Mother’s Day – get in those pictures!!

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that every year on Mother’s Day I get to reprimand you for not taking pictures of yourself.

I have tried to make more of an effort to take pictures with my kiddos.  You know, be IN the pictures.  And in addition, take an individual picture with each one of them – because what happens when they’re in jr high and need a picture of themselves as a child with their mom, and there’s a bunch of other siblings in the picture too…so I took these on Easter (and wow, was the light just right for pictures!)

As moms, we aren’t in pictures.  We’re behind the camera.  If we do get into a picture or two (those “flattering” ones our kids take) we delete them cause we don’t look great.  Guess what – our kids are used to us in our normal, not-looking-great mode – in fact if we’re all dolled up we might not look like ourselves to them…food for thought.  What happens when they are all grown up and have no picture of themselves with their mom? Anyways….

If you need motivation, here’s a great In Front of the Lens Series starting at Kristen Duke Photography – click this button for more info on that:

For Mother’s Day, I’m reposting this post from previous years on the blog (to see all the comments from the first year, go HERE):

She emailed me last year to tell me she loved my blog and to ask if I liked my short hair-cut. This lead to a series of emails which eventually led me to remark that I really loved how often she posted pictures of herself with her children on her blog. And she replied to me, “Have you ever seen a photograph of your own mother and thought to yourself how fat she looked? Or how she wasn’t wearing make-up? Or wasn’t dressed in a glamorous outfit?” Of course my answer was no.
She then responded with saying that she made it a goal to take a picture of herself with her children at least once every month. And that to use excuses about how we look, as women, is ridiculous, since our children will never care what we looked like, but only that we had physical evidence of the bond between mother and child.

Aleida tragically and unexpectedly passed away in an auto accident in September of 2008, leaving 2 small children and a grieving husband. After she passed I thought of how those children must feel to have those precious photographs. I have made it my personal goal to follow her wise suggestion and I try to take photos of myself with my children….double chins, make-up free, bed-head and all.

I invite Mothers everywhere to take Aleida’s Challenge. To photograph yourself with your children each and every month. And to post them here so that we can see Aleida’s legacy unfolding”

She’s right – moms aren’t in the pictures.  One reason is probably that we don’t think we look our best.  But my kids surely don’t think of my “best” look when they think of me – I’m sure they see me in all my bad hair/no makeup glory.  Here’s pics of my mom with me as a baby – so glad she found these: