She likes the mud. A lot.
This is my first blog post for the 99 days of blogging with Melissa Firman.
It’s a simply post but I think the photos say it all. Go play in a mud puddle today. I did. My shoes are ruined, but my heart is light.
child photographer Elmira NY
Toddlers, books and motherhood
My house was a mess and my photos were remaining unedited, which was driving me crazy. Little Miss wanted to sit in my lap and have me read to her, the first time ever. I sat in the middle of that mess and read to her after feeling frustrated and annoyed only 15 minutes before,
For most of the night she was clinging to me and whining and crying and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I knew I wanted to fold the laundry and clean the upstairs sink and she wasn’t letting me. My oldest had forgot a book at school that he needed for an important project and a long weekend was ahead of us, cutting down the time to get his project done. I was getting mad and frustrated and flat out ticked. I felt overwhelmed and inadequate as a mom and a housekeeper and I threw toys out of my way as I tried to clean up the potato chips Little Miss had stomped into the floor.
It seems like each time I try to accomplish a project a toddler cries or falls off something, a child needs a drink, or an animal throws up. Hours later my husband comes home from work and finds none of the projects I claimed I could complete done.
More and more I am realizing I need to stop expecting myself to be super mom. I am never going to be the mom I expect myself to be. I’m most likely never going to be like Donna Reed, cooking a perfect meal, helping the children with their homework, kidding my husband and cleaning the kitchen floor at the same time. I’m never going to be that mom who sweetly smiles at her child even when he forgets an important book after he was specially told the book was needed and then says “oh well! Let’s go make some lemonade out of these lemons!” I’m most likely always going to be the mom who swallows her annoyance and says tightly “we will figure this out …. Somehow.”
But maybe I will be the mom who sits in the middle of the upstairs hallway, in the middle of her mess, and lets the toddler crawl on her lap and lift her first library book up to be read again and again because that matters more than clean upstairs sinks.
Through the tunnel | Elmira N.Y. Photographer
His boyness is still there | Sayre, PA Photography
He’s changing so fast and I’m not ready for it. He’s not dressing up like superheroes as much as he used to. He’s not asking if he can wear a ninja costume to the store.
He’s not jumping off the couch quite as much. He’s too into TV and the digital world. I’m already hearing a heavy teenage-like sigh when I tell him it’s time for a computer break.
He doesn’t play as hard or do the wild things he used to quite as often.
But it’s there. . . Somewhere under his sly grin and smirk, his crazy boyness, if that were a word. At a moments notice he’s jumping on a board and striking a pose as Iron Man or Spider-Man. Suddenly he’s tugging off the polo shirt he wears to school and making it into a cape.
There is my little boy.
I haven’t lost him yet.
sometimes real life is messy
Sometimes houses are messy and not picture perfect, white washed walls. And sometimes toddlers climb up the step stool to get the chips. That’s reality.
10 on 10 January | Pennsylvania Photographer
It was like she had found the most exciting location in the world the way my daughter stomped her tiny 15 month old, boot-clad feet in the mud puddle in the park of a city we’d visited for the day.
We hadn’t brought extra socks so her dad and I wavered between telling her and her brother to stop playing with the icy water and not wanting to squealch their childhood fun.
Water splashed out onto the brick road and up her legs and she threw her head back and giggled.
And when she giggled her brother laughed. But with the laughter I remember tension and sadness because I didn’t let my nine year old splash as much as he would have liked. He was wearing his school shoes and we didn’t want him to get them wet and dirty.
I’m not good at being a strict parent. I’d rather be the parent who has fun and lets my children have fun, unless they are risking their safety.
I remember my son’s sad, disappointed expression on his face, the way he looked at his sister, as if to say “she can stomp in the puddle, why can’t I?” Looking back I wish I had let him stomp in that puddle. The fun of splashing with his sister was much more important than his shoes, which, if we had had to, we could have found the money to replace.
I look at these moments that leave me with a twinge of sadness as learning moments. The next time we’re near a puddle I’ll let him jump in, as I always have before and did one day after school, ignoring the other parents watching as my son jumped up and down and sat in the muddy water of a deep puddle.
Life is too short to worry about mud covered shoes and too precious to give away moments of pure joy and laughter. (Even though his shoes are these really cool light-up Batman shoes and I’d hate to have had them ruined with the muddy water, so, yeah, maybe it was OK to say no this time. Ha!)
This post is part of a blog circle with a group of other photographers. We post 10 photos on the 10th day of the month. To continue the circle visit Katie Brenkert!
A little snow must fall. . .eventually | Athens, PA Photographer
You would have thought we had never seen snow before the way Jonathan and I quickly dressed ourselves and the baby and headed outside into the cold.
“Quick! Before it melts!” I called as I buttoned Grace’s new Christmas-styled coat.
With a winter that was featuring temperatures way above normal I knew the day could warm up fast and turn our yard into mud instead of a winter wonderland.
I also knew the forecasts were calling for record breaking warm temperatures for Christmas and we wouldn’t be having a white Christmas, so we’d better enjoy the snowy scene while we could.
I placed Grace in the slushy white snow in the side yard and watched her look down at it with a confused look on her face. She’d been too young last year to really notice the snow but this year I watched her poke her finger in it on the grass, my shoe, her brother’s shoe. She seemed to be genuinely puzzled by the cold substance on the ground.
I’m sure it will be another year before she really enjoys the snow the way her brother does, building snow forts and snow men (though we’ve never actually been able to make a real snow man).
As for when we will get any measurable snow again in Pennsylvania – your guess is as good as mine.
Why documentary photography? | Athens, Pennsylvania photographer
Sometimes I want to give up on photography that speaks to my heart so I can make a quick buck with some quick poses but then I remember why I love lifestyle, or what I also call storytelling, photography.
It’s real.
It’s emotive.
It tells stories.
It’s memories frozen in time, not poses.
One of my favorite, newly found photographers is Lisa Tichane and she spoke at Click Away, a photographers’ conference, this Fall about why she incorporates movement in her family photography.
“If I look at this image, (posed portrait photo) what does it tell me other than look how sweetly they were posing for the photographer? . . . this isn’t real. They are playing a role. As a photographer what story am I telling here except the photographer was there? . . As a family photographer this is not what I want to provide my clients. I want to create memories for them. Memories that wll remind them who they really are in 2015, not the fact that I was there.”
She’s right. I have frames full of photos a family member used to give us every year for Christmas. It was the only gift she ever gave and it was her children looking uncomfortable and unnatural in posed portraits. I don’t want this to sound like a complaint, because the images were a kind gesture and we appreciated them each year. However, even though the lighting was lovely the only thing those photos tell me about her children is they know how to follow directions and be forced to smile.
I couldn’t tell from those photos that the youngest was full of crazy fun or the second oldest loved all things sparkly and shiny or that the oldest was a sports fanatic.
Eventually these portraits made me uncomfortable, partially because the family members no longer spoke to us and partially because the expression of the one girl was so full of discomfort I felt bad she’d been forced to pose.
I put those images in a closet and filled my walls with images of my children being children. There is one of my son standing in my parents driveway, wearing my dad’s fishing hat and another of him standing in a pool of light in a local creek.
There are others of him smiling at the camera,but none of them were forced and I didn’t ask for the smile.
The photos on my wall tell a story for me of a boy who likes to explore the fields at his grandparents’ house. They tell a story of a family who isn’t always perfect, but is loved, is trying, is striving to be better.
I have images of smiling faces, but almost none of them were obtained by asking for them, they came naturally, they were gifts, given to me in naturally happy moments.
Most importantly, the images I treasure most tell a story and that story is what I want to remember as the years pass.
““What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
— Karl Lagerfeld”
A Day to be Boys | Child Photographer Chemung NY
It was one of those warm Fall days that reminds you of summer, but not so much you wish it was cooler. It was a day to be boys.
They were boys being boys on a playground and on a path in a small city.
The fountain dyed blue, they pretended it was a monster and threw rocks at it.
Running in the tunnel under the road, into the dark and then into the light again.
Laughing as they ran up metal ladders and slid down slides and then climbed them the wrong way.
Dirty knees, blistered palms, Star Wars themed battles and superhero rescues.
Boondock Ramblings 