How to make a yearbook for your baby or child, year after year
The first year has more milestones than any other, and it's not the only one worth keeping. Here is how to build a yearbook for your child that grows with them, without turning any single year into a second job.
Written by Philip · Published September 13, 2026
The first year is the one every new parent wants to remember clearly, and the one they’re least likely to, simply because there’s no time or energy left over for a big scrapbooking project. It’s also not the only year worth keeping.
Here’s how to keep a real record of your child’s growth in small pieces, from the first year through every year after it, without turning any single year into more work than it already is.
The first year is the one you'll want to remember most, and have the least time for
There's a specific kind of guilt that comes with a newborn's first year: you know, even while it's happening, that you won't remember most of it. Not because it wasn't meaningful, but because you're sleep-deprived, stretched thin, and living week to week. The milestones blur into each other. The specific week they started smiling gets fuzzy by the time they're crawling.
The instinct to document it properly is real. So is the fact that most new parents don't have the hours a scrapbook or a heavily designed photo book actually takes. The two don't have to be in conflict, but it requires a format built for exactly this: low effort per entry, spread out over a full year, not a single big project.
It doesn't have to stop after year one
Most baby book projects are built around exactly twelve months, and quietly assume the job is done once the first birthday photo is taken. But a two-year-old learning to talk, a five-year-old starting school, a ten-year-old developing an actual personality and actual opinions are all just as worth capturing as a newborn's milestones, and usually get documented far less.
The reason isn't that people stop caring. It's that the format that made sense for a first-year baby book (a bound book with a fixed set of milestone pages: first steps, first tooth, first birthday) doesn't map cleanly onto a five-year-old's year, which has a completely different shape. A yearbook that can be built the same way every year, whatever age your child is, solves this by not needing a different template for each stage of childhood.
Milestones are easy to remember to add. The ordinary days aren't
Nobody forgets to take a photo of the first steps, the first day of school, or a birthday. Those moments announce themselves, at any age. What gets lost is the ordinary Tuesday: the specific way they said a word wrong for a few months before they said it right, the phase they went through and grew out of, the joke that was funny to exactly your household for one specific month. Those details don't feel significant enough to write down in the moment, and they're exactly the ones you won't be able to reconstruct a year later.
A child's yearbook works best when it captures both: the milestones everyone expects, and a handful of the small, unremarkable moments that would otherwise disappear entirely. That's true whether your child is two months old or twelve years old.
It doesn't have to be built by one parent alone
In a lot of households, one parent ends up as the default photo-taker and the default person expected to "do something" with all those photos eventually. That's a lot of pressure to put on one person, in the newborn year or any year after it.
A child's yearbook works better as something both parents, and often grandparents, add to directly. One parent might catch the morning routine, the other catches the weekend outing. A grandparent who was there for a visit can add their own note about what they noticed that week. As a child gets older, they can eventually add their own pages too, in their own words. The book ends up as a fuller record than any one person's camera roll could be, and no single parent is stuck doing all of it.
Low effort per entry is the whole point, at every age
The realistic version of this isn't sitting down for two hours once a month. It's adding a photo and a line, or just a fifteen-second voice note, whenever there's a moment worth keeping and thirty seconds to spare, whether that's one-handed while holding a newborn or in the car after picking an older kid up from school.
A voice note in particular tends to work well during the years when typing isn't practical, since it takes less time and captures something a caption can't: how tired, amused, or overwhelmed you actually were saying it. Reading that back years later says more about what the year was actually like than a polished caption would.
How Yeerbook handles a child's yearbook, year after year
Yeerbook is built for adding to over time, not assembling all at once, and for building a new book each year rather than treating year one as the only one that counts. You add a photo and a line, or a quick voice memo, whenever something's worth keeping. There's no fixed schedule and no penalty for a month with less in it than another.
Both parents can add directly to the same book, and grandparents or other close family can be tagged to specific pages to add their own note or photo, no account or app download needed on their end. Once a child is old enough to write a sentence or record a voice note, they can be tagged to their own pages too. At the end of each year, it prints as a real hardcover, the start of a shelf of books you hand your kid one day instead of a folder of unsorted photos.
How to make a baby or child’s yearbook
- 1
Start whenever you're ready
At birth, partway through a year, or with an older child who's never had one before. There's no deadline for starting, and no requirement to begin at age zero.
- 2
Add a photo and a line, or a voice note
Whenever there's a moment worth keeping. It takes under a minute, whatever your child's age.
- 3
Let both parents add directly
Both parents can add to the same book without needing to funnel everything through one person's camera roll.
- 4
Tag grandparents or close family to specific pages
They get a private link to add their own note or photo, no account or app download required.
- 5
Let your child add their own pages once they're able to
A kid old enough to write a sentence or record a voice note can be tagged to their own memories and add their own side of the year.
- 6
Print a new book at the end of each year
Each year becomes its own hardcover, building into a shelf of books that follows your child through childhood instead of stopping after year one.
See yeerbook for new parents for how the first year specifically works, or read how yeerbook works end to end.
Frequently asked questions
Do both parents need separate accounts to add photos?
No. Both parents can add to the same book, and you can also tag a grandparent or other family member to a specific page so they can add their own note or photo through a private link, with no account or app download required on their end.
What if we forget to add anything for a month or two?
That's normal, at any age. There's no fixed schedule to keep up with. You can add photos and notes whenever you have a moment, and backfill an earlier month later using photos you already have on your phone.
Does this replace a baby book or milestone tracker?
It can work alongside one or instead of one. A milestone tracker is usually a checklist of firsts that stops being relevant once the obvious milestones are behind you. A child's yearbook includes those milestones in the early years but keeps working the same way in every year after, with room for the ordinary days too.
Can we start with an older child who's never had a yearbook before?
Yes. You don't need to have started at birth. Plenty of families start when a child is a toddler, starting school, or older, and backfill a bit of earlier history from photos already on their phone if they want to.
Is a voice note actually useful, or is writing better?
Both work, and you don't have to pick one. A lot of parents find a quick voice note easier to record than typing, and it captures tone in a way text doesn't. As kids get older, some enjoy recording their own voice notes instead of writing.
What are good things to include in a child's yearbook?
In the early years: the expected milestones (first smile, first steps, first birthday) alongside smaller details that are easy to forget, like a word they mispronounced for months or a food they loved or hated. In later years: a first day of school, a new friend, something they got good at, a phase or obsession that took over their year, or just what a normal week actually looked like.
At what age can a child start adding to their own yearbook?
As soon as they can write a simple sentence or record a short voice note, usually somewhere in the early school years, though it varies by kid. Before that, the book is built entirely by parents and other family, which is completely normal too.
Do we need to build a new book every single year?
No, there's no requirement. Some families build one every year without exception, others skip a year here and there and pick back up later. Either way, each year you do build stands on its own as a complete book.
References
- Insana, S. P., Williams, K. B., & Montgomery-Downs, H. E. (2013). Sleep disturbance and neurobehavioral performance among postpartum women. Sleep, 36(1), 73–81.
- Henkel, L. A. (2014). Point-and-Shoot Memories: The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour. Psychological Science, 25(2), 396–402.
- Petrelli, D., van den Hoven, E., & Whittaker, S. (2009). Making History: Intentional Capture of Future Mementos. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2723–2732.
The first of many years worth keeping.
Add a photo and a line whenever there’s a moment worth keeping, this year and every year after it. That’s the whole first step.
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