TX family photos.

Kylie took our family photos while she was here for Thanksgiving. It was so convenient to have a photographer here just a few weeks before Christmas cards were due! It's been a part of my master plan all along to get one of Dave's siblings to marry a photographer, so you can imagine how happy I was when she said yes just a few weeks after these photos were taken. To say that we're elated is a massive understatement. Hooray! These family photos make me happy - taken in our new hometown, on a bright & sunny Texas afternoon. 

Quinn was just barely starting to walk that week, & now he's sprinting - with a goose egg on his forehead to prove it. He's moved up a size in his Converse & has somehow turned into this mischievous little boy that loves attacking toilet paper rolls, turning on water faucets & initiating games of peek-a-boo. Cliché: Time flies. 

Q has been sick for the past few weeks, & it has been tiring. We've been sneezed on, coughed on, thrown up on... It hasn't exactly been restful. I was up with him the other night in the middle of the night for a few hours - one of those experiences where you just know that there's nothing you can do about it except try to provide some sort of comfort, while fully believing that an eventual death from sleep deprivation is entirely possible. As I sat there in Q's dark nursery singing him my 97th song I thought, Motherhood is so selfless. And then I immediately disagreed with myself. Because as often as women discuss the loss of self that is associated with motherhood, I've sort of come to believe that it's opposite of this. I think that as a mother, I've grown into & discovered who I really am & who what I'm supposed to be. What I've taken away from this experience over the past short 15 months has been incredibly transformative.  I've given my son every ounce of love I can muster, but I know that he has given me more. And while I sometimes mourn the loss of independence, or am nostalgic about certain aspects of my old life, I feel grateful for this experience that I am blessed to have with a good husband & a son that we love so much. 

I really, really love my family.