My Boy's 6th Birthday Photoshoot


Two years ago, when my biggest boys would have turned 4 years old, I got little tee shirts made for their bears, as well as a matching little outfit for Kate to wear. I took them all out in their matching outfits and took some siblings pictures of Kate and my boys' bears. I have still loved those photos for years, and so now with Link it felt like the perfect idea to reprise the photo session idea for their birthday again this year.

And this was the result;


You know the saying “time is a funny thing…” we all have our own experiences that give us that feeling of time moving in its own wacky way. These last six years have been a strange passage of time for me. There are moments that seemed to last forever and then there are entire years that have seemed to pass in a blink.

Ever since six years ago, I have had trouble recalling my age (I am much too young to be forgetting that already, in my opinion.) When the whole year of 2016 was spent either pregnant or completely lost to grief, it sometimes [painfully] doesn’t seem to exist in my living memory. Like sometimes the whole year was just a devastating dream that my brain doesn’t count as reality. That feeling hurts in and of itself, the idea that my babies were never real at all.

So my age is not readily remembered both because I sometimes think I should be a year younger, or because I feel I will forever be the age I was before life changed completely and made me feel so much older than I truly am.

In the last six years, those last months of 2016 were some of the longest and hardest, and the year 2017 seemed to drag on and on with negative tests, a miscarriage and even more negatives. 2018 was a mix of elation and dread. Having another baby wiggling and growing inside was all I had dreamed of except it was accompanied with such sever anxiety. The month of January 2019 was the single longest month in my memory. Each day was a month of its own and I was wholly convinced both Kate and I would not make it through the month alive.

And then miraculously we did. SHE did. Alive and in my arms! And February seemed like a single day of time by comparison.

And the rest of the year breezed by at a normal feeling pace in what seemed like the the first time since my wedding.

Even though big things were happening with moving cross-country, family weddings and events, and a growing baby girl, it was all okay again. I continued to think of and miss my sons daily, but my little rainbow healed so much of the ache in my heart and helped me find my direction and purpose again. I started my business and dove into my old portrait passion again, and even through 2020 and quarantine, time moved on just as it should.

The busier seasons for photos (spring/fall) seemed to go a little faster at times, but no month flew by the way the entire year seemed to snap through since Links birth. I had my third precious August boy and then turned around and my sweet boy is already one and no longer a bitty baby.

In the same way 2017 dragged on forever, 2022 has flown by all in a breath.

And so it is honestly hard to believe that my big angel boys would be 6 years old. In so many ways they are still just my babies. But in other ways it feels like it has been longer than forever since I held them.

I adore seeing Kate and Link play and love one another so much, and constantly desperately wish that they could know and love their big brothers that same way. I know they will have the chance one day, and until then we will remember and celebrate our boys Th

Happy 6th Birthday Matt & TJ