[Pansy-Mae]

Without wanting to disclose too much about my family (I hate sharing personal information over the internet...); don't worry, my parents aren't a problem here.

I've never made much use of the measuring tape. To me it seems like it's too easy to get overly optimistic or conservative numbers with a measuring tape.

So I should rather compare using photos than numbers?

Personally I've always done both at regular intervals ( every 2 months). That fits my fairly slow progress, and any more frequent just gets depressing because nothing seems to be happening.
The tape in particular tells much less than the full story because, unless you get lots of measurements each time, it doesn't give any indication of the changes in shape, which are actually more significant than the 3 basic 'above, nipples, under' figures.