Capturing Time

So I decided at around January 3rd to participate in the Photo A Day project. Granted that means I missed three days but I have been keeping up ever since. There are days that I almost forget and I take picture of something random, like my cat snuggled in my bed right before I get in. Other days I actually remember to pull out my camera at a moment that is telling of my day. Like today when I caught N's protest on the streets of Cambridge. He just sat down and wouldn't move. He wasn't screaming. It wasn't a full blown out tantrum. Just a protest that he didn't want to leave. So he went limp on the sidewalk and just sat there. And I let him. Sometimes it's easier. I let him sit there for a few minutes, pointing at trucks and "talking" to me. I took photos.

As much as a lot of these photos seem trivial on a daily basis (like the one I took of my blueberry muffin batter) I imagine when I look back at them at the end of the year I will enjoy them. They will give me a sense of where I was a year ago, or ten months ago, or 5 months ago. When you have young children those can be very different spaces of time. So in that same line of thinking I've decided to capture the joy of the year as well. Parenting is so much about just getting through. Getting through this stage, this event, this meal, this bedtime, this night..... But along the way there are those moments of sublime joy. And in the 99% of the day of "getting through" its hard to remember the 1%. It's probably why my favorite article ever about parenting (with the most telling title) is the NY Times "All Joy, No Fun". But the reality is that each week has a moment. Maybe more than one, maybe less, but I want to make Friday JOY DAY. Starting now, each I will write about one moment of pure parenting joy from the week. This leaves 48 more weeks for me to come up with something. Per usual, it's to help me keep things in perspective.

And to be clear, this week's moment of joy was NOT N's Occupy Porter Square stunt. Not even close.