Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm a gal that likes tradition.  I like seeing similarities and differences.  Sometimes it means that something is working (like the diet that needs to happen in our house) or it means that life has continued on while you were busy cleaning floors and doing dishes and trying to be as much in the moment as you can at that moment.  Last year for Valentine's Day, I tried to take photos of my kids (plural for the first time in my life).  While my photography skills have grown since and I look back at these photos with a critical eye wishing that I would have changed some settings on my camera, they are still absolutely perfect to me.  As they served their purpose... They stopped time for a moment, so that I can forever look back and realize just how wonderful that time was.  Because while living that moment, I was struggling.

Fish was only two weeks old -- he hadn't learned how to hold a binky yet and as evidenced by those photos, he wasn't a happy camper unless I was holding him (probably due to the fact that he was only two weeks old).  And Finn wasn't exactly being a princess either -- she was refusing to do what I wanted of her, having in the end to be bribed with a sucker (ain't it always the way).  And I was also in a race against time -- I picked Finn up from daycare a little early, but the sun was going down and I had approximately 20 minutes to get my photos done.  It was too difficult to set everything up and I was determined to not have to do it again.

My new all-time favorite photo

But this is the amazing thing about photos.  Photos tell you how amazing your life is when you sometimes don't realize it.  I would give anything to go back to that day and relive the last year, the good times and the pitfalls as well.  In a way, photos show you what is important -- the people.  In this case, the little people.  It doesn't matter what is made for dinner or how much of a disaster your house is as long as you got "your people".  And photos also tell you that no matter how much you soak in the moment, try to breath in their smells, remember their tiny hands in yours -- they are going to grow and you are going to forget.

So this year, I had been wanting to take annual Valentine's photos.  When I saw that it was going to be snowing on his birthday, which happened to fall on a weekend, I knew what I wanted to do.  I was inspired by my 33-week pregnancy update with Fish.  And while the flakes weren't as large as they were in my update photos, they turned out pretty wonderful!  E brought the couch outside into our yard and we spent about 10 minutes taking them.  Also speaking of tradition, this couch has definitely made it's rounds.  It was used in the Valentine's photos mentioned above, as well as Finorah's first week photos as well as being our go-to couch for our Christmas card when I was pregnant with Finn.  It is soaked in our traditions -- not back for a vintage $90 couch off eBay.