Hello, Summer!

Summer is here! And I feel so excited and ready for it this year. I love love love Austin, Texas. But, I am historically not as fond of the weather here. Year after year, in the heat of August, I question the sanity of enduring blazing day after blazing day, no matter how great everything else is. But something feels really different this year. I can't really put my finger on it. I think this might finally be the year that I accept and embrace the sweaty, sticky funk that will inevitably cover me from morning to night. (Staying clean all the time is exhausting and life is too damn short.) I think I also feel a bit of relief that we don't have to try and squeeze all of the fun in before school starts back up in August. There is an enormous sense of freedom in knowing that we can let summer keep going as long as we want to. So, here's to tomatoes from the garden, fresh juicy watermelon, baseball games, sunscreen, lightning bugs, popsicles, fireworks, staying in the pool all day...and deciding for ourselves when it will come to an end.

Happy Summer!

The most beautiful girl in the world

Is there anything sweeter than a baby girl taking care of her baby doll? I think it's funny that she likes to use the bottle even though she never actually used one herself.

These photos were taken a year ago. I just really like them, so I felt like sharing them here. I think my daughter is so beautiful. I know that I'm not unique in that at all. All kids are beautiful and all mamas think their babies are the most beautiful. That's the way it should be. It's part of what gives me such joy when I'm photographing my kids. Trying to capture that beauty and share it with the world through my eyes.

Sometimes when I look at her that Prince song plays in my head (see title of this post). I tried to put a link to it here, but apparently he has blocked his music from youtube. I love Prince, but he's kind of a douche.

I made these

Winter People

"Well, you know we're all Winter people", my husband said to me recently. I had been on some rant or another about how everyone in this family is so emotional and volatile and dramatic and depressive and sensitive, etc. etc. (It was one of those days.) "What the hell does that mean?" I asked. He told me that people with winter birthdays are something like twice as likely to commit suicide as "summer people". There are all kinds of other sad statistics, too. But, I found this information so oddly comforting. It all made sense. Science and figures and statistics...I can accept that stuff so much easier than the emotions streaming out of of every pore of every member of my little nuclear family. October, November, December, January. That's us. Winter people, indeed. Believe it or not, this is all the prelude to a happy ending. Like I said, I take comfort in that somehow. We get each other; there's that. You lucky summer sons of bitches (whom there are many of that I do love dearly) will just never quite relate to us of the cold weather births. And I'm glad that we all have that to share with each other, even if we all feel like stabbing each other sometimes. So, I decided this year to start celebrating our half birthdays, too. Making a big deal out of it for the kids. The purpose is mostly just for fun and to have a birthday NOT directly connected with some major holiday (we all have that going for us, too.) But also, I thought a little summer-y celebration might help balance out some of that winter inside of us. I'm hoping this space might help me to stop and look around a little bit more. Appreciate the beauty, embrace the moment, that stuff. I can be very good at it, and I can forget really easily. I'm sure I'll use this space to bitch and complain, too. And I'll try to share lots of photos. Because, I have them, I absolutely love taking them, and what the hell else am I gonna do with them?