Charlotte Rose

1 / 30 / 15

Sister Charlotte turns two this Sunday and I’m in complete denial. She is our baby. Which must be why she still likes to wake up in the middle of the night…but whatever. She’s still squishy and round, but gaining thoughts, ideas, most importantly, words at a rapid pace. Watching her play with Shep, mimicking everything he does… I will tuck these memories away, and draw them out when I am old and need to smile. Charlotte is precious. Joyful, funny, loving. She melts me in every way. But she is also tough, determined, opinionated, and a little bit loud. She has a sweet, raspy smoker’s voice that we are in love with, unless she’s screaming… then it’s just loud.

Truthfully, I’m a little intimidated that this spunky little thing is taking notes from me.

I knew Charlotte was a girl, from the beginning, just like I sensed Shep was a boy. I was terribly anxious about her pregnancy because Shep’s ended so abruptly at 32 weeks after the doctors suddenly determined he would grow better on the outside. I feared the same for Charlotte. Instead, early on in our pregnancy, we were given 1 in 18 odds that Charlotte would have Down Syndrome. We were scared, and my heart was broken with worry for our baby, but we felt strongly that whatever lay before us would work out fine. She’d have a family that would adore her regardless. Obviously, Charlotte ended up not having Down Syndrome, which we confirmed though a relatively new test in Texas called MaterniT- 21. It’s non invasive, and highly accurate. Aside from that, pregnancy with Charlotte was a breeze. (Full disclosure, I’m one of those girls who loves being pregnant and both babies were small so I avoided the uncomfortable parts of pregnancy.) Charlotte was a scheduled C section after Shep’s mandatory one, and the difference between the two was astounding. While there was intense fear and disappointment over unmet expectations surrounding Shepherd’s birth, Charlotte’s seemed like a dream, literally. No fear, just excitement. I cried when I met her.

She did throw us for a loop though, when she arrived sporting jet black hair, a tan, and Asian eyes. Which would have been great, if Erron and I were not the most American looking parents on the planet. I was confused. It totally threw me. I’m embarrassed to admit I had a panic moment when I racked my brain for some horrible memory I may have repressed and kiiiind of wondered if Erron was thinking the same thing. If you look at her now, you would giggle, Char is an obvious combination of the two of us. But when she was born…

Two quick years later, here we are. And she’s everything I could have wished for. Her best friend is brother and she appreciates little boy potty humor. He loves to teach her how to do things and she loves his attention, unless he is trying to hit her with a sword, then she’s over it. She also LOVES to dance, her leotard is THE ONLY thing I can get on her without a struggle. And when I pick her up from Mother’s Day Out or church, she’s always holding a baby doll. It amazes me all the emotions that come with having a daughter and how different some of them are from the ones you have towards your son. I am fiercely protective over her, her body, her heart, her spirit…yet I have a feeling she may have an ability to push my buttons a little quicker because I feel like I know what’s going on in that cute little head of hers. If she cries out in the middle of the night, I go to her room groggy and frustrated…until I touch her soft skin, then my heart softens and I have to fight the urge to crawl into bed with her and snuggle her back to sleep every time. I rub her back, bathe her in kisses then creep out the door. I can’t believe I get to be Charlotte’s momma, just like I can’t believe I’m Shepherd’s…and while I’m sad to see babyhood slip away, she’s too much fun to not look forward to the future. Happy Birthday, Charlotte Rose. What a gift you are, you are cherished.

Everyday Light V. 1

1 / 26 / 152 / 9 / 15

#EverydayLight is a guest series by Chelsea Ahlgrim Photography with the purpose of helping mommas capture better photos of their family’s memories at home. Be sure to check out the Introduction here and Part Two. You can also follow along on Instagram and post your own images using the #EverydayLight hashtag!

Welcome back! Today we’re going to talk about the first three things you can start doing TODAY to take better pictures of your kids at home! Okay, grab a cup of coffee, and have a seat. We won’t even be pulling out your camera today. First I want to talk a little bit about changing the way you think about taking photos- things that may have held you back from trying previously. Let’s get started!

1. Love the One You’re With– We’re talking cameras, folks. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, so let’s just establish that when it comes to shooting in your own home, gear isn’t much of a factor. You will want something with the option to turn the flash on and off, and preferably something with the option to change something called ISO (we’ll talk more about this technical aspect later.)

I started falling in love with photography when using a small point-and-shoot camera from Walmart (An earlier version of this one, to be more specific). I then used a Nikon D3000 for nearly five years before upgrading to my current full frame camera (don’t worry about terminology here. Just know that “full frame” basically equals a professional grade machine). Don’t let your gear- or lack thereof- hold you back! So let’s all breathe a sigh of relief- I won’t be asking you to spend your kid’s college fund for a big fancy camera! (the first few images below were taken with a point and shoot)

2. Let It Go- The idea that you have in your head of the perfect portrait of your children? Hair combed, clean, unwrinkled clothes, sitting in a beautiful chair, eyes on you, smiling on command… Not gonna happen. I mean, yeah maybe. But since this series is all about documenting our REAL lives, let’s stick with the assumption that your house is like mine: It’s nearly noon; crumbs on floors, smudges on windows, toys scattered, breakfast still on the table, dishes still in the sink, kids covered in yogurt, sitting in the middle of the mess, still wearing jammies. Or it’s bath time: water covering every surface, tub ring, WAY too many bath toys, clothes discarded, cracked tile. Or it’s bedtime: beds unmade, messy rooms, naked babies, freshly bathed, a million books by the bed, and the kids are nowhere near ready to go to sleep. THIS is your life. THIS is beautiful. It doesn’t matter that your kitchen needs updating or your laundry is piled on the couch. There are more important things that will be happening in the pictures you take- things that make all that mess make sense- it’s there because you’re too busy embracing the chaos and loving your life.

3. Lead The Way– Part of being a good photographer is knowing when to give guidance. Sometimes it means moving your children into a room with better lighting and letting them continue to play, and sometimes it means giving your child a quiet activity so you can get him to sit still. And very often it means sitting back, watching the chaos unfold before your eyes, and photographing every second of it.

Making play time into photo time has become my jam. Try to remember to remain engaged when appropriate- don’t completely fade into the background. Encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing! Here are a few ideas to encourage activity without staging a photo shoot and times when you want to be sure to have your camera handy:

Art time
Puzzles
Pretend play and dress up
Books they can read themselves
Food to chop/ stir/ frost/ assemble
Dirt digging (deep breath… embrace the mess…)
Bath time
Meal time (breakfast is my favorite)
Bed time
Homework/ school time

These don’t require a lot of set-up, and your kids are probably going to be doing them throughout the day anyway! You know those times where you see your kids playing happily and you stop and think, “I just wish I could freeze this moment….,”? You can do that. With your camera. You just have to get past your fear of inferior equipment or the mess in your house or having no time to shoot. YOU can take charge of your family’s memories. And it’s easier than you think!

I hope you enjoyed our first three tips for taking beautiful photos of your everyday life. You didn’t even have to take out your camera this week! I hope you’ll join us next week for the next set of tips!

xo,

Chelsea

Introducing: Everyday Light

1 / 25 / 15

Hi there! I’m so excited to be bringing you all this content! Documenting our everyday life is something I’m really passionate about- seeing beauty even when you might think there is none. It’s easy to get wrapped up in our routines and neglect to see- really see- the joy in our own lives. Perfection in the imperfection. Love when you feel unlovable. Light in the darkness. But I promise you, it’s there.

When Shepherd had his accident last year, it absolutely sent our entire family into a tailspin- that seems like such an understatement, but I just don’t know how else to describe it. It wasn’t anywhere near the same degree of helplessness and fear that Erron and Allie experienced, but our world stood still and began to spin out of control all at the same time. I began to desperately hold onto every moment with my own children. I had always been pretty good about taking pictures at home, but this felt different. I NEEDED to have these moments captured. I frantically collected moments in my mind and pulled out my camera as often as possible, because what if… what if tomorrow, all I had left of my children were these silly, grainy pictures of them with bedhead and oatmeal-smeared faces? What if I couldn’t recall the way her hair caught the light in the late afternoon sun as she ran around in the most ridiculous outfit ever concocted? And the sweet way he tilted his head to the side, fingers in his mouth, to listen to me intently? Or the lines on my husband’s face and the blue of his eyes… What if…

So now here we are, half a year later, and my desire to document my family and our lives just as they are- here and now, good, bad, and ugly- has only intensified and I’ve noticed a lot of mommas feeling the same way. I get asked constantly, “How in the world do you get such good pictures of your kids at home?” and “Mine would NEVER sit still for that, “ and “I just can’t figure out my camera well enough to take pictures of my kids like this.” Well, never fear, mommas. We’re going to learn this together!

Here are a few things that will be covered during the next few weeks:

-Choosing and loving your camera

-Getting a fresh perspective on portraits

-Tips on when to shoot

-Camera settings

-Lighting

And more!

PLUS, we’ll talk about editing your images and sizing them for easy sharing or printing!

I’m not here to make you a pro, or jumpstart a career for you. I truly feel in my heart, that the moments we always want to remember of our families are fleeting and wild and chaotic and messy and perfectly imperfect: tiny hands reaching to be held, blonde curls dripping with bath water, watching from the windows as snow falls outside, the anticipation of Christmas morning, eyes of blue, quiet and peaceful mornings that make way into loud and unruly days, the way he crinkles his forehead while he works, and all the moments in between that hold intangible things… feelings…. We’re not taking pictures here. We’re freezing time.

These tips are strictly to show you that you CAN capture your own beautiful memories of your family at home! I promise I’m going to make this as easy to understand as possible, and I hope that you’ll feel brave enough to try out some of the things I’m going to share with you. AND I hope you’ll share them with us here on the blog, on Facebook, and Instagram using the hashtag #everydaylight. I’m going to be checking in every day, so be sure to leave any questions in the comments of the post, or on the Facebook post that correlates with each lesson.

I hope you’ll come back and learn with us! I’m really excited to get started and see all of the beautiful images you create and capture!

Everyday Light-coming soon.

1 / 22 / 15

So, I’m a huge fan of the iphone camera because it’s simple and easy… but every now and then the quality of the photo leaves something to be desired, and I’m wishing I’d gotten that sweet moment of my littles captured with an actual camera.

I LOVE beautiful photographs but I’m terrible at taking them. It must be part of the technology deficit I have which causes well functioning computers and iphones to quit working just by looking at them. STILL. There is always hope. Even for tech-phopic moms like me, which is why my sweet sister in law, Chelsea Ahlgrim, will be doing a series of guest posts focusing on the basics of photography that hopefully any mom can take something away from. We own a fairly decent camera but I won’t touch it because I’m way too intimidated. Chelsea’s goal is that no matter what kind of camera you have, something in her posts will give you enough courage and confidence to dust off your “real” camera and use it to capture some beautiful candid moments of your family in perfect clarity. I will still be writing my own posts, totally unrelated to photography, but Chelsea will be guest blogging her photo tips for the average mom here once a week for the next 3 or 4 weeks.

A couple quick things you should know about Chelsea. She is Erron’s younger sister and I adore her. She is totally down to earth and when she’s taking your picture she makes you feel totally comfortable which can be challenging when your kids are screaming, your hair is stuck in your lip gloss, and everyone is sweating because it’s 500 degrees outside in Oklahoma. She’s also a mom to two of her own littles, Vesper who is 3 and Grey, who’s almost 2, just like Char. Chelsea’s been doing all of our family photos for years, so I’m totally spoiled, but my favorite is when she has her camera at normal family get-togethers. She has captured some of the best candid photos of my children that I still swoon over. Here are some of her beautiful photos so you can see who you’re taking tips from. I’ve already reached for my own camera a few more times just knowing her advice is on it’s way.

The comeback

1 / 14 / 156 / 29 / 15

For whatever reason, my first memories of Shep’s drowning have made a resurgence these last few days. It’s unexpected and seems unprompted but still they’ve come, late at night or even in broad day. This Sunday I sat next to Erron in church listening to worship music but in my head I was walking into Shep’s hospital room for the first time. It was loud, from the oscillating ventilator that was pushing air in and out of his water logged lungs at 200 breaths per minute. It made his whole chest vibrate. The room was filled with staff. I remember a nurse walking me in then immediately guiding me to a chair just inside the doorway. Later, I learned she sat me down because my legs were giving out. I never even noticed. What I do remember is asking for a bag and dry heaving into it as I tried to wrap my head around what was happening.

The other night, when the memories wouldn’t relent, I suck out of bed and crawled into Shep’s, wrapping my arms around his breathing body while I begged God to make the movie reel stop. I’m beginning to wonder if I am going to have to write the memories all out. I wasn’t ready to take that on yet. It will wreck me.

But maybe it could heal me also? Writing about the guilt over Shep’s accident was certainly a game changer for my aching heart.

I think the shock of it all was, (and still is) the hardest part. I was just so unprepared, so oblivious to the fact that losing Shepherd could even be in the realm of possibility for my life. Yes, I had definitely felt that fear when he was born much too early….but nothing like the day he fell in. That very day, I’d sat by the pool with my parents and told them about the secondary drowning article that was circulating the internet last summer. I described the symptoms…just so we all knew. What I didn’t know, was that an hour later I’d be back at the pool’s edge, scrambling to reach for my beautiful boy as my mom struggled to drag his body to the stairs. His perfect skin blue, his unusually large eyes cloudy and fixed…staring. I was certain we were too late. That he was gone. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready.

I don’t want this blog to forever focus solely on what happened to Shepherd. I don’t want to forever focus it on it. There is so much other life to write about, the beautiful parts, and the parts that are funny, the hard, the fun, and the pretty, so much more life then those terrifying moments. And I’ve learned I love to write about all of it here. But Shepherd’s accident, his miraculous recovery, and God’s peace in the midst of our pain and panic will forever be a part of our family’s story. So… to move on without really telling it may not work for me.

But it’s going to hurt to like hell to write and I’m still not convinced this is the best medium for it. As painful as it is to write, I know it’s also hard to read.

So in the meantime, I’m going to stall a bit longer with some way more enjoyable things to write about. Things that matter to me. Like sister Charlotte turning 2 next month. And my crazy talented sister-in-law, Chelsea Ahlgrim, will grace this space with some photography tips for the totally untalented moms like me, who are only comfortable capturing little moments with an iphone. The hard stuff will always be there, but right now I’m in the mood for a little fun.

I made this my profile picture the day after Shep fell in. I love his eyes in this picture. The 3 of us were having so.much.fun. We are still having so much fun. And I’m so thankful.

Walking the line

1 / 7 / 15

I love reading about everyone’s new year’s resolutions. I love the idea of setting life goals, re-evaluating priorities…all that stuff. I’m a total nerd for “vision-casting.” I also like reading about others NOT doing the resolution thing because it stresses them out, makes them feel like underachievers…all THAT stuff. I get both. I feel both. I think I fall somewhere in the middle.

I didn’t do resolutions this year. (Besides trying to put on anti-aging cream on a regular basis.) I’m taking a year off from expectations. I did copy some friends and pick a word though. I can handle one word. Like a lot of mommas, my word was what we all want to be: present. Less face booking, more puzzles. Less cleaning, more pretend. However, even with this…I gotta walk the line. For me, it’s more of a gut check. It’s asking myself, “Do I really need to do this, when my kids are asking me to do this?” And reminding myself to stop day-dreaming about the next big thing, when I’ve got a million little great things right in front of me. But I can’t say that my goal of being present is to sit in the awareness that all of it can be lost in an instant. Of this fact, I’m already well aware. I’ve read a lot of really amazing and beautiful posts lately about being present and remembering that nothing is guaranteed. In the blink of eye, life can change. I, of all people, understand this. But living in that frame of mind all the time begins to wear on me. After a while, it makes me feel anxious… panicky. Since nothing on this earth is promised, I start to wonder about the day it will all go away. When will that be? What will that look like? Who or what, that I love, will I lose?

For me, the ability to practice intense gratitude also means wrestling with an intense fear of the What Ifs.

It’s a delicate, deliberate balancing act. Every so often, I need to step out of that grateful zone and joke, and I admit, sometimes gripe, about the ‘hard’ in life. I need to be able to say that I haven’t slept a full night through in a consecutive two week span in about 2 years because Charlotte is a vampire and would rather be up all night and I would rather snuggle her than listen to her scream. Or roll my eyes and get annoyed when Shepherd loses it over going to bed every. single. night. Because it’s a brand new outrageous idea that he’s never had to live through before, except that he did, THE NIGHT BEFORE THIS NIGHT, and he somehow survived brushing his teeth, listening to a book, and getting tucked in by two parents who are obsessed with him.

Don’t think for a second I don’t understand that this ‘hard’ I’m writing about is the most wonderful stuff life is made of. All I’m saying is, I am still trying to find that balance of savoring every moment, and not holding on to them for dear life. I have to speak some of the crazy hard times out-loud, so that I can loosen my grip. Otherwise, I might cry a lot, because I will be afraid of missing it, losing it, or messing it all up.