Ideas to capture childhood, stage by stage

Games, photos, letters and outings for every age, from the first day to the first years. Each idea says what is worth keeping and how.

The first months 3 months to 1 year Around 1 year Around 2 years From 3 years At any age Special dates

The first months

Film the ordinary

The bath, the feed, the walk home. Nobody films the ordinary because it feels like it will last forever, and the ordinary is what vanishes without warning.

Write down what nobody will remember

The smell of her head, the sound she makes while feeding, the way she grips your finger. These are the first things to go. One sentence is enough.

The photo of the hands

Your hand next to hers, in the same photo. It is the image that most astonishes years later, because that scale never comes back.

One line per hard night

It sounds like the last thing you want to do at three in the morning. But this is the stage that vanishes from memory fastest, and the one most worth having written down.

Face up close, window light

A newborn sees best at about thirty centimetres, roughly the distance of your arms. Stay at that distance, no flash, with window light coming from the side.

Record your voice, not hers

Singing, reading out loud, talking about the day. Thirty years from now she will want to hear herself, but the voice she will most want to hear is yours.

Strong contrast is entertaining

In the first weeks high contrast draws more attention than colour. A sheet of paper with black and white stripes, moved slowly, buys minutes of fascination and wonderful faces.

A little time on her tummy

Awake and with company, a few minutes a day. She gets stronger, complains a bit and pulls some priceless faces. Keep your phone nearby.

The same photo, every month

Pick one fixed spot and repeat it every month. On their own they say little. Together, at the end of the year, they are the loveliest thing in the collection.

Routine and organisation

One song for each hour

The same song at bath time, another at bedtime. It becomes a signal of what comes next, it soothes, and twenty years from now that song hands the whole house back.

3 months to 1 year

The mirror

Sit with her facing a mirror and talk. The reaction changes from month to month, and filming the same scene every couple of months makes a beautiful sequence.

Outings and fresh air

The first trip

What to bring, how much travelling time she can take, and how not to come home without a single photo of the three of you.

A box of textures

A fluffy offcut, paper that crumples, a wooden spoon, a dry sponge. Nothing small enough to fit whole in a mouth. More entertaining than an expensive toy.

Outings and fresh air

Where to go with a small child

Places that actually work, by age range, and what to bring so you do not have to head home early.

Routine and organisation

Getting ready for first foods

What to set aside at home and how to record it. When to start and what to offer is for your paediatrician to say.

The face new food makes

Avocado, mango, beetroot. The face at the first spoonful of each flavour makes a run of photos that ages very well.

A cloth book, chewed and all

At this stage a book is an object before it is a story: something to crumple, chew and turn inside out. Reading together now is about linking books to your lap.

Outings and fresh air

Water for the first time

The sea, a pool, a stream or a basin in the garden. The face when a foot touches cold water is a photo you only get to take once.

Peekaboo

Hiding your face behind your hands and reappearing. The laugh that follows is short in life and forever on video.

A tunnel of cushions

Sofa cushions, a cardboard box open at both ends, a sheet over two chairs. Burns energy, costs nothing.

The cardboard box beats the toy

A big box becomes a car, a house and a hiding place, and entertains better than the toy that came inside it. That injustice is worth recording.

Around 1 year

Routine and organisation

Settling in at nursery

What the first week usually looks like, what to agree with the school, and the record nobody keeps.

Write down the wrong words

The first words come out crooked, and the crooked version is the one the family keeps forever. Write them down before the correct pronunciation erases the joke.

Routine and organisation

When a sibling arrives

How to prepare, and what to record before the house changes shape for good.

Outings and fresh air

A different surface every weekend

Grass, sand, gravel, dry leaves. Walking on different surfaces is fun and practice at the same time, and the park down the road will do.

She copies everything you do

Sweeping, talking on the phone, stirring a pot. Give her a small version of a real object and film it: this is where your family shows up in her.

Keep the first scribble

Photograph the drawing together with the hand that drew it. Paper yellows, goes missing, ends up as wrapping. The photo stays.

Around 2 years

A basin of water in the garden

A basin, two cups and a spoon. Twenty minutes of absolute concentration for practically nothing. Film from a distance, without interrupting.

Washable paint and big paper

Brown paper on the floor, poster paint and the whole hand. The mess is the point. Keep the handprint with the date on it.

The first day of school

The photo at the door, the backpack bigger than she is, and the text that matters: how you felt leaving her there.

The yearly interview

Three questions, always the same ones, every birthday. Record the audio. In ten years you will have a priceless collection.

From 3 years

Cooking together, mess included

Stirring, pouring, squashing dough. The mess is the point, not a side effect. A cloth on the floor solves it and the memory stays.

Let her tell the story

Pick a familiar book and ask her to tell it to you, looking at the pictures. Her version is usually better than the original.

The why stage

Write down the questions you could not answer. It is the truest portrait of how she thought at this age, and it disappears within a few months.

At any age

Letters to the future: what to write to your child

Five opening lines that solve the blank page.

Film the grandparents with her

Not the child on her own: the two of them together, talking. It is the record the family will most want to have, and the window does not stay open forever.

Document one whole ordinary day

Pick any Saturday and photograph it hour by hour, staging nothing. A day with nothing special about it is the one you will most want to see again.

The mark on the wall

A door frame, a pencil and the date. It is the most analogue record there is and the one that moves people most when the family moves house. Photograph it before you go.

Special dates

The first Easter

Probably no chocolate yet. But the photo with the little ears and the Easter letter last far longer than the egg.

The first Mother's Day

The photo that almost never exists is the mother with the baby, because she is the one taking the photos. Ask someone. Today is the day.

The first Father's Day

A recording of her father speaking to her at eighteen is worth more than any present he could be given today.

The first Christmas

Presents, photos, and what to do with a baby who will remember none of it.

Ideas for the first birthday

Not long now. Where to hold it, what to serve, who to invite and, above all, what to record before the day flies past.

Putting together the first year retrospective

A recipe for turning the year's collection into a video or an album the whole family will want to see.

Ideas for the second birthday

At two she takes part. That changes everything compared with the first one.