I often come home on the weekend from my newborn photo shoots at dinner time. My husband is the main cook in our house, so managing 3 kids by himself at dinner time is no problem for him at all. Most mums I know have to switch back into ‘mummy mode’ when they get home from work, for me, I’ve pretty much been doing that all afternoon already.

Settling 5 day old newborn babies, often playing with their older brother or sister and watching the  grown ups navigate the parenting dynamics that emerge when you bring a newborn baby home. I’m thrust into the thick of parenting and this doesn’t change when I get home, except they call me mum.

You’d think as a photographer I would be photographing my children all the time. But it’s the opposite. I’m so mindful that I want my children to remember my face and not a lens peering at them that I rarely pick my camera up to catch their everyday moments. I realise that this is a ridiculous situation. One of the core strengths of ‘and then she clicked photography is capturing real moments in real environments but I’m so hell bent on NOT constantly shoving a camera at their faces that I fear I’m actually going to miss the real raw moments that make their childhood.

So from this day forward I’m throwing caution to the wind. I’m going to capture these memorable childhood moments. I’m not going to keep them on the hard drives, I’m going to print them on the best papers. I’m going to lovingly put them together in archive quality albums like I do for my clients. And when I’m old and grey I’m going to leaf through the pages of my past and smile at how cute the kids were and how bad the decor in the kitchen was.