Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

This is the second post in a series that I am participating in with 20-something other photographers. Stories about my life. I am a photographer who likes to capture children in nice clothes, looking their best, with sunlight streaming into their hair, joy on their faces. But we all know that is not how children are 100% of the time. Most of the time, my children are happily playing or talking or reading or eating. Sometimes they are immersed in a game by themselves or with each other. Sometimes they are sleeping peacefully. Sometimes they are sitting on the stairs. Sometimes their attention is stolen by something outside the window. But at all of these times, all of time, they are my boys. I don’t just want to capture them in spotless clothes with huge grins on their faces; I also want to capture them doing what they do, just being them. That is what this post – and this series – is about.

Last week I showed Noah in his pajamas. This week, I am sharing my little guy, Lucas. He looks up to his big brother; he points to him and says “Oh-uh” (Noah) and grins. He calls out for daddy when he wakes up in the middle of the night. He gives me soft little hugs with his head on my shoulder and his fingers wrapped around my neck. He lets all three of us know, without a doubt, that we are his favorite three people in the world.


baby boy on the stairs

brothers playing with legos

I love him so much it hurts. Look at him staring into his future. This picture makes me want to hold him and smell his baby-shampoo hair and squeeze his little squishy body and never let go.
baby in front of a height chart

Lucas, you melt my heart. I love you more everyday.

To see the next photographer’s Story, click here to visit the beautiful blog of talented Australia photographer, Lee Bird Photography!

Ever see a photographer who starts out with a 365 day project, or even a 52 week project and never finishes? Yeah, me too. Well, I recently joined a group of a few other busy photographers who decided to commit to a 12 month project! If we fail this, we’ll be taking donations for a time management seminar. The best part is that it will be totally candid, lifestyle shots of each of our own families/lives. We don’t even have to dredge up random people or make our kids pose for us. We’re calling the series “The Story of ________” and we’ll each be filling in our own blanks. At the end of this post is a link to another photographer who participated, and she’ll be linking to someone else. It’s a whole big circle of stories in pictures. Click through and enjoy!

boy laying on the stairs

toddler toes

boy in his jammies

Noah loves these pajamas. They are soft, comfortable, and cute. Just like him.

Click to see the next Story in our series, from talented New Jersey Photographer, Claire Hunter.

I have always loved the poem, “Babies Don’t Keep.” Nothing is so bittersweet as seeing my babies grow up right before my eyes. Lucas is growing up so fast. I blinked, and he turned one. He climbs, he runs, he grows… too fast.

Lucas has elbow dimples. He has 7 teeth, because that other one on the bottom left just won’t come in. When he smiles really big, he crosses his teeth in a funny diagonal way that cracks me up. When he’s really sleepy, he sings what I call the “sleepy song” as his eyes slowly flutter open and closed. He sometimes makes this face where he scrunches up his eyebrows and grins really big, and then he laughs like he knows he looks goofy.

Happy First Birthday to my Lucas, my happy, serious, goofy, beautiful little boy!


Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Before we had babies, I spent some time watching other people with kids, thinking about how I was going to do things when I had my own. I will be the best mom ever, I would say to myself. My kids will sleep through the night at three months old, and they’ll be potty trained at 18 months. They are going to be so smart and well-behaved! If only life worked that way. Reality is that my almost-three-year-old son has a speech delay. But he can say 50+ words now, and he has learned 3 words in sign language: milk, please, and thanks. My 11-month-old still wakes up an average of three times per night to nurse. But he takes an afternoon nap at the same time as his big brother. I’m tired, but I’m blissfully happy. I had high hopes and big dreams. But reality, in all its imperfection, is far more perfect.

baby brothers

I’ve been thinking. My thoughts often go in a swirl that rivals even my kids’ playroom for chaos (and believe me, their playroom is a mess). I want to post more often about me. Just like any other mother, my children are a huge, deep, real part of my life. I don’t often talk about motherhood in hushed tones, in awe of its power and beauty. Although it is certainly powerful and beautiful, it is also frustrating and funny. Funny in that physical comedy kind of way. I often feel like I’m the unlucky lady in a movie who is on her way to a job interview, running terribly late, wearing a freshly ironed dress, only to find herself standing on the corner of the street as a car whisks by, spraying her with muddy water from a pothole. Motherhood is definitely easier if you have the ability to laugh at yourself. Life with children is unwavering in its ability to provide the most beautiful, tinkling laughter and the most heart-wrenching, frustrated tears in the same day.

But the laughter almost always makes up for the tears.


baby boy at the window
Lucas, nine months old.