Tip #40: An alternate baby book

We keep a blog of our life in general, and since getting pregnant and having a baby, it has allowed us to keep all our family and friends up-to-date on his development. It's chock-full of pictures as well. At the end of his first year, I plan to make a book (you could use iPhoto or a web-based photo album kind of place). The book will basically have every blog post that pertains specifically to him or our family. For example, I have lists of foods he likes at certain ages, posts on when he got his first tooth, when he started crawling, weight and height updates etc. Plus, pictures of us apple picking, playing at play groups, and so on. With the blog, we also have the date of when those things happened, so when he hits 12-months old, I'll simply copy pictures and the blog text into a dated book to have printed for us and grandparents.

Source: Grandma suggested this as an alternate to remembering to write into a more traditional baby album.

Tip #15 - Don't prebuy seasonal baby clothes

My husband and I thought we were really on top of things when we found great deals on Craigslist and at consignment shops for baby clothes before our little munchkin was born. What we didn't know, but all moms seem to find out pretty quickly, is that baby clothing sizes don't mean a whole lot! So here we were buying long sleeves for 6-months old thinking it will be fall when he's six months, only it turns out he's in most of those now (June and July). He spent about a total of two weeks in '3-month' sizes and there are even some 12-month clothes that he's in now at 16-weeks.

So if you are pregnant now, feel free to stock up on onesies, but hold off on the swimming trunks and the winter jackets until you have some idea how big your baby will be (and birth weight has nothing to do with it, I've seen some small babies put on a lot of weight as well as big ones). If you're buying presents for a friend...gift cards, so they can buy that seasonal stuff as needed.