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.

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 that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together as well. The bits 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 monthly feature – The Moments In Between – is a space for me to share all of those magical bits that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.

OCTOBER

We’ve spent a lot of time at home this month, despite the unusually bright weather.  The girls are exhausted from a long first half term at school and have pretty much refused to leave the house at all at weekends.  I’ve found that hard – it feels like such a ‘waste’ of sunshine and family time when we may not get that many more good-weather days before the next season arrives.  But I’ve been trying my best to honour the slowness and downtime that they need, despite desperately wanting to go out for long autumnal walks in the fresh air.   The clocks have gone back, the evenings are drawing in, there is frost on the ground in the mornings and the light is beginning to shift to having a different quality to the golden glow of early Autumn.

It feels like a huge contrast to this time last year, where we’d not long returned from our holiday-of-a-lifetime at Walt Disney World in Florida.  That feels like it was a whole lifetime ago and when I look back through photos or watch our vlog from our trip I can’t believe how much the girls have changed in just twelve months.

There seem to be a higher proportion of black and white images than usual in my monthly collection and I’m not sure if that’s to do with my mood or the slow advancement towards Winter.  Either way I’m ok with it – black and white photos seem to tell so much more of a story, to show so much more emotion than colour images and I’ve found myself leaning more towards them as the month has progressed.

All of these photos from the last month are special and as always, I love every single one of these images. So very much. Every single one has a meaning for me deeper than the surface level of what you see. Every single one brings back feelings and thoughts and moments I want to remember. Every single one speaks to me in so many ways. Every single one is a piece of our jigsaw.

Every single one tells part of our story.

This is us.