Breakfast at our house: a photo-documentary shoot with Jenny Jimenez (+ bonus Care Bear onesies for the whole family)
Some of you who’ve been reading for a while may be familiar with the family portrait shoots I’ve done with Jenny Jimenez in the past — she did our maternity shoot, and then a shoot with Tavi at six months last spring. To say I love Jenny’s eye is an understatement — I trust this woman to capture some pretty pivotal moments in my life. She is amazing.
So when Jenny contacted me a couple months ago wanting to do a different kind of photo shoot, I was all ears. She wanted to do a shoot that was more photo documentary style — no posed shots, no forced smiles. She wanted to capture our family just doing what we do.
Celebrating thirty-nine weeks of a day-glo pregnancy
Remember Katie and her spectacular day-glo maternity photos? Well, she took ANOTHER round at 39 weeks, this time with her family and plenty of stripes in tow. This set was also shot by Tampa-based Evol Photography, so all you Floridians may want to look into her work!
Let’s ditch the “one size fits all” model of parenting
Like life, parenting is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but on this front I’m pretty much middle of the road on the stuff that seems to make parents pull out knives on each other. I don’t understand the obsession we seem to have, or at least that the media thrusts upon us, with tar and feathering one another. My motto is: make sure you’re educated, informed, evaluate your life and circumstances, and then get to the business of doing what works best for you and yours.
Is starting medical school compatible with raising a family?
I am a twenty-seven-year-old who is applying to medical school next year. I would start in Fall of 2013. By the time I start medical school I will be twenty-nine and my partner will be thirty-seven. We will most likely be in a new city far from family and friends, and our main income will be from school loans and scholarships.
Here’s our problem: we really want to have children.
Standing at the brink of thirteen
There’s an endearing, exasperating naivete to this age. She wears eyeliner but doesn’t wash her hair without reminders. Sometimes she leaves the house looking like a million bucks. Other times I turn her around before she hits the breakfast table because I cannot stand to look at the same sloppy gym shorts for even one meal more.
Taking a trip out of the country without my kid rocked my world
I feel I’ve done a great job (or at least, one that I am very happy with) maintaining a sense of ME since becoming a mother, but it’s good to see that my son also has a sense of HIM that doesn’t depend on whether or not I’m there, physically guiding him through it. It’s a comforting thing to know that if you leave for a day or seven that your child will keep trucking on — and to know that he or she will also be over the moon when you get back.
An easy fix for slipping bra straps
Call me a prude, but I really can’t stand it when my bra strap starts to wander, letting the world know just what color and condition said bra is in. (Answer: generally not great.) In fact, it drives me nuts. I don’t want to have to constantly be adjusting and digging around. It’s just not… dignified.
The journey of trying to conceive with my wife has changed the way I identify as a mom
Even though Carly and I knew we would want to have children together, we never had serious how-to discussions until last summer. I had a dream that I was carrying Carly’s baby, and I wanted it so badly that I was crying about it as I shared my dream with her. This sparked our baby planning. Ideally, we would choose in vitro fertilization (IVF), pick a sperm donor, have Carly’s egg fertilized, and I would carry her baby.