My Obsession With Archiving

Today, my twin girls turned 5. Five years have passed since that day that I first held their tiny bodies in the hospital and met the little people who had been kicking and moving around inside me for 36 weeks. And now, of course, they are sweet, adorable, usually well-behaved pre-schoolers with strong personalities and busy lives filled with school, activities, friends, and, of course, each other.

Last night, I realized that I have become somewhat obsessive in trying to capture every facet of their lives and preserve them into perpetuity. First, there is the sheer volume of photographs I have taken of my two girls. Thousands of them. And while I use a digital camera, of course, I still get most of those pictures printed and put them into photo albums. It has gotten to the point where it takes only three months of photos to fill a large album - that's a bit obsessive. I spent the last four nights staying up into the wee hours of the night to get caught up, and I am proud to say that I am current on albums through the middle of March. (It would have been the end of March, but I ran out of refill pages.)

But the photos are just the beginning. In addition, there's the daily blog, where I capture the wry, witty things they say, as well as the sweet moments and the challenges of being their mom. I launched the blog in July '07, and try not to miss more than a day or two a week. So that's a lotof memories right there. Someday I am going to make a Blurb book and get it all printed, I swear.

My archiving has gone multimedia too. Every year, I make a CD of the girls' favorite songs and give it out as a favor at their birthday party. Volume 4 - this year's version - is an eclectic mix of kids' stuff, some 80s pop, a few show tunes, and a patriotic song thrown in at one daughter's insistence. This year, I also made each girl a book of the artwork she had produced over the school year. (Thank you, Inkubook!). So while the original paper might fade over the years, they will always have a glossy hardcover book full of their masterpieces.

I haven't even mentioned the video library sitting on my hard drive, or those old-fashioned baby books I caught up on this morning while I was at the doctor's office. (I had gotten a little behind - don't tell anyone).

So what's the point of all this? Are the girls going to want all this stuff in 20 years? Am I? Am I preserving all of these memories and keepsakes for me, or for them? I am assuming that yes, they will be very interesting in reading about their days in pre-school and seeing what they looked like at age 5... but how can I be sure? My childhood certainly wasn't documented in this kind of detail, so I don't have any idea how much I'd want to have it now.

Or is my relentless preservation a futile attempt to slow down the speed with which they are growing up, to prevent the daily rush of detail from going by in such a blur that I can't ever remember it?

Whatever the reason, I know I won't be stopping anytime soon.

Original D.C. Metro Moms post. Gayle also blogs about books at Everyday I Write the Book.