Right now, my youngest child is a precocious three-year old. While she can talk up a storm and has a rather impressive vocabulary (a gift of being the third child, it seems), one of my favorite things about the way she talks is when she doesn’t quite get it right. I love the way she says “bruders” for “brothers” and “I goed” for “I went”. These are just a couple of the things I’m sure I’ll never forget. Until I do.

You see, I know that I will, because there were the types of things my boys—her big “bruders”—said that I swore I’d never forget either. But now I close my eyes and try with all my might to remember the way they told me things—mispronunciations, silly facial expressions, and all.

I was recently introduced to OneDay, an easy-to-use app that was created to help parents like me hold on to these must-never-forget expressions and moments. The app captures conversations on video, then packages them into a keepsake movie.

Using the OneDay app—which is free now, though I’m told that will likely change— you choose from pre-existing question sets (e.g. “About Mom”, “When You Grow Up”, and “Your Favorite Things”) and record your child’s response to each of the 10 questions on the subject. You can save each answer, skip a question, or re-record an answer as you go. When you reach the end of the question set, the app stitches together all the questions and answers—in less than a minute, based on my experience—to create a wonderful interview, starring your kid.

Not only are the videos easy to create, they’re really fun for families to make together. Each of my children (ranging in age from 3 to 8 years old)—even the camera shy ones—loved answering the questions and then seeing themselves as the star of a “movie”.  And I loved how some of their answers surprised me, even though I think I know everything there is to know about my kids.

My tween niece who was with us when we were playing with the app asked me to interview her, too. She chose “Advice for Your Parents.” Once I created the video, it was easy to save to my camera roll and text to her…you guessed it…parents. In the app, there are sharing options as well, making completed projects simple to send to others or post to social media sites.

Since OneDay just launched a few weeks ago, there are some coming-soon features worth noting. Future updates will target people other than kids (think grandparents and significant others), include customized question sets (I can’t wait for this one), and more background music options (right now there’s a single default soundtrack).

Parents, this is one app you’ll want to remember. Because there are some things you just don’t want to forget.

By Amy Heinz

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