Favorite Photos: "Cheese Face"

I read a lovely entry on this blog (the Nie Nie Dialogues, whom most of you have heard about, by a lovely woman who writes on motherhood and her family. She is now in a hospital in Arizona after she and her husband were in a plane crash. Read about it here).

She quotes Elder Ballard (one of the leaders of our church) who quotes Anna Quindlen:

"Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments.{or if I could enter here-the basket-head mother syndrome} She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”(Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).

I've been trying to do ths more recently. Rocking Evie before bed, really playing and trying to remember that I'm loving what I'm doing. And I want to remember -- what my children were like, what they sounded like, what they did. So I'm going to write it down. So, when I look back, I will remember.


This is Evie's "cheese" face. Her response to you pulling out the camera (followed by "deese!" at the top of her little lungs). Or pointing at the fridge at snack time (or any time, frankly. that child eats more cheese than anyone I know). It's the "I know you're looking at me" face. Or the "I really want this so I'll ask really nicely" face. Or the "I know I'm doing something I'm not supposed to and I'm watching you to see if you notice" face. And, it generally works.