The Second Child’s Baby Book

Baby books are a wonderful invention that allow you to record every beautiful, breathtaking detail of your first child’s infancy while then completely forgetting anything that happened to all subsequent children.  I am the oldest in my family and my baby book is a carefully kept record of days I smiled and afternoons spent vomiting into my mother’s hair.  Tales about how one day I learned to say “cup” and “up” and how on another I smiled at the mailman and he said I was “such a sweet baby!”  My sisters, judging from the reference material, may as well not even exist.  And this is because of what all mothers of multiple children will tell you: once there is more than once child in the house there is LESS THAN ZERO time to keep anything resembling a baby book.  This seems likely, given that I have one child who is not even mobile and I barely have time to wash my hair or sob uncontrollably into my throw pillows.  That being said, here is a prototype of the easy-to-use “Second Child Baby Book” that I will be sending to my friends upon hearing that they are pregnant with their second child.

Best of luck on the continuation of your families!

To my sisters and all other second/third/fourth/etc. children– I am sorry about the failure to memorialize your childhoods!  There is just no time.  If you eventually write a memoir, just accept that it will begin with you at age twelve.