I remember receiving our first-ever ‘blue book’ at the hospital, day one of motherhood. The nurse showed me through all the helpful information, the areas for recording milestones, height, weight, head circumference.
“Why is head circumference so important?” I asked.
“Big head, big brains; little heads, we just take them away right now,” she joked.
“Really?!” I panicked. New-mum fog, very sensitive.
Needless to say, I made grand plans to very carefully record head circumference as often as possible, and indeed went on to obsess over it when the Badoo was born (although it’s safe to say she has an unusually large head).
That was then, this is now. After an initial burst of record-keeping, I went on to fail miserably to record a damn thing in those blue books. I forget them at every immunisation, failed to refer to them for helpful advice and certainly never put pencil to paper to plot a single dot on those growth charts.
Instead, I did what every sensible parent across Australia does. I used the door jamb in the kitchen, a chopping board and carefully marked the date and child’s name in a pencil so heavy that it quickly smudged into a nice ancient-relic patina in no time at all. Sometimes if it has been a while between measurings I even let the kids measure themselves up and write their own details on the wall.
There are random kids on there too. Any child who is in the house on Measuring Day gets measured. While it sounds official, Measuring Day is actually any given Sunday, or other completely random day just so we have no way of ever gleaning anything even remotely important from the door-jamb data we collect.
“What happens if you ever move?” A friend asked.
“I’ll take the door jamb with me,” was all I could say.
I don’t recommend my system.
Use this system instead: a Foolhouse Door Jam. A neat, portable alternative and their creator Sarah has added the most deliciously humorous and whimsical touches that even if you never recorded a single measurement, you would still want to have one of these up on your wall.
I love all of Sarah’s creations, she has wooden spoons that say ‘let’s spoon’ (dare you to get one for your man!) and wooden treasure boxes for keeping nice things nice. A check out this ‘Anatomy of a Mother’ tea towel – perfect gift for a new mum.
Now, part of being in the Down That Little Lane blogger family is that I get to give stuff away just because. This time we’re giving away four special Foolhouse door jam height charts and you could be a winner!
All you need to do to enter is leave a comment below telling me who the biggest fool in your house is and why. Then follow the prompts in the Rafflecopter widget below to be in with a chance to win.