Growth Charts

For some reason, I have a special compulsion about growth charts. I have always loved the idea of marking the passage of time on them, but was never able to commit to one because I just loved all of them. Silly, huh?

I resorted to using the back of our basement door for our family’s growth chart. I measured Katie for the first time on her first birthday. I put hash marks on the door and wrote the date and posted a photo of the kids standing at the door. I always figured that if and when we ever move, we’ll just take the entire door with us.

But I recently got a bee in my bonnet and decided to make a true growth chart. I was hesitant to do this, since the kids are now three and six, and I didn’t want to break the continuity of something I already started. But I went ahead with it anyway.

I bought an unfinished board from Home Depot for about $5. I painted it white twice. The first time I used spray paint, which was too splotchy. The second time I used a brush and acrylic craft paint, which worked much better. Last Thursday, I asked Dan to mount it to the wall near our basement door. I figured I was pressing my luck to ask him to mount it in such a conspicuous place in our kitchen, where people could actually see it. But he actually did it without comment. And the next thing that happened made me question his sanity. He actually asked me to paint a design on it. That is unheard of in our house. Dan’s decorating preference is pretty plain with clean lines. So when he suggested I paint a vine or something resembling Jack’s Beanstalk, I about fell over. I hustled to my craft supplies and found some paint and brushes and whipped up a beanstalk – all free form too! Another unheard-of in our house. I don’t do decorative painting, so I surprised myself by painting without a plan.

I painted the beanstalk on Thursday night, then had the kids make red thumbprints on the board Friday morning. I turned those into ladybugs at the bottom of the beanstalk, and added the measurements and photos from the basement door. We measured Jackson on the chart today, to mark his third birthday. Dan and I even added our own measurements afterwards.

I am really happy with how our growth chart turned out, and pleased that it’s more portable than the basement door. Now I just have to use elbow grease and the Magic Eraser to get the old markings off the basement door!