Picture this

Pictures are so easy these days. My first camera was a cheapy Kodak point-and-shoot. I got it when I was 10 or 11. I took maybe 100 pictures with it. Ever. My second camera is the Canon SureShot I have now. I got it when I was 32.

Everyone I know who has kids takes digital pictures, shares them 70 or 80 places online, and usually keeps hard prints as well. I'm no exception. My sole reason for getting a camera (being gifted a camera, really) was to take pictures of the kid once he emerged. Facebook and Shutterfly and blogs and whatnot are some of the best inventions of our time. I love seeing other people's pictures and I love looking at mine over and over again.

But with the ease of sharing pictures comes the pressure to take the pictures. I usually have my camera with me. I don't often use it, but it's there just in case.

Andrew is a walking (running) photo op. I wish everyone could see him so carefully dipping his chip or making scary faces (hard to describe; imagine a guttural AHHH! and a smidge of constipation and you'll be close) or dancing or reading a magazine or any of the hundreds of things that paint Andrew's personality portrait. He moves lickety quick, though, and the moment is usually finished before I think to take a picture, let alone can reach my camera.

Holidays and outings are hard, too, because those are the moments people expect to be photodocumented, and ours often aren't. Take this holiday weekend, for example. No picures of Andrew eating a delicious, gooey, trifle-esque dessert on Thanksgiving. No pictures of the wonderful trip to the zoo on Friday. No pictures of him stamping his ears and then trying to stamp mine with the ink stamps in the Gymboree art room. Part of the lack is because I'm not a big picture-taker by nature. We didn't do it when I was a kid. I just forget. Another part is logistics. Andrew's and my fun times are often on our own. Sometimes I ask a stranger to take a picture of the two of us, and I do like those shots. But the candid photo ops usually end up being ops lost because I don't have enough hands to both keep him from jumping in a fountain and get the camera. I feel sad sometimes that I might forget all these little things. That's why I started this blog. I hope to paint the untaken pictures in words.

There's a good thing, though, that comes from knowing I won't have any pictures of certain moments, and that is I just focus on enjoying the moments. I don't have video of Andrew squealing with glee at the sea lions or doing his whisper roar when I said "sea lion" (for whatever reason, he whispers his roars and shouts everything else). But I had a ball sitting next to him for 10 minutes while he did it.