We keep a globe in Hudson’s room to point to Europe (and to California) when he surprises us by suddenly exclaiming, “Let’s go to Spain today!”
As you can imagine, we talk about travel a lot—places he has been, places he will go… That distinction can still get as fuzzy and feel as abstract to him as the distance between two continents. So I’ve been wanting to gather a collection of photos for him to have his own travel album to flip through.
We love the Mini Book of Names & Faces spiral-bound book we made for Skyler’s first birthday (she looks at it all the time), so we chose a similar format from Pinhole Press, their new “My First Photo Book.”
The book comes in matte or glossy (probably my top pick for sticky little fingers, but the matte has a lovely look) and can hold between 20 and 40 images. I chose to feature places we traveled to by airplane (with the exception of his first-ever trip, to the Berkshires, when he was 12 weeks old), making collages of favorite snapshots for one side; then I photographed the maps for those places out of one of our favorite picture books and used those for the facing pages.
It’s impossible to really include everything from each trip, so I tried to choose pictures I thought Hudson would like the most: pictures that included him, animals, or might evoke a memory or lead to a story I know he’d love to hear told (like that time he was given a fish to care for by our hotel in Portland, or that time he ate fried worms in Mexico City). You could even upload images directly from Instagram; and one could include snapshots of the odd souvenirs children seem to collect—like room keys and those flattened pennies—or shots of the visas in their passports to add context.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a treasured addition to the travel book collection.
P.S. More gift ideas for traveling kiddos. And a series on the best gifts for preschoolers.
Thank you to Pinhole Press for sponsoring this post. They have been a longtime supporter of Hither & Thither and I’ve been so happy with everything we’ve ordered from them. Their quality is wonderful and they’re a great source for gifts. Some favorites: A photo memory game, the brag books I’ve made for every Mother’s Day, and a calendar for dad’s office.
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