We have 5 children in our family, 2 we created together and 3 from my partners’ previous relationship. When we first got together I really struggled with the disconnect between the kids usual day to day lives and their lives when they were with us. Nothing stayed connected once they went home. They’d leave and come back and the connections had to start all over again and it frustrated me to no end.
When times get tough you draw on what you know, your strengths, and in my case it was photos.
So I bought each child a photo album and started taking photos, lots of them, to record our time together, and they loved it. Each time they came, they’d rush in to see what new photos were ready to go in, they had something to hold and touch that represented their time with us, and they were immediately reconnecting. It was fun, we’d all sit around and laugh and look back through the images.
Flash forward to today and I see the youngest two Kardashian girls (yes I was watching it..:\) flicking through their childhood photos albums and it prompted me to casually ask to see one of the albums to find out where I was up to in regards to printing the photos. The last photo in the album was of my son, with training wheels on his bike. He hasn’t had training wheels on his bike for over 12 months …. ball officially dropped.
With a couple of businesses on the go, 3 kids living with us, 2 visiting regularly, sport, meetings, school, kindy and life in general I had dropped the ball, without even realising it. The photos still existed on my computer, but they didn’t exist for the kids, my computer is strictly out of bounds to them.
So long story short, 3 hours on the computer and an order of close to 1000 4×6 prints (5 kids remember, and they each get a copy of their own), we won’t mention the price in case my other half actually decides to start reading my blog…. but I am pleased to announce I am back on track.
I want my kids to have photos of their childhoods, lots of them. Photos of them by themselves, with me, with their siblings, with their grandparents. I know as parents we don’t want to talk about it, but shit things sometimes happen in life. I don’t want to look back, more importantly I don’t want my family to look back, and realise that there were no photos, I’ve seen it happen and it is total heartbreak, and I won’t let that happen to my family.
Prints are powerful pieces of paper, little time machines evoking emotions and memories that had been long been buried underneath daily life.
They won’t remember all the details of their childhood, that’s not the way it works. The cuddles, games in the backyard, catching waves with their cousins at the beach, they all just blur into one big memory, a picture in their mind of how their childhood was. Photos show us the connections, the laughter and the love that existed in infinite detail forever.
#printyourphotos #makememories #lovemyfamily #existinphotos
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