Long-term parental notes?

[schneider_4 1]

I am a new dad of twins, and I'm thinking about creating an account (or 2) to document their growth. This means pictures, short video perhaps, notes, web links... Stuff like that. Any thoughts/reasons why Evernote (upgraded I presume) would or would not work rather than simply creating an email account for each?

[Morticia 193]

Start with one account. And collect pictures and video-shots. 

And the growing up data, first word and so

The first year the are together almost everytime. Later you can create one or two more (for each of them) and export the first account to ENEX and import in their personally account.

Tag notes their name, year etc

Have fun.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

@schneider_4:

 

I think Evernote would make a great scrapbook/journal for recording the life of your new twins as they grow up.

However, it is not the best for photo management, or sharing/viewing of photos.  So you might want to also find an online photo management system that you like.  Just google "online photo management".

 

 

For Evernote

 

Start with good descriptive Note Titles that have good keywords in the Title.

• Some people like to put the date in the Title, but I prefer to use the Note date fields to track/record the date.
• You can decide which works best for you.

 

Then a simple system of tags would probably be helpful.

• Use a prefix like "Fam." to denote tags about your family members
  So, if your twins names are Jack and Robert
  • Fam.Jack
  • Fam.Robert
  • etc
• Using a tag prefix is a great way to make searching easier when you want to find all Notes that have any of tags that have that prefix.  So a search for "tag:Fam.*" would return Notes about all of your family.
• A tag for each year, like 2015, 2016, etc
• You can use the same tags for categorizing their lives as you use for yourself.
  • You just also assign the "Fam." tag to denote the person
  • So for Jack's health records, you would assign tags of "Fam.Jack" and "Health"
• Finally I have a few special tags that may or may not be useful to you:
  • Photo, Event, Trip, !Fav

Be sure to set the Note Creation date to the actual date of the record or event so they will sort properly.  If you're using EN Mac, there is an AppleScript that makes this easy.

 

In addition to the "Fam." name tags, you might also put each the Notes about each person in a separate Notebook.  This would allow you to share that NB with just the person it's about.

 

You can also set a reminder (w/o a date) on key Notes/Events for each person.  You can use these reminders like pinned notes at the top of the Note list.

 

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[gazumped 11,652]

...pretty much what they said.  Congratulations too. 

 

Having been there myself (two kids,  not twins) I can say with fair confidence that the first 30 years are the worst...    

[Frank.dg 1,385]

...pretty much what they said.  Congratulations too. 

 

Having been there myself (two kids,  not twins) I can say with fair confidence that the first 30 years are the worst...  

 

... 23 more to go 

[schneider_4 1]

Thanks for all the good suggestions! I thought the tagging would be an important part of it. I also am using this to gather "things I wanted to be sure to tell you" notebook as well. My main concern was running out of space and wasn't sure if there was a maximum total space limit.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

My main concern was running out of space and wasn't sure if there was a maximum total space limit.

 

If you go with a Premium account you won't have to worry about limits.  Since you are documenting the life of your twins, I think the small price of $5/mo or $45/yr is well worth it.

 

BTW, here is one cool thing you can do.  Use your smartphone to capture relatively short (< 5 min) videos of their life as it is happening, and then upload to Evernote.  When you're taking the video, be sure to say your name, the date, your kid's name, the place, and what's happening, and of course whatever else you'd like.  These short videos should be well below the 200MB Note limit for Premium accounts.

 

Later, if you're into video editing, you could put these video snippets together in a fun way.  So be sure to also store the videos (and all photos) in an area separate from Evernote.  

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Here's a really good, recent, comprehensive review:

Photo Mgr Review -- Flickr, Google Photos, Photobucket and iCloud