When our first child was born, my wife used a book that she wrote every single detail in. Things that made us laugh, first words, rough times in parenting, when first steps were taken, all those kind of things. Even when our second child arrived, she wrote everything down. Our journal of parenting was almost full with multiple weekly entries – until I became a stay at home dad.
I’m terrible at keeping a journal, as in, I’ve never done one. I don’t blog, vlog, or anything like that. If you know me at all, you’re really not shocked. You’re surprised that I even have a cell phone (no data either. Who needs data when there’s free Wifi somewherearound here?). So when it came time for ME to be writing in our journal, I dropped the ball… a lot. Okay, I didn’t even write in it. But, I did have Twitter and Facebook where I posted the humours of being a Stay at Home Dad, like this gem:
*Couple minutes after sending my 4yo out to the garage to put his shoes on*
Me: You still don’t have your shoes on? What did I send you out here to do?
4yo: Ummm… Motorcycling?
But after a while, Twitter and Facebook lost its glamour. Then I found a really neat way to record our adventures as a family. One Second Everyday. I love taking pictures and videos of my family already, so this was a perfect fit. It’s free, you download it to your phone and, if you have a great camera on your mobile device, you can expect some great quality clips to trim. You have options to upload a picture or a video, and to choose either a 1 second clip or a 1.5 second clip. I do favour the iOS version of the app, there are more options and it is more user friendly than the Android version (not sure why companies do this?). You also have the option of customizing the dates of your video clips for when they start and finish. Usually I do a video clip for each month.
What I do love about this way of remembering our time is that at the end of your year, you can stitch your entire year as one long, almost 10 minute video (if you recorded every day). I upload it to our computer, and add some music to it with Windows Movie Maker (I’m talking about some very high-tech software here). I’ve been doing it since May 2016 and have captured almost every single day and it truly is amazing what 1.5 seconds can do helping you and your family remember those adventures. Hopefully in 10 years time, I’m still doing this and can reflect back a whole decade.
Justin Paisley, DCL Director
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