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Notes on keeping a childhood

Essays on memory, archives, and why most parenting apps get the psychology backwards. Useful whether or not you ever use Vellum.

Memory August 12, 2026 · 8 min read

The photo survives. The story doesn’t.

Context decays faster than images. Why the question that made you take the photo is the artifact worth keeping — and what a prompt actually does.

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Prompts 11 min

What to write in a keepsake book when you have no idea what to write

The blank page is the enemy. Forty real prompts you can answer in under a minute — tonight, in whatever notebook or notes app you already have.

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Design 7 min

Streaks are a bad idea in a parenting app

The mechanic that works for language apps is quietly poisonous when the subject is your kid. Why we refused it, and what we built instead.

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How-to 9 min

How to record your kid’s voice before it changes

The voice goes first and nobody warns you. A practical guide: what to record, how to get them talking naturally, and how to keep the files findable.

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Archives 10 min

A childhood archive your kid can actually inherit

Most digital memory boxes are leases, not archives. What survives twenty years, what doesn’t, and the questions to ask any app holding your kid’s childhood.

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One question a day. A childhood you can find again.

Everything argued in these essays is one product decision away: how Vellum works, or the full library of 133 prompts, free to read.