Veronika is old enough now that she definitely has favorite places to go in our week together, especially as we settle into a routine while big brother is at school.

Some top picks? The library, the coffee shop, her music class, the playground, and toddler play time. Throughout the week, I snapped pictures of Veronika as we were out and about. Here’s music about to begin!

I also added a few pictures from home, places like her high chair and crib.

You can use a digital camera and have the pictures printed, but I love the charm of our instant camera.

Arrange the photos in a little album or scrapbook, ideally small enough for your child to manipulate the pages.

Veronika and I can go through and “read” about her week, or talk what we’ll be doing that day.

Because she has no baby book chronicling her first year (second child syndrome!), I made the pictures special with the addition of scrapbook-quality stickers: look for sheets of stickers with playground themes, nursery room themes, music class themes, and other applicable subjects. These will hopefully make it special to flip through as she gets older.

Another hope is that she can learn to point to where she wants to go, easing frustration for both parent and child in those awkward months between understanding language and the spoken word. In the meantime, she loves simply looking through her little book!