Moms: The guardians of our family memories

By Melissa Blackett, Be Your Own Adventure

I’m so excited that Judah has joined the Booker family on the outside! As a mom to two boys, I know that Levi & Judah will share heaps of fun times, bruises & “problem-solving”!

It’s not news to anyone that kids grow up fast. They change every day & while we rejoice & delight in the milestones that they reach, we also want to put on the brakes, pause the changes & try to capture the moments that are so quickly part of the past.

I think about Mary raising Jesus. Luke 2:19, “…but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often.” I wonder what Mary’s Tweets & status updates might have been as Jesus was growing up. We are the keepers of our children’s childhoods, the guardians of our family memories and moments.

I wanted to share a few ways that I use to try to remember these moments. Most are probably not ground-breaking, but perhaps they’ll trigger an idea for you.

• Twitter & Facebook! I post a lot of my kid’s antics & funny things that they say on FB & Twitter. I do this for a couple of reasons – my main one being that my husband’s family lives in New Zealand & we live in the States. These daily moments that I share on a public forum help the boy’s family to feel connected to them. I try to be honest in my status updates, but always take care to honour & not embarrass or berate the boys.  I take time regularly to copy all of my status updates into a document that I call Family Moments – I look forward to sharing this with the boys when they are older. I supplement this document with other stories & sayings that I don’t post to a public forum.

• Photos & Video. Pretty obvious, but it’s easy to overlook taking pictures of the daily things. The faces & hair covered in blue sand, the picture of their last night asleep in the crib, the grumpy face that they are perfecting. It’s a digital age – take lots of pictures. I also want to remember their funny voices & ways of saying things – we try to get those things on video.

• Art work/creation archiving. Kids create an incredible amount of stuff. I had no idea. There are heaps of fun ideas out there of ways to display & save the works of art kids create.  I’ve been using a display idea that I found on Pinterest, you can see it here. I plan to do a lot of scanning, photo taking & repurposing of the boy’s art work.

• Birthday letters and keepsakes. Another recent addition to my memory capturing is to write each of the boys a letter on their birthday & include with it some mementos, photos & keepsakes. Nothing too bulky, but enough to help us all remember what’s been happening that year. I actually thought that it was going to be a bit tough to write the letters, but once I started, the words, as well as the tears started to flow. My letters are full of mundane details, their likes & dislikes as well as praise, pride & prayers for their future. Have a box of tissues on hand.

I’d love to hear your ideas for archiving these moments of childhood & parenthood.

Blessings, Melissa

BIO: Melissa Blackett is a stay at home Mom to two gorgeous boys, four & two years old. She’s married to a New Zealander & lives in Bend, Oregon. Having spent much of her life living overseas in big cities, she’s adjusting to life in suburban America. She blogs about family, fashion, art, crafts, food & anything else that happens to take her fancy at Be Your Own Adventure.

Dear friends, I love these ideas – all of them. (Thank you so much Melissa!) I love the ongoing facebook/twitter document especially. I tried doing that once and never kept it up… but I’m inspired to try again and be more deliberate!! Those everyday moments splashed up on facebook are just precious and priceless… and so easily forgotten. How about you? How do you – the “Keeper of Your Child’s Childhood” – purposefully record the lives of  your kids?