Preface

When Oscar was about 6 months old, I found a diary my mother had written for me.  It covered the first 8 months of my life, with details of every aspect of my development:  how often I fed, how well I slept, how much I weighed, my mobility, sounds I made, my favourite toys, even my bowel movements!  Most importantly, it recorded - though in less detail - how she felt about being a new mum:  the anxiety and helplessness she felt when I cried (which I seemed to do pretty much non-stop for the first 6 weeks of my life), the elation when I cooed or smiled or laughed, the tenderness when she looked at me, the gratitude for having a hands-on husband (that was a bit of a revelation for me).  Five and a half years after her death, finding this diary was an incredible gift.  I could feel her grinning and winking conspirationally at me from beyond the grave.  It was far more meaningful to me for having had a baby myself.

I wished, then, that I had kept such a diary for Oscar.  I found that I was too busy enjoying him to record any of it.  I took lots of photos.  I told myself that our life wasn't interesting enough to write about, really.  We mostly hung out with the "Camberwell girls" (the two Ellas, Isabel, Poppy and Elodie) in various parks and cafes, and walked around looking for a house to buy.  Later, I wished I'd kept a record of our traveling at least:  by the time he turned 4 years old Oscar had been to the USA, France, Italy, Germany, Kenya (twice), South Africa, Argentina, Zanzibar, Ireland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Spain, and of course the Democratic Republic of Congo where he lived for 2.5 years.

When Leo was born I vowed to start a diary.  I bought one and began to write down one memory a day, but I failed to keep it up.  The days were too similar:  lazy mornings in bed making up for heavily disrupted nights, Leo napping in the sling while I explored our neighbourhood, heading off on the 37 bus to pick Oscar up at school in Clapham, an after-school activity for Oscar and then the evening ritual of dinner, bath, story, bed for Oscar, feeding Leo while rewatching The Wire, and bed for us (though rarely for long).  What I failed to do was to capture the moments when I just sat there holding Leo, marvelling at the feel of him, or the joyful camaraderie between Oscar and me when we walked together side by side - seemingly insignificant moments that were so precious to me.

And now we have a daughter, Audrey, nearly 5 weeks old already.   I re-read my mom's diary and realised that those trivial baby details would matter to a girl, if she chose to have children, so once again I am motivated to try to keep some kind of record.  This photoblog is for my children, to help them remember their childhood, and it is for me:  Audrey is almost certainly our last baby;  I am determined to fully appreciate every moment with her and with her brothers, to soak it all in, but it's going so fast!  I hope this blog can be my memory jar, in which I bottle up snapshots of our life to be revisited later, when the maelstrom of our children's childhood has passed.