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I. Pages
These layouts were designed in a variety of aesthetic styles that provide a coherent whole on their own while allowing for lots of personal creative enhancement. Color in the images and frames if you like. Include cool visual clippings. Write or paste in printed exerpts and quotes. We will have examples of completed pages on our website as well. Here are some page-specific suggestions:
Crane page: you may want to use a picture of the baby with the family, as the book is about that individual within the context of their family and as there is a welcome page later on
Parents' Story: "hot ass" is a great gag entry for what they liked about each other
Names Considered: include origin and meaning of winning names
Pregnancy: detail cravings, first movements, trans-abdominal whisperings, physical & emotional challenges & perks. Use additional pages to create more of a journal if you wish
Ultrasound: mark identifying features such as foot, eye, nostrils...if not readily distinguishable; include age of baby at time of ultrasound
Siblings: include birthdays, ages at baby's birth, expectations/understandings/thoughts/feelings/comments about baby on the way
Our Midwife/Doula/Doctor: include pictures and ask them to write an entry
Our Home Birth: include address, picture of home/room, how you prepared, meaningful objects in the birth space, why you chose a home birth
The Hospital: Mom's roommates, baby's roommates, smells, sights, sounds, who was present at the birth
Welcome: use frame for first picture or full name; write entries around the frame after or above each heading
Birth Stories: give a page to each person present at the birth. Include pictures of these authors with the new baby. Use extra pages for Mom's story for those loooong births, or for detailed accounts
Birth memorabilia: hospital bracelets, a copy of the birth certificate, announcements, cards, pressed flowers
Our First Days: what the family did, what the baby did, first outfit, first diaper change, how the climate/structure of home changed to accommodate the new baby
Zodiac: use stickers or collage for the baby's Chinese astrological sign; use symbols of prominent planets in the baby's chart; include numerology and birthstone information
Creature: theories on where the baby came from, prophecies, what he/she is meant to teach others, first observations about the baby's personality

Mother/Fatherroot: this was designed to accommodate for the absolute basic line of ancestry. To incorporate more immediate family members, we suggest you use different colors to distinguish names of children, siblings, and children-of-siblings of direct ancestors (ex: Mother: Althea (silver); Althea's siblings/baby's aunts & uncles (purple, written to either or both sides of the Althea entry); their children/baby's first cousins (green, written under their parents' names). Mother's Mother: Winifred (silver); Winifred's siblings/baby's great aunts & uncles (purple); their children/baby's cousins (green). And so on.) We included Ancestors headings on the back of these pages for more detailed ancestral records, family crests, meanings of family names, pictures, histories, stories, etc.
Visitors: pictures, autographs, wishes, how they helped out
Nursing Stories: feeding habits, skills acquired by mother and baby, compromises made, feelings and connections made
Day of Blessings: written blessings of family and friends, quotes and exerpts from your spiritual traditions, details/sequence of the day
Family Bed: accommodations made, sleeping habits, connections made, inevitable funny stories
Coping Stories: this is a great place to witness the frustrations and creative improvisation of parenting; also a great place for those classic screaming child pics
Centerfolds: a tribute to the nude infant genre of photography
Monthly pages: firsts, cute stories, baby's new hobbies, nicknames, sounds, games, activities, events. Use extra blank pages to expand particularly eventful months. It's also nice to have a picture on each monthly page to chronicle the extraordinary changes taking place
Walking: baby's footprints (which you may want to paste onto the page unless you're confident you can get a good print on the first try), distances, destinations (ex: couch to Uncle John)
Growing:

II. Materials
Photographs:
*it's a good idea to have negatives of the images you use
*use a red-eye pen to de-demonize your child, family and friends
*trim, crop and silhouette
*use photo corners or, even easier, quick stick photo tabs
Pens and Pencils:
*use a variety of colors
*be careful of inks that bleed and you might want to consider acid-free
Glue:
*avoid rubber cement as it doesn't hold up over time
*experiment; some will go a long way with just a little, which will make it easier and cleaner to use
*again, you may want to consider acid-free products
Stickers:
*can be used as an alternate to photo corners
*creature stickers are perfect for commentary
Stamps:
*practice a little for consistent inking and placement
*be careful of inks that bleed
*an elegant solution to blank backs of pages

III. Conversions
In the event you like an image and not the text or vice-versa or neither, it may be fairly simple to use stickers, pictures or clippings to cover up the offending parts. Another option is to use the whole page as the back of a pocket page. Simply cut a corner out of a blank page, run a line of glue along the back side and bottom edges, affix to offending page (covering up layout) and punch holes on the left side. This may be a little too crafty for your taste, in which case we ask you to recycle the unwanted page.

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this is our adaptation of the growth chart. You can use either the nautilus chambers or spines for chronological entries including height, weight, length and date. Chronologically arranged pictures or hand prints might be cool
Talking: first sounds, words, phrases, statements and exclamations
Untitled layouts and blank pages: create themed pages or use as an extension of another section of the book