I have a little tip that I often hear, seldom follow, but wish I did more often. Write down what your kids say. Time just moves so quickly and you lose those little gems in a heartbeat. If your children are anything like mine, the stuff that comes out of their mouths is often hysterical, occasionally disturbing, always interesting and all too often it holds a mirror up to you.
I have a family blog that I try to update with these little bits of priceless memory, but I'm oddly terrible at keeping up with it. Especially since starting this blog, I've ignored my little family blog a lot. Believe me, I'm totally ashamed of this fact! I feel terrible because it is not only a connection with far-flung family and friends, it is like a family diary. I would love to someday use one of those services that turns your blog into a book because it would be a little history of us.
Do you have a place where you keep these memories? Do you use video? Stories? A diary/journal? Scrap pieces of paper all over the kitchen? Perhaps a good resolution this year is to be better at recording these memories. Sounds like a plan!
I kept a (hand-written) journal pretty consistently when my kids were little, but somewhere around the time my youngest turned 2 I stopped finding the time to write in it. I wish I had kept it up. I have many of those gems you mentioned from the early years, but I lost the rest by not writing them down, and when I look at what I have, it makes me wish I had more.
ReplyDeleteAs a writer, nothing is more helpful then being around children the age you're writing for. Unfortunately, they grow up :) There are many writing days when I wish I had a few more idea-sparkers from when my kids were little!
My mom did that when we were little. There are some pages in each of our baby albums that have all the random, adorable things we said when we first started speaking. It's so funny to read!
ReplyDeletePS. Award for you at my blog :-)
I'm HORRIBLE at this. Seriously, forgot-my-camer-for-my-kids-first-concert horrible. Also no-baby-book-for-second-kid-horrible.
ReplyDeleteI'm so going to need to dedicate my first book to them. :)
erica
gosh i didn't know that they turned blogged into books except for Julie and Julia. Our childish things were reported in Christmas and others letters and my Mum keeps a diary. :O)
ReplyDeleteOh so true! I hve a word document with my son's sayings in, but I do miss a few gems if I don't write them down quick enough.
ReplyDeleteMy husband started a Google doc. Unfortunately, it wasn't until my kids were like three and four, so we missed a lot of the best ones! But it is a good way to do it, because we can both access it no matter where we are!
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