Last night I had a rare opportunity. I was home for the most part by myself. Girls were with Grandparents, Josh was out with some guys for work, so it was just me and Tacy. I had grand plans on what I was going to do with my night and I ended up spending it working on photos.Every year I say I want to get better at documenting our lives. It is an easy thing to SAY it’s much harder to do. Last year I was actually pretty good at getting photos. But in this digital day and age it’s way too easy for those photos to stay on my computer or phone. So last night I bit the bullet. I created and ordered a photo book with my favorite 200 photos of 2013. I also ordered all the photos I have taken in the month of January so I can try my hand a new scrapbook system. Lastly I sorted through all the printed photos I have and organized them chronologically. All in all it was a good night, though not at all easy. It wasn’t the time or money, though both of those were a bit frustrating. More than anything it was spending hours and hours looking at photos of myself. While it has been a wonderful year it has been a hard year and giving birth to a baby rarely does kind things to our bodies. So here I sit a month into the new year staring at pages and pages of photos of myself I would rather bury. It would be very easy to hit delete but I didn’t I hit print. In 12 years when my now six month old is struggling with her body image I want her to look back and see pictures of me… a little stocky, exhausted, wearing a bright pink shirt standing on Aztec ruins in Cozumel my belly growing with her in it. I want all my daughters to see that I lived a full life. I want them to see that I didn’t let my insecurities hold me back. And so I hit print. And I will continue to take silly faced selfies with my girls, and let my husband snap photos even when I am covered in baby spit up, and I will continue to hit print. And I encourage you to do the same. Take photos, hit print, put them in a book, stash them in a drawer, just do something with them. Your children think you are absolutely beautiful, leave being proof for them that they are right.
