Three Great Ways To Record The Moments With Your Kids To Better Cherish The Memories

I spoke with my mother on the phone just the other day and she mentioned that my father asked her what I was like when I was little. He doesn’t remember anything from when we were kids. The truth is that as our kids grow older it becomes hard to remember what they were like when they were little. My son is only four but I barely remember what he was like when he was a baby. It seems that our current memories of our children erases our older ones.

Everyone talks about how fast children grow up. “Before you know it, your kids will be grown up and out of the house”. Well for some people hearing that would make them happy – “The sooner the better”. As for me, it only makes me sad to think about it. If you are like me then you treasure almost every moment with your children. I am always focused on trying to cherish every moment because sooner or later they will grow up. I can barely remember what college was like let alone when I was little. The years fly by so fast that if we have no way to preserve the memories everything will become one big blur in the space of time.

Here are the three great ways to record the moments with your children to better cherish the memories.

Keep A Calendar Journal
Two years ago I purchased a yearly calendar journal to record all the memorable moments that I had with the kids. I am happy to say that I just started working on my third journal. Most of our Sunday outings with the kids over the last two years has been recorded in the journal as well as holidays and vacations. Half way through last year’s journal, I started jotting down for each month what our youngest son has being doing as he grows from being a baby to a toddler.

Its important to get the right journal. When I first started I bought one of those daily calendar journals. You know, the ones with a page for every day. I found that after a few months I was getting tired of writing so much for each day recorded that I decided to buy a weekly journal for the following year. Weekly journals have a whole week spread out over two pages. This gave me less space to write which meant writing less. I also got one that didn’t have times on each day of the week. I felt that if I am recording moments I don’t need to see the hours on the day listed on the side. Also, its important to get a calendar that doesn’t group Saturday and Sunday. Since, those are the days that you are going to spend the most time with your kids you don’t want to have your space too limited.

Make “A Day in the Life of” Video
The other great way to really cherish the memories with your kids is to make “A day in the life of” video for each of your kids. Even if you are always videoing your kids its still really important to make video of an ordinary day in their life.

Regular recorded videos only capture your kids doing various activities or at specific moments. Having lots of random videos of the kids are great as they will certainly help your cherish the times with your children, however, 15-20 years from now you wont remember what they were like in the morning or how they went to bed.

The great thing about doing ‘A day in the life of’ video is that it will help you remember an entire day’s routine for each of your children. You’ll remember them waking up in the morning, climbing all over you, brushing their teeth and getting them dressed, breakfast routine, going to school or nursery, and so on.

Its important to make a video of an ordinary day. If you drop your kids off at school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon then I would suggest making a video on a school day as opposed to a weekend day. Walk them into school and make sure to video everything else as well. This way you’ll remember what their classroom looked like, the hallway, their friends, and more. You’ll capture things that you wouldn’t have captured if you would have made the video on the weekend instead. Also, by doing it on a school day or something similar, one video will help you remember what an entire school year was like when they were little.

Once the day is complete transfer the video files to your computer and create a separate DVD or CD titled ‘A day in the life of …’ for each of your kids.

Photo Essay / Journal
The above two methods for preserving the memories of your children are really great if you have the time and patience to do so. However, if you feel that keeping a journal or making ‘A day in the life of’ video is too much work or whatever your excuse is then consider making a photo essay of each of your kids instead. Even if you are doing the above two methods a photo essay will be a great addition. A photo journal is similar to ‘A day in the life of’ video except that you are photographing your kids instead of videoing them. Here you would also try to capture them waking up, getting dressed, eating breakfast, going to school, and so on. By the end of the day you should have a nice collection of photos that you could keep in a separate folder on your computer titled ‘A Day in the life of …’ or even in a separate album sized just right to hold all the photos. An album like this would make a great gift especially for Grandparents who don’t live near their grandchildren.

Whether you choose to do all three methods or just one of them, you will have made a great investment for cherishing the memories with your children. It will also be great for them when they get older. It will help them remember what it was like being little and what you were like when they were little.

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