Parenting

Of being a Parental Unit.

  • Darkness, Light… and Human Development

    I have the gift of being able to capture my son’s life, and his essence, in images – already I look back through them and marvel at what happens when passion, love, skill, and an observing heart & mind come together. I can see his life unfolding and see his different personality traits emerge as I look through this growing archive. It blows my heart and mind.

    Talk about bittersweet. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

    Darkness & Light
    Braden, Age 7, September 2014

     

     

    By the time I recognize this moment this moment will be gone, but I will bend the light, pretending that it somehow lingered on.
    ~John Mayer, Clarity

    *****
    © Lotus Carroll, All Rights Reserved
    To license commercially, please email.

  • My Heart Skips None Of These Beats

    The last bit of summer vacation is pressing in on us, and it has largely become this: the frantic run from pool to platform on repeat, a near maddening loop of frenzied obsession, the intense need to squeeze in as much flight, falling, plunge and ascension as possible before the school bell once more rings.

    He is reborn over and over again in an unrealized effort to slow the sinking of the sun.

    It is both beautiful and somehow tragic in its simple impossibility; it is all at once the sweetness of youth and his slipping grasp on it. My heart swells and tightens as I watch him hurry to soar and float once more.

    I feel him breathing life inexplicably into me as he powers through his, and I realize that I love the bittersweet pulse of this life.

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  • The Beauty of Change

    We collected a rather large batch of caterpillars that were threatening to skeletonize my sunflower garden recently. I housed them in a small plastic container with slots for air designed to hold buggies and fed them sunflower leaf rations (they turned their noses up at other types of leaves) saving most of my garden from destruction while still feeding them. After several days, they all suited up in their respective chrysalises and made with the metamorphosing. We dug witnessing this, and awaited the unfolding of their wings as they became Bordered Patch Butterflies (Chlosyne lacinia).

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    For the past couple of days, they’ve been greeting the world anew, and as they do, we open the hatch on the container and set them free into my (flower filled, butterfly orgasmic) back yard. It is an incredibly joyous feeling to watch one of them lift out of the housing and ascend into the air and off to freedom, somehow making my heart more buoyant even though it is my lungs that fill with air while I breathe in and watch them float.

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    This little flapper needed some extra time to dry its wings and visit with another creature who has been rapidly changing right before my eyes lately.

    The Beauty of Change

    I have a tender love that floats on wings of expectation and wonder for them both.

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  • His Ever Changing Face

    Every day he looks a little different. He grins up at me now with this lopsided, crazy toothed smile. Him, squinting into the sun and my lens and blowing my heart with his innocence and love.

    His Ever Changing Face

    Every day he is a little bigger, some tiny bit older, somehow new in his growing-boy-changeling ways.
    He is what all children are – a person becoming something amazing in deceptively tiny steps that are really so, so big on their insides.

    They feel big to me, and as they go by, I feel a weight turn and shift inside me. It is both a feeling of joy and sorrow, the disparity between which is one of life’s greatest gifts to experience.

    Change on, my love.

  • When You Make The Dream of Flying Come True

    I was reminded recently of this experience, and wanted to share it with you guys. Last summer, John took Braden and me with him to a show (he is a guitar player) at a place where there’s a helicopter ride offering on the property. We got lucky and were able to take Braden up in the helicopter that evening. The flight was amazing – open doors, of course, and it was very thrilling (the pilot turned us sideways at one point, with me on the underbelly, WHOA).

    I had been so excited to go up in the helicopter myself, but, as thrilling as it was, I quickly realized that the best part of the ride was listening to Braden over the headphones we were all wearing. I wish I had an audio recording to share with you. He was adorable, hilarious, and sweet beyond description. I was not in a really great position to take photos of him (I was in the front, my hair whipping all over the place, holding my camera and phone) but I managed this shot by holding the camera over my shoulder.

    It may not be the best photo, but I think you get the point. He was ecstatic. When we landed, John wanted to thank the pilot, but when he tried, he was given thanks himself. The pilot said it was the best ride he’d piloted in years because of Braden.

    Children can be challenging and present all kinds of frustrating moments, but the joy they bring far eclipses any of that. They make the world an altogether more wonderful and interesting place. I’m so thankful we have him.

  • No, Fig Newtons did not sponsor this.

    But we love them. And their wrapper. Wanna see how 2 sickies entertain one another when they’re home alone at snack time?

    Be warned, this is about 5 minutes of your life you will never get back. It will, however, leave you with a goofy grin on your face and a feeling of happy deep within you. If it doesn’t, you likely have a dead fish for a heart. Good luck with that.

    So? Do you have the happy?