Four years ago I didn’t own a camera or a camera phone. I saw no need for taking photographs or videos and had no interest in social media. In the first 24 years of my life I only remember a handful of times that I wanted to capture a moment in a photograph and all of those times were when I had climbed a mountain!

Then I met my now wife and my views and feelings changed dramatically. Suddenly I wanted to capture every date, every smile, every precious moment we spent together. I started taking photographs from the day I met her and captured our lives together. I wanted to be able to look back on these times and have the memories brought back to life. Suddenly I had a camera, computer and phone full of pictures.

Then my wife became pregnant and the desire to record and capture became even stronger. I took photos of her bump each day as it grew and filmed Ted’s movements from inside the bump.

Then my beautiful baby boy arrived. On the first day of his life we must have photographed him a hundred times. Each day we wanted to capture every expression and every sound. We didn’t want to miss a moment.

It quickly became apparent that if we wanted to capture our memories so frequently then we needed a way of storing and ordering them. The sheer quantity of photographs needed a more systematic approach.

By the end of our first week with Teddy we began searching on-line and found an app and website called Lifecake.

Lifecake allows you to upload your photographs and stores them in a timeline. Each photograph records the day it was taken and how old Teddy is in months and days. With the swipe of a finger we can chose any day or moment in time and within seconds see the photographs we took on that day. When we are talking about his special milestone moments and trying to recall when each milestone happened, we can find out almost instantly by looking at the timeline.

Lifecake also offers the option to share your photographs with family or friends securely. They are notified when you have uploaded a new photograph and have the option of ‘loving’ it or leaving a comment. This was especially useful in the first few weeks when some adoring family members wanted to see a photo of Teddy each day to see how he was growing and changing.

Using the Lifecake App is like having the equivalent of an enormous photobook stored on your phone, only better because it takes seconds to make and is automatically in chronological order.

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As I write this post I have my phone next to my keyboard with my Lifecake App open. On my screen I can see 7 beautiful photos of teddy. As I swipe my finger across the screen I can travel from yesterdays photograph to the day that he was born in under a minute, quickly scrolling past a photo of every day of his life in-between. In the time I have written this I have relived so many precious moment and the memories have come flooding back. Time has gone to quickly and Ted seems to have turned 16 months in the blink of an eye. I am so glad that we captured so much of his life on camera. I get such pleasure looking back on these photographs and will do for years to come. I don’t mind admitting that my time spent on my Lifecake App this morning has bought a tear to my eye.

It really is a way that parents can time travel.

Lifecake have got a great competition running this month called the #MeandMyBear competition. You could win a three night stay at the fantastic Port Lympne Reserve, as well as lots of runner up prizes. All you have to do, is enter yourself into their photo contest to be in with a chance of winning. Upload a picture of you with your childhood soft toy (or your child’s toy) on Facebook here, or simply share your pic on Instagram or Twitter tagging @Lifecake and using the hashtag #MeAndMyBear. The full competition details can be viewed here: http://iconosquare.com/contests/meandmybear. 

Here’s mine.