For The Memory Keepers Of The Family, These Write To Me Journals Are Perfect

I am overwhelmed easily. By baby books, by scrapbooks, by promising myself I'll journal every single day — but I'm also deeply committed to building the legacy of our family. I want to preserve memories and I want to document our life in Write to Me journals. I want it to be easy — to grab a pen, scrawl out what happened that day, and have a tangible piece of life preserved for generations to find. I want to leave behind for my children what my parents and grandparents have left for me.

When I was pregnant with my oldest, I kept a baby book for almost the entire first year of her life. And I mean, I kept a baby book. I printed out pictures (a feat all on its own), I taped in ultrasound photos, I wrote into the margins of the page answering questions like "Who is your 1-month-old's favorite person?" and "What does your 1-month-old like to do?" How I managed to fill an entire page with "me, the woman with the milk in your breasts" and "drink that same milk" as answers, I'll never know.

But I do know that I was often overwhelmed with the task. It felt like it had to be perfect. I was annoyed there weren't enough lines on each page, annoyed that it gave me spots to put pictures instead of just being blank. I was scared to mess it up, and then I was scared I wasn't doing enough. I wanted to write more in the book about how I was feeling and less about how much baby ate during her first solid food experience. And then all of those feelings turned into guilt when I slacked on the baby book. My role as documenter and legacy-creator was obviously in jeopardy if I couldn't perfectly tape ultrasound photos into those tiny boxes held up by cartoon giraffes.

The Write to Me journals are now the only ones I use to document our family life. Bound in linen with sweet embossed lettering on the front, I have two of the Funny Things My Kids Say journals. They could not be easier for me to fill out, making it a breeze for me to write down the memories as they're happening. My favorite part is how the pages are set up. With a note at the top to write your child's name and the date, that alone gives you some freedom — you don't have to keep up with several books or make one for just one child. Write everyone's memories down in the same journal with just a little bit of labeling. Underneath the name and date lines is a giant space that just says "quote." Which means I have plenty of room to give context to the funny thing my kid said, and I don't have to worry about looking back in 10 years and having no idea why my kid kept saying "That's my appropriate stuff!" Write to Me believes that this is the journal for parents who say they'll remember the funny things their kids say, until they don't. I am that parent. Write to Me is for me.

But they have more journals, too. There's a Christmas one I'm dying to get my hands on — it's a journal specifically for writing down the magic that happens at Christmas, and is created so you can preserve 21 years of memories with a photo and space to journal. 21 years! I'm blown away by this one, because family Christmases are the most nostalgia-inducing memories of my life, and I'm eager to soak up every second.

Write to Me also has journals for pregnancy, travel, weddings, and more, so they make great gifts for a person in your life who, you know, lives. I'm already planning on passing these out as gifts at baby showers, birthday parties, and weddings. It's small enough to fit in a bag and go everywhere with you, and so easy to just whip out and write down the things you want to remember. Everyone wants to leave a legacy behind for their family, but perfectly curating a scrapbook with photos or organizing everything by year and holiday isn't always feasible. I've learned that my type of documenting is scribbling on the back of recipe cards about why it's such a great family dish, writing on the back of photos what happened that day, and writing in my Write to Me journal.