When my son turned one, the pre-filled pages in his baby book stopped. Apparently we were done recording milestones. But at the same time, at least to me, he suddenly became a lot more fascinating. 

With a baby, all milestones are huge, but you can wait months for them and they can be covered by a single line. First sat up on x date. First smile. Learns how to clap hands. 

After twelve months, this little person starts emerging. Steps became confident walking, which turns into running. Words start. Gestures are meaningful. Two words are put together. Then sentences. I found that every single day he did something amusing, amazing and that I wanted to remember. 

I don’t like to write about him in this blog – I don’t know how he’ll feel about online privacy when he’s older, so it’s best just avoided. Instead I bought a blank journal with 365 pages (I got one similar to this from Kikki.K – my first one was black though with thicker pages and nicer than the pink one I got this year). I try to write a little snippet each day about something new he has learned, something fun we did, who we saw, or some days he insists on doing a drawing in there. 

It might be something that he never wants to look at when he’s older, but if he does, he’ll see the stories that I wrote for him. I plan to keep it up until he starts school, but we’ll see how I go with it. I also need to get motivated to do the same with baby number two. My husband (a middle child) insists that since I started this for the first child, I need to do it too for the second. 

Occasionally I flick back through to what we were doing, and it reminds me of how quickly he is growing and changing. I take lots of photos too (what parent doesn’t these days), but I like the writing too.