My Moments. My Girls.
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When I am at a loss for words (like now), I think of moments.
Like that moment when Toddler wrestled her little sister in the bold sunshine and I realized: These are my girls and they will always be sisters.
Like that moment when we took Toddler to the petting zoo right before her sister was born and she let the goats gobble from her tiny hands and I realized: One day she will be fearful, but not yet.
Like that moment when Toddler zipped through the playground on our corner and I realized: She is her own person.
Like that moment when we girls huddled happily on the hardwood floor amidst lovely chaos and I realized: I am a mother of two.
Like that moment my girls took a bath together and I realized: They are in it together. This bath. This life.
Like that moment I gave Baby her first Starbucks cup and I realized: One day, she will sip from this cup and not kick it around.
Like that moment when Toddler paced that big old porch clutching that tiny toy rod and I realized: She will fish one day. For trout. For happiness.
Like that moment when Husband led Toddler down to the dock and I realized: That was once Dad and me. At this very same pond. Some things change. Some things stay the same.
Like that moment I lifted my big girl over my shoulders to see the expanse of nature and I realized: This is my job. My biggest job. To lift her up. To let her see.
Like that moment on Independence Day when Toddler skipped through candy green grass clutching a big pink ball and I realized: One day I will not be able to catch her.
Like that moment when Baby first played with grass and tasted a few blades and I realized: There is so much for her to discover. And I must let her.
Like that moment when they wore matching pajamas and played together, really played together, and I realized: They will always play. They will always have each other.
Like that moment when Toddler pranced through the sand and studied her footprints and shadows and I realized: Life is full of prints and shadows, simple evidence of existence and presence.
Like that early morning moment in South Carolina when the girls and Daddy gazed out the window at a new day and I realized: The world is full of wide windows and new beginnings.
Like that moment when my big girl studied the rainbow of flowers and I realized: Life is full of color and it’s our job to see it.
Like that moment when Baby ran away and onto that bridge and I realized: Life is full of bridges between There and Here, Then and Now.
Like that moment on Christmas morning when my girls waited patiently to open their gifts and I realized: This is life. Waiting patiently to open the gifts that await us.
Like that moment when we hailed a yellow taxi after Toddler’s birthday celebration at Preschool and I realized: Time is passing. There won’t always be purple crowns.
Like that moment when I grabbed Baby and kissed her tiny ear and I realized, The love I feel for these creatures is impossible.
Like that moment when Daddy plopped two giggling girls into environmentally-friendly grocery bags and toted them through our kitchen and I realized: This is fun. This is silly. This is life. This is it.
These are my moments. These are my girls.
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Do you agree that happiness is about moments – enjoying them while they happen and sifting through them after the fact? In times of existential quiet, do you also think of moments? Do you think modern existence makes it hard to appreciate the moments of our days? Do you think this is why so many of us blog – to memorialize the moments that might otherwise evaporate?
What a lovely portrait of your children, Aidan. The actualization/realization tie-ins were especially poignant.
What a lovely collection of moments and memories. I have a private family blog for this reason and I can’t imagine not having it. It has become a record of milestones and misadventures, doctor visits and daily disasters. It is where I go when I can’t remember what IEP weighed at 9 months. It is where I go when I want to watch the videos of his first steps. It is a nearly unabridged account of our life as a family. And it’s completely priceless.
Gale, I am jealous. I MUST do this. I have scraps of paper on crowded shelves of my closet, videos stored in miscellaneous folders on my computer. Absolutely priceless!
Aidan! This is breathtakingly lovely! What happened to the shallow end? Bye bye…
Your observations are deeply profound and definitely resonating for me. I think they will resonate for all parents.
Thank you for putting these hundreds of moments of our lives into touching words.
This is simply beautiful. My blog is definitely my place to write down all the mommyhood stuff – big and small – that I always want to remember. I’m not a scrapbooker and each child just has a small Word document with major milestones. So my blog is my virtual scrapbook of memories. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day stress of parenting, but especially after the birth of child #3, I’m consciously trying to live more in the moment.
Aidan, your girls are heart-wrenchingly precious! Yes, we write, we blog, we photograph- to save these moments, these words, these poignant memories- in color.
I don’t want to miss a single moment with Des; don’t want to forget these growing-up years.
Lovely pictures. May I ask what kind of camera you use?
*tear* Simply gorgeous.
Beautiful photos and beautiful words. Ever since Kristen’s post on Motherese yesterday, I’ve been thinking of individual moments with my sons constantly. Yes, part of the reason I blog is to record my family’s journey. Thank you for the sweet send-off to the weekend.
Beautiful! These photos brought many smiles to my face. Thank you for sharing with us, Aidan.
Aidan, I couldn’t get through this without crying and I am at work which meant that I had to stop and come back!
I don’t think it is just modern existence that makes it hard to appreciate moments. I think it is just existence. Time does not stop. Blogging, just as pictures, is just one more way for us to attempt to capture these things. To place them in perennial containers.
Beautiful, beautiful pictures.
This was so beautiful Aidan!
Love the photos, and love how you noticed the moments.
Lovely post. Not being a blogger, I memorialize moments in different ways. Since becoming a mother nearly 9 years ago, I find I am hyperaware of moments and time. I find myself taking mental snapshots of moments with my family (the 4 of us snuggling, the 2 of them playing together) and referring back to them when I can’t be with them. My mental photo albums helped keep me going over the past 4-6 months of nonstop 7 day work weeks and 12-14 hour days. And while it was heart-wrenching to not be able to fill up new “pages,” I am finding in this new downtime, I am overloading the images, and if possible appreciating them even more.
So glad you are taking time to enjoy the little moments we most often ignore. Beautiful photos and memories of your beautiful children. You area a lucky woman.
This is my favorite post of yours. So touching! You could seriously turn this into a children’s book – each page an illustration of the pictures with the same text. It would be a best-seller. I am not kidding! LOVE it.
Lovely collection of memories that will be treasured forever by you and yours. We realize the gravity of these moments only when we realize that they can be taken away at any time. The kisses on the ear, cuddling with our children, that hug we give to loved ones become so much more once we internalize that these moments are the true gifts of living. Thanks for the post.
What a beautiful collection of moments. I teared up, reminded of how fleeting they are.
Yes! When we look back at our lives, the little moments are what will stand out. I don’t want forget a minute of them.
Aidan, you always have something special here when I visit. Today, it’s beauty and tears. Thank you for these gifts you give us. You are generous.
Beautiful photos. Even more beautiful words. Thank you.
beautiful. i do think our society places too much emphasis on go,go,go and trying to push our children to do more adult stuff at a younger age. i love when i realize little moments like these. doesn’t it make your days so much brighter?
What a poetic photo essay! And such gorgeous shots. Love the flower dress and her by the flowers. And of course the tub shots, always the best!
The pictures were great. They added a lot to this post. Well done.
What a staggeringly beautiful post.
The Purple Crown made me cry, in a good way. I forget to remember there won’t always be purple crowns.
Thank you for this.
I think moments like these give us something to hang onto when the going gets rough. Small reminders of what awaits if we hang on. (Hugs)Indigo
Aidan, A lovely, poetic love note to your two girls. My favorites? The photos of the round, round head of baby here and there, but especially in the bathtub, and the beach photo of toddler discovering her footprints and perhaps trying to capture her own shadow. Seems like maybe you have a “chip off the block” there.
I also wasn’t sure when my kids would start playing together, especially because my son is 4 years older than my daughter. Much to my surprise it happened before my daughter was a year old. My son announced it as a permanent fact one day. He said she wasn’t a baby anymore, now she was a kid.
Sniff, sniff! That was so lovely, pure, simple and true. Time passes much too quickly. Wonderful post!
Yes Yes the MOMENTS. To me they are so much more important and so much more special than the big events. But they are hard to capture… you have to really be present to notice them. And you did a great job. You’ve inspired me to write a similar posts to take note of some of my moments… thank you.
I loved reading your moments.
It’s certainly a large part of the reason why I love blogging: to immortalize my moments, and to enjoy those moments others choose to share with me.
Thank you, Aidan, for sharing all these moments and the photos. I went to a juried photo exhibit last night and yours moved me more today than most of those did.
Loved the photos, particularly the one of your daughter with the fishing rod. Tremendous!
*bawling*
your family is exquisite… as are you.
If you ever want a break from writing novels, I say write greeting cards or poems. You said in one sentence what many of us couldn’t say in pages. I too love the purple crown but something about lifting toddler up to “let her see” grabbed me. I have found myself, as the boys turn 6 and 8 stopping myself more to sit and watch and soak in the moments. I don’t think I did it as much with a toddler and a baby glad you are.
Loved these photos. Loved your words.
Like Gale, I have a private family blog that Husband and I try to maintain as a digital scrapbook of our boys’ childhoods. But sometimes my infatuation with a certain other blog detracts from the time I dedicate to it. Thanks for this reminder to capture these fleeting moments while they’re still here.
This was an incredible post. Thank you so much for writing down these moments – it was the perfect reminder for me as a mother of two baby boys that time slips by at a rapid, rapid pace.
What a gorgeous poetic journey in pictures, at one fiercely personal and yet universal in so many truths.
Your girls are lucky to have each other, yes, and be sisters. But they are also lucky to have you.
Cheers to the little moments that really are quite big.
Great moments!
I was thinking of when my girls were about 2 and 5 – I chased them down the hall, they were squealing …
Terrific times! They are only 17 and 20 now
A beautiful picture story of your life. You are blessed.
My goodness! You are a scrapbooker at heart, did you know that? This is exquisite, quite a collection of memories. I wanted to say that I particularly enjoyed the photos of your girls together, this blossoming relationship must be so amazing for you to watch. I feel the same about my boys. My youngest is just one so their friendship is just starting, but the love that they have for each other brings me such happiness. Outside of our love for them, it’s the most real relationship they will never know.
I’ve recently started picking up my camera more often. For many months it remained perched on a shelf, and I was “too busy” to grab it and capture these moments. But I know too well the feeling of being the youngest child and noticing time and again that the ratio between pictures of myself and pictures of my sister (the oldest/first-born) was too far off. This sticks with me as I try my darnedest to continue to capture the moments even when life seems too full, often overflowing, and I am determined just to keep up with it all let alone create memories through a mural of the small moments.
Pictures really do speak a thousand words, or a million. Thanks for sharing.
I think its important to sit back and recognize moments…Life goes so fast, and most of the time I find myself focusing on “bigger” things. But its really not about that. It’s the little things in life that make it special and important. I’m glad you see that in your girls
How did I miss this post? Really beautiful. Since I am so very close to my own sister, this hit home.