Seven Days Of Change // A personal post

I spent 7 days with my cameras close to hand at home for two reasons: Firstly with a 5 week wedding breather I was getting an itchy trigger finger. And secondly, and most importantly, pointing my camera at something *anything* some how lets me see it in a different way and make some kind of sense of it…it sounds weird but its true.

Phoebe (as I post this) is 2 years and 9 months old.  She is fun, she is creative, she is shy and outgoing in equal measures, she is an observer and along with her mum (who she adores so much it makes me want to want to burst with pride) she is my whole world.

But she is defiant, fiercely independent and annoyingly determined.  And she is growing up.

This frustrates us and confuses her. Its easy to trivialise this as a phase, as the “terrible two’s” and hope she will grow out of it. BUT. When these are character traits you want your child to grow INTO rather than out of then…well then its hard.

So you wait and you watch and you share your frustrations, write a blog and take some pictures. But you refuse to become a parent who spends their life telling their child to “do as they are told”

And purely by coincidence (unless my camera has become some kind of miracle parenting tool) the week you slow down and start to look at things differently…well things start to change *maybe*

I see in these images all of the above: The fun, the bond with mum, the shyness, the defiance, the frustration and the anger BUT I can also see a change. An understanding and acceptance and control that I didn’t see before.

I have huge hopes for her. HUGE. But I know she will get there in her own way and in her own time.

And one day when Phoebe’s generation of little girls are ruling the world..maybe she will look back at this little outpouring and remember what a soppy sod her old man was 🙂

MATT X