The good ol’ summertime is a fantastic time to slow it down and really smell the roses. So to speak.
Erin: It’s also a perfect time to have it smack you in the face just how fast your babies are growing up. We just had our LAST first lost tooth over here. I know. Sniff. Sniff.
Ellen: Wow. Try saying “last first lost tooth” three times fast. But even with five kids, you’ll eventually get to the end of firsts, it just takes longer. So get over yourself. My youngest is thirteen, so if your youngest is what, seven? That makes it about how many years ago since our last first lost tooth?
Erin: That would be six years ago. You’re doing some mighty powerful math over there. But really, you’re making my point. You forget things as the years go by. I feel like I should toss this golden nugget on top of the mound of memories I already have started but, truth be told, with five kids that mound’s starting to look more like a mountain of crap than a pile of precious memories.
Ellen: Here’s my dirty little secret. I have two kids and never filled a baby book past the second month. Stop judging because this was way before Instagram, Facebook, and, for my first child, digital cameras.
Erin: Gasp! Just kidding. The same is true for me.
Ellen: You should see our boxes of old photos, bins of artwork, and meaningful scraps of paper that look more like guinea pig litter than mementos.
I cannot bear to disassemble this corner. There is stuff dating back to second grade and my girls are going into 11th and 8th grades. I need help.
Erin: I have those bins too, except multiplied exponentially because, you know, I multiplied exponentially.
Then, of course, there are also the Facebook updates and blog posts that we have been using ever since surfing the net became a thing. That stuff all counts in recording the story of our families.
Ellen: We hope. If only the Internet had been around in the beginning or was designed for finding things in the future. How on earth are my kids ever gonna find all my witty status updates or see all the photos I uploaded to my profile in five years, let alone twenty?
Erin: But there’s hope and a way to sort through the multimedia mass. Those scraps of paper with those funny quotes can be liberated from the drawers. Those beautiful photos (even those hanging out on Instagram and Facebook) can be pulled out from the boxes under the bed. Even those handprints plastered on paper plates and all the other artwork can resurface and find a place in the light again.
Ellen: Stop locking their childhoods in a closet! Set them free! We have discovered an easy way to collect, preserve, organize, share, and print out those memories for all eternity or, at the very least, Grandma.
Blinkbuggy to the Rescue!
Blinkbuggy is a new online website dedicated to solving our memory mess and yours. Blinkbuggy offers simple yet powerful tools to tell your family’s story from first step to last first tooth to prom to graduation (It’s a’ comin, people! Insert another loud and snuffly sniff sniff here).
It’s just as important to get the funny shot as the money shot.
In addition, Blinkbuggy’s easy-to understand controls for privacy and sharing offer assurances that Aunt Tillie and Grandma have plenty of access to “The Story of You All” but college recruiters will not.
Furthermore, it’s so easy that these self-proclaimed Lazy Girls can get on board. With a Blinkbuggy app for iPhone already available and an Android app available by year’s end, it couldn’t be easier to get the funny quote or picture right where it belongs right away. We love that there’s room for funny quotes and sweet notes to nestle beside our ubiquitous but wonderful pictures.
We wouldn’t want to forget the ten year old’s obsession with big band music that made us wake up every morning ready to ration sugar and donate our hose to the war effort.
Blinkbuggy’s memory pages are easy on the eyes too. They mimic the look and feel of an Instagram feed and offer multiple ways to view the memories you have stored.
They really put our old boxes and bins to shame. We like all the viewing options really, but they are still, you know, on the computer. While this has solved our big issue of gathering all the scraps and bits together into one nice neat little story, that story’s only as good as our internet connection. Sometimes you just want to hand your old roommate or your grandfather a lovely book to look through and Blinkbuggy has some great options there too.
Partnering with MILK books, Blinkbuggy offers three options for printing from your memory feed: an archive-ready album, individual framed prints, and cards. We are of course excited about these pretty things, because we love all things graphic and creative. However, the real reason you should hustle over and start your own memory feed today is that finally all the pictures you take, your kids take, and heck, your husband takes can all be collected in one place. This is truly a feat because sometimes you find gems like this one on your husband’s phone.
The Mom Stays in the Picture . . . For Once
But what we love even more is the way Blinkbuggy works for our families now. We are so beyond anything baby that we can barely even stand the word “potty-training”, but we are still sentimental and sweet on our kids.
We are also real. With five teens between us, we have a healthy relationship with technology. Everybody has Instagram accounts and most of them have Facebook accounts as well. They all take their own photos on their phones and iPods.
What Blinkbuggy makes so easy with their upload from Instagram and Facebook feature is that our kids and their photos can become part of our story-telling as well. These photos are the adolescent equivalent of all those macaroni necklaces and construction paper projects we have stuffed in the drawers.
We will look back someday and be grateful for these literal snapshots of their lives. For now, we’ll just be grateful that Blinkbuggy is proving that nobody is really beyond a baby book. Because as we all know, they’ll always be our babies.
This is a sponsored post but we are true believers in this product or we wouldn’t tell you about it.
You can sign up for your own free Blinkbuggy account today!
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Check out our books, “I Just Want to Be Alone” and “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth.”
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