J is for

So, if the day ever comes when my mother finds this blog, it is highly likely that it will be my last day on Earth, fairly certain she will kill me for posting an image of her here. Why then am I posting it? Her name starts with J. So today, J is for my mother.

This was not the photo I was planning for today. It isn't even the photo I was planning for yesterday, when I should have taken my 'J is for' photo and made this post. Just a few weeks into things and already I am only photographing and posting every second day. While I have been feeling a bit disappointed with myself on the days that I don't post, surprisingly enough I am not really punishing myself about it like I used to. In fact, if I had failed at something like this before I probably would have just given up. As soon as there is any sign of failure I usually give in. But I'm going to keep going with this, just, in my own time I guess, on my own schedule. Not that my is hectic and full on or anything, but I still spend the majority of my days exhausted, and I think that's something that is going to get worse coming into the third trimester of this pregnancy and well into the first few months of Hippos life.

Anyway, I've gotten myself a bit off track. For J I was going to take a photo of myself, and make it 'J is for Just Me'. I was going to talk a bit about myself and how things are going with me and my depression. How I am feeling and coping. I feel as though I have been taking the easy route with my photos and posts lately, and to be honest I am struggling to come to terms with talking about my life right now so it has been kind of on purpose that I've been glossing over things and my posts have been quite one-dimensional.

I really couldn't help myself today though, when my mother came home from work and wanted to start building my daughters birthday present with her, and the two of them sat down at the table and started working together happily I had to go and grab my camera and take a shot. As I've said before, I really prefer these unplanned moments that just happen to make the best 'real' photos of my life.

So not only would mother kill me for posting a photo of her at all, let alone a 'natural' photo of her where she is wearing her house-clothes and no makeup, but the house is a mess, I was half way through making dinner, the table is obviously covered in pieces, not the type of photo she would like shared!

My daughter was being a bit silly when she saw the camera pointed at her, and the lighting in the room was really poor, I had to bump the ISO up way further than I would ever like to as I felt that grabbing my flash out would have ruined the naturalness of the moment. I chose to compensate by having a large aperture, which meant only my mother was in focus and everything else has that gorgeous blur (except the screwdriver that my daughter managed to hold at exactly that distance at the moment I took the photo!). I'm really happy with the focus choice though as it highlights the topic of the post. My mother does a lot with my daughter, her granddaughter. I am very grateful for it and the bond the two of them share. I believe without a doubt that my mother is the second most important person in my daughters life, with me being the first. Perhaps one day her step-father, my husband, will take that place, but it is hard to expect a bond that has only been developing for less than a year to exceed that bond of spending 7 years being so close to her grandmother.