Baby Books For The Digital Age

If you've been on Facebook or Myspace for more than five minutes, you've seen the many pictures parents post of their kids. I personally love seeing them, especially the pictures of my nephews and godchildren. Some parents, however, are nervous about posting pictures of their families on wide-reaching sites like Facebook. While they would love to share photos of their kids online with long-distance friends and family, they don't want to risk having 'the wrong person' see them. Also, it's not just about photos-you might want to share growth charts and other milestones. The good news is that there are a few sites out there that help parents make a complete and secure online scrapbook for their children. In many cases, you can also order a hard-bound printed copy of whatever you post if you want to keep them or give them as gifts.

 MyOwnLittleStory helps busy parents to keep track of their children's development using online reminders. Just enter your child's due date or birth date and you will get email reminders twice a month that coincide with general developmental milestones (smiling, speaking, rolling over, etc). If your child hasn't reached that milestone yet or you just don't have time, there is a 'snooze button' that will remind you again in a week. If you'd rather just add everything yourself or want to add extra information, you can create custom pages that can be either shared with your friends online (by invitation) or printed into a scrapbook. In addition to this, you can order things such as onesies and note cards for gifting.

In addition to the above, Kidmondo allows you to keep track of milestones such as growth, teething, favorite foods and doctor visits. You might not want to share these things with others, but it's good to have a record of these things that you can access from different places. Also, you can update your child's journal from anywhere by simply emailing pictures or stories to the site. If you want to share photos and stories with other people, you can do that easily. It's a great way to keep and share whatever sort of cute things your children do with anyone who wants to see them.

 Totspot.com also allows you to create pages devoted to each of your children, but you can manage them from one central dashboard. If you upload any pictures or stories to a child's profile, they will automatically be sent to the child's 'friends'. The Milestones section is pretty extensive in that it has separate tabs for verbal, physical, prenatal, growth charts and what trips you take. In addition to photos, you can also upload videos to share. That way, your child's first steps or first words can be shared with their proud grandparents even if they live all the way across the country! I'm sure they will enjoy that immensely!

As you can see, there are a few sites that allow you to create scrapbooks for your children that you can share and keep online. This way, you can share your children's information with anyone you want to see them without having to worry about anyone you don't want. It's really sad that we live in a world where we have to worry about things like this, but there's not much we can do about that other than protect ourselves.