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It’s too easy for days, weeks and months to pass by without actually getting in front of the camera with our children.  It’s so important to make the time every now and then to get in a photo or two so that your children have images of you from their childhood to look back on.

It seems that hearing songs that we heard at one time in particular triggers memories that were also formed at that time.  I know for me personally that there are some songs that instantly bring back all the feelings from the time that I used to listen to it, within a few seconds of hearing the music.

Whenever I hear anything by Bob Dylan I’m suddenly back in my bedroom at home, hearing the music floating up from the lounge below where my Dad was playing it on the record player.

A few bars of ‘Breathe’ and I’m back in Envy dancing away with my best friend.

I hear the opening line of the Ellie Goulding version of ‘Your song’ and I’m suddenly pregnant with Rhys again, singing to him and getting all emotional about how wonderful life will be once he’s out in the world!

There are a few songs that, for one reason or another, were present throughout Nerys’ first year; that I think will bring me back to this time when  I hear them in the future.

And so, to celebrate her turning one, I give you the soundtrack to Nerys’ first year!

Christina Perri – A thousand years

This is the song I used to sing while I was pregnant with Nerys.  It’s really quite cheesy I know, but pregnancy hormones made me get all emotional when I heard it.  Especially the line “And all along I believed I would find you, time has brought your heart to me, I have loved you for a thousand years”.  Before I fell pregnant with Nerys I started to get the feeling that there was a girl out there for us, and when we had the 20 week scan and found out she was a girl that line seemed to have a lot of significance!

This song will always remind me of the day Nerys was born.  It was playing in my head the whole time, and the whole of the next day while we were in the hospital.

Also, have you ever watched ‘Better off Ted‘?  It was a really funny tv program that never seemed to get the popularity it deserved.  But if you did ever happen to see it, you might remember Veronica singing ‘Never gonna give you up’ on her cd ‘Veronica in the key of love’?  Well, the mash up changed into that quite a lot on that first day with Nerys too.  Makes me smile whenever I think about it!

I have watched a fair bit of tv over the last year, and a lot of the time during the day I’ve been watching Friends (it’s on ALL the time!).  Now when Friends comes on, Nerys will sometimes stop what she’s doing and watch the tv, then go back to what she’s doing when the theme tune ends!

One of my friends always used to laugh at me for being completely out of touch with new music.  The thing was, back then, I never really listened to the radio, so I just didn’t hear any new music!  Now that I drive to school every day though, I’m listening to the radio again and starting to get more up to date.

Now I know this may not be the coolest song to choose to show how down with the kids I am these days, but it’s the one I most associate with those drives.  Even Rhys would sing along to it!

For most of Nerys first year, if we were watching kids tv it would be Disney Junior because that’s what Rhys was most into.  A month or so ago though, my father-in-law asked if Nerys liked Mr Tumble, as Rhys absolutely loved him as a toddler.  So we started watching Cbeebies again.  And would you believe it, Nerys is now a huge fan of Something Special!  She loves to wave her arms around when they spot the things they’re looking for and is fascinated by the signing.

There is a photographer called Sue Bryce who speaks really passionately about the importance of making sure there are photos of yourself.  She even started the #existinphotos campaign, to encourage everyone to stop waiting until they are ‘perfect’ enough to have their photo taken and to just go ahead and do it.  The stresses the point that you are already perfect, especially to your family.  And they will want there to be photos of you for them to look back on.  The quote below is from her, and she can barely get the words out without crying, which speaks volumes about how important this idea really is.

I want my children to have photos of our interactions and our relationship to look back on.  I may care that I need a hair cut and that my greys are really coming through, but they won’t care at all about those things.  They’ll just care that I was there.

So here is the first set of photos from the first week of March.

Even if you don’t want to share your photos, please, just make sure you exist in photos for your family!