Parenting tip: Send emails to your baby

Forget the memory book. You can email your baby as often as you want about anything you want.

Honestly, I get it. You had the best intentions. You bought the baby record book and you added scattered memos to your phone in the middle of the night of things you didn't want to forget.

You even stocked up on scrapbooking items before the baby was born, fully intending to create the Mother of All Scrapbooks to keep all those precious memories you want to remember forever and ever, once the brain fog dissipates. The first time your baby smiled (how magical), the first time they pooped so much it went all the way up to their neck (again, just pure magic).

Except you've been so busy. The months fly by and all those milestones you were sure were tattooed in your memory have all vanished. Their first food? Who knows? Their first song? Wouldn't have a clue.

The likelihood of these baby books getting filled with memories decreases with every new child. Even getting photos printed for an album is a mission, let alone sitting down to sum up months into paragraphs, print and glue photos of their first bath or remembering to reach out for the book to note down their height at any given point.

I'm hereby freeing you from the obligation to fill out that record book. Seriously, get rid of it. You don't need that guilt every time you walk past it, staring mockingly at you from the bookshelf.

Instead, set up an email account for your baby and, every time they do something cute or memorable, flick them a quick email.

The beauty of this plan truly lies in its simplicity.

Obviously, if you're one of those talented people with an inclination for arts and crafts, by all means carry on scrapbooking to your heart's content. For those of us without this ability, however, this ensures those memories actually get put down somewhere for posterity.

Once you set up the email account, it's just a matter of taking a couple of minutes whenever something cool happens to write an email, attach a photo or even a short video.

Email them them every time they say something cute or funny or even just when you have a few spare minutes. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook when you have some spare time (lolololol I know, what's that?), compose an email to them about what life is like right now. Honestly, you can even do it from the, ahem, comfort of your own bathroom (we all know you take your phone in there).

The emails can be lengthy love letters or quick one liners with "sent from my iPhone, sorry about the typos" underneath it - it really doesn't matter, as long as you're actually putting those memories down somewhere that's not some dumb memory book. It doesn't even have to be just text.

You can even email them receipts for things of yours they break so they can, should they choose to, one day repay you. There's no dedicated page in a memory book for this kind of guilt-trip.

Even if you have nothing major to say, whenever you remember, write them an email. The daily routine that you think is so boring is what your children will be the most curious about when growing up.

On their birthday, since you're likely to take a bunch of photos anyway, just email some to your baby, with a little description of the day and what the last year has been like in terms of their development. A lot of what you will write, while it's fresh on your mind, is stuff that you will likely forget as time passes.

Years from now, once your child turns into the amazing adult they will become, you just hand them the password to that email account and, with that, the greatest gift you can give them: years of solidly documented undying love, all there, in chronological order.

And not a single minute of your life will have to be wasted pretending to enjoy scrapbooking.

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