Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Writing stuff down

I thought of a great subject to post about last night while I was bed, but I'd already forgotten what it was by this morning. What I should do is have a notebook and pen on the bedside table, just in case I come up with an idea I want to remember.

After all, if I didn't write stuff down I wouldn't remember anything except my name.

When The Little Madam was about three months old, I started to record the times she fed and napped because I hoped to work out what her routine was. It never really worked, because by the time I'd determined what it was, she changed again. But I still, even now that she's one year old, can't stop logging her naptimes, meal times, meal contents and overnight sleep times.

It must sound totally anal to you, dear reader. But I can't stop. I've already filled up two whole notebooks with this stuff, and have just started a third*.

What can I say - I've got one of those obssessive personalities. If I'd been any different, I wouldn't have quit my IT job to learn how to paint pretty pictures, or gone overseas for two years at an age when most of my friends had already returned home, or spent 18 months in a sometimes-thankless job helping library customers with their photocopying (actually that last job wasn't all bad, I did fun and satisfying stuff too).

My obssessions are what keep me going.


*I'm not saying that one day in the far future, I'll go back to the notebooks and reminisce over how TLM slept for 40 mins four times a day at the age of four months, or ate nothing but luncheon slices and toast every day for about three months.

But it has been useful for seeing how she has progressed in her sleep habits, or even just to prove to the boy that I really did only sleep in 3-4 hour blocks most nights last month. It'll also be handy if she starts to show any symptons of food allergy, because just about every single thing that passes her lips is there on paper.

10 comments:

LK said...

That is a lot of notes on baby - you are definietly dedicated to the cause. And now I have to quickly go and add that Emperor and Assasin movie to my Fatso DVD list, it looks good.

darth said...

yikes, violet-we were keeping frenzied, scrawled notes (fueled by lack of sleep and stress) of every diaper change, breast feeding, and sleep period for darth jr. for the first...uh, ok, i'm embarrassed how long we kept it up. more than one notebook full. For the life of me, I can't remember why now :lol:

Violet said...

nyx: and that's not including the fun stuff, like the hundred or so photos...

darth: lack of sleep and stress are definitely factors in my note-keeping frenzy too. Maybe it's a way of feeling in control of something.

Urban Chick said...

funny you should mention it but last night i found some scribblings in a notebook which charted our (disastrous) sleeping situation (kids) from earlier in the year

likewise, we were trying to make sense of it (ha!) or at least tell ourselves that our latest tactic was working (um, it did AFTER THREE WEEKS OF CONTROLLED CRYING)

argh

Urban Chick said...

p.s. there is a series of programmes about memory on bbc radio 4 just now - and some hot tips on how to remember stuff (feel sure you can listen again online if you really want to!)

Anonymous said...

Keeping detailed notes is good. You can read them to her future boyfriends , ha,ha..

The Skirt said...

Hey I wish my parents had kept those notes on me - it would have been fun to read them! And if she's ever a difficult teenager who complains how annoying you are, you have documentary evidence for how hard she was to bring up in the early days!

Violet said...

urban chick: three weeks? That's a helluva long way from the three nights that the books tell you it'll take. It must've been a hellish process for you. I've read some stuff about memory, like for instance apparently eating pork is bad for your memory - which means that Muslims are at an advantage compared to the Cantonese...

happyandblue2 and the skirt: ah, she'd never believe it. I still refuse to believe I was anything but a model baby, whatever my mother tells me.

jon said...

I've always said, "Why waste brain space on trying to remember things that I can write down?"

Unfortunately, I never write things down, so I just end up not remembering everything.

Violet said...

jon: if I didn't write stuff down, I wouln't make any appointments or know what to buy at the supermarket. Or be able to log into my computer.