The Instagram effect

Back in late October, I spent a week at my parent's house with my brother and sister and my three kiddos.  Most of us adults are still recovering from the lack of sleep that entailed (this was one of Julia's first ear infections, and before we knew that screaming all the time was her #1 symptom...), so it wasn't exactly the fun and relaxing visit we had imagined.  BUT during that visit my siblings introduced me to Instagram, and then we got my fabulous mom to join, too.

Of course, given my propensity to over-analyze my (sometimes excessive) technology use, I've gone back and forth about this new development, wondering if it's really worth my time.

Then recently, with our travels and otherwise busy schedule, I unintentionally took a multi-week hiatus.

The thing that I missed, in retrospect, was an excuse to look for the positive and sweet moments of my day.  Posting to Instagram makes me stop, smile, and appreciate the silly and the precious that's mixed in with the crazy and the frustrating of every day.  Should I admit publicly that posting more regularly has helped improve my overall outlook?

My re-commitment to posting on the blog has had a similar effect, and I found myself over the weekend making mental notes about things the girls said, wanting to remember them and write them out here.  I wish I was better at keeping nice, written baby books for the kids, but in this case, the perfect is the enemy of the good.  My ideal of having physical records prevents me from even keeping track at all, and then time passes and I have nothing saved.  Poor Julia's year of milestones was such a blur that I have little to no recollection of her first rolls, steps, or words.

With all that said, today Pete got himself from laying down to sitting up for the first time.  And his top tooth - which has been coming in for two months now - finally broke through.

And this weekend, I was reminded over and over of the sweet mis-pronunciations that both girls use:

They love to play the "pe-nano."  And they were thrilled to attend a "festi-bull" at the school.

I'll probably always wrestle with the role of technology in our lives, but for now I'm giving myself permission to enjoy having an excuse to appreciate and remember the sweet spots of my day!