Justifying this Blog/Digital Scrapbook

This blog started as a travelogue when Craig and I traveled around the world in the summer of 2009 (7 counties on 4 continents in 9 week).  It has since morphed into a digital scrapbook of our life as a family, growing from a couple to the TriCeps with Belle's birth in 2010 to the QuadriCeps when we recently welcomed Emily to the team.  This blog details how parenthood is harder yet better than I had expected.  No one knows the future of the Internet or of blogspot.com, but I hope this blog will remain live and accessible for many years to come. I would love for the girls to be able to look at it when they've grown some to enjoy seeing pictures and reading stories of their early days.

Last year, in my "real" (non-mom) job as a high school English teacher, I assigned a memoir-writing project. In preparation for a larger writing piece, I asked my ninth grade students to bring in a photograph of themselves, and then write a description of what is happening in the picture, and explain its significance both then (when the picture was taken) and now. One young lady brought in a 3X5 photo of a beaming man glowingly looking at a toddler who was smiling a toothy smile while holding a balloon. The student explained that the she was the toddler and the picture was taken at her second birthday party. She has no recollection of that day or of any of the events surrounding it, but she is able to describe the photo because her parents have told her about it, and that she is the birthday girl and the man in the picture is her father.  She continued to write that the photo is significant because it proves to her that her parents, specifically her father who is in the photo, loved her even before she had any awareness of anything. She says she tries to remember this now that she is a teenager and her parents often get on her nerves.  

That reasoning from a wise fifteen-year-old justifies this blog to me. I would love for the girls to look at this digital scrapbook in the future and then never ever doubt how much we love them (really, how much they are loved by their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and each other). I hope they understand how we appreciate the joy they bring us. Emily is now only two-months-old and Belle just two-years-old, and neither are able to form and retain memories.  I hope this blog is a memory-preserver and proof of our adoration for Belle and Emily.