Books are an invaluable part of a baby's development, and here's a way to create a personalized book for your baby to look at.

I kind of did it by accident really. When my twin granddaughters were born, I took loads of photos, as you do, and saved them on my pc. I printed some out to show around, and then needed somewhere to keep them, so the obvious thing to do was to start putting them in a photo album. I put them in date order, building up a record of the first year of the girls lives. This is the kind of album with sticky pages and a clear cover that you press down.

One day when the girls were about eight months old, I picked it up and started showing them the photos of themselves and their family. They were mesmerized! I told them who everyone was: mummy, daddy, grandparents, themselves. I also talked to them about other things in the photos such as dummies, baby walkers, hats, shoes, cups, balloons, teddies, buckets and spades and so on.

After that it became a regular thing on every visit. As they started toddling around, I showed them where the album was kept on my bookshelf and told them that was their book. After that one or the other of them always went to it, tugged it off and spent ages looking at the photos. They also understood very well that they musn't touch the other books, and they were very good at not messing with them.

It got to where I could ask them where a person or an item was in the book and they would point to it. I think this really helps with vocabulary and also remembering family members or friends they might not see very often.

Over time, the album got filled up and the girls helped with sticking the photos in. Now they are three they can name everyone and everything in the book and we can talk about what's happening in the photos. They're not identical, so they can tell which one is which in the photos, even where they are very tiny. It's fascinating to finally hear their opinions about the photos as well!

This doesn't have to cost much. You can pick up a cheap album from Poundland and then it won't matter if it gets knocked around, or sticky.