TinyYears

Are Baby Books Going The Way Of The Do do?

tyeditor ♦ December 2, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

Baby books have been a traditional part of the baby years for generations. Keepsakes, milestones, foot prints and photographs are lovingly stored in a special album that can be presented to the child and used as a record book.

When your baby is small it’s hard to imagine that you could forget your child’s babyhood, but a couple of years down the road you may find yourself wondering “how old was he when he said his first word again? He was walking by 11 months, wasn’t he? Or was it a year?”

The child him or herself may ask one day “what was my first word? What foods did I like as a baby? When did I first go to the zoo?”

Our children can’t remember their own lives before age three or so, and the parents give themselves the job of logging those first steps, those first foods, those early illnesses and special events.

Unfortunately, paper albums are becoming less and less convenient.

Do You Have The Time?

Busy and tired mothers are realizing more and more that their baby’s album is devoid of photos, because the photos are all on the computer. They keep meaning to get some printed for the book, but it’s just one of those little chores that never seems to get done.

As for logging mile stones, baby’s newest word or today’s cute little sentence, it’s so easy to fall behind. Whenever you think of it, you are in the middle of a shopping trip, or at work. By the time you get home and get the baby to sleep, you have forgotten again or you’re too tired to pull out the album.

One day the mother does pull the book off of the shelf and realizes guiltily that she hasn’t updated it in months. She sits on the couch going through the book and trying to remember – when did he learn the word “dog”? When did she sit unsupported for the first time? When was that trip to the cottage?

Parents of second and third children have even less time than parents of single children, and those babies often don’t get baby albums at all – Mom and Dad keep meaning to do it, but never seem to have the time.

When they do get a moment, they are more likely to spend that time uploading photos to Facebook or emailing them to distant relatives. These days more people than ever are living far away from their close family, and are resorting to the internet as a way to keep in touch.

Anxious grandparents living halfway across the country love to receive photos in their email, or sign up for Facebook just so that they keep track of their growing grandchildren.

Paper or Internet? What’s the Best Way?

Neither the paper album nor the Facebook route seem like an ideal way to track your child’s babyhood.

The paper album cannot be sent to grandparents when it is updated, and may get lost or damaged over the years.

Facebook provides a good way to share pictures, but not a single coherent story line devoted entirely to the child. Instead, cute things your kid has said, a status about taking him to the zoo, will all be lost in the backlog of other status, comments and wall postsings.

You can’t sit down and show your daughter your Facebook wall and say “here is the story of your baby years.”

Privacy Concerns

Besides, many parents worry about privacy concerns with Facebook and other social networking sites. Once those photos are uploaded, they are out there for the world to find – and misuse. Parents might want to share a cute picture of their baby naked in the bath, but be hesitant for fear that the photo might be spotted by a sexual predator.

Such privacy concerns are not unjustified. One woman discovered that an old junior high acquaintance that she had “friended” on Facebook had stolen 83 photos of her baby daughter. The photo thief used these photos to convince an ex boyfriend that the baby was actually hers, weaving an elaborate deception using photos of this child.

“i am tha babys REAL MOTHER and i put pictures on fb so my family who lives miles away could see her growin up….” she wrote in a comment on the linked news article. “THINK OF HOW U WOULD FEEL IF SOMEONE DONE THIS TO YOU?”

She’s not the only parent to have this happen – many parents have discovered that their photos have been taken without permission and reproduced, often under false pretences. Another mother posted a photo of her family on her blog… only to later learn that the photo had been taken off of the internet for use as an ad in the Czech Republic.

What’s A Proud Parent To Do?

Happily, a new service is arising that gives parents the ability to privately log photographs, drawings, videos, milestones, and other memories while still sharing those same memories online with trusted family and friends.

Tiny Years is an online baby book that keeps a dedicated chronological storyline of your child’s babyhood, from first smile to first day at school and beyond. The uploaded material is private, but you can choose to share it with select family and friends so that they can watch your child grow from afar.

By keeping an online baby book, you don’t have to worry about saving your baby’s records in the case of a fire or flood. It is easy to upload photos from your computer or mobile device instantly. Best of all it is completely private – except for the certain special someones to whom you give access.

Now your baby’s every word and every discovery can be logged safely, easily and best of all, privately online. You will have a detailed story of your child’s babyhood, logged adorable sentence by adorable sentence, so your distant loved ones can watch your child grow day by day, and so you can relive those wonderful moments whenever you like, or even on the go from your mobile device.

If you run into an old acquaintance on the street and want to show them pictures of your baby, you don’t have to trawl through your phone’s camera roll or through your Facebook page, trying to get through the superfluous stuff to the picture you want to find. Instead you can go right to Tiny Years and show them an unfolding story of your child growing up.

When he or she is older, they will love to look through their Tiny Years album with you, watching themselves grow and develop day by day. That is the kind of memory that lasts a lifetime.