I’m a big recorder of memories and I really like to have my two daughters’ personal albums (baby books, school albums) similar to each other. I have this innate fear that if their photo albums aren’t similar they will think I don’t love them as much as their sibling.

The problem is, it’s impossible to have everything exactly the same. They were born 2 ½ years apart, after all. I couldn’t possibly remember everything I had saved for my oldest while I was packing around an infant and chasing her around.

For instance, I noted all my oldest daughter’s first words, but nothing on my youngest. From what I can remember, my youngest didn’t talk for a long time; she just grunted and pointed. Then, always the perfectionist, she finally felt she had it right and began talking in sentences. I missed the whole thing because it just felt natural.

Going on that self-imposed angst of not having preserved everything for both children, I did my youngest daughter’s baby album first. Younger children seem to get less Kodak moments because we are busy with our older children. I was pleasantly surprised by how well I did.

When I finally sat down with my oldest daughter’s album, those feelings that something was missing resurfaced. I used my youngest’s album as a model and tried to copy exactly what I had done.

I ended up stopping several times because I couldn’t match them up exactly. I had to regroup my psyche and remind myself they are different kids, in a different birth order, with different experiences. My oldest had a baby sister arrive in her toddler years, my youngest did not.

When I finally pulled myself together enough to finish the album, I got to the very last part, which was her First Communion. In my unstable, young mother memory, I had saved both the girls’ group pictures (with all the kids receiving their First Communion that year) and their First Communion Certificates.

By the time I laid down the photos of my youngest daughter’s First Communion, that memory morphed into the thought that I only had her certificate and my oldest daughter’s group photo.

I searched and searched for either of those pieces for my oldest with no luck. However, I did unearth my youngest daughter’s group photo. I went through my oldest’s memory box, her school albums, and all my unsorted picture files. In my panic, I felt paralyzed to move forward. There it sat for months. Every once in awhile I’d repeat all my searches, giving up in frustration.

Last Saturday, I decided I had to resolve this issue and either finish her album with what I had or find those items. By then my scrapbooking table had become a chaotic mess. I determined I would start by cleaning it off. I started piling everything, one piece at a time, on a small side table so I could see where to begin.

There was a plastic storage bag with cards for my daughter’s First Communion. I picked it up to move it out of my way when I spied a velum envelope. “It couldn’t be that easy, could it?” I thought.

It was. All those weeks of frantic searching and it was sitting right in front of me. In my defense I believe I got that bag out of my daughter’s memory box , which holds random items from her babyhood that can’t go in scrapbooks. I remember snagging it from the bottom and thinking those cards belonged in her baby album.

Now I have all the same important pieces for each of their baby albums. I do realize that in spite of my self-inflicted, motherly torment, I’m sure they already know I love them.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.