Before the Tweens | Columbus, Ohio Family Portrait Photographer

My son started middle school this year.  I swear it was just as hard watching him get on the middle school bus as it was putting him on the bus for kindergarten.  When the changes happen before your eyes, you almost don’t see them.  You look up and suddenly this kid is taller than his grandparents and has these lanky limbs that he can’t quite figure out how to move.  You want to hold him and squeeze him but, that snuggle point is almost gone.  There’s brief glimpses but, its fading fast.  The problems get harder and harder.  They break your heart.  They break your soul.  

The mom of this session once commented about the changes you can see each year.  How her oldest has lost some the carefree-ness of the littles.  She’s coming out of the time where kids feel everyone from adults to their friends have love, kindness and joy in their hearts.  The time before there’s a cool and a not cool.  

The thing is, that the time where there are no inhibitions, when the photographer is super funny and cool, when the snuggle point is at its perfection…is never as long as you think. That time is golden, though. They give you the carefree pics.  Those are the pics that capture their personalities.  The ones we see at home. The smiles and the looks that we hold in our hearts.

Then they become tweens.