When Woo was born, I chronicled almost everything he did for the first year of his life. It was very specific at first; his sleep, his diaper changes, his feedings… This was mostly because he was my first and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wanted to make sure that I knew what I’d done and what he done.  I quickly saw that most of these notes could be transcribed into a “baby book”, that of course he would want when he was older*. Over time I refined what I recorded and actually included milestones that were noteworthy: the teeth, the words, the steps…

I made a conscious decision to stop at his first birthday.  While I continue to record some developments on the photos I was posting online, one year seemed like the appropriate snapshot to pass on in his baby book. When Goose was born, I recorded her milestones for exactly two days.

It was harder the second time. As much as Goose’s transition into our house was smooth, I just didn’t have the time to record EVERYTHING.  I made a halfhearted attempt by scribbling cryptic notes on whatever scraps of paper were on hand, but they were never transferred to her book, and more often than not lost or recycled as grocery lists. I give up entirely after about a month.

This blog, and my desire to chronicle our California adventure have become my second child’s baby book. I really wanted to record our stories, much like I did with our stories from India. It even seemed to start off well, but dropped off quickly.  Right now I have a pile of cryptic notes reminding me of stories to tell, several half written tales, and one or two completed posts that I just never published.

Then we had rats move in, and I realized that there are some stories that need to be told, that we are going to want to remember (and my memory is already failing me). It’s far too late for Goosie’s baby book, but it’s not for our current adventure. I hope it lasts more than two entries this time.

*while I still have the notebook that I used, these never actually made it into a “baby book”.