I really wish that I had photos like this of myself when my 12 year old was one year and still nursing.

It again speaks to me of why I’ve chosen to focus on family and newborn photography – it’s one of those fleeting but beautiful moments that is absolutely etched in my mind and heart – makes my heart simply ache to remember my own children as toddlers – to remember the rituals of bath time and reading, of stuffed animals and first nurseries. Of little hands who are busy playing with your shirt, your hair, your face while nursing. How busy little toddler’s world stops and becomes calm. Well, mostly calm! There is some squirming and protesting involved I will admit. Still, eventually there is peace, and simply connecting.

Also I am kind of obsessing about blue hair and really pondering it for myself. . . . Keep posted for that one.

Editing the images from this photoshoot made me keep thinking of the tagline that we brainstormed for June Day Photo – your everyday is beautiful.  I really, really believe this.  I am convinced that you don’t have to dress up and go somewhere special for the kind of photos that you will want hanging on your walls.  I think back to the one bedroom apartment in West Philly that we brought our first born into.  That one bedroom apartment, which we shared with mice and loud neighbors, was home.  I really don’t have many images of it.  But I think back to it with such fondness and nostalgia.  I remember that that feeling of holding my two day old and thinking, “Wow, I am a mom; Jim is a dad, they are letting us walk out of the hospital with this tiny precious bit of amazing.”  I walked around his whole first year of life feeling so lucky that I was getting to play house for a living.  I know that not all stay at home moms feel this way, and honestly, maybe it’s just rose tinted glasses.  Still, I feel passionately that that first year is something to literally capture – to preserve and look back in awe of how incredible it is to play a role in helping a newborn grow into a person.  And I really love doing that for people.