“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week in 2013”

I’ve been absent this week. Absent from this space, absent from the kitchen. I’ve been tired. Worn out. It’s starting to heat up here again, and I’m remembering how irritable it makes me. And how it cuts out my daily walks with my child. Which in turn makes her irritable. I kept wondering this week why I was so tired, why I had no energy. As I sit here typing this at midnight I realize why. What the hell am I doing up right now? Why am I not sleeping? I’m turning back into the night person I’ve always been, but now I have a baby. A baby who is 100% a morning person.

Sometimes I look at her and wonder aloud, where did you come from? Like I don’t know or something. She is so like me, and so like her father, and so NOT. At a baseball game in a crowd of people tonight, she came alive. Smiling at strangers, getting excited by the noise and the crowd. Her father and I would sooner crawl under a rock then be in a huge crowd, but not her. My morning loving, crowd pleasing girl. Seeing her develop her own personality is something that never ceases to blow me away. She began clapping this week, and even gave out her first kisses.

I’ve noticed I’m taking less photos of her these days, so this week I tried to take more. Most end up being iPhone snaps, but I pulled out the camera more. Don’t misunderstand, I’m constantly photographing this child. But I’ve slowed the pace a bit. This weeks photo came post nap, she’s been sleeping in just a diaper most days. Although at night, once she’s completely out I sneak some pjs on as she cools off. She was so proud of herself for getting a hold of my phone, that I let her have it for a minute while I snapped away. And then promptly removed it before she could completely destroy it with slobber.

This week I love this portrait, finding it very familiar. Something about this photograph reminded me of my days spent in northern Wisconsin as a child. And something about the light in this image reminded me of the old photographs found rummaging through my parents old photo albums.