#kristilstuart

Chris Hadfield.

She's almost 15 months old.

I convinced my best friend and photographer to do some family photos at a farmer's market we went to a lot this summer. He would tell you he is better at taking photos of old buildings and dead sticks, but he's a good sport.

I take/have a lot of photos of Grace. And I mean a lot. I have most of the moms on Facebook beat. But taking these constant photos is my way of fighting to hold on to as many memories as I can as I get older. And, not to be depressing, but I also like to think of it as a way to ensure that if anything ever happened to me, there are piles and piles of evidence that I not only loved her more than anything, but that our little family has had so many truly great and happy times together already. Especially now, in this amazing but weird age where she (somewhat sadly) won't remember any of the times we've had. I don't mean to paint an unrealistic picture, we've had our rough days and tears and fears like everyone, but they are drowned out by days like this.

There's a monster in our closet.

Last week when we were on vacation, Kristi had to leave early for work. The last night I was there in the bedroom by myself and I heard a noise. When I checked, there was a monster. Friendly though, it kept me company the rest of the night. 

Star Trek: The Adventures of Captain Grace!

A short history of this blog. With pictures.

One nice thing about the Saltys nomination, besides discovering some new local people to follow, is that it made me take a look back through all of my posts, pick a few favourites, and think about why I started the blog. Before Grace was born I decided I wanted to do some sort of photo project with her as she grew. I ran through a lot of complicated and artsy ideas, and in the end, instead of committing myself to one focused plan and failing as soon as it became to hard, I decided to just do my best to post some non tradition baby photos once a month or as often as my new schedule allowed. 

Looking at this post after doing a little collection, I'd say there are a lot more photos over the span of 7 months than I would have expected, thanks to help from Dan Culberson, Brenda McLeese and of course Kristi being the most patient person alive at times. 

People often say, she is going to hate this when she's older. And well, there likely will be a time where that is completely true, but I have put some thought into that, and I'd like to think she'll be cool enough to roll with it and march to the beat of her own drum a bit. And I have high hopes she'll absolutely think it's cool later on. Besides, people's pics of their kids have exploded to the point where I'm not sure old pics will be as embarrassing as they are now. I would trade any of these for the photos of me with bad hair, a silk shirt and bad acne from Jr High. 

Really, to be honest though, these are for me. She is such a focal point in my life, and in my heart that all of my thoughts are funnelled through the Grace filter, so all of my I love you's also turn into weird photo sets. I don't think that's such a bad thing.

Why post these if they're just for me you say? Well, there wouldn't be much on the internet if everyone thought that way. I've been inspired quite a bit by other creative family photos, and would be very pleased if any of these ever did the same for others. 

The Magic Show and The Magic Show Outtakes

The Littlest Turtle

The Cute is Strong with this One

The Littlest Rocksmith

Santa's Little Elf 

Star Trek - The Adventures of Captain Grace (They're all through the blog lately)

The Photos of Anthony Geddes

Baiting Businessmen with Burgers (No baby, just wanted to sneak this in)

Lazy Sunday

The Continuing Adventures of Captain Grace

Captain Grace