Becoming a good mom, one hour at a time
Tall trees. A clear river. Gentle inclines. The Old Salmon River Trail has everything you’d want in a kid-friendly hike near Portland.
Just outside Welches on the slopes of Mt. Hood, the Old Salmon River Trail is perfect for families. On a recent trek on the trail, most of the fellow hikers we came across were parents and kids in hiking boots. Read more
Peeper was five or six weeks old when I realized that I hadn’t taken a one-month picture of her.
You see them all over Facebook and Pinterest: monthly shots of a baby, often with a button or brightly decorated chalk board marking her age. Look at a year’s worth and you can see a child grow from a slumpy infant to a one-year-old who will hardly sit still long enough for a parent to snap a photo.
I felt guilty that I’d let her month-birthday pass without commemorating it. And since I missed the first one, I figured I couldn’t catch up later. What’s the use of having a “I’m two months old!” photo when you don’t have the one-month-old one?
At the time, I was struggling to do anything besides nurse. Breastfeeding was still an awful, painful, teary, bloody struggle. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t add one more expectation, even if it seems like taking a photo is pretty minor. Because when something as fundamental as feeding your child is really, really hard, staging a photograph, printing out a sign with a big “1 month” on it and taking a picture with an actual camera is also really hard.
So we don’t have a series of photos that shows how Peeper has grown each month. But we have other ways to mark her changes.