harrison's mommy and daddy met at aquinas when they were undergrad psychology students. they brought him back there to do this photo session of him at 9 months old. i wager he's their proudest accomplishment and greatest joy.
this family also opted to make me their photographer, which means i have 5 years of fun ahead of me, watching them grow.
when karissa came and sat in my living room with me and began talking about the miracle of pregnancy she found herself in, and how she was so bowled over by it and feeling all the feelings so deeply, and then began sharing bits of her personal history and describing herself with such self-awareness and depth... well, i just "got" her. this woman is a woman of great soul, and she doesn't hide.
at the time we met she was just about to "break up" with her OB, since she'd been feeling, as she puts it, as though she was "getting an oil change, not having my first baby." instead, she decided to follow her gut and search out a midwife. she chose a great CNM who delivered at the hospital. but as she read more birth stories (including my own), and looked inward further, she realized there was no reason she shouldn't/couldn't have her baby at home. so she interviewed home birth midwives, and ultimately settled on Leslie and Kim at Midwifery Matters, which is a practice of CNMs who do home birth deliveries. she also chose a wonderful doula, Brenda, of Over The Moon.
she gathered a birth team made up only of women who believed that she could do it, and with whom she felt safe, because she knew she would need that circle of love and power to do the work of bringing her little son earth-side. from there, i watched karissa go on to have the most proactive, empowering, prepared, and lovingly present pregnancy and birth preparation you can imagine.
her birth space was sacred and serene, even with all the growling and vocalizing ;). and after it was all over, as she lay nursing her son in bed with her rock of a husband and her big sister beside her, she said with grateful disbelief, "i never thought i would do this." ah, doesn't life have a way of turning out to be totally other than and also better than we hoped or imagined? i love that.
more and more i'm coming to love doing (a) newborn sessions with babies who are 3rd or 4th in their families and (b) sessions that take place on farms or rural areas. so this little session was pretty dreamy for me.
kara and dave have made home for themselves and their four little people in lake odessa, surrounded by fields of plants and livestock for as far as you can see. it's dark enough out there at night to see the stars. kara has made a beautiful creative home space (not surprising since she's a photographer, too) while dave fills his days caring for livestock and hunting for deer. their kids are darned cute, and the newest member, baby Easton, is falling into stride with all the beautiful mess of family.
for this session, they made an apple pie, fed easton his bottle, headed out to collect eggs from the chickens and feed apple peels to the horses, then came in for some bed-jumping and to pull that pie out of the oven.
enjoy a little slice of their life with a newborn.
yesterday our family was photographed by the talented suzanne gipson. she came and did a storytelling session in our home, photographing us as we went about all the usual sorts of activities: waking up from naps, drawing, playing trains, sitting on the front porch drinking lemonade, prepping dinner, tickling and wrestling on the bed, etc. etc. it was a session a lot like what i do for others, with one of the primary goals being to keep things real and to create a snapshot of life as it is for our family in this particular season of life in our own context.
when i do these sessions for others, i hope that they'll be able to relax and trust. i hope that they won't feel the need to get new clothes, and i certainly don't want them to coordinate the wardrobe amongst the entire family. i hope they'll leave some of their messes visible and not compulsively clean up all evidence that a real, living and breathing family lives in their home. i hope that they will somehow supernaturally be able to trust that not only will i not be put off by their imperfections but that i will also actually LOVE them; that i will be even more endeared to them for having been allowed to see and include their messes and their grown-out haircuts and their stained t-shirts. from where i stand -- which is behind the camera -- i am more than comfortable with their human-ness.
so it was a little surprising to find in myself a compulsive desire to tidy up our house, to hide the objects that i don't really like, to get my son's hair cut, and to choose clothes carefully. confession: i actually even went to a resale store and bought "new" outfits for the kids. confession: hazel and gus both had haircuts the day of. confession: tim and i have been konmarie-ing the heck out of our house for weeks. confession: i put on some very light make-up (whereas usually i wear none).
i was feeling a little embaressed about this. it was as if i couldn't practice what i was preaching to all my clients. i myself was having difficulty trusting that Suzanne could and would see beauty and make magic out of all our raw material.
but now i see that all these things -- the tidying/discarding, the haircuts, and the buying of some fall clothes -- needed doing anyway, and would have been done eventually. yet, we definitely were fueled toward getting them done quickly, with the due date being the date of our sessions. and maybe that's not all bad. as for the make-up... well, i'm justifying that one by saying it will make my face "pop" a bit more on film. ;)
here's the important thing: the way our family and our house looked the day Suzanne came to photograph us was not formed to match some idealized Pinterest board. the clothes and the haircuts were all characteristic of the style we tend toward and lifestyle that we live; they were not inauthentic.
a (raw, unedited) screen shot Suzanne sent me of one very real family moment from our session : the one in which Gus laid on top of Walt's head, while Hazel drove a train over his back. that's my arm in the top right, sweeping in to pull Gus off his brother's face lest he suffocate him.
so maybe that's the main thing: to somehow stand determined to be who you really are as a family, even if that presentation is a TOUCH more put-together than it normally is. for if we try to become something other than what we are, we aren't really capturing family history at all, are we? the moment we try to conform ourselves to an idealized vision of Happy Family, that's the moment we start losing ground in the goal to record our family history, and to hold in a collection of images the unique and perfectly imperfect chaos of our real life.
i still sorta wish i had left a few more messes around for suzanne. and if i had it to do over, i might have skipped the make-up.
rebecca and eric: hilarious, playful, uber-talented, classy people who also love one another deeply and evidently. also, this is how they announced their pregnancy:
We have a very special announcement... along with some celebratory dancing. A Slow Motion Pregnancy Announcement. I do not claim to own rights to this song, all rights belong to the original artist. Long live Salt N Pepa.
though she had booked me well before they went public with their pregnancy announcement, after i saw this, my excitement increased about ten-fold. because only awesome people do things like this, am i right?!
arriving to their hospital room in the middle of an august night, i found a fantastic iron and wine playlist going, their doula standing by with quiet support, and rebecca looking gorgeous in her floral birth gown, headband (which eric kept tenderly re-arranging on her head when it got askew), and glitter-gold polish and finger and toenails. i settled in to listen to them read through some beautiful well-wishes friends and family had written for their baby girl, and enjoyed the fast-passing hours chatting and growing in excitement to see the little face of their daughter, who would soon emerge.
just before dawn, she was fully dilated. the pushing stage went so well because becca was SUCH a rock star with it. her epidural was kept just low enough that she was still very much feeling the contractions, sensing what her body was doing, and working with it very effectively. their amazing nurse stayed past the end of her shift to see amelia's entrance, and we all got a bit teary when she came out, squalling healthfully as the sun was rising. this amazing little one weighed in at 9lbs 7oz!
enjoy these photos. they've captivated my heart as i was working on them.
baby gavin is at home with is mama and daddy and two big brothers. this blended family thought they were complete, but God gifted them with gavin, which is likely one of the happier surprises they've ever received. and in the six weeks since he's made his arrival, he's already knitting their hearts closer together.
you can tag along for a little snippet of their mid-day, in which gavin wakes from his nap for cuddles and nursing with mama, then all the attention from his adoring big brothers before they meet up with daddy -- whose business office is located in the workshop behind the house, which means he can swing by for lunch and whatnot -- for more family cuddle time on the sofa, some time outside with the horses and the rope swing, and a visit to the workshop. then amy takes the boys on a walk and bike ride down the trail in their front yard.
there is so much beauty in the simplicity of simple life lived humbly and with great love. can you see that between the lines of these photos?
