How many pictures do you have on your phone? I’m going to guess somewhere around 4,324,679… give or take.
How many have you posted to social media? Maybe .026 of them?
How many have you printed? Ballpark, .00000000002?
So why in God’s name do you have so many pictures?
I know why.
Within that camera roll lays a million tiny moments that you just can’t let go of. Ones that you don’t care if the rest of the world sees, but they are there for you. Just so you can look at your husband eight months from now and say, “can you believe we let the boy’s hair get this long?” Or to prove to your daughter that she used to love wearing her ladybug rainboots to the beach. Or to look at those messy candids that make you whisper to yourself, ‘I’ll never forget the way I felt at that moment.’
But the inevitable is going to happen. Those pictures will disappear. You’ll get a new phone. They’ll ascend to that nebulous ‘cloud.’ Or maybe even become victims of the trash can when storage space is needed.
I hate that.
I hate that the regular moments, the ones that don’t make frames or social media pages, are forgotten. Lost in space. It hurts my heart because those are the moments of real life. The moments in between camera-ready that fall between the cracks.
My solution; set up an email for your kids. It takes two minutes. Then whenever you get a chance, once a week, once a month, select a few unfiltered images and email them with a little caption. Just a sentence or two to let your kids know that in between the moments of beauty and triumph, you were there watching, taking notice, embedding their regular, everyday into your heart.
Our littles are growing up in a virtual age, and we have to get on board.
I’ll bet that most of you made a physical scrapbook of the first year of their lives. Maybe even the first few years. And if you’re one of those amazing crafty mom’s, you have one that celebrates all of their sporting, school, and social events. But I’ll wager not many of you have made one that simply showcases the everyday moments where childhood really happens. This is your chance to let them know that you’ve celebrated them, who they are, in their Wildest form.
How cool would it be to scroll through your email right now and open a picture of yourself at your clunky wooden kitchen table, your hair in pigtails held up by a pair of plastic double-bobble hair ties, wearing a bright pink pair of ruffled OshKosh overalls, shoving a mouthful of Sugar Smacks through your lips, with a caption written by your mom that says, “I promised you that you could watch Rainbow Bright before school if you ate something… Breakfast of Champions.” Nostalgia, am I right?
We are lucky that this ability is at our fingertips. All it takes is a few clicks, a couple taps on the keyboard, and our precious moments are forever saved (well, unless our kids get too embarrassed and delete, but that’s on them😊)
So keep taking those candids, keep running up the numbers on that camera roll, but make them count. Make them available for your future teenager, your future adult. Remind them that you’ve always watched them, always loved them, especially in their Wild. I can promise they will appreciate that you cherished those moments that fell between the cracks.
