Modern Day Journal to My Kids
When I was pregnant with my first baby, I had all the time in the world to do creative things! I did scrap booking, I kept up on the baby book by putting in the day every tooth popped through, I printed all his baby pictures and kept them in a photo album and I had a journal that I wrote in, starting in pregnancy that I am eventually going to give him. You know all that fun memory stuff. Well, the second baby came and I planned on doing all that great stuff. I bought the journal, wrote in it (a little), I have a cute scrap book (that I never opened) and his baby book, well it's got the important stuff in it! The third baby...... well, as you can guess, it's all there on her shelf but I never opened any of it!! I am now pregnant with number 4! I kick myself every time I think of all the memories I'm not writing down in their journals or baby books! I'm not to worried about the pictures I haven't printed because really, I can send them to shutterfly and they will put them in a book for me. But the journals, I really wish I had written down a lot of those funny moments or funny things that they said. These kids are hilarious!! Of course we say, "I'll always remember that one! It was too funny!" Then of course, I can't remember a single one!
So, my new idea (I'm sure someone else thought of this already. I'm not that creative or smart) is a modern day journal. In this day and age, a lot of us rely on technology for so much. We have smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc, all at our finger tips. It dawned on me that I can answer 10 emails, post my status on facebook, RSVP to evites, take my turn on Drawsome, schedule play dates on the calendar that will sync to all of my family's calendars, find a new project to do on Pinterest, and post my junk on Craigslist all at the drop of a hat on my phone! Yet I can't write an entry into my kids journal :-(. So, I decided to journal through email! I created an email account for each of my kids and now I can write to them whenever I want! If they say something funny, I can take 60 seconds on my phone and email it to their email! I can write to them when I'm waiting in the Dr's office, at work on lunch, when I'm a passenger in the car, when the kids are in the bath and I'm sitting on the toilet making sure they don't drown each other......anytime! Then when they are old enough, I can give them their email address and password and they can read all the wonderful things they said, did or that I wanted to tell them. I can also attached pictures to go with that entry. When I write about the day my son was curious about eyeliner and mascara going all over his face, I can take a picture with my phone and send it as an attachment with that entry! There is no way I could ever be together enough to find the camera at that perfect moment, take a picture, upload it to the computer, print it, cut it out, find the journal, and paste it in!
I'm very excited about this idea! I really hope you like it just as much and find it helpful for you and your children. I also gave my husband their emails so that he too can write to them! Oh!! Maybe even the grandparents! I just thought about that!! There are really a lot of things you can do with this! Let me know your ideas!!
Enjoy!!
Late edit:
Late edit:
I have had wonderful responses to this post!! I'm so happy that everyone is liking this idea! There have been some questions on how to set up multiple email accounts. So I will try to give a step by step as best I can. All the email services are so different.
Gmail:
I use gmail for all my person email addresses. I really like them and have never had any problems. Go to gmail.com. It should look like this:
Click on the red button "create an account" in the top right corner.
Now it should look like this:
1. For the first and last name I used the kids name.
2. The username is what you want their email address to be.
3. Then create a password
4. For their birthday use your year. Most likely you kids are to young and gmail won't allow them to have an email. If you did use their year and it denies you, close you browser, clear you cookies and then try again.
5. Mobile phone is so they can send you your password if forgotten.
6. For the current email address I used my email. It's so you can get their username or password if you forget.
7. Next page:
8. Here you can add a photo and personalize it. Then press next step.
9. From here it will take you step by step to your email!
As far as signing up with other email providers, I'm not sure. If you really have a problem, please let me know. Leave a comment or email me at anytime and I will figure it out and help you! : )
Have fun!!!
