It has never been as easy as it is today to preserve all those moments in your children’s lives for them to treasure forever. Of course, you wouldn’t want to pull them out when your son or daughter brings home their first date, but that’s another story for another day. Today, let’s talk about five ways to preserve those magic moments in a child’s development that you, your children, and their children to follow will cherish forever. These are four ways to keep family history, one child at a time.
1. Videos of Childhood Firsts
Someday ask your grandparents what they wouldn’t give to have videos of your parents’ first steps or the loss of a first tooth and their excitement over the coming of the tooth fairy. What about their first birthday or their first Christmas? All you really need is an excellent digital camcorder or a new generation smartphone to capture those moments as they happen.
You will also need to look at a few good video editing desktops because there may be times when you will want to edit out bits and pieces that probably have no place in a childhood memory video. Keep them all on a local disk, but you may also want to upload them to Cloud storage, just ‘in case.’ You get the drift!
2. Baby Book – Scrap Book
This is a tradition still prevalent today among some cultures, but many families have left the practice behind. You can still find baby books for sale, and these really just scrapbooks with a stylized cover for babies and then pages of cardstock or heavy paper where things like photos, birthday cards, and perhaps bits of fabric from their favorite blankie when they were toddlers can be glued in the the the. It can be stapled or glued to a page if it can lay flat. Handmade baby books are fun to compile and even more fun to take out to show the family.
3. Bronzed Baby Shoes
This is another tradition you rarely see anymore. There was a time when every home had their children’s first pair of shoes bronzed to preserve them forever. While those old-fashioned bronzed baby shoes were traditionally high-top white lace-up shoes, imagine your son’s infant Nikes being bronzed and that famous Nike brand check showing through nicely.
4. Fabric Art
In the past, grandmas would knit or crochet blankets for their grandchildren. They also quilted some with embroidered panels of things like Raggedy Ann dolls or little train engines. Some had various discussions with nursery rhyme characters.
With heat transfer technology and sublimation ink, it is fun to do these quilts with photos of the child. They get such a kick out of seeing themselves on a blanket. That’s something to store vacuum sealed as a memory to pass onto them when they are grown and have families of their own.
Today, with computer technology and the ability to store a massive amount of digital data, you can preserve more memories than any generation before you could even imagine. Not only will you be preserving memories, but you will also be making them.
