family dynamics

Photo Friday: Smiles

I’ve been thinking about Wednesday’s post ever since I hit “publish.” Mostly the part where I talked of searching through old photos and finding so many where Ryan looked, sad, scared, detached or confused.

I talked of how I always seem to remember those photos more than the ones where we got a picture of him flashing his wonderful smile.

Well, that’s not what I want to remember. So I went back to my photo archives. It took me all of 15 minutes to put together the following collection of nothing but smiles covering those same toddler years.

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Happy Friday, everyone. Have a great weekend — full of plenty of smiles.

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Summer’s Second Half

The question came up the other day, for the first time since school let out. “Dad, is summer more than halfway over?” Ryan asked. Last summer, and probably the few summers before that, this was a frequent question. We suspect it had to do with Ryan’s nerves about changing schools, but also his general need […]

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How They Help Each Other

My children are 20 months apart. Ryan, the older one, is trying to figure out social norms and learn where he fits in. Riley, the younger sister, is barreling into tween-dom at light speed. They are often headed in opposite directions. They fight like cats and dogs. It’s rarely anything serious, just standard age-appropriate name […]

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