Bonjour Claude...

I went out today just down the street to do a photo shoot with my dad. I've driven past this one spot so many times and wondered if it would make for a good place for a photo shoot and was so happy to find that it was. We spent just a quick half hour there where I helped my dad relax in front of the camera while I gained some more experience and practice in directing shoots. It was fun to try to make him laugh in order to catch a natural smile (he doesn't like smiling in front of the camera), and I hope that I can eventually have the skills to be able to do this with strangers.

My biggest weakness, in fact, is client interaction while directing the shoot, and I'm hoping to continue to work past that, to push myself more and to eventually become good in this area through merely continuing to just practice, practice, practice. I always want to naturally just be good at everything and I've used my lack of social ease as an excuse to not pursue photography as intensely as I could be. I've been realising lately, that with every job, whatever it may be, there are and always will be some areas that you just have to work at that little bit harder because it just doesn't come naturally. Of course, I feel like I'm already working so hard on the whole photography part itself, that I obviously find the social side even more overwhelming!

Anyway. It was really fun to spend some time with my dad today. He went along with my direction and it was fun to share this aspect of my life with him. It's been so great to have him live here in Redding with us this last year and I've appreciated his grandpa-ness towards my baby girl, his incredible help as a dad to me while I was pregnant and his humility and eagerness to learn during this time that he is a the School of Supernatural Ministry here at Bethel. He's grown a lot and remained open to a lot of things and it's inspired me to be humble and willing to learn when I'm his age.

Here's my dad:

Perfection

I've been taking a parenting class at the church we go to here and I have been so privileged to get good tips on training and parenting each child individually and being intentional in every step of parenting. Lots of good stuff. Overwhelming at times to think about, but really good. We are still way early on in this whole parenting malarkey but know that we will all too quickly be needing lots and lots of good parenting info and advice so are making use of the time we have now to get as prepared as one can be!

We started reading through the binder from the parenting class and the first little article showed how one encounter with your child can go either really well or really horrible, depending on how you decide to parent. In the scenario that ends badly with the child being hurt and disappointed, the mum was too obsessed with being perfect. She baked her cake while her daughter was sleeping so that it would be perfect, didn't let her pick the flowers from the garden, but only from the field, and she didn't let her child put her flower into the bouquet that she was arranging because it was going to ruin it. In the second scenario, they baked the cake together, she let her pick flowers from their garden, and she let her put in her flower even if it didn't fit, because the little girl was so excited to contribute.

It was good for me to read, because today, I was trying to be the perfectionist mum. Sophie had a weird day where she didn't really take her morning nap. She fell asleep for about five minutes and then was wide awake! And boy, did it stress me out. I was worried about the rest of the day and how her next nap would go, and how her schedule would be all off and how she'd get overtired and it might be hard for her to go down at night. She's also teething so I worried that no nap would just make it all worse too (It turned out she had a bit of plastic from a Kleenex tissue packet stuck in her mouth for an hour and a half which is why she didn't nap and didn't take her paci among other things. We just were so grateful that nothing worse happened because of the plastic.)

Somewhere along the day, I just relaxed. I was able to realise that all this stress is silly and pointless and she's going to be fine. And sure enough, everything was fine. She ate well and then went down great for her afternoon nap, and went down great for bedtime too. She was still moderately fussy due to the teething, but it really wasn't that bad.

Reading that article made me realise again that I just need to calm down about things. Especially when it comes to Sophie. I don't want to be the mum that squashes my child's enthusiasm to help with a bouquet or a cake or anything I'm doing. I don't want to squelch her happy spirit with my stresses. Perfectionism is definitely over-rated. I just need to remind myself of this every day and hope to be able to let lots of things go on this great journey of parenthood.

And because I just must post pix every time, here are some of me and my darling baby girl, Sophie:

Boston

I often forget that my husband is an amazing photographer and I need to remember to hand him the camera more often. His eye and creative touch are different to mine and I like that, need that. He's actually going to assist me on a larger family shoot this coming Friday and I'm excited to have our strengths work together. As I've said before, I would actually love for us to do all my photos shoots together as he really brings something that I just don't have. Speaking of my husband, I just love that he is totally this engineer/web design and coder/IT guy but he also has this amazing creative, musical, social edge that sets him apart from those typical engineer/web design and coder/IT guy type people. What a fun combination. :)

While wandering the streets of Boston, while in Massachusetts last week, he took a few snapshots of some fun buildings around the Boston Commons area. Love his eye:

Easthampton Visit

John, Sophie and I just got back from a wonderful visit with John's brother, his wife and their new baby, Noah. The twins got to spend their birthday together for the first time in four years and we had fun having our babies meet for the first time (they are exactly four months apart). They sat together (well, Sophie sat, and Noah sat propped up by Britt) and laughed and smiled at each other. It was really cute. We also got to head down to New Haven, CT and hang out with their sister, Bekah for the day. So fun to get to see lots of family. We all love to play games, so we did that a lot, as well as go get coffee and walk around Northampton, a fun town near where they live. We hit up Boston and wanted to do New York but it was just going to be a long and expensive day with the kids, so we sadly decided not to (I LOVE New York! No seriously I do, it's not just a t-shirt, it's a reality).

It's really fun for us all to be at the same stage in our lives. My brothers and John's older sister, Rachael, have all had kids for a few years now (our oldest niece and nephews are 6 and 7!) and it was fun to get to connect with Mark and Britt on the fact that this is our first kid, and they're around the same age, and that we're all learning so much about babies and parenting. We just love that Sophie has so many cousins right around her age - she will have four total by June all born within a year of her.

We decided to do our own little photo shoots in Boston and in Easthampton, and here are some of the pictures from our time (thanks, Bekah, for taking our pictures!). We're going to send the one of the four of us with our new babies to the Taylor University alumni page, to introduce Noah and Sophie.

I Heart Faces People's Choice Photography Challenge

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