Children's Journals

My boys

Several months ago my friend mentioned that she has a journal for each of her children that she writes down memories in. The booklets are very simple and include funny things her children have said, special experiences, conversations etc.

Now wouldn't that be the coolest thing if you had a booklet all about you from your childhood written by your parents? Not only would it be fun for you to read, but it would be
really interesting for you kids to read and I'm sure your parents to read.

I decided that I wanted to start this habit but I knew the way my friend does it would never work for me. I'm horrible with journals. I get behind and then I keep procrastinating writing because the task seems insurmountable. And I admit that sometimes I am just too lazy to go upstairs to get my journal and write the sentence or two that comes to mind. OK, and sometimes I don't even know where my journal is. So obviously if I want my kids to have more than 2 sentences about them from their childhood I need to find another method of journal keeping.

After some thought I decided to make a blog for each of my children. In fact, after my son Jacob was born and named, I literally made a blog the next day so no one would steal my blog address :)  A blog is a perfect for me. I can get to it where ever I am, you can actually read my handwriting, there's spell check so I don't look like an idiot to future generations :) and I can even change the date of a posts if I get behind or forget to write about something. It is perfect. I write stuff all the time about my kids. Even if it is just a sentence or two. 

For example, today on Jacob's blog I wrote "Jacob grabbed his legs a few times the last couples weeks for several seconds but today for the first time he was grabbing and playing with them for long periods of time. He was also trying out a bunch of new sounds with his mouth today." And on Joshua's blog I wrote "Joshua calls macaroni and cheese "mac and cheese-roni". It took me like 5 seconds of my time to write on Joshua's blog today (I don't do it every day, just whenever I feel like I have something to say) and what I had to say wasn't of much importance, but I am pretty sure the two of us will love reading over this when he gets older.

I know this post is very off topic but I have loved having these blogs and I have a feeling that they will be one of the things I do as a parent that I will be so grateful for later on. You know how your kids do something adorable and you wish that you could capture the moment forever? Well, I feel like I am kind of doing that now. And it is so simple and easy to do.

On a side note, I keep the blogs private. This way I never have to feel self conscious about what I am writing. Plus, some of the things I write about are kind of personal and just between me and my boys :) I also don't post any pictures on the blogs. I do think this would make them more fun, but this would also make them more complicated and I would end up being less likely to do them. Maybe in several years I'll go through photo albums and add pictures to what I have written.