A photo journal comprised of my thoughts on motherhood and other life happenings, as well as some of professional work as a photographer. Southern California is home.
Everyone tells you how fast time seems to fly when you get older. The speed seems to pick up somewhere in the mid-twenties and before you know it, you’re thirty and marveling at how fast the last ten years have gone. Childhood doesn’t seem to do us any favors in this category. Doesn’t it seem like childhood moved at snails pace? I remember summer vacations seemingly lasting forever. Now each day rolls into the next and with no distinguishable break, time just keeps on a’ truckin’.
When you have a baby, everyone tells you how fast they grow and change. These same people remind you to enjoy it. To soak it all in. But the truth is, I spent the last year enjoying our family and soaking in all the changes and excitement and well, it just isn’t enough. What they don’t tell is no matter how much you relish in the moment, the moments pass too quickly.
I imagine the sock monster that hides in the dryer and devotes his life to rearranging pairs of cotton booties must also hide behind clocks and play with those little dials when we’re not looking.
Because time moves too fast.
This past year, I’ve watched my baby grow into a boy. He started the year as a googly eyed bobble head and is closing the year out as a bull in a china shop with a mind all his own. See, it’s not only that time goes fast, it’s also that within a short amount of time a lot of change takes place. Imagine learning to roll, sit, crawl, walk, and run all in the same year. Imagine going from breastfeeding to spoon feeding yourself. A child’s development is incredible.
Anyway, here’s some of my favorite Hooper shots from 2011. I better put my running shoes on in 2012 if I have any aspirations of capturing the blur that is to be next year. And trust me, I do have aspirations.
Before we even talk about this latest obsession, can we talk about all the crap on the floor. I swear I keep our house fairly clean. It feels like I am picking up stuff off the floor constantly. There is only one excuse and it’s a very valid one: A 13 month old lives here. And there he is, with part of a baseboard in one hand and a shower curtain rod in the other.
Now, onto this obsession. Note again all those toys on the floor. I see books, a xylophone, records, a tin top, a ball, a wooden car, even a plastic container of pepper by his feet. But that baseboard and shower curtain rod trump everything. And it doesn’t stop there. He’s also into the swiffer, the broom, golf clubs. You get the idea. Anything long and thin. Not sure what to make of all this. What I do know is that he got toys, lots and lots of toys, for Christmas but spent much of the afternoon roaming around with a mop and broom.
Note Sarah in the background, fearful for her safety. She’s not so dumb after all…
But apparently I’m the one in danger.
Is this a typical stage? Does your one year old choose the broom over the book? Or is my little boy a future javelin thrower?
Friends of ours are new parents. Emmerson is a few days old and we met her the other day. It quickly reminded me of our early days with Hooper.
Oh how Hooper cried. As parents, and new parents at that, we tried our whole grab bag of tricks to figure out why: Is he cold? Is he wet? Did he poo? Is he hungry? Then we tried adding a blanket, changing his diaper that was hardly soiled, or offering more milk even though it seems like he just came off my raw, cracked, and tender nipple. Come on new moms, you know you feel me on this. Anyway, by the time we would reach the bottom of our grab bag, chances are Hooper would be asleep. Not so much because of the interventions we tried, but because he was a newborn, and therefore good at shut eye (intermittently, of course). Sometimes I think all the things we try are really to make us feel better because it just pains us too much as new moms to watch our new little bundle of joy “suffer” in any way. But truth is, babies cry. Who knows why. I imagine that womb is quite the cozy place and I suppose there is some adjustment period warranted.
Oh how Hooper pooped. Actually, as a newborn Hooper had something quite different than what I’ve come to know poop to be. His poop was far from solid, far from dark brown, and smelled like shit that came out instead as throw up out of a homeless mans mouth. I was reminded of this when we turned Emmerson onto her belly for a few more photos and heard an explosion in her diaper. And then I was thankful when I didn’t have to change it.
Remind me again of a dad’s role in caring for a newborn? Is this question harsh? Am I going to get hate mail for what I am insinuating in asking this? In my experience as a breast feeding mom, much of the responsibility fell on me. Don’t get me wrong, Willy wanted to help. And he wanted to bond. It was hard for him not to play as big of a role as he had envisioned and hard for me to take on a role I expected to be much more shared. This is why I’ve come to coin the first month with a newborn as survival time. People can say how magical and loving and special those first few weeks are and in no way would I disagree with them. There is all that too. But it’s hard. I will never lie about that.
Anyway, I snapped a few shots of Emmerson. It wasn’t easy. I had forgotten all about how to position a newborn, not to mention the explosion. In any event, there will be many Emmerson photo shoots in the near future.
One photo had an uncanny resemblance to a picture of Hooper when he too was just a few days old. It brought back memories of our own survival time.
I have a thing with highchairs. Okay, not really with highchairs, per say. More like against highchairs. And their bulkiness. And their gaudiness. So when we set out to decide on a highchair, we were looking for something simple and non-obstructing. I liked the Stokke Tripp Trapp chair… until I saw the price. Their whole premise revolves around the child eating at the table with you, in addition to the chair growing with the child. Then I saw this picture:
And thought: unt-aw, no soiree, not my child. Hooper will not be that over sized dorky kid still in a highchair at that age. So, I clung onto their other premise of having the child eat at the table with the parents. No bulky tray involved here. And I liked that premise. But again, the price. Ouch. So I stuck with the premise and looked instead at restaurant style highchairs and found just that, for $40. At Target.
Not only does it fit our home stylistically, but it also has become one of my favorite places to photograph Hooper. He’s contained, for one. And occupied with food, for two. And I can position it wherever I want, allowing for optimal lighting and background, for three. And by golly, those combined make for a successful photo shoot for an otherwise room wrecking, dog terrorizing, pulling-on-moms-pants one-year-old.
