Motherhood Moments I Wish I Could Freeze — But Can't
I document everyone else's motherhood milestones for a living. The first steps, the birthday cake smashes, the back-to-school portraits — I'm there, camera in hand, making sure those moments are preserved forever. But somewhere in the middle of all of that, my own slipped by in the everyday chaos.
And honestly? I didn't even realize it was happening until I sat down one day and noticed: I had hard drives full of other people's families, and almost nothing of my own.
The Quiet Moments Nobody Thinks to Capture
When I think about what I wish I could freeze right now, it's not the big stuff. The celebrations, the milestones — we have all the photos and videos for those. It's the quiet, in-between moments that I keep missing.
It's when my kids lean on me.
When they reach for my hand without thinking.
How they look when they’re asleep and right when they wake up,
Sometimes I joke that I wish I had a third arm — one that could just quietly lift a camera while the other two are busy being a mom.
And then there are the bedtime conversations. That's when they actually open up — completely unfiltered, completely honest. Sometimes funny, sometimes so sweet it aches, and sometimes heartbreaking. Like when my daughter Amara waited until Sunday bedtime to tell me she'd had a fight with her friend on Friday. She didn't say a word at pickup. She held it until she felt safe enough, in the dark, in that in-between space before sleep — and then she just let it out.
Those are the sacred moments. The ones I'm terrified I'll forget — how they sounded at this exact age, how it felt to be the person they trusted with the hard things.
How I Learned to Balance the Camera and the Moment
When I first started doing photography, I stopped taking photos of my own family almost entirely.
For the first two or three years of my career, I didn't capture anything. I was so deep in the craft, so focused on my clients, that my own children became an afterthought in my lens. Or a break from the “job”. And then one day I looked at my computer — beautiful galleries of other families' lives — and realized I had almost nothing of mine.
And I treated my art as so personal, you know? But I had none of the loves of my life.
I decided to bring my camera on trips, but I set intentional time for it. Maybe an hour at the park where I step back and let them just be — and I capture that. But the rest of the time, I put the camera down. I ooh-ed and aah-ed at the sights with them. We have conversations during meals. I walk with them. I'm in it, not behind glass.
It took me a while to figure that balance out, and honestly, I'm still figuring it out. But knowing when to document and when to just live has made both things better.
What I'm Trying to Soak In Before It's Gone
Time is a strange asset. You don't realize its value until you've already spent it.
I think about this a lot — how the present moment is always slipping forward, and if you're not in it, if you didn't feel it or share in it, it's just... gone. There's no going back.
So what I'm really trying to soak in right now is all of it. Their joy. Their sadness. The mundane Tuesday afternoons. The silly arguments. The car conversations that go from funny to honest. The way they still reach for me.
I try to document what I can - and what I can't capture, I try to commit to memory — really commit, the way you do when you know something is temporary.
Because childhood isn't a phase to get through. It's a season to be in. And I'd rather be in it — fully, messily, imperfectly — than look back at a perfectly curated feed and realize I missed the whole thing.
If you're a mama reading this: the chaos is the content. The ordinary is the extraordinary. And you don't need a professional camera to remember — sometimes you just need to stop, look, and let yourself feel it.
