When I hear her yell “starfish” from the other side of the door, that’s my cue to start the music. It could be “Problem” by Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” or any other song from the & Juliet soundtrack (her first play ever). Then my wild-spirited six-year-old bursts through the door and does an improvised dance. Since she doesn’t take lessons, it’s always more Elaine Benes than Beyoncé, and it never gets old.
I’m very aware this won’t last forever. It’s one of the hundreds of phases my children will pass through that are joyful and hilarious and fleeting. The everyday moments that tell our family’s story so much better than the big milestones. The ones we share with our partners and best friends to make them laugh or drop tons of emojis.
Like when my son wrestles Carlton, his white stuffed bear. He’s in the thick of a WWE obsession, learning every wrestler’s name, personality, stats, and best moves, and he regularly subjects poor Carlton to Stone Cold Stunners and the odd German Suplex. It’s a solid part of his nine-year-old bedtime routine, and I’ve taken tons of videos from his doorway while “Macho Man Jr.” flexes his skills on a small stuffie.
As parents, our text chains and camera rolls are cluttered with these kinds of silly photos, videos, and anecdotes—but when nostalgia hits, we’re lucky if we can actually find them. I used to jot down the funny words that my kids would mispronounce for a few months (never correct them, because when they stop saying “kenks” instead of thanks, you’ll miss it) and the weird things they did in my notes app. But as they grow, I feel like I have less bandwidth for this kind of remembering.
In a panic over the thought of forgetting that my daughter says “potopoty” instead of apostrophe and my son calls a duvet a “dubet,” I started adding all these moments to a Tinybeans album called “Quirks.” I use the captions to tell the stories behind the photos and videos, and the new voice memos to record the mispronunciations or quickly dictate something they’ve been doing lately. They’re curated, organized, and easily shared with the grandparents, uncles and aunties, and my besties.
It’s where you’ll find photos of the little love notes and updates my daughter leaves on my work to-do lists: “love mom,” “I like being with you,” “mommy mi tooth fell out!!!” Or pictures of our latest learn-to-draw masterpieces, where she bossily guides me in drawing something totally offbeat in very specific ways. You’ll also hear about how my son still loves to watch the original Muppet Show, Dodo videos about dogs, and old black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons, and the particularly adorable way he looks when he groggily stumbles down the hall to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I’m lucky enough to be awake.
Some mysteries of childhood I’ll probably never solve, like how to get him to eat anything that isn’t beige or how to get her to stop swearing like a sailor. But I’ve figured out how to keep track of the rest of it, and my best advice is to find a great system to keep these moments close. Because you won’t know when it’s the last time they yell “starfish” and strut through the door, but you’re definitely going to want to relive it for years to come (one more for the Quirks album).
