Families together make me cry

you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

Living in San Diego means that if our family is not part of the military world, often we are connected to families who are. I’ve been sharing the recent developments in my family life – my anxiety/stress/guilt/whatever comes to mind – and yet, I have the support on a daily basis of my husband, Rob, who rocks my world and also nourishes 21 other little lives each weekday in his classroom. What would I do without him? I would put one foot in front of the other, is the answer…

But how do my friends whose husbands are in Iraq or overseas DO IT?

When I was 2 1/2 my mom and I lost my dad to Crohn’s Disease. I have no recollection of that time and I don’t “miss” my dad the way you miss someone whom you have memories of. I think of him. Who he was. How he must have interacted with me. As a wife now, I think of how he and my mom ,must have lived together, parented together, dreamed together, worried about me together.

My mom didn’t have a lot of support from him in taking care of me during those first 2 years of my life, as he was very sick for most of it. She was constantly going between the hospital and home and work. I know she must have been on auto pilot because that’s what us moms do. Did she stop and take a breath when she layed her head on her pillow at night. What were her thoughts before she finally fell asleep?

What do these women whom I watch taking care of their families 24 hours a day, with their men gone, think about at night?

you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

I just completed a private group of mini-sessions for a local mom’s group. I’d photographed most of the families before, but this was the first time I met some of the dads who had been in Iraq at our last mini-session. I get easily overwhelmed with emotion and, I didn’t…but I wanted to give everyone the biggest hugs…and cry and tell them how amazing all of them are.  To endure separation…to still be kind to your children, to strangers, to your friends and family. To come back together and still click…still feel connected AND to parent your children together.

The crying I wanted to do, and did do as I was Super-RAD-on-izing their images, wasn’t sad-crying. It was overwhelmingly joyous-crying. Grateful-crying. That these babies have their family back together. That these families are sacrificing daily for me, for my family, for our country. I’m so thankful and deeply moved. Their faces are in my thoughts when I lay my head down for the night.

you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

** Not All of the families in the Mom’s group are military families…but/and they are an amazing gathering of families who have watched their littlest ones grow over the last year and a half.

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On Pandora: Frank Black

Now THAT’s a family photo

I’m struggling. It’s personal. It’s professional. I’m dealing with What I’m doing…what I’m REALLY doing in photo-land. This holiday season I have been fantastically overwhelmed with requests to take family portrtaits…and I’ve been Thrilled to No End to do them for families of all flavors!

But as I was putting my own Roon-style on some of the images I shot in the past couple of weeks…of families…sweet, kind, beautiful families….I started wondering if the style of photography I shot this year is truly representative of me…of THEM…the families.

I’m vowing next year to focus on shooting families as they ARE… Maybe no one will sign up… Maybe no one will put their photos on their Christmas cards… who knows… But I know I’m ready to have some fun, man…some serious creative fun.

Thank you, lovely Holiday Customers…hope you’ll come back next year for something new…that’s not really new at all…not NEW. but YOU!!!!!

This perfect post is what inspired my thoughts. And here’s my favorite photo of the bunch from photographer David E. Jackson:

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Right?!?!?!??!?!?

Finding IT…

As I was editing this session, I knew I had a shot of a doormat with a penny hidden in it. During my session with the Morash clan, Mason found the penny and was thrilled… I was thrilled because I LOVE, with deep and simple honesty, when a child is delighted by the simplest things. Reminding me that joy can be found easily if we let it be. (Curren was SO pleased with himself last year in pre-school because his good behavior was rewarded with the opportunity for him to pass out napkins to his classmates at snack.)

Finding a penny on the street is definitely cause for celebration, so imagine my surprise and almost immediate disappointment when I zoomed in on the penny photo only to find what appears to be a nickel, (or is it a dime?), sitting right next to it in the mat! We had done the boogie for the penny…it was genuine happiness. We were content.

Do things change now that we know there was something more valuable to be found right under our noses? Before the Nickel discovery, this blog entry was going to be about finding the penny and how Dave and Corrine had found each other in college and how they value their family and are head over heals delighted by their son, Mason… (and all of this is true!)

But as I was finishing up these photos, I kept thinking about how lame it was that I could no longer enjoy Mason’s find with a purity of heart. Is this what I do with my family? With the stuff I have? With the things I do? If I feel even a little disappointment when eyeing something that may have been, “better”, how much does that add up to a lifetime of missed opportunities to celebrate exactly what I HAVE found….exactly what I can put in my pocket and walk around with?

This morning, my eyes are open…and am making a gentle vow to myself, to hold tight to my pennies found.

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This is Mason: Look at this face!!!!

you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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this is right after they kissed and I just can’t even stand how sweet this little gesture her man made makes me feel!

you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

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you picture me photography {holiday portraits}

Editing Lovelies…

Just some little lovelies of this little lovely to brighten your Monday Morning…

*please check out the new Holiday Card Section up above next to the -About Me- section*

you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

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you picture me photography {mini-session photographer}

My journey is never in a straight line. I am just that way. Sometimes I try to put one foot in front of the other, but I always end up silly dancing this way and that… Thankfully, when I see little ones like this, all my flittering about seems like it’s purposeful and right. (Then I catch a glimpse in the mirror and remember that the world I normally float around in prefers a straight line. Thankfully, again, my clients don’t.)

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On Pandora: My Morning Jacket

Cuteness Explosion – seriously.

you picture me photography {family portraits}

Curren and Naya are currently OBSESSED with the vintage cartoon, Super Friends, starring, among others, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a strange Scooby-like dog.  Oh…and AquaMan–my favorite.  So Batman and Robin are also on this glorious time sucker of a show and Robin’s one liners are Killing me. (In a good way.)  ”Holy Cue-Ball, Batman!” “Holy-nuclear power plant, Batman.”

If Robin were here during this photo shoot, he would have been right in my ear saying, “Holy-Cuteness, Wonder Woman!”

you picture me photography {family portraits}

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you picture me photography {family portraits}

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you picture me photography {family portraits}

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you picture me photography {family portraits}

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you picture me photography {family portraits}

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you picture me photography {family portraits}

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Sick of Pandora this week…listening to Ya Ya Sisterhood Soundtrack – The world is exploding into love…

Getting there…

 

you picture me photography {child photographer}

 

 

To this day, when I put on sunglasses, I swear I don’t hear as well.  My senses are dulled.  The glasses inevitably end up in my purse with receipts, Naya’s sandals, chapstick, a bracelet made of plastic jewels and some sticky, sand covered cough drops.  Just as with everything else in my life, my intention is to do the right thing, to protect my health, my body, to follow directions, to be a good example, but often, things don’t work out the way I’ve envisioned.

Things are good right now.  I got an overwhelming response following my last post and am so grateful to know I’ve got such a steadfast and genuinely understand support system.

I’ve realized I’m just at one of those points.  You know the times in life I’m talking about.  In college, when I was studying to become a teacher, one of the most poignant and lasting teachings I came away with was the concept of disequilibrium.  We were taught that in order to jolt our students’ brains into action and awareness, we needed to first throw them into a state of disequilibrium, a place where they were uncomfortable, an unfamiliar experience or movement, a radical idea.  This discomfort would alert their body and brain that new information was coming.  That it was necessary that their senses come alive in order to process and be their most alert.

I am in a state of disequilibrium, and while I haven’t come to this point all at once, I’m here, none-the-less.  Hallelujah…I am growing.  I will grow.

Not noticing that my clothes are wet

 

You Picture Me Photography {Brown Life}

 

 

I haven’t told many people, but the last few months have been rough, strange, not-normal-body months for me.  I know that humans are supposed to sleep.  I also know that some of us moms, (all of us?), push aside the fact that we are human for most of our Mama lives.  So after not sleeping correctly for 4 years, waking at the slightest sound, not going to bed until it was almost time to be awakened by one of the babies, waking in the middle of the night and staying awake the second my brain registered that it could think and make plans and worry and … well… I started having problems breathing.  Not wheezing or sudden loss of air, just a steady elephant on my chest…at many points throughout the day, and markedly at night, sometimes waking me in the middle of the night.  Then came the headaches and extreme nasea…cramps…was I going to have another baby?

Finally I took myself to the doctor.  I hadn’t been since I’d given birth to Naya. 2 years ago.  Correction, I hadn’t been to MY doctor…I’d been to THE doctor with the kids every other week for something…maybe that’s why I felt protected, taken care of.

…sometimes I actually have the thought, “have I eaten today?”, and the answer in my head is generally a hazy mish-mosh of me trying to separate myself from the kids…did they eat or did I?!

Anyway…the doc took tests, read numbers and listened to my chest and all of the reasons why I couldn’t come in earlier.  She told me to go see a psychologist.  The diagnosis?  I had anxiety. Stress. Lack of Sleep.  That was it.  What a thing to “find out”! So there was no quick fix.  No medication. Just a huge commitment and lifestyle change ahead of me.  I honestly sat there and thought to myself, “I don’t really have time for this.”   and then…well, maybe I could just take a year off from the family and sit on an island in the sand and sleep and eat mangoes…whole…not cut up…no fruit would need to be cut up.

When Rob came home from work that day I gave him the grave news that his wife was stressed.

Ha!  He was sympathetic, but not surprised and just as mystified as me as to how we were going to truly solve the problem.

Since that day, I’ve been tested for a few other things, everything coming out roses…I am, indeed, a stress-case.  I am, miraculously feeling much better, though, just having the diagnosis and know that nothing else more serious is going on.  I have made some committments to myself that I have to be consicous about following.  Some days I listen to myself…most days I don’t yet.

I know many of you moms out there have similar experiences…I write this today to highlight Liz’s story which she talks about over at Breezy Mama today.  Thankfully, my symptoms were a result of my fancy brain and not something more serious…

Here’s an excerpt:

Taken separately, my symptoms were unremarkable. I wasn’t planning to call the doctor about them. I am 40 years old. I have some irritating aches and pains, but it never occurred to me that I could have something extreme like ovarian cancer. Make a doctor appointment? No thanks. Just had a pap smear a month ago. Really, I had other things to do.

Please Read the whole article here.

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moved…

whenever i’m feeling overwhelmed or under inspired, something always comes my way…

opera meets photography at W

First Comes Love, Then Comes …

 

you picture me photography {engagement photography}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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you picture me photography {wedding photographer}

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On Pandora: Donavon Frankenreiter

The Gigglers… hee hee

till he cried:

you picture me photography {family portraits}

cool and private silliness:

you picture me photography {family portraits}

free, unencumbered and lovely:

you picture me photography {family portraits}

you picture me photography {family portraits}

not so giggly…but kick-ass…:

you picture me photography {family portraits}

and little one was also not in such a Ha Ha mood…but she totally hung in there…who wouldn’t with such a love for an Aunt?!:

you picture me photography {family portraits}

Happy HaHaHalidays!!

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On Pandora: Ska/Rock Steady (an all-time fav)