up in the air.  Well, that didn’t happen,  but I have memorized what that looked like and will always remember it! 

Here are some suggestions of photos to try and get that day:

·         Baby and mommy meeting

·         Family photo on the hospital bed

·         Baby all swaddled up!

·         Footprints

·         Daddy and baby

And most important, stop to take it all in!  It is a day you will never soon forget.  Enjoy it.  AND (in all honesty) you grow fonder of that day as time passes!  

Weekly Photos

From week 1 I started taking a handful to pictures of my son on his weekly birthdays.  He was born on a Thursday, so every Thursday I will set him up and take a few pictures.  This is a great way to see how quickly he grows.  I will pick my favorite photo and put it in a separate folder on the computer so that I can quickly click through and see the changes week by week.  Just the other day I clicked through and focused on just the changes in his hair.  He doesn’t have much but I can see it growing before my eyes through the pictures.  How neat!

Monthly Photos

In addition to the weekly photos we take monthly photos on our son’s month birthdays.  The 4th of every month we set him up in the same spot with the same props, in the same clothes (new sizes obviously).  We chose to use props so that you can compare the size of him to the objects around him.  It is also fun to see him interact with the props as he gets older and more mobile.  We just snap away and come out with a few (or 100’s) of cute pictures.  Again, we copy the best one and put in a folder so we can flip through quickly and see our boy get bigger before our eyes!

The days go by so quickly with children.  Because of the photographs we have taken of our son, I can slip away and re-live the day he was born, when he first tried solid food, our family vacation, and many other special memories.  In a way it slows down the time just a bit. 

Visit Life Your Way to see all of the Ultimate Blog Swap participants!