Thursday, April 10, 2008

sweet little details

i got inspired by reading a strangers blog that maybe this was something i could get into. it's a great way to document life as it flies by. and i am a documenter by nature. i keep a "family journal" that i write in weekly, usually just a paragraphed highlight of the week. i keep a scrapbook of things that have been given to me. cards, letters, ticket stubs, hospital bracelets. some things i keep because i love it. some things i keep because i want it to jog my memory one day when i look at it. my memory is horrible, by the way. anything to help it is a good thing. there are embarrassing things that i can't remember. it makes me really nervous, especially after i had children, that i was going to forget these moments slipping through time. that i would be an old lady one day and retrieving no sweet little details of their lives. very scary to me for their sake too. i want them to have stories. so in addition to their baby books (that i update weekly at least) i also have a scrapbook for each of them. same idea. nothing creative or fancy. i just tape in cards given to them, valentines from preschool, a note that robbie wrote for olive the first day he had to go back to work after lucy was born, encouraging her to be good, help mommy, and simply that he loved her very much. i remember, because i have this crumpled up evidence, that she carried that note around all day and asked me to read it to her several times. the sweet little details. i also take tons of pictures and video. partly as a creative outlet. partly because i am afraid to forget how precious they are just on an ordinary tuesday morning eating their breakfast. it is a problem that i have. but thank God for digital cameras. so this blog could be the ultimate documentation. if ever our house burned down and i couldn't grab the computer, the baby books, the photo albums, the scrapbooks, and the journal...this would always be there in computer space to retrieve. so you see, it's just plain smart to start a blog. it would be dumb of me not to - not vein and self indulgent like i once thought. highly intelligent, witty, and quite genius actually. well done, me.