Muscle Memory

while at the beach with my family a couple of weeks ago, i was able to get away for a bit to go shooting. i love shooting at the shore as the sun goes down. it has been a long time since i just went out on my own with my camera. i didn't really come away with anything i particularly like... but it was good practice.


i think i have a lot a lot a lot of pictures of people standing back, waiting, and looking off into the distance.


that umbrella should have been framed further to the left or right. i think i have another shot with the umbrella in a different position but just liked the lights in this one.

Flower Light

My son turned a year old this past Friday - August 14. I'm about to say all the usual things - I can't believe this year has gone so quickly but yet it is also difficult to conceive of the time before he was here.

Maybe that's what people meant when they would say after finding out I was pregnant - "your life is about to change completely, it will never be the same." I kept thinking people meant that the actual events and activities of my life would change so as to be almost unrecognizable. And that who I was and what I did and cared about would change completely. And for months and months following Phineas' birth, I would wonder, from time to time, what people meant by that phrase. Because - my life didn't change all that much. I mean - yes, I was waking up at 2 and 4 and 6 to feed my son. And I had to learn how to change diapers and carry extra clothes and wipes and think about all the sharp edges in our apartment. But, that couldn't be what people meant when they mentioned a life-altering event.

I think now that I was being pedantic in my interpretations. My life has changed completely not because I have changed, or the activities in my day-to-day are different. It has changed because what is "normal" now is different from what was "normal" then. It has changed because I can't imagine him not being in my life.

Uhm - ok. That was just really a lot of mommy contemplation all at once. I will say that I have consciously tried to fit Phineas into our life, rather than changing our life around Phineas. Does that sound horrible? I just mean that I never wanted to be the kind of parent who made the child's world the center of the world in general - the center of attention and conversation and life's activities. Does that sound horrible too? I just mean that - all things being "normal," you know, barring illness or extreme needs on the child's part - that there should be a clear delineation between what is the child's life and what is an adult's.

But that's not to say that I don't ever join him in his current world - I do, often, and it's delightful. Take the Flower Light - for instance. He loves lights right now. Points to them all, telling us what's overhead. But this one, in our bedroom, is his favorite. It never fails to bring a smile to his face.

I could make the point that children's insight and observation is critical to creativity - seeing things in a new way... And that's true. I just feel like I've never lost that. The harder task now is to be as strong an adult as I can be for him.

The Flower Light






Phineas also really enjoys the refrigerator light...