Before my first child was born, I bought a pretty baby book and had full intention of filling it up and keeping it up to date. I completed like 6 pages, but then I started getting late on those monthly update pages! Then I thought, hey, I can always go back to those months and document them retrospectively a few months later. Well, a few months later, that never happened. Now, I don't even know 100% where that baby book is.
One thing that I did do right was I started a private Twitter account when my first born was a month old. I tweet about the big events and milestones, but also the littlest things that I would probably forget otherwise. I love tweeting the silly things that my kids say, their phonetic pronunciations of words that they haven't yet nailed, some memorable OOTDs (outfit of the day), the tablescape during Thanksgiving, and even pictures of our dogs napping together in one bed.
Below are some of my tweets from my account... (Full disclosure: the pictures within these tweets are NOT portfolio worthy. They are cell phone pictures and quickly edited with a different style than I have now, usually within the Twitter app itself. My goal was to make sure that I documented the memories for my family, and that meant quick and accessible pictures! If you want to see pictures that I've taken that are portfolio worthy, check out my family and couples gallery!)
Twitter is great because you can include pictures and videos. Also, the 280 character limit that Twitter imposes makes documenting less daunting and more doable, leading to more memories captured.
You can use it as an app on your phone, which makes it portable, so that you can tweet basically anytime, and then view it on different devices anywhere with internet. Twitter also allows you to archive your tweets into a savable HTML file, and other sites allow you to convert them into a PDF, which is searchable for a specific memory. Since Twitter is digital, it can't be lost like a physical journal, although services that can print your Twitter into a book do exist.
One of the greatest conveniences of Twitter is that all of your personal memories can be compartmentalized into one account, instead of just relying on Facebook, for example, which mixes everything together (e.g. yours and other's off topic shared links, etc.). Occasionally though, you can always retweet noteworthy news, events or other tweets that will help you remember each year.
Anyway, now that my children are 5 and older, I love having my Twitter account to look back on random, little memories, as well as settle debates with my husband about whether our son said "mama" or "dada" first. 😛
What do you think? Would you use Twitter as an alternative to a baby book? Let me know in the comments below!
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