baby love letters

What's This Site About?

Thanks for joining me at Friday Letters. Since publishing the little book, Held in the Arms of Love, (see June 26th post and cool mom picks ) I have been asked lots of questions about writing letters to one's children. Friday Letters is to make the process easy and fun. You can join me just for today or come back on a weekly basis. The purpose of this blog is to help parents create a meaningful letter to their child, even if it's only one paragraph long and takes 15 minutes to write.

Each Friday a new question will be put up on this blog. Your response to this week's question can stand on its own or be joined together with answers to future questions.

1. Read this week’s question and spend no more than 15 minutes writing your answer.
(Obviously everything you want to say can’t be said in 15 minutes but this gets your thoughts down on paper and you can always write more letters in the future.)

2. For the photographers of the group
Create 1-3 photographs on this topic to accompany your words.

3. Save your letter in a place where you keep important papers.

Content and images on this site are copyrighted.

Friday Letter questions are for individual use not for commercial purposes, without the author's permission.

Friday Letters...Baby love letter 108

 "Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."

Albert Camus

"If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart."

Arab Proverb

Although this isn't quite on topic I love this idea I read today about gift giving to children. Sometimes the piles of things we give our kids just goes beyond common sense. So here is a dust free idea. Why not have adults give the child a coupon for an experience with them of something they do? For instance, I had my grandson take a picture with my camera while we were at the beach. The coupon would be for an hour lesson with me on my computer turning that picture into a card. Or how about if you are a good cook...a coupon for an afternoon with you making your special secret recipe. Or if you are a gardener, a coupon for an hour of planting a special vegetable garden pot...one for them to take home and tend during the summer. (Might want to talk to mom first before you give gifts that involve her follow up.) Time with adults children love, doing something that the adult also loves, can be a win win gift.  (idea from 12/13/09  article "Gifts that don't gather dust" The Christian Science Monitor)

  
 
 

Friday Letters...Baby love letter 107

 "Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all thirty feet tall."

Larry Wilde

 

I think last year I had visions of sugar plums dancing in my head when I pictured all 6 of my grandchildren at the Christmas tree farm finding that perfect tree. In my dream....they were all scampering through the endless rows of trees until... there it was... my tree. In reality...the boys took off one way beating down the weeds with their pretend swords. And the 4 girls went the other direction running and chatting endlessly. I finally picked the tree...the dad's cut it down... and home we went shivering from the cold. Not quite what I had imagined.

 
 

Well this year I wanted it to be a memorable experience. So a week before our outing, my grandson and I went in search for the perfect tree. One hour later we found it, tagged it and memorized its location. 

 

That week I created 12 clues and put them in individual envelopes. Tucked inside some of the envelopes were 5 dollar bills to be collected during the hunt. These, when all found, would be enough to pay for our tree.

 

On the following gorgeous Sunday, upon each child's arrival at the farm they were given 2 envelopes with their clue numbers printed on the outside.

 

 

 

The older children helped the younger ones decipher the big words as each clue was read and off they ran at full speed from one clue to the next until... they found our tree which was identified by 6 large candy canes hanging from its branches.

 

 

The tree is now up and decorated and awaiting its December 5th debut. That's the night Sinter Klaus arrives upon his white horse with presents for the good girls and boys.

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Friday Letters...Baby love letter 106

 

"The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it to you."

Kendall Hailey

 

 "To grandmother's house we go..."

It's amazing what we do when family is coming to town. These are children who laughed, cried, argued and lived with us for 18 years or longer. You know the ones we taught to be responsible and clean their rooms. They know all of the family secrets and all of our faults, yet...we clean, polish, bake and cook (like we never do the rest of the year) so we can appear at the front door with smiling faces and open arms..ready for them to see us and our home in our best light...if only for an instant.

"And thank you for a house full of people I love. Amen."

Ward Elliot Hour

Friday Letters...Baby Love Letter 105

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

Scott Adams

As some of you know I have been taking drawing classes. I have a love/hate relationship with my new discovery. At some points confidence leads my piece of charcoal across the page and at others I am truly frozen by the fear of making a mistake. The latter took over this week during class. I couldn't get myself to take the next step. I already had 15 minutes invested in my project and didn't want to blow it. My teacher saw what was going on and set the drawing aside and had me start on something new.

In that instance... that was just what I needed.

Still lurking in my sketchbook is that unfinished piece. I think I will keep it so, even though now I have the courage and knowledge to complete it.

I love this quote by Churchill, "You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her..."

 

Last day to get the entire list.

It disappears at midnight tonight! This is the last day to find all 104 prompts (two years of questions) in one spot. Go to last Friday's post.

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Friday Letters...104

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."

Dr. Seuss

This post marks two years of weekly prompts to help parents write one or a series of letters to their children. I have been asked to put all of these questions in one place for easy reference. So as a convenience to those of you who have been my loyal bloggers...here is the list.

This will only be on the blog for the next week.

The List

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Check by the baby love letter blog tonight at 12:01 am and you will find the list of prompts from the last two years.

But remember.... this list will only be here for one week.

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Friday Letters...103

"The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live."

Flora Whittemore

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Coming Soon!!!

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I've been asked over and over to compile all of the questions from my blog in one place for quick reference...SO next week's post (question 104) will have all of the questions listed there. I will leave that list up for one week.

If you are a member of a scrapbooking or writers forum you might want to give your members a heads up.

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Friday Letters...102

"The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time."

Henry Ford

"Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged."

Thomas Edison

In early 1999 I began working with a little idea...more like a passing thought. Sitting on my desk was a list of questions I had been asking clients with newborns to answer to accompany their mother baby, father baby images. A letter was written from the answers to these questions. The letter was then to be framed and hang on the wall beside the image or tucked into the back of the picture's frame.

Sitting next to this paper were sketch type images I had just taken of my little grandson with his father. The idea that came to me was...wouldn't the combining of these two things create an interesting hallmark card. A few days later the little card idea was seen by a book printer who suggested it would be an incredible idea for a gift book for new parents. So was born the little book, Held in the Arms of Love.

I love Seth Godin's post for today...

"Big ideas...are little ideas that no one killed too soon."  

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