Dear super enjoyers of kids,
I have something to admit. I am totally, unquestionably, 1,000% that mom. I take and share a ridiculous number of pictures of my kids. And I know that it might seem like I’m trying to capture picture-perfect moments, or present myself to the world in some special kind of way on social media. But the truth is quite the opposite.
You see, my life is insanely busy, as I’m sure you can relate. And when I stop to take a photo of my children, so stops the incessant to-do list running through my head. I stop for a second and soak in a moment. Yes, a moment through the lens of my camera. A moment I can thankfully look back at later to remember, because these days spent parenting young children are so often such a blur of snack-fetching, boo-boo-healing, time-out-giving, sibling-refereeing and no-more-water-get-in-your-bed-and-stay-there-ing that I can barely remember my own name at the end of the day.
I’m pretty sure if I didn’t use up all 47 seconds of my children’s attention spans for photos, I would rest my head on whatever pillows they didn’t steal from my bed each night wondering if I’m doing anything right. But instead, I lie down and open up a camera reel that reminds me that today, there were smiles. There was blonde hair glistening in the sunlight and there were blue eyes looking up at me with wonder (or contempt or confusion or all of the above). It reminds me there was gum stuck in hair and there were Cheerios stuck to foreheads, or pools splashed in and swings swung in.
And it all makes me smile.