Photos
I considered the monthly baby stickers - where you attach a sticker to a onesie monthly and take a photo (usually in the same spot to see how much they have grown). I love this idea and adore seeing photos of moms who do this with their little ones. I never got around to ordering the stickers but I did start taking a monthly photo of Charlotte on the rocking chair in her nursery so that I could measure how big she had grown in a year - see, I'm just as on top of it and organized as every other new mom out there! But - alas - I quickly realized that I hated the rocking chair so we now have my mother-in-laws glider - the inconsistency just didn't work for me.
From the moment Charlotte was born, I have take photos of her on a daily (okay - sometime hourly) basis. I am pretty sure that she thinks that my hot pink iPhone Otter case is part of my human body. Poor kid. So I started using A Beautiful Mess app to mark each day, week and month mark of her 1st year (I use the Lobster Two font - my favourite).
So in a year, I will have collected 365 individual images of our little girl. I am not sure what I am going to do with them at that point but I am sure some sort of photo project will take place (I already documented her 1st month and my pregnancy in a photo book).
Journal
I also wanted to make sure I documented all the little moments that we share together, including all of her 1st memories. I do have a baby book that I am keeping up-to-date but I wanted a way to document the day-to-day stuff. I have been using the Wonderful Days app for years now and I absolutely love it. I decided to dedicate Charlotte's 1st year to her so instead of keeping my personal journal on my iPhone, I keep bullet point notes each day for her - as well as her daily photo in the file. The app lets me also keep track of how I am feeling and the weather. Honestly - updating a day takes maybe 5 minutes, not even.
The best thing about this app? It syncs with Evernote. This means that I will never lose my journal notes, and I will be able to do something with them later on down the road (again - not sure what but I am pretty sure a book will be happening at the end of this year as a keepsake for when Charlotte gets older). I have considered just using Evernote directly for this process but I want my "journal" to be passcode protected and you have to pay for that feature through Evernote - it is automatic with Wonderful Days.
Scrapbook
I - like many - am obsessed with Project Life but haven't gotten around to starting that documenting process. I did just order the Project Life Core Kit - Baby Edition from Amazon. I am not sure when I will get an album and get started on this scrapbooking project but I'm glad I made the leap in the right direction.
Another thing I did recently was open up an email account in Charlotte's name and shared it with her grandparents. That way, any of us at any time can send Charlotte a note for the future. I wrote her a bunch of letters when I was pregnant and have those sealed up in pretty envelopes and wrapped with a bow but I loved the idea of handing over her email address and password on her 16th birthday so she could read the words and advice from loved ones. We will see if anyone actually gets around to doing this - ha ha!
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I have a lot of pieces up in the air but I know that when it comes to letting Charlotte know what her 1st year was like, I will be able to find all the details. Once I get around to pulling all these pieces together, I will make sure to share them here! Now my only concern is, how am I going to duplicate all these efforts for any future children?! :)
How do you document your children's lives?
What great ideas! I'll have to check out the Wonderful Days app. So far, I've been taking lots of photos and videos on my iPhone and saving them to my computer.
ReplyDeleteThe Wonderful Days app is so easy to use - and as I mentioned, it uploads to Evernote so you could definitely print the journal entries in the future or use them in a different format if you want. Enjoy!
DeleteWow! It sounds like you are on top of this! I have never heard of several of these things. When my children (ages 18, 15 and 12) were babies, I wrote in a journal every day to document their first years. Unfortunately, all of the journals were stolen from our home. I wish I had had some of the other ways of journaling you mention so that the memories would not be gone. I especially love the email idea for relatives and giving it to her as a gift for her 16th birthday.
ReplyDeleteThanks April! I am so sorry to hear about the journals being stolen. I guess that is the benefit of technology but I do still adore just good old fashioned writing with a piece of paper and a pen! I want to do whatever I can to keep some special memories for my daughter but the challenge will come if we have more than one :)
DeleteIt is going to be so cool to look at those pictures and see how much she has changed in a year. I wish I would have done that!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jenn! I got caught up in trying to keep track of her milestones and then realized that I take photos of her daily so why not just document one a day? It isn't time consuming and I love the idea of having a years worth of photos in the end to do something special with!
DeleteI loved this post, full of wonderful ideas. I am keeping a pregnancy journal, but have neglected to record anything for a few months. I think I will start again this weekend. I'm only half way through so it's never too late :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Krystal! It is never too late - I actually didn't start keeping track of anything through my pregnancy until almost 20 weeks because I was sick - wish I had from the beginning but what are you going to do? Enjoy and congratulations!!!
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