I take hundreds of photos every month, and most of them don’t get shared with anyone, let alone online. And yet the moments in time that those photos capture are just as important a part of our story as the other images that I do choose to share.
I originally created this blog as a way of documenting our lives, a way of watching the girls grow into who they’re going to be and a way of remembering who they once were. It’s something I want them to be able to look back on as they get older, because memories fade but (digital) photographs don’t. A legacy, of sorts.
It’s easy (and tempting) to only focus on sharing the fun bits, the memorable parts, the highlights and the celebrations. But I’m learning more and more as I continue through this crazy journey of motherhood and life that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together as well.
The pieces of the jigsaw that fill in the gaps to complete the picture.
The tantalising glimpses into who our girls are becoming.
The chaos, the calm and all the moments in between.
This feature – The Moments In Between – is a space for me to share all of those magical and messy parts of our family life that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.
NOVEMBER & DECEMBER
November felt incredibly long and December felt ridiculously hard and yet we made it through to the end of the year and had an enjoyable Christmas, which I think is something significant to acknowledge.
As I type this it’s the first day of a brand new week, month and year. A blank page, the very beginning of a fresh chapter in all of our lives. The opportunity to write a different story. 2024 starts on a Monday, which pleases me, and is also a leap year, which interests me.
And, as is usual for me during this in-betweeny, transitional, calendar-flip period of time, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on this past year and a lot of looking forwards to what I want to create and build on over the next twelve months. This has mostly been happening in my head, despite having printed out helpful and aesthetically beautiful workbooks, written down lists of journal prompts, and signed up to multiple webinars (which I don’t ever seem to be able to attend and somehow never get around to watching the replays of) to help me with the process. The intention is always there… yet creating the time to follow through with the action is harder to implement. Which might actually be something else for me to reflect on because I’d very much like to change that and actually get some stuff done.
Interestingly, I don’t actually even own a journal. All of my thoughts end up scribbled on roughly torn scraps of paper or neon coloured post-it notes that inevitably get scattered on my desk and buried under piles of other paperwork, only to be delightfully rediscovered (usually at the exact moment I need to be reminded of them, actually) when I’m searching for something else. It’s probably that precise, unexplainable, synchronicitous intervention that keeps me doing it in this way because I like believing in that tiny spark of magic that weaves it’s way through everything (if you let it).
Anyway, here’s my collection of images from the final two months of 2023 – full of birthdays and snow days and festive days – because these moments, these visual time-freezes, matter.
This was us in November and December…
