I don't know where the time has gone.  Any mother will tell you the same about her own growing child.  But I look at his face...and I see so much of his daddy...and less and less of the baby that he used to be.  I watch videos and listen to that tiny voice he had...so quiet...and it's almost as if that was an entire lifetime ago.  He's only 6 and those memories are already soft in the back of my mind.  I wonder, if not for photos and videos, whether his baby time would be all but lost to me.  So each year I try to document who he is.  What our lives feel like...and look like. When I take his yearly pictures, I try to capture his emotions...his expressions and silliness...his connection to the things around him.  My dear son...although you are 6 years old and changing by the minute, some things remain the same.  You are still sensitive and loving.  Cautious and each year more adventurous.  I see you take small risks...going just slightly further each time, pushing the line from what you think you can't do to giving it a nudge. You are still silly and goofy...sometimes to make others laugh and other times as a masque to hide that you are embarrassed or upset.  You think I don't know, but I do.  I'm your mom and for now, I get to be the only expert on you outside of yourself.  I hope I am doing this right.  I pray that I'm building you up.  Firm but not too harsh (but, my dear, you are first born, and sometimes that means I expect far too much).  I hope you feel my love, my pride in you.  Even when I'm mad, even when you make a mistake (because let's be honest, I make far more), my love is forever, never ending, always there.  Nothing you do can ever change that.  

So I know there are too many pictures here, but I'm not apologizing.  Not for a second.  Because this is my way of freezing time to remember the way your dark chocolate eyes sparkle, how you throw your head back when you laugh, or how you stand, holding your hands behind your back.  I want to document it all before you are on the verge of 18 and 6 is soft to me.  I can look back at these and bring into focus the beautiful 6 year old you are today.  As always...thanks for choosing me, my little love.

Chagrin Falls Child Photographer

This is what we did when I was a kid.  Rode for hours in the car, crossed the border into Canada and fished on a lake where they practically jumped on the hook for you.  It had been years since we had done this....my sister and I just little girls.  When my dad booked this trip, I knew what he wanted.  He wanted the memories of doing it with his grandsons, his grown girls...he wanted to continue a tradition from his own childhood.  This trip was for him.  Or at least that is what I thought.  In reality this trip was for me...for all of us.  Mostly disconnected from it all aside for the spotty wifi if you were close to the main cabin.  I love the disconnect.  I read 2 books.  Something I haven't done in years.  I fished.  We boated.  We made meals, relaxed together, and enjoyed the time together...my parents, my sister, my husband and our boys.  It was the week we all needed.