Time Flies
One of the things I’ve been doing while sequestering at home is trying to organize the gazillion photos that accumulated over the years. I’ve actually scanned those from my childhood (including the Polaroids!), college, and even when I first dated G. I used this scanning app on my iPhone and it’s been great. By the time we got married, digital was a thing, so organizing got a lot easier, but then the kids were born. And digital or not, pictures of every moment of their young lives are too precious to “delete.” Everything is stored by date on my desktop Photos App.
If you don't have time now to make albums at this point in your life, here is a bonus tip: add photos you love to your default "favorites album" by clicking the ♥️ heart icon. This is an easy way to look back on only the best of the best, and organize later.
A few years ago I stumbled up this all-too-true YouTube ad for Chatbooks advertising how easy it is now to make memory books, even with three wild children and a busy household. They truly are easy and quick to make!!! I have stacks and stacks of Chatbooks on our bookshelf that we enjoy all the time. They make great grandparent gift too.
When you first have kids, you constantly hear the words "enjoy it, it goes so fast." Anyone and their mother, sister or fifth cousin will impart this advice with authority. What flashes though your mind each time someone says this is, "how could this helpless-hungry-sleepless-24/7-baby-time go fast?"
The days are long, the nights are longer. Once in a while, and not without a pang of guilt, I would find myself in a "kids-gone-off-to-college" fantasy of happy hour that doesn't end in an hour. Then about-face, coming to: How could anyone wish this precious time away?
Fast or slow, if one looks deeper into these early motherhood moments, weeks and months, they are pretty raw. Your body aches, your neck and shoulders throb from the baby sling, you may use lubricated mama balm all over, but parts are just chronically dry and cracked. A new mom's wardrobe is painlessly loose and pitifully stained with various baby bodily fluids. Even with the most reliable Instagram filters, the first few months after giving birth are not a pretty time for any mom. Miraculously many of us do it again, and again and sometimes even again! When one is in this state of being, it is difficult to believe for just one moment that it goes “so fast.”
Now, relatively distant from those raw moments, I look back on that time with gratitude and longing. Once your kids can get through the day without the constant assistance of carrying, rocking, buckling, wiping, brushing, tucking and coo-ing, time advances without permission.
In our family, my daughter was the easy one, and my son, well he required much more hands-on parenting. At times, I would cry, beg, plead, blame, and frequently give up when it came to parenting. Once or twice, I even washed his bad-word-mouth out with (organic Whole Foods) soap (it actually worked!). Not necessarily proud of those moments, you learn a lot about what drives one to the brink of such a harsh punishment (I don't even believe in killing spiders!). And I don’t need to repeat the story again of how he wouldn’t wash his hands. Of course, there is a subset of rare children that follow the rules, understand the consequences of poor unacceptable behavior, and even floss their teeth! Dare I mention my daughter is this way? Against the contrast of ease, I still love them both so profoundly and so equally.
But back to my point. Time does go fast. Even in a pandemic when every day feels like the same. It’s important to take pictures and video to remember the best, and even not so good, moments. Some of my favorite shots and videos are of friends and family just…doing whatever they were doing. Not at a special birthday party or staged holiday photo, not a posed picture where everyone is saying “cheese.” But the minute before that picture was shot; the hysteria that came later. That’s where the real stories are. Those are the things you want to remember. Take a picture. But more importantly, enjoy those little moments every day. They go so fast.
What are favorite moments of the day? Take a quick pic and send it to my personal email: alli@onefunco.com.
Yours truly,
Alli DiVincenzo
One Fun™ CEO