Here we are

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We don’t have to pretend it’s not hard to celebrate that it’s still good.

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We’re in that sweet spot now. Our kids are sandwiched in that magical time between 5 and 10. Everyone’s old enough to be sleeping in their own bed (well, most of the time) and wiping their own butts (ok, most of the time). They feed themselves and can even prepare food for themselves. They are old enough to be pretty independent and young enough to not be too burdened by the overwhelming emotions of puberty.

And yet, this past year has been one of our hardest years of parenting. Just as we started to relax into the freedom we gained from not having to pack diaper bags or drag along strollers, new issues started demanding our attention that were beyond our parenting knowledge and experience.

I know that there are different phases of family life and that there are different challenges and perks that come with each of them, but I wasn’t expecting this phase to be quite so demanding. Early parenthood left me physically exhausted from all the breastfeeding, rocking, diaper changing, feeding, dressing, playing, and supervising. While the immediate daily caregiving needs lessened in most ways, the way the kids need me now has evolved in more complicated and unexpected ways. This phase has left me with an emotional exhaustion that no amount of self care can manage and no late night google searches can solve. I’ve had to let go of a lot of expectations and ask for plenty of help. I’ve had to find acceptance.

This is where we are at the moment. It feels big and hard to navigate now, but we’re figuring it out. The challenges create opportunities to expand our understanding, practice empathy, and build resilience as a family.

We’re not going to always get it right, but we’re doing the best we can.

And we don't have to pretend it's not hard to celebrate that it's still good. And it’s still so very good.

I’m incredibly grateful for my dear friend Anda Marie for capturing these ordinary fragments and moments of who we were in April of 2022.

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Transforming Perspectives

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LIFE IN 2021

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I’m honored to have the photo below on display as part of the DFP group exhibition Life in 2021. Documentary Family Photographers (DFP) is a global community, directory, and photography resource and education platform committed to empowering and connecting families and photographers from all walks of life.  The organization aims to transform perspectives and to create an impact on lives through documentary photography and community. Life in 2021 showcases images from documentary family photographers from around the world.  The imagery highlighted in the Life in 2021 exhibit is of true stories from 2021 and the universal yet multi-faceted experiences of the year - the good, the bad, the funny, and more. Life in 2021 will be available to viewers online from January 21st – March 6th, 2022. For more information about DFP, or to view the exhibit starting January 21st, please visit www.dfp-gallery.com.

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Masked

This photo was taken during a family gathering in Iowa in the fall of 2021. The kids decorated masks, and then they went about playing with their masks on, completely unaware of how their innocent environment and childhood play had suddenly turned macabre. It’s this play of illusion vs. reality that kept me coming back to these images and how they relate to our lives in 2021, a year where our lives were still disrupted by the pandemic. A year where we were still wearing masks even though we thought we wouldn’t be. A year where people’s perceptions of reality varied greatly, even within my own family.

The Halloween mask, as a symbolic representation of death, is unsettling on a child. Placing a child within this frightening illusion is the sort of thing that scary movies are made of. Masks affect our perceptions of reality. This may be why the idea of wearing a mask has been a very emotional and polarizing part of the American experience of this pandemic. The idea of the mask itself requires an acceptance of a reality that includes sickness and death. Within this context, wearing a mask has become a sort of performative act, much like wearing a Halloween mask, where an illusion of how you want to be perceived based on your reality is projected onto others.

The following photos are part of this series but are not included as part of the exhibition.

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A Day in the Life of my Life, Atlanta Family Photographer

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From wake to sleep

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I always like to start my year with an inspiring course that will challenge my growth as a photographer. For the final assignment of this year's course, The Documentary Approach, I had to do A Day in the Life of my own family. While I document my children every week as part of my Portrait of Play project, I had never photographed a day of our family life in its entirety. I went to bed with my camera beside me ready to wake up and capture the day as it happened all the way until bedtime. There was nothing special about the day. Nothing was scheduled, and we never even left the house. I took pictures like I would if I were photographing another family and also while nursing and vacuuming. It's safe to say that this is something I will continue to do every year as a way to record the things that stay the same and the things that change in our family life from year to year. The photos remind me of these things that I don't want to forget that define this time in our life:

-Winnie coming up to bed with us in the middle of the night every night. Waking up with her next to me.

-The furniture that James made for us that will be part of our life throughout the years.

-The exhaustion. Serious. Lack. Of. Sleep. Such is life when you have young children and you like to work until 2 am most nights.

-How much Roland loves James.

-The way my kids entertain themselves and me. My mom once said I should just record everything that happens here or stream it as a reality tv show. Their imaginations delight me.

-How Chuck sometimes wants to take showers by herself instead of baths with her sister.

-The little details that may go unnoticed to everyone else but are visually a part of our every day life: James' resistance band, the chalkboard wall, the rug, the coffee cups, the toys, the boxes from the car seats they will be in for the next several years, and the painting that is hanging in the girls' room. These are all things that make our house a home.

-The work that never ends, dishes, laundry, meals, pottying, nursing, changing, repeat, repeat, repeat.

-Atlas, the dog we had before we had kids, the dog who is not getting any younger.

This year has been rough. I mean, having three kids is crazy. In the same breath that I am already aching for the days I know I'll miss (that have not even passed yet), I am dreaming about 3 years from now when I will hopefully have more personal space, time to myself, and sleep. Because I know this day in our life will look different next year, I went ahead and printed these in a photo book so I could look at them without having to search through an old external hard drive to find them. My future self thanks me. 

While I was able to include my presence in these photographs, I am very glad my dear friend Anda Marie will be taking photos of our family this month. My family through my lens is different than my family through the lens of another. Plus, I want to be able to see myself with my children, and I want them to see me with them. My future self thanks me for that too.

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I'd love to spend some time in your home with your family. It doesn't have to be for a full day. You don't have to be at your prepregnancy weight. Your house doesn't have to be clean. Your kids don't have to behave. You just have to be you.