A couple of weeks ago was Lilah’s last day at daycare after almost 3 and a half years of being with the same caregiver. I wanted to show my appreciation to the caregiver by gifting her something to make her always remember Lilah.
My idea came when I was talking with a friend whose child was also moving on to another school. The parents at her preschool banded together to create a hard bound book (much like a yearbook), which was printed by one of the online photo companies. The children that were moving on each had two pages in the book with snapshots of them and quotes explaining what they liked about each of their teachers. The back of the book had a few pages with photos and names of each of the remaining students. It was a beautiful and creative idea. The parents paid to produce one for each of the teachers and themselves.
The DVD Cover Art
My daycare was in no way as organized as her group, and subsequently I decided to do something very last minute for Mamãe (refers to mom in Portuguese, which is what we call Lilah’s caregiver) on my own. I looked through my computer and found photos and some short videos of Lilah as young as 3-months-old. Not only did I choose movies of my little one, but also anything that included other kids at her school. Most recently I had recorded her class graduation ceremony. I needed something to close the video so I interviewed Lilah about what she liked most about her time and what was special for her at daycare, as well as who she loves!
I am NOT a “techie.” I know what computers are capable of, but not always able to get them to do what I want. I ended up not being able to burn the information to a DVD at home and decided to bring my external hard drive to work and ask for help. Dennis (our IT guy) graciously offered (thank you Dennis!) to make a movie out of my footage. What!?! He has a Mac which was made for this sort of thing. He loaded up everything into a movie wizard on his computer, chose a children’s theme and voila it was a movie. It had a section for photos which showed as a slide show. The movies all appeared as separate scenes of a movie. I was blown away! It was animated. There were flowers on hills with the videos in each flower. I couldn’t believe it only took 10 minutes to create this masterpiece!
We watched the movie together and the reaction I received from it was overwhelming. Mamãe said that NO ONE had ever done that for her. I was so happy to be the first to give her this type of special gift. She said in her graduation speech that she didn’t want them [her students] to ever forget her. Since I had a second DVD made for our family, we will never forget her, and Mamãe will never forget Lilah or any of her friends.
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