So after a rather disastrous first birthday cake smash Lola proved she can smash food for the camera and started with her lunch. Watching her twirl the spaghetti around her fingers, throw it through the air and rub it through her hair was worth capturing.
Most birthday cake baking in our house happens at the eleventh hour late at night. It’s almost exclusively the domain of Tim who is quite the skilled baker and cake decorator. Working in low light I decided to capture a few shots of Tim as he slaved away in the kitchen.
Last night I lit a candle in support of the two rehabilitated prisoners, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, in Indonesia. I woke with a heavy heart when I learned that the state sanctioned killings of the two young Australians had gone ahead. I make no apology for being staunchly against the death penalty. That however does not mean that I support drug crimes or take their crimes lightly but I strongly believe that murder is barbaric and fundamentally wrong. These two men were someone’s son, someone’s brother and someone’s husband and my thoughts are with their families at this devastating time.
‘An eye for an eye and the world goes blind’ as Gandhi said.
It’s true what they say that having a child is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body. From the first moment that I laid eyes on you, held you tightly in my arms and gazed into your deep blue eyes I knew that each day that passed would be better than the last. In 365 days I have experienced tiredness, joy, patience, strength and love like I’ve never known before but to watch you grow has been an incredible privilege – a debt to the universe that I can never repay.
Happy first birthday sweet Lola.
On the last day that my baby girl is still a ‘baby’ I thought I would revisit a few photos taken in her first few days of life. I can’t believe how it’s been almost a year since she was born. Looking back through her images was emotional and eye opening. For the last 364 days she has been the perfect muse and my photography has certainly improved.
As we’ve been madly rushing around getting the house ready for Lola’s first birthday party the cats have been doing as cats do – lying smugly in the sun. Cats have a certain way of rubbing their lifestyle perks in your face when you least need the reminder. Nonetheless and despite the severe envy I was feeling Josie and Tiger made good photography subjects today.
One of Oscar’s favourite meals is sushi and at his request we made some for dinner the other night. He’s at an age where he loves being involved in the preparation and making of food and it actually encourages him to eat better. I love sushi but I do find his fixation on it rather strange for someone who is all of 3.
It’s a fairly regular activity in our house so I took a few photos while the boys set to work.
In the lead up to her first birthday this week is all about Lola. To balance out her unfortunate reaction to her ‘cake smash’ session I thought I’d add one of my favourite portraits of her that I recently took while playing on the front verandah. Can’t believe this little doll face is nearly one year old.
In the lead up to Lola’s birthday I attempted to give her a ‘cake smash’ photoshoot. Having done this before I assumed it would be a piece of cake, no pun intended. Unfortunately it turns out that not every child enjoys cake or the feeling of buttercream icing through their fingers and my daughter happened to be one of them. The results were not as desired and probably should be featured on the ever popular ‘nailed it’ blog.
Oscar’s always been an incredibly active child. His legs have not stopped moving since the day he was born. Trying to keep a child this active in a sitting position through many, many asthma attacks has been an incredible challenge. Lately he has been housebound, out of the cold air and wind, since his recent bout of pneumonia.
I snapped a few photos as he peeked longingly out the windows at the outside world and the image reminded me of the first line from the Dr Seuss book, the Cat in the Hat: “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.”
