First-year milestones come fast and furiously for us parents, so it’s never a surprise when, given that we are living through the Technological Revolution, we try and document them somehow.
We want to remember those very first steps after all, now don’t we?!
I remember when my daughter had her first birthday party. It was a small affair, just her mom and her grammy and me, all standing there around our Violet seated in her high chair digging her tiny fingers into the over-sized chocolate cake I had made her with a lot of love and not much skill.
The memories of that day will live on in my mind until the day I die, just like most parents, I’m sure. But I have to be honest here. I’m really glad I recorded video of the afternoon on our little digital camera, too. Whenever I watch it (too often, but what’s a proud dad to do?) I am instantly transfixed by all of the details I think I probably might have forgotten by now, some five years later.
Video freezes time and there’s no way around it. There on my computer screen, all the balloons I went and got her at the party store are still chock-full of helium, and even the cake itself is whole again, my proud work of art still alive and well all these years later.
In that light, I’m a guy who must admit to you that I really love watching other people’s videos of the little milestones in their own kids’ lives. I’m not so sure why, really. I just do. They make me smile, probably because they instantly remind me of those big days that are behind us now, days when my daughter or my sons first mumbled out their first recognizable word or ran across the living room floor like an uneasy bird for the very first time.
If you feel at all like I do, then I think you’re really going to dig this video below of a doting dad making his baby laugh for the very first time. It”s a super special moment made all the better by the fact that it involves a bunch of genuine laughter and happiness, something we can always use when we’re out there surfing the net and being swallowed whole by all the sadness and meanness that comes along with a few hours in cyberspace.
Anyways, I have this sneaking little suspicion you’re about to smile your face off.
