I wanted to take a moment to talk about Month-By-Month baby photos.

Your baby grows and changes every day, and capturing those changes on a regular basis is both important and really fun!

If you’ve been on Pinterest you’ll know that there are a LOT of ideas out there for how to do it.
Most of them work from this familiar formula: baby + prop + text.

Here’s what I love about monthly baby photos. 

Over the course of a year, your baby has likely gone from sleeping and eating all the time — not being able to hold his or her own head up — to laughing, interacting, and moving around in the world. There’s been rolling, and tummy time, sitting and scooting, crawling, cruising, and maybe even walking. 

There were the cute noises your baby made, games you played together, and the little things that made you stop and think, “Wow. This is unbelievable.”

Everyone says it, but they say it because it’s true. Take it from me – the mom of a (now) 2-year-old. It’s impossible to understand just how acutely these moments will be gone. Literally. They will disappear. They will be gone not only from present time, but also from your memory… Unless you take specific steps to remember them.

So I did a quick pinterest search for “monthly baby photos” and here are some of the beautiful images I found.

Using the formula: baby + prop + text, it’s common to choose a location as well as a particular stuffed animal to use the whole year so that the the baby’s size change will be apparent in relation to those items. I see a lot of stickers with “1 month old today!” on them, or some slightly more motivated people will overlay some relevant text after the fact.

Here are just a few examples I found out there.

It is fun to look at them all together and compare the little things that change over time!
And…

Here’s why I recommend another set of monthly photos.

Your child is growing in size, to be sure. The thing is, size is only one of the many things that changes!

If you design the situation to be the same every month, you are, in effect, removing your child from his or her natural environment. And that environment says a ton about who your child is right now! So let your baby tell you what to do. Wait – what? 

It’s so easy, really.
All you have to do is focus on everyday moments.

If you want to go the whole way, do yourself a favor and make notes. Write down milestones, skills, sounds, and adventures. Keep track of the things that make you laugh and things that make you stop and stand still in wonder — the things that you overcame. Write down the things that you learned. The things you invented. The things you love.

And take pictures along the way.

Each time you reach a monthly birthday, instead of setting your baby in the same chair, sit down and write them a letter. Tell them about these moments. These are the kinds of things that seem like you will never forget but trust me, you will. If you are mindful about capturing them, you will be able to re-live them again whenever you want and, more importantly, you will be giving your child a window into the love you had from the very start.

I’m not going to lie and say this will be easy. But here’s the thing – once you make it a habit, taking pictures in the moment IS easy. It’s selecting the one to use in your series that will be hard. 🙂

Click this thumbnail to see the full series: