Last April I was going through pictures of the kids from the past year in anticipation for their birthdays. Considering the amount of photos I take on a daily basis, I was not lacking in quantity. 

But then I started noticing a disturbing trend. There were a lot of pictures of E and B. There were a lot of pictures of them with daddy. There were a lot of pictures of our dog. There were a lot of pictures of the entire family, minus one person.

Me. 

Some of that is for an obvious reason--I'm taking the majority of the pictures. And although I'm a "selfie" pro (you know, when I can control the exact angle, filters, etc.), most of the time when I'm taking pictures of the kids it is not practical to be in it with them. Plus, I'm mostly trying to either capture a moment between the kids or I want them to be the focal point of the picture. 

But, sometimes when there are pictures of me with the kids I become hyper-critical of myself and decide I don't like it for whatever reason. I look fat. I hadn't showered yet. I'm not wearing make-up and I look completely washed out. Whatever the ridiculous reason, I decide it's not good enough. And I delete them.

Taking a lot of pictures with my phone is both awesome and bad. Awesome because I take a lot of pictures. Bad because I can quickly flip through those pictures and delete with ease. And before I know it, the set of pictures that had me in them are all gone.

At first when I saw that I was lacking in pictures I thought maybe it was just a fluke. That they were somewhere else or it was just recently that this "epidemic" started. So I went back over our pictures from the past 4 years. And as absent as I was in the past year, there was another year that I was completely missing. 

I was only in a handful of pictures from my daughter's first year. My first baby, the child that made me a mom. I spent that first year (as do most first-time moms I believe) tired. Well, exhausted really. Oh, and when she was 12 weeks old I found out I was pregnant again. So to say that I wasn't exactly in the mood to be photographed would be an understatement.

Regardless, I was there. But there are very few pictures to show my daughter of her and me in her first year. One picture I do have is this one of four generations of women. My grandma, my mom, me and my daughter, taken approximately 12 hours after giving birth.

And to think that it took years for me to like this picture. I always appreciated it but hated how "swollen" and "splotchy" I looked. How ridiculous is that negative self-talk? This isn't about perfection, it's about the moment. And that moment is beautiful. 

I cannot go back and change what has already happened. I can't make pictures that aren't there suddenly appear. But I can make a better effort of being in the pictures with my kids. The last two years that E has been in school I made sure to get a "1st day of school" picture with her. 

September 2013

September 2014

I don't know why I'm so critical of myself but I don't want my daughter to hear that. I don't want my negative self-talk to become her inner voice (I wrote about that here). So I'm making an effort to be IN the picture. And to love them--flaws and all. Because you know what? My daughter loves looking at pictures and loves seeing her family. She's not seeing all the dumb little things I'm seeing, she's seeing her mommy and herself. And she LOVES those pictures.

I need to start seeing pictures through my daughter's eyes.

xo Sara

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