Chubby Cheek Photography Houston, TX Natural Light Photographer

okay okay sorry the blog has been quiet lately, as you know i went out of town for a little r&r with daddy cheeks last week, and limited edition saltwater sessions are THIS WEEKEND and the threat of rain is literally a dark cloud over my head, blech!

i opened up another smart cookie academy class for june…so if you are interested in a “how to use your dslr” hit me up in an email

and last but not least i have to apologize to each of you who took the time to email me, comment, or send some love after this post last week because i headed out of town and didn’t get to respond to each of you from my little ol cell phone, lordy lordy that would have taken me years, ha

so i am taking the time to say it now, THANK YOU, i am happy that i will not be alone on this journey and i will walk with each of you on this challenge….so here is how we will do it….

write…write your letters….love your babies….and tell them!

if you feel so inclined to share feel free to link to the original post or any of my letters or shoot even post your link on my ccp Facebook wall, this way i can see, WE CAN ALL SEE in the comments that you wrote to your babies and head on over to give you some encouragement, learn from YOUR LIFE, and lift you up with love.

the thing is we are all moms, we are all in the same place, we all have good days where we feel like mom of the year and bad days where we feel like going back to bed.  we all have dirty laundry on the floor and folded laundry sitting on our coffee table at some point, right?!  you don’t have to be a photographer, heck you don’t even have to have girls, or kids really, maybe you want to write to your future kids.  who cares?!  i can learn from you, you can learn from me we can all LEARN From each other!  there is no deadline or set number of letters you need to write…there are no rules…

let’s do this

4:04 am – may third - two thousand twelve

i sat upright in bed startled…by something?!  by nothing?!…a sense of uneasiness sitting in the pit of my stomach like a rock.

i layed back down and closed my eyes willing my mind to go back to sleep, trying to ignore whatever it was that woke me up in the first place.  listening to the rise and fall of sleep around me.  funny thing, i am here, at my parents house, sleeping in my parents bed WITH my MOM AND MY GIRLS, ha ( and for the record, daddy cheeks is in houston, he wasnt all alone in the other room or anything).  yep i will freely admit it right at this very moment that i may have slept with my mom one too many nights past one too many birthdays, and maybe this night was or was not one of those.  but nonetheless there i was teetering on the edge of a king size bed with both girls stacked on top of eachother and on top of me and my tingling arm reaching out to feel my mom on the other side (with a ton of space to be all sprawled out on, i might add…of which she was not, she was huddled right next to cheeks #1).

i layed there, for real wide awake at this point, smelling a mixture of carefree cartwheels in the grass, aveeno baby shampoo, and a little hint of dora, crest toothpaste.

….oh the magic of mommy moments….

4:29 am my arm is beyond feeling, so i finagle my way off of the sliver of bed i managed to balance on and got up.

my mind is a funny thing it never stops, really, as in N-E-V-E-R, but i still couldnt shake whatever it was that woke me up in a panic.

so i sat, in the dark in the quiet, all alone.

finally…i knew, and it hurt.

you see a few months ago my new friend amy lucy asked me to be a part of something special.  She had gathered a circle of women, of photogs around the u.s. who had daughters and she wanted us to take part in sharing “letters to our daughters” each month.  but in my ins and outs, my daily ups and my daily downs, my MIND got in the way.  While i was overcome with the idea i couldnt commit.  My mind rolled through the million things i have to do, the million other thing i need to do and the other million things i wanted to do…my mind said “no maam your plate is full”, i convinced myself my yearly birthday letters were good enough.  i sadly declined.

period.

a month or so past and apparently this NOT SO FULL feeling decided to grow inside the pit of my stomach, it needed to wake me up.

RIGHT NOW.

today.

this morring, sandwiched on a bed with my mom and my babies. the irony of it is not lost on me by the way.

my heart is fighting my mind.  the mommy guilt that i shoo away in my friends, was staring me in the face.  WITH GOOD REASON!  how on earth could i have said thanks but no thanks!?  WHY am i saying no to my babies?!

so thats it, im NOT.

while i can not be a part of amy’s amazing group as they have already launched the circle and life will surely try to get in my way bc i have no one to hold me accountable for posting i will follow my heart.

bc every day is a fresh start, a day to make right what went wrong yesterday, a day to be better, a day to fail, a day to learn, a day to teach…

everyday is a blessing and none of us are guaranteed tomorrow.

life will NOT get in the way of me LIVING!

so this post, while not in letter format and minus any images (bc i am not on my own computer of course) is my first letter to my daughters…

wont you join me?!  encourage me and others?!  hold me accountable?!  share with me?!

learn with me.