Eighteen years.
We’ve been wrangling this kid into Pete’s old leather jacket each autumn for the past eighteen years (and his sister into her great-grandma’s fringed jacket for fourteen). Oh, how slippery time is.

On Sage’s first birthday, we wrapped him up in an adult-sized jacket (a thrift store find that belonged to Pete) and snapped a picture for posterity.
A friend had suggested the tradition, to mark time by capturing your child growing into the garment as they approached adulthood. Hopelessly sentimental, I was all in the moment she shared it with me, and knew it would be the one consistent thing I did to mark time.
We repeated the shoot each year, and when Lupine was born, she got a jacket of her own (my grandma’s vintage buckskin fringe).

Year after year, all childhood long, this is what we‘ve done. I bribe them with ice cream each autumn, they don the jackets, and we head outside. In the absence of school pictures, we have these. How glad I am.









And this year… well, this year was big. Because Sage isn’t a child anymore. He’s old enough to vote (his first vote being this critical election, quite possibly our most important homeschooling lesson of all).
I expect this is the final jacket picture year featuring them both.








Oh, my heart. What a ride it has been.
How do you mark time and the growing of your kids?
I’ve managed to do consistent first day of (home)school photos by our pond since my oldest was 5, and since the kids were I think 2 and 6 I’ve done Halloween photos of them sitting on a bale of hay with their pumpkins by our smallest live oak. I love that your tradition goes all the way back to Sage’s babyhood!