If you are like me, you have thousands upon thousands of photos on your computer documenting every millisecond of your little one’s lives, from the moment they were born right up to this moment. Juliet probably thinks my face is that big black box that is always in front of her making silly noises. I really love taking pictures of my little ones to share with them one day. But of all the thousands of photos I have, I only have a very small handful, less then a hundred… maybe even fifty where I am actually in the photo with them.

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It’s hard as I’m always the one snapping away. When I’m home most days I look like a wreck. Shower? Who has time for that? Makeup? I haven’t worn that in years. The last thing I want is to have the camera pointing at me. Still as I think back at my own photos of growing up, my favorite ones were the ones where my parents were in the photos. As a child why would I want to see a picture of myself?  What I really want to see is mommy and daddy….with me!  I want to see their funny clothes and wacky hair. I want to see them standing behind me as I blow out my candles on my birthday cake.  I want to see them when I am holding up my first trophy for intramural soccer, even if everyone got one.  I want to see them at my graduations, vacations, and just everyday life.  I want to see them to know they were apart of my childhood, how they looked, how their love and pride for me shines in the photos. When I look at my family photos I see a life with my parents.  Those pictures mean even more to me now that my dad is gone.  I’ll never have any more photos with him so the ones I do have mean that much more.

I used to think in order to get in the photos when Mr. Chocolate wasn’t home I would need a tripod and a fancy remote, but this past week I set up my camera in Juliet’s room and decided to try a few photos of us together. I couldn’t find my tripod so I just used a chair and some books. I took some quick test shots to check that we were in frame and the exposure was ok. The first day I shot it was too gloomy out so there was a lot of noise on the images, but I ended up falling in love with those photos when I saw myself, zits and all thanks to my returning period, with my baby girl. I tried a few more days at different times and even wrangled Drake in a few. I bought this remote a while ago, and it’s not pricey at all but it does the trick fine.

 

When I look back at these photos I know they aren’t my strongest or technically right even, but I love them all the same because it shows I was there in that moment with them.  I hope when they get older they will want to do this every so often with me so in years to come we can all look back at this time in our lives and remember it as I do now.