Mama + Me | Pittsburgh Family Lifestyle

When faced with equally accumulating piles of dishes and books, maternity leave has seen me choose the latter. Regularly having only one arm at my disposal has made the choice rather straightforward, but I can't pretend it's been some sort of sacrifice. Books are one of my great solaces in life. It has been years since I've read at the pace I've been going over the past few weeks and despite barely leaving the house and always spouting a fresh coat of spit up on my clothing, it's felt like a breath of fresh air. 

I recently made it through Celeste Ng's "Little Fires Everywhere," (beautiful!) on a great recommendation, when a quote about parenthood struck me to my core:

“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.”

Let's blame it on the beautiful writing and the postpartum hormones for the weeping that ensued. Looking down at my son all snuggled up in my arms, I could see the wrinkly newborn baby he was just a few weeks ago, the chubby baby with rolls that he had become, and the little boy he was growing into. I see it every time I look at him. His growth is somehow both too fast and timeless, all at once.

I've known Lindsay and her sweet husband Jordan for years now, photographing their engagement, their wedding, and a newborn session for little E. Now they're a family of four, with two gorgeous children. It was an honor for me to document a little snippet of that shifting, vast eternal place of childhood for Lindsay and her littles. Because when she looks at them she will always see the babies they were, the children they are becoming, and the hope of the adults they will be. Nothing we do can slow down time, but making these images together pressed "pause" on a brief moment in that timeline, for her to look back on whenever she wants. Becoming a mother has made it seem all the more urgent that I do that for myself as often as possible, too. Because it's only been a few months, and I already am muttering to myself, "I don't know where the time has gone." 

Here are a few of my favorites from our Mama & Me session.