Even though its been a really ugly season around here, beset with far too much rain and a ridiculously early frost that rotted pumpkins everywhere and ruined most of the foilage, its still bittersweet. Fall is my favorite season and winter by far my least.
And anyways, Zeke just now learned to properly play with leaves!
Always before he would just point to them and say "yucky" if you encouraged him to touch them. That or say "wow" if it was a particularly large pile of leaves. But last week we went to the Arboretum (its like a tree museum, lol) with some friends and I think watching all those older kids jump in the leaves showed Zeke that maybe it wasn't so "yucky" after all because as you can see from the above pictures, he was all over them this weekend. That is until he got some mud on his hand...then it was ALL OVER.My only good pics from the Arboretum:
I'm really torn on the whole picture thing lately, actually. On the one side I'm sad that I'm not getting the regular excellent quality pictures of Ezekiel that I once was. My kid is darn cute, and I want proof of that later on when he's say...12. On the other side, I don't want to take aforementioned regular excellent quality pictures anymore.I blame too much exposure this summer (at festivals and fairs and parks) to mothers shrilly yelling at their children to not make that face or to do such and such pose. I suddenly now have this very real fear of being so intent on capturing the moment that I miss out on the moment. Or even worse so intent on creating a moment that we ALL miss out on having one in the first place.
I dont want my kid's only memories of Arboretum visits to be of the struggle to get a good picture. I want them to remember the leaves and the cool weather and chasing eachother around trees and climbing rocks and throwing leaves into the stream, not momma telling them to smile and throw the leaves exactly "now".
And I suppose its all a matter of balance, like all of motherhood. I just need to balance moment-making with moment-capturing because both are important to me. Much in the same way that this blog post has taken me over an hour to write, each snippet gotten down somewhere in between the 20th and 400th reading of Courderoy's Trick or Treat (Zeke doesnt care that its November now). But if I err in this balancing act, as I suppose I do in some way large or small in every balancing act, I would rather have too many memories not captured on film than dozens and dozens of beautiful pictures of days I hardly remember.
4 comments:
I used to find myself thinking that I was too busy trying to snap a good picture that I failed to utilize the glory that IS digital. Snap a hundred, keep three. I play for awhile to get the kids excited, then I pick up the camera and just snap randomly and without poses. Sometimes the older ones look, sometimes the little one does....but eventually I get a good shot. And it could come in sheer moments or ten minutes later. And then the camera gets put back down and I go back to playing. :)
Don't put the camera away completely. We get older and our memories fade....and the pictures we DO capture will remind us of all the moments we finally "remember".
This is a really lovely post... It reminds me of my mother's picture philosophy. If we wanted to make silly faces or look pouty or stuff leaves down our shirts, she would just take the picture anyway, because that's how the moment was, and she wasn't going to pose it, she was going to capture it.
As a result, there are now lots of pictures of me and my siblings looking absolutely ridiculous (or cranky as all get out in our adolescent years) but we're the only ones who get embarrassed. My parents have pictures they can point at and say "Yup, that's exactly how it was." And everyone else has a good laugh. =)
"I dont want my kid's only memories of Arboretum visits to be of the struggle to get a good picture. I want them to remember the leaves and the cool weather and chasing each other around trees and climbing rocks and throwing leaves into the stream, not momma telling them to smile and throw the leaves exactly "now"."
sorry to have offended you so much with our picture taking at the arboretum...I'll have you know that my daughter's memories of her park visits are wonderful which is why she begs to go often.
I understand where you're coming from and struggle with finding this balance too.
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