I have so often been asked “How do you do it?” “I don’t know how you travel with kids” “It must be crazy with four” and have been referred to as wonder woman more than once! I’ll happily take that title, not because I think I am wonder woman (although sometimes I question how on earth we get through some days), I’ll take it simply because I think we’re all wonder women doing what we do for our kids.
Wonder women and Super men. It’s one of the hardest jobs in the world being a parent and it’s even harder with all the expectations we seem to add on thanks to social media, that and it’s 24/7.
I’ve often compared and brought up feelings of guilt questioning my own parenting, not the healthiest take on sharing experiences. However I have also walked away with the constant reminder to enjoy every minute and love them endlessly, no matter what form of parenting you choose for your own family and children.
Time passes for everyone and the best we can do whilst here is to be happy and love.
My father died at the age of 39 and suddenly when I hit 30, how young he was became a little more real for me. I was 14 at the time and anyone beyond thirty to me was “old”. Only now do I realise just how young he sadly was and so I’ve said to myself with each passing year “9 years left”. “8 years left”. And now “7 years left”.
I know it’s a cliche to say live life as if tomorrow may never come. We’ve all read it, we’ve sung songs about it, even tried living by it and it may have lasted a day or two before we fell back into our old routines and habits.
Though I may not live every day to it’s fullest, I do keep my father and his short life in my mind; so a plane ride with four young children becomes a time to spend with my monkeys with no distractions, hours in the car becomes games of eye spy with our own rules, my work on holidays becomes the means to take my family with me, the families and people I capture through my job, become new found friends for me and my children, editing in front of the computer means Rio will fall asleep on me in my office, time spent away from my family is precious time I make the most of with the people I spend it with, cleaning our house reminds me how amazing it is that we have our own, lack of sleep means we spend a little more time living, even if it’s through the night!
I can’t say that our life is all sunshine and rainbows, that we never get upset and we don’t have hard days; but I can say that we try and make the most of it and amongst the chaos that is life, we’re finding our balance between it all through trial and error, figuring out what works best for us.
If we’re doing this with love, it’s the best we can do.
So when you’re in between a trip from Madrid for a workshop and headed to Vegas for two intense days of Newborn sessions with just 2 days in between, do you make the most of a couple who’s wedding you’ve photographed and who happen to be in Venice at the same time you are? Yes, yes you do and you do it with your family! Life’s an adventure and you’ve got to live it to see what’s next and here’s to the man that follows me everywhere.
