Thursday, August 26, 2010

Beyond the Baby Book

Are you religious about filling out your kid's baby books?  I am.  Everything in my girls' books are filled out except the first day of school pages and Bowbas's 3rd and 4th birthday party pages.  Once a month from 3 months to 24 months I would make notes in the back of the book.  "Took first steps this month! Loves to watch Dora and eat Gerber Puffs...." After 24 months I would make notes of bigger things like "Finally potty trained!!"  Once their books started filling up and I realized I wouldn't be able to make notes in the baby books forever, I decided there needed to be something else were their toddler through school aged year memories could be documented. 
I started journals for both my girls.  I try to write in them at least once a month.  Some months I just jot down new things that are going on with them.  Other entries include details of road trips, birthdays, holidays, etc.  When I started this...good grief 2 years ago!  Is my Teeter Bees really 4 already?  I wasn't sure what my purpose was, but last month Tuck and I read through the girls' baby books and journals.  We laughed and we cried.  We laughed at little memories like Bowbas's first sentence "shud da door" and we cried at the scary times like Teeter being rushed to the ER with a severe allergic reaction to an ant bite.
We looked at each other and realized that these are our daughter's lives right here in writing.  I have created something that they will be able to look at when they have kids.  They can remember all the fun and exciting things we did like going to Crump's Garden to see thousands of beautiful poinsettias or getting to enjoy 3 Easter egg hunts in one weekend!  And they can remember how Mama and Daddy took care of them during scary times like ant bites and breath holding spells.
Do you document your kiddos?  How? 

1 comment:

  1. my Bailey blog :) I realized I am not good at writing things down on paper and keeping track of it so I started my online blog when I was pregnant with her. The whole surgery thing left me with so many emotions that I decided I needed to start writing down all of the things that were happening and that I was feeling at that time, and then it developed into a baby book and toddler book :)

    ReplyDelete