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baby book of the new millenium


I don’t have a baby book for Maggie. I never got one before she was born, and I kept thinking ‘Oh, when I scrapbook her baby pictures, I’ll just write all her milestones and stuff in as I go. And I’ll TOTALLY remember them all, because I will be Super Mom and will never forget any of it!’

Well, that was a big huge FAIL. I am now 3 years behind on scrapbooking, which means I haven’t scrapbooked a single picture of my kid yet (not even when she was in-utero!) and I can never remember any of her past milestones off the top of my head. I have found myself going back in my blog archives numerous times to find out when she first rolled over, or when she got her first tooth, or when she first started walking. As it turns out, this blog is basically her baby book. I didn’t really plan for it to be that way, but I guess when your mom is a blogger, your life just kind of becomes part of it. Sorry kid!

So, in the spirit of recording my daughter’s development, here’s a list of things she does now, in no particular order:

She sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star anytime she sees a star. It goes like this: ‘Cwinkle Cwinkle Cwittle Tar, Hhhhhhaaaa waaaaa wa arrrrrr…’ and it’s the freaking cutest thing ever. I really need to get it on video, but she immediately stops doing whatever it is that’s video-worthy as soon as we turn the camera on. She even started singing it tonight when she heard the first few notes of the song on her CD player. Dan didn’t even recognize the song at first until she started singing it. He was impressed!

She can count to 10 sometimes. She counts each step as we go down them, and a few times she has made it to 10. Most of the time she makes it to 6.

Her first multi-word phrase was ‘Take a bite’ this weekend at dinner.

She is getting a lot better at eating from a fork or a spoon. She gets SO proud of herself when she does it, she’ll clap and say ‘YAY!’ after she does it successfully.

She knows a few shapes- circle, square, and heart (and star, obviously) When we sit down to color with her, she demands ‘CEE-COOL!’ and keeps repeating it until we draw 50 billion circles on the page. Apparently the kid likes circles.

Her colors made a huge leap this week. For a few weeks, everything was ‘Red’. Now she can say ‘Green’ and ‘Purple’ when we point to something green or purple and ask her what color it is. Sometimes she’ll say ‘Red’ first, and when we say ‘No… what color is it?’ again, she gets the right one. She also said ‘Orange’ tonight at dinner, without saying ‘Red’ first.

She is constantly talking. CONSTANTLY. My sister watched her on Friday night, and she said that basically she just walked around all night and never stopped saying words. Sometimes it’s in context, but sometimes it’s just random things she sees (‘Tree!’) or hears (‘Plane!’) The number of new words she learns each day is astounding. We can no longer keep track of them. Now is apparently the time when we need to start being careful what we say. She repeated ‘Crap!’ last week. Whoops.

And as for her sleeping- it’s been going much better. She seems to get that nighttime is not for hanging out on the couch with Mom, it’s for sleeping in your bed. I love you kid, but I don’t mind not seeing you between the hours of 8pm and 7am. That’s totally cool with me.

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Other Bun Stuff « Red Pen Mama

[...] responses I was over at Jayesel’s place reading about her daughter, and I realize Bun and Maggie are doing the same stuff. Although Jayesel doesn’t mention if [...]

Nov 25 at 9:58 am


12 Comments


  1. sparkyd

    Nov 23 at 8:41 pm

    I think the fact that you have a blog to record Maggie’s development and your life together in general is way better than any baby book. She won’t just have a few facts and photos to look back on; one day she’ll be able to read all of this and get a real sense of what her life was like when she was just a babe. And not just all about her, she’ll learn a lot about her Mom and Dad too. I think it is really cool. I’d love it if I had something like that from my Mom. I think there is a service (or possibly several) that will publish your blog into a book – you should totally do that for her eventually.

    When my son was born (18 months ago) my plan was to write him a letter every month. Never even finished one. Bad Mommy. I’m not a scrapbooker or anything like that either. The best I’ve got is lots and lots of pictures. And I’m even failing on tagging and organizing those lately. Sigh. Maybe next week…



  2. Rachie

    Nov 23 at 10:16 pm

    Aw I’m so proud of her for every thing’s she accomplishing! I know you are. If you do get anywhere with her baby book/scrapbook you should totally scan some of it. I’d like to see!

    Rachies last blog post: Progress-has been and will be made.



  3. Dave P.

    Nov 24 at 12:04 am

    My wonderful wife managed to put together a scrapbook as a baby book for Abby’s first year, but we decided that would be it as far as scrapbooking went, due to the time and materials involved. I agree with sparkyd, the blog is a great record of her life and mom & dad’s life as she grew up. Definitely keep backups! Offsite! :-)

    Also, as to the printed book option; I have heard of this, and can’t remember the original one I ran across for putting a blog into book format, but I recently ran across Blurb.com and they seem to have some great options for creating your own book. I have seen their output, and the quality is great – check them out if you are interested in that kind of thing!

    Dave P.s last blog post: Enjoying the glow: Pittsburgh Light Up Night 2008



  4. Priscilla

    Nov 24 at 7:30 am

    Those baby books are so freaking hard to keep up with! I have one for each of the kids and I have to say that I did well with all the younger stuff until they hit about 2 then it is blank! Why do they make those books go until the kid is five anyway?!!



  5. Karen

    Nov 24 at 8:37 am

    Of course you’ll never forget a milestone. Super Moms never do. That’s why we’re so good at make-believe stories.

    Karens last blog post: This Is A Public Service Announcement



  6. red pen mama

    Nov 24 at 10:52 am

    Oh, good. I was going to write this post for Bun, but now I’m just going to link here, saying: Go see what Maggie’s doing. Bun’s doing it too.

    I was so surprised the other night when Bun counted to 10. I didn’t teach her that! Sigh. Sometimes working outside the home makes me sad.

    ciao,
    rpm



  7. Jen

    Nov 24 at 12:18 pm

    @red pen mama: Maggie is home with me 3 days a week, and I still have no idea where she learns half this stuff! I think some of it is Sesame Street, and some is daycare, and a lot is Dan- he goes through her letters and numbers every night, making a point to teach her things. It’s actually really cool to watch! I’m just the lazy slacker mom who lets Sesame Street teach her the rest, ha! (Though we did look for colors together at Costco this morning!)



  8. Steph

    Nov 24 at 3:43 pm

    I am very proud to report that I did keep a baby book but they were all “approximations” – I didn’t run to the thing the very same day she hit a milestone. I’d go in a week or two later and try to remember the day.. most of them were just guesses (but close enough).

    In said baby book, there was also a place where you stamp their feet and hands to record how small they were – yeah, I stamped Heidi at like 3 months or something. When I finally remembered ;)

    I’m glad I kept that kind of record because I stopped blogging shortly after she was born…

    Anyway – it’s great that Maggie is doing so well with numbers, shapes and letters! You know what I found really helped Heidi pick up the colours was when I would let her draw with crayons. Whenever she’d reach for one I’d tell her the colour. Then we got to a stage where she had to ask me for a colour before I gave her one. It was great fun for both of us and now she’s a pro with colour :) (side note: at my aunt’s Christmas party on Sat, we had her up on the pool table to play with the balls.. and I mentioned that she knew all of her colours and we got challeneged, and Heidi came through!)

    Stephs last blog post: Why Having Your Own Office Rules



  9. Melissa

    Nov 24 at 4:23 pm

    I find myself doing the same thing, going back through blog posts to find out exactly when Oliver did something. I do have a baby book that I filled out throughout his first year, and since then I’ve been writing letters now and then in the blank pages in the back. I printed out his birthday letters from my blog and stuck them in there too. But look at all the photos we take of our kids these days… tons more than our parents took of us!… so I think having all those memories captured is quite a “baby book” in itself. And having your blog will not only provide Maggie with memories from her childhood, but someday when she’s in college and getting married and having babies (!), she can look back to see what YOU were doing/thinking when you were going through those things, and that will be really special for her to have. :)

    Kids learn so much just by listening and observing. It’s hard trying to keep up with teaching them, honestly, because their brains are always a few steps ahead of ours!

    Melissas last blog post: and when there was no moon she watched the stars



  10. ChristineMM aka The Thinking Mother

    Nov 24 at 4:45 pm

    I’m not into scrapbooking but I hear that digital scrapbooking is also a new easy thing you do the work all over the Internet using your digital photos.

    Also very ‘milennium baby book’ like!

    :)

    ChristineMM aka The Thinking Mothers last blog post: A Poem About Suburbia by Tony Cavin



  11. Laura

    Nov 24 at 7:33 pm

    So cute! And BTW, my memories of Andrew totally change in retrospect. What seemed like FOREVER at the time was only a few weeks, and what he was doing early or late 6 months ago seems totally irrelevant. ;) I am, however, obsessive about his baby book (I write in in every month) and I love looking back and realizing how different my perspective is now.

    Lauras last blog post: longest short week 2008