Documenting Milestones

Hello Help Me Grow Blog readers! My name is Stephanie and I am a first-time mom of the cutest 4 month old boy in the world! (Yes, we moms are allowed to be biased. I’m sure your baby is the cutest in the world to you, too). But really, look at this picture.  You have to agree he is in at least the top ten.  :-)

I have learned a lot over the last 4 months and continue to learn new things every day.  I hope I can continue to write here some of the things I have learned and hopefully learn from all of you from the comments you leave.

Today, I wanted to share something that actually happened while I was pregnant.  Didn’t you find that there was a lot of pressure to prepare to document every little milestone your baby has?  I couldn’t believe all the journals and books and things I saw to have you write the date of everything.  Now, I could understand the big ones, like first smile, first step, first roll over, first tooth, etc.  However, I was also seeing people document everything like first time looking at me or first time he moved! (ok, that might be an exaggeration, but really…)  In other words I was feeling overwhelmed.

I guess it is important for you to know also that I am extremely intimidated by keeping a journal for all of my kids.  For the first, it may not have been a big deal.  However, as I thought about adding one, two, three, maybe even four…I got more and more nervous.  I had to think of an easier solution.

Then, I found it!  Two Minute Tuesdays.  Each Tuesday (or Wednesday, if I forget), I pull out our video camera and take a short 2-3 minute video of my little guy.  I try to get him to do some of the new things he learned that week, but if he won’t do them, I just talk about them while I video his cute face!  I have to tell you, it has been SO fun watching him grow and I love going back to old videos to see how much he has grown.  At the end of the first year, I plan to put them all together and put them on DVD.  Also, after the first year, we will not be doing it every week. Maybe once a month or so. This documenting technique has taken all the pressure off of writing everything down and we have a blast doing it together!

So, what are some ways that you like to document your child’s achievements?