I don’t know when it happened.
When you lost your baby cheeks.
When you stopped reaching for my hand. Stopped needing a tuck-in. A snuggle
Maybe I wasn’t looking. I was cleaning or working or laughing at your sweet-silliness. Maybe.
I didn’t want you to change, to grow up, to leave your babyhood behind.
Because I like you like that.
Soft. Sweet. Snuggly.
But you didn’t listen. You grew. You changed.
And that’s okay. I like this “you” too. I do.
You’re so fun to talk to. To listen to. To know.
You are so bright and thoughtful.
Wonderful.
You are so YOU.
I miss those days. Oh . . . I do . . .
But I am grateful that you grow and change and become.
It’s as it should be.
You, my sweet children, all of you.
You will always be.
My babies that grew.
Lydia Grace, 3
Anna Mayer is a children, family, newborn and baby photographer with locations in both Los Gatos, California (The San Francisco Bay Area) and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (also serving Chicago, Oshkosh, and the Saint Paul, Minnesota areas). She splits her time between her family in Milwaukee and her studio in the Bay Area, sometimes successfully, and often chaotically. Her love for capturing the spirit of childhood shows in every image of sweet newborns, happy, chubby babies, dancing toddlers, cheesing school aged kids and sulking teens. At any given moment you might find her dancing in the the living room with her four children, sewing some kind of crafty project for her daughters, reading a book in the comfort and relative privacy of the bathroom, hosting her beloved family in her new Milwaukee home, working along side her husband, Brian, to fix up that new home or flying between the Midwest and the West Coast, to capture her wonderful clients there. Visit her blog often to learn more tales of life as a mother of four, owner of a children’s photography business with her husband of twelve years, her quest to make a house a home her years as a teen mother or her life in two different worlds. Better yet, subscribe to this photography (and life) blog and you won’t miss a thing!
I love not only your photographs but also how you write. I can relate to so many things, and it’s always fun to read. I feel just the same about my babies and have at times grieved a little, now I have this wonderful new baby in my life and I get to do it all over again, I can’t describe how happy and fortunate I feel. Looking forward to hopefully many sessions with you throughout the years to record it all in the fun beautiful way you do.
So beautiful this brought a tear to my eye as it rings so true!