"When did that happen? Was it in March or April of last year? I know I mentioned it on Twitter, but it would take forever to find it." This was a regular occurrence for me. In particular when I took a blogging hiatus for the last few months, I didn't have a blog post to reference that would tell me when Ian first said something or when I had a cold or whatever. No matter how little I was blogging, though, I was still on Twitter (and Facebook).

Last month when Ian turned two, I got all nostalgic that I wasn't sure exactly when things happened while I was in labor. Did I get Pitocin in the afternoon or evening? When did I start pushing? And since I only got as far as telling Ian's birth story up to the point of his entering the world, I never got a chance to write down all the details of those first few days with him in the hospital. In many ways those first few days were our trial as parents more than any dilating cervix or delayed epidural. But how long were we in the hospital? When did we get to go home? When did my milk come in?

The historian in me needs to have things like this recorded. So I started hunting around online a few weeks ago and discovered Twistory.net. Just getting an export of all my tweets to date has been worth every penny.

So, I highly recommend trying it out or any other Twitter archive tool. You don't know what you're missing until you go traipsing through your Internet past. Don't count on the Library of Congress to squirrel it all away for you!