Our family calendar

My much chiller version of keeping a baby book

While I was pregnant with my first baby, my mom handed me a journal. I opened it to find an entry written on the day I was born. At the end of the page, my mother signed off by saying, “I’ll write more tomorrow.” I flipped the page. In my mother’s hand it read: “Flash forward eighteen years!” We died laughing. Because that’s parenting, isn’t it?

Not long before I had my baby, people started talking to me about keeping a baby book or marking “firsts” in a calendar. It seems like such a simple thing: buy a calendar, write down a few words, or even just place a pre-made sticker, but I couldn’t get it together to do this. I kept thinking: Next month I’ll get a calendar. Next week I’ll write a few things down in that (still mostly empty) baby book I bought. Tomorrow I’ll jot down what he did in the Notes app on my phone and then transfer it later.

I didn’t do any of that. I took a million pictures on my phone, of course, but I couldn’t summon the energy to write down so many of Gummy Bear’s firsts. I was a little overwhelmed by people asking me if he was rolling over, or later, if he liked eating solid foods and what were his favorites, and the constantly asked, “Is he sleeping through the night? How long are his sleep stretches? Is he in his own room yet?”

The first year of my baby’s life, I barely recorded a thing. When he turned one, I felt like I was just beginning to emerge from a long sleep, like a drowsy bear pulling herself out of his hibernation hovel.

Early in the year, I decided to make a Shutterfly calendar featuring some of the millions of photos I took of Gummy Bear only because I wanted those adorable pictures displayed. Once it was up on our kitchen wall, though, it was easy to reach around to the purple bookshelf in the living room where I keep a mug of pens and jot down a bullet point or two when I thought of it. Soon, I was recording any fun or funny happenings from the day and all of GB’s first words and utterings. For a long time his favorite thing to say was “Duckle Duckle da” and I must have scrawled its ten different iterations all over the calendar. I wrote down things like “GB helped cut ‘geen beans’” and “loved the ‘biggie busses’ at the airport” and “‘Boggie’ = froggy,” and soon many months were filled this way.

I didn’t sweat it when a day or two went by blank. It was a calendar, not a baby book, and every tiny bullet point of a memory I pinned down was one more that I had had I not written anything down. Somehow, keeping a brief record of my child’s second year had become a chill and fun experience. Now, looking back across the months, entire days of memories bloom, triggered by just a few words scrawled in teal gel pen. Because I took the pressure off, I now have so much more than I would have had I struggled to keep a long-winded, thorough journal.

I’m also very happy I started doing this after GB turned one. I honored my capacity and mental state by eschewing any real sort of record keeping that first year, and tbh? I didn’t miss much. I’ve discovered I’m not the type of mom who cares whether or not she remembers when her baby first sat up or slept through the night (lol) or tried peas or cut a tooth. I found I needed to live closer to surviving during his first year of life and was then able to step toward thriving during his second year. (And now?? I’m in the first couple months since he turned two and I feel the most me since before I got pregnant!)

An internet friend of mine and fellow Minnesota writer and mom, Emily Brisse, wrote a recent article in the Star Tribune about keeping a one-sentence-a-day journal in order to slow down and capture the joy and magic that is day-to-day life with her kids. She has also created a one-sentence-a-day journal for purchase designed specifically for parents. This could also be a great option for, as she says, “slowing down the blur that is parenting.”

You can capture the day in a few words in a calendar, a journal, a Notes app, or something else. You can skip a few days or weeks and jump back in. You can start this practice on the first day of the new year or in mid-February or the end of July. You can do this to preserve memories of your kids, your pets, yourself, your friends, your dreams, your Wordle scores, the articles or books you read—anything! And remember: anything captured is more than you had before, so don’t sweat the things you miss.

Do you keep a journal or calendar or other form of record? Tell me about it in the comments!

I hope that all of you have a peaceful and happy start to 2025. I am making no goals this year and feel really, really good about it. More on that later! For now—take good care and please know I am sending you warm wishes of health and happiness this New Year and beyond.

With love from my kitchen table,

Kaia