As with your younger days, your little ones’ childhood is a fleeting beauty. Their time will come when you are ready and then go when they are ready. As they grow quickly and society has yet to invent a way to put time on temporary hold, the urge to document their growth becomes irresistible.
Whether you’re a new mom or an experienced parent, documenting your child’s growth invites nostalgia and introspection. Marking their height on a wall or taking yearly photographs are timeless methods, but there are ways to make them more engaging.
Here are four memorable and interactive ways to document your child’s growth:
Yearly Photo Album
Making a yearly photo album is a fun project you can do with your child. You can hand pick your favorite pictures each year, put them together in an album, and arrange them however you like. You can also jot down dates or add some quick, witty captions to go along with the photos.
The beauty of this method is that photos resist change, or at least age with minimal wear and tear. Plus, it’s not like the poses in the photos will ever change. Every time you reminisce through the album, it’s like stepping back in time and seeing how your child has grown over the years. The result is a nostalgic trip down memory lane, and perhaps even a cherished family tradition.
Growth Journal
If the form of photos alone is not enough for you, consider making a growth journal instead. Working with journals means you are working with a bundle of pages that are completely empty. Between these pages, you can stick, write, attach anything and, most importantly, place them anywhere that you want to. Journals offer more freedom in how you maximize the pages–so much so that even if, say, a random receipt extends past the edge of a page, it will still do. You can lay out, maybe, a line that your child currently won’t stop saying and some crafts together. Whatever it is that you do with the pages, the journal will not fail to keep them secure because they are all tight and shut with a binding.
Milestone Keepsake Box
Small mementos and letters might make it into a journal, but a box can accommodate bigger items like artworks and trinkets. Using boxes is more flexible when it comes to what you can store, and it requires minimal effort to start doing it or maintain it. Whether you are using a simple cardboard box or a wooden box, boxes provide great storage with less complication or constraint. You can still personalize the box by placing compartments inside or painting the outside. And if this does not satisfy your scrapbooking urges enough, you can always pick up an album or journal again and simply keep it inside the box!
Time Capsule Letters
A reversed approach to documenting your child’s growth is through time capsule letters. As the name implies, time capsule letters involve writing your current thoughts, sentiments, and hopes, and using them to address your toddler in the future. These letters are then stored in a time capsule and saved for the special date or milestone when you want your toddler to read them. It’s like documenting their growth in advance, allowing you to reflect retrospectively on both of your evolving roles as a child and parent.
These four methods provide a way to look back on your child’s development in a more interactive manner. Deep inside, these four methods are labors of love, forever suspending the time of precious moments of childhood. Childhood can slip by before you even know it. So, don’t forget, while the goal is to document your journey with your toddler, seize every moment while it’s still there.
