Daddy Does: Keeping Notes

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Technology has changed so much since the youngest of my two older kids was born. In the last 8 years, smartphone usage has quadrupled. Making Internet access is virtually everywhere and cloud storage of data invisible.

As the dad, one of my duties is to take the kids in for all their appointments (i.e. doctor's, dentist, orthodontics). Sadly, my male genes tend to provide me with rather short term memory loss. The doctor will tell me a bunch of things and in the end I'll only hear "she's doing great".

This never settled well with my wife. She loves the details; more of what the doctor said. To deal with this, I started sending her text messages while in the office with the doctor. Immediately after s/he left the room, I'd take a minute and type her up a quick txt.

With baby 3, I took it a step further. My Lumia phone came with OneNote preinstalled. This application creates a document that is stored on Microsoft's OneDrive and can easily be shared across to other phone platforms (iOS and Android also have OneNote clients. ) In addition, computers running Office 2010-2013 or via the online office on Microsoft's Live website can also open this document and edit it.

After that first 1 month appointment, I started taking regular notes in the app. I've documented every single milestone as it's come along, when she started crawling, when she started eating, even what medications (picture of script, picture of bottle) she took.

As time has gone by, my wife has really come to love this. She's referred to it when filling in her baby book. She asks me to add "did you get those 2 new teeth she's cutting?"