Alex, Elliot and baby Charlie

Erin contacted me a few weeks before her due date and wanted to know if I could fit in a newborn session. She was feeling sentimental and felt like she needed to document the arrival of the last baby.  I totally understand this and remembered feeling like I wanted to freeze every second of my youngest daughter’s first few days. I know all too well from the first child how quickly it all goes by and Erin knows this from watching the last 3+ years flash by with her daughter Alex and her son, Elliot.

There is a passage from the book The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver that makes me snivel every time I read it and it captures the sentiment far better than I ever could:

“But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after – oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.”

Welcome to the world, baby Charlie.