Our joyful storehouse of memories

This October, my to-do list includes making “spider cookies”:/news/2009/spider-cookies/, celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary with my “excellent husband”:/news/2006/daddy-o/, and figuring out how the heck I’m going to find some time to add to this blog, doggonit.

We “started Boyds’ Nest News”:/news/2006/big-belly-blog/ just weeks before Lucy was born. It was so incredibly important in that first year — a “place”:/news/2006/due-date/ to “rant”:/news/2006/a-futile-form-of-protest/ and “moan”:/news/2006/due-date-3/ as “we”:/news/2006/due-date-4/ “waited”:/news/2006/due-date-5/ for “Lucy’s”:/news/2006/due-date-6/ “fashionably”:/news/2006/due-date-7/ “late”:/news/2006/t-minus-4-days/ “arrival”:/news/2006/lucy-is-here/, to “celebrate”:/news/2006/lucy-gets-home/ those “precious”:/news/2006/unreal/ “first”:/news/2006/milk-face/ “days”:/news/2006/baby-houdini/, to seek “advice”:/news/2006/to-pacify-or-not-to-pacify/ on “nursing”:/news/2006/feeding-alternatives/, “baby”:/news/2006/road-warrior/ “sleep”:/news/2006/sleep-poker/, and “mood”:/news/2006/we-love-our-friends/ “swings”:/news/2006/signs-of-health/.

p{color:gray}. Photo: The three Boyd girls on our latest grand adventure: attending the outdoor wedding of our friends “Adrian and Rachel”:http://adrianandrachelkay.com/.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but being a musician, I think it really helped me to have an “audience” as I adjusted to new motherhood. When things got tough, if I re-framed it by imagining how to describe it on our blog, I gained some perspective and was able to look at the situation through fresh eyes. As Lucy grew bigger, it was fun to share some “adorable”:/news/2006/the-lucy-files-october-29/ “moments”:/news/2006/lucy-falls-asleep/ in her “development”:/news/2007/first-tooth/, and then “chronicle”:/news/2007/our-little-announcement/ our “next”:/news/2007/150-bpm/ “pregnancy”:/news/2008/two-sisters/, “Rosie’s”:/news/2008/rosalind-hazel-boyd/ “birth”:/news/2008/rosies-labor-the-cliffs-notes/, and our “transition”:/news/2008/big-sister-life/ to “life”:/news/2008/a-family-routine/ as a “family”:/news/2008/thats-my-little-sister/ of “four”:/news/2009/two-crazy-sisters/. We’ve had some really “great times”:/news/2009/strollercam/ here.

Now, not that anyone would notice, but over the past year or so our writing has been…sporadic. Less frequent than we would like. Believe it or not, that’s a little terrifying to me (yes, terrifying!), because this isn’t just a blog — this is our family scrapbook. After Lucy dropped her nap (over a year ago), I never was able to find a regular time for blog writing. It’s not that I don’t have things to write. I often walk around through my day, composing posts in my head, but once I sit down at the computer, everything evaporates as I click on my RSS feeds and start reading the new offerings at “The Kitchn”:http://www.thekitchn.com/. (So many recipes! So little time!) By the time I finally start writing, the whole idea has become a monster that often feels just too big to tackle. And that’s a shame, because I’m trying to write about sweet little girls, not monsters!

So, since I’m tired of feeling anxious about childhood moments slipping away, I plan to figure this out. I don’t want to lose the memories that are being created right now. We’re woefully behind on organizing the photos we’ve been shooting, and even more behind on our videos, but we’re digging through the backlog and getting up to date. (Did we ever get video footage of Rosie saying “a ribble lit” when she meant “a little bit”? We hope so.) We’re trying out a few “new things”:/news/category/overheard/ to make this blog work for us — including the revolutionary idea “just sit down and write for ten minutes each day.”

It feels good to be taking some action here. I knew my infrequent blog writing was bugging me, but it wasn’t until I met with my spiritual director a few weeks ago that it became clear how true that was. Alice has a great way of helping me to listen for God’s activity in everyday situations. It turns out that the little nagging voice in my head that keeps worrying that I’ll forget Rosie’s adorable turns of speech or Lucy’s passion for “Diego”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go,_Diego,_Go! is worth listening to. (It’s full of great blog ideas!) If I can just give that voice a little bit of attention, I’ll stop feeling anxious about childhood memories slipping away. It’s just a little thing, but it’s really related to my calling: mothering my two girls. The truth is, *God is treasuring up all of these memories for us.* I don’t really need to worry about “losing” the memories, because he cares more about these moments than even I do. I’m looking for that sweet spot between compulsively recording anecdotes and feeling guilty about not writing anything.

After talking with Alice for a couple of hours, she and I prayed that God will help this blog be a “joyful storehouse of memories” (a phrase lifted shamelessly out of my latest recommended read, “_The Happiness Project_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061583251/octothorppres-20) and not something that makes me feel anxious or compulsive. I’m grateful for God’s help in clarifying my hopes and stirring up my motivation, and I trust that he’ll help me get good at writing in tiny blocks of time! In the meantime, we thank you for your patience as we work out the kinks of blogging with a couple of preschoolers in the house.