Once a month, three short questions about your child by email. Reply from your phone, a sentence or two each. On their first birthday at least six months away, your replies become a print-ready letter from you, quoting the words you recorded.
$36 per child, one payment through Stripe Checkout, for one letter. Nothing renews.
From the sample — A letter to Theo, age 4
You told a cashier at Trader Joe's that you were "a pretend pirate but a real boy." She gave you a sticker. That same month you started saying wow wow wow every time we opened something — not whoa whoa whoa, you were clear about that, the Ws mattered — and you poured your own cereal, two hands, bowl right at the edge of the counter, no spills.
You tried to convince me Greg the dinosaur had a job. "Greg works at the office, mama." You started saying "I'm thinking about it" before answering anything at all. And you buttoned your own pajamas — just the top button, took ten minutes, wouldn't accept help.
I found you "shaving" in the bathroom with a tongue depressor and a cup of water, very serious about it. You started calling Mira "my best baby," which she technically is by default, but you meant it as the highest praise there is. You drew a T on your own, crooked but recognizable, and it's still on the fridge.
On the day you choose each month, you get an email with three short prompts about your child: something that made you laugh, a phrase you don't want to forget, something they did that they couldn't before. Reply from your phone — one or two sentences each is plenty.
On your child's first birthday at least six months after you confirm your details, the replies you have sent by then are compiled into a single letter from you, quoting the words you recorded. You get a link to a private page laid out to print, with a few small watercolor illustrations painted from objects in your replies.
Prompts come to your inbox and you answer by replying. There is no app to install and no password to remember: your archive page opens from a private link.
Before checkout you give us your child's name, birthday, time zone, and the day of the month you'd like the prompts, and after checkout you confirm them. Prompts start once you have confirmed. Each month on that day we email you three questions. You reply with one to three short sentences per question. On your child's first birthday at least six months after you confirm, we compile the replies received by then into a letter and email you a link to its private page, which is laid out to print. Prompts continue monthly until that day, at most twelve. You see the exact date before you pay. The $36 is one payment for one letter: prompts stop when it is delivered, and nothing renews.
The letter is written from your replies, with your child's phrases in quotation marks. Quoted passages are checked against your replies and must be at least 90% similar to what you wrote. A letter that fails the check is written again, and one that still fails is not sent.
The letter only includes the months you replied to. If there are no replies by that birthday, no letter goes out that day. We email you a reminder, up to three in all, a month apart, and the letter is compiled within a day of your first reply. Once you have replied six times, you get a halfway preview by email: a short draft from your replies to the first six prompts, so you can see what the letter will be like.
Each letter comes with up to three small watercolor pictures and a cover, painted from objects in your replies: a cereal bowl, a stuffed dinosaur, a plate. A scene that mentions a person or any text is dropped before painting, and no photo is used. On your archive page you can redraw any of them (twice each) or remove them.
The letter comes to you, not to your child, so it goes no further until you share its link. You can redraw or remove the illustrations on your archive page. Your replies and the letter's wording cannot be edited.
Yes. Each child is a separate $36 payment with its own archive page, prompts, and letter. Deleting one archive does not affect the other.
If we cannot produce your letter after trying for about a day, we email you and refund your $36 automatically. Other refunds are not automatic. If a prompt or your letter does not arrive, or a charge looks wrong, write to yearletter@forage.bot and we will look at it case by case. Pausing prompts or deleting your archive does not refund your payment.
A short form, one Stripe Checkout, one confirmation step. Then the first monthly prompt arrives on the day you choose.
Start — $36