Portraits of a (Growing) Family

We had maternity pictures done yesterday. I say "we" even though the "maternity" description technically only applies to me because about half of them involved TH or baby girl or all of us.

Pictures of our little family as it's in the process of growing. The last real portraits we'll have taken to document our short little stint as a family of three.

I haven't seen any yet, but I can already tell you that, in one sense, they won't live up to the vision in my head. In my head, I want to see myself in those pictures with perfect hair, perfect make-up, the perfect outfit on that perfectly shows off my growing, gorgeous belly. My husband would look dashing and casual. My daughter, curls perfectly framing her sweet head, would smile sweetly for the camera and show the world just what an angel she is. We would be the picture perfect family, poised on the edge of growing once again.

In reality, I didn't have time to do my hair. To be perfectly honest, I didn't have time to shower, either. In my defense, I showered the afternoon before and actually blow-dried my hair, something that usually happens about 10 times a year. TH and I had a hot date night to go see Blue Man Group and I wanted to look cute. But that was Saturday. On Sunday, we spent the day running errands and building furniture. By the time we stopped to get ready, there was no time for me to shower or re-do my hair. So I brushed it and relied on the fact that it usually looks better the second day anyway. I had a cute new shirt but had never found the time to finish the outfit off, so I paired with with an old pair of maternity capri jeans. My unpainted toes peeped out from my sandals--who on earth has time for pedicures? And as I was running around getting dressed and trying to get my toddler dressed as well and hollering across the house to my husband that we were supposed to be in the car leaving IN TWO MINUTES, he had enough time to try on two shirts and pick the better of the two. So much for tightly coordinated outfits.

Baby girl was having none of the photo shoot. She had a rough day yesterday. Or maybe it's a normal day in toddlerdom. She melted down just about anytime we wouldn't give her something she wanted. Asking her to do something was the surest way to have it NOT done. She only napped for an hour. At the shoot, when faced with a stranger and a camera, she refused to let her daddy put her down. When we tried for group shots, she stared sullenly at the photographer and refused to smile. When she came to kiss my tummy, I got a nice, fat snot glob on my new shirt.

Motherhood is so glamorous.

But that's where we get to the other sense. We had a photo shoot yesterday of our little family as it's in the process of growing. Not a fake family. Not a magazine family that is airbrushed and perfectly, impossibly poised. Our real family.

My hair wasn't done. My toes were unpainted. And at one pointed I got slimed by baby snot. But I had a diamond necklace on that my husband gave me for Valentine's that showed one heart inside another, a symbol, he said, of the hearts that I grow inside me. The portrait of a real mom.

And my sweet baby girl wouldn't smile most of the time (she did finally warm up a bit at the end), but hell, that's real, too. Real for the joyful world of the wild passions of toddlerdom.

So we sat snuggled together, documenting for all times not the perfect family we could be, but the perfect family we actually are.

And the smiles that shone from two of our three faces showed just how happy with that reality, with our family, that we really are.