If you've been reading here awhile, you might remember our calendar page project that we started five years ago to document Lo's first twelve months. (Or you may have seen our project before on
iVillage or
Rookie Moms.) After she was born, I photographed her holding a calendar page once a month (on her birth date, the 2nd) until she was a year old to record how much she was growing and changing.
As everyone knows, babies change so incredibly fast and monthly photos are an increasingly popular way to record that crazy first year. People use chalkboards, screen-printed t-shirts ... you name it. I ended up creating a calendar page in Adobe Illustrator so I could update and print it out each month. At the end of the year, I had all of the photos printed and put them into an accordian-fold album.
Looking back, I have to smile. I remember getting our first 'nice' camera the year Lo was born, but I didn't really know how to use it. I propped her up against an enormous black backdrop every month and she'd try to eat the calendar page, crumple it up, spit up all over the place or crawl away. But we ended up with a pretty fantastic record of her first year. Totally worth it.
So, now it's little Bowen's turn. I was thinking about abandoning the calendar page idea and trying something different this time, but I think looking at siblings in side-by-side photos (that were shot the same way) someday might be interesting. Plus, I'm trying hard to keep it fair and do the same things for my second kid as I did for the first. So we're sticking to the format. I can't wait to watch him grow. Did you document your baby's first year in photographs? Tell me how you did it!
