Being Mum in front of the camera.

23. Have (updated) professional family photos done (Completed September 21, 2014)

This was a goal I was both excited about ticking off, but also dreading.

I was one of those mothers.  I was going to lose weight and have photos!  Except instead of losing weight, the number on the scale was going up.  And I realised that if I waited until I lost weight, I was never going to have photos of my family that included me.  Because despite the fact that I take photos of families for a living, and despite the fact I am constantly telling mothers to get in to photos with their children - I did not practice what I would preach.  

I cried when I went shopping for an outfit.  I came home empty handed and frustrated and in a very self depreciating mood.  Ty hid from me.  It wasn't a fun experience for either of us!  I went back without him.  I went back in to one shop, decided I wanted something in navy blue, and set myself the task.  I didn't look for long.  The first thing that looked ok was what I got.  Turns out, I rather love that dress.  It's pretty, it's comfortable, and it doesn't cling to my fat rolls.  Fingers crossed, Gina.  Hope for the best.  

Still, right up until I actually got there?  I wanted to cancel that shoot.  I made up many excuses in my head as to how I could put it off until I lost that weight.  For the record, if I did, I'd still be waiting.  And our photographer was not going to let me out of it - she knew exactly where my head was.

Mandii from Xanthe Photography is my kind of person - fun, silly, natural.  We've developed a friendship through our love of photography, and I am so grateful to have her in my life.  She was having none of my self-hate.  And despite not loving myself very much, I trusted her.  And she was great.  And she is amazing at what she does.  And I am so in love with our family photos.  We now have 2 beautiful canvases hung in our lounge room - a family portrait, and one of our 3 gorgeous kids with their favourite soft toys.  I am soon to create a photobook displaying my 60 favourite images.  And I 100% LOVE showing our photos to people, and absolutely do not care what people think of me in these photos.  Because they are so beautiful, and they are so us.  And they make me SO happy.

And here's the thing.  I surprised myself.  The first image that Mandii gave us a sneak peak of made me cry.  Me and my baby boy.  Not "OMG look at how awful I look", but "OMG I finally have a stunning photo of me and my Memphis".  And it is.  And I actually kinda love myself in it.  I look at it and think wow, he's so tiny yet suddenly not so tiny.  Look at his cheeky grin and those little fingers.  Those beautiful big eyes.  And look at me.  It's nothing to do with the fact that I  actually don't look that fat and everything to do with the fact that I look HAPPY.  That's me and my baby.  (The colour version is amazeballs, by the way... I've attached it further down!)

The first image I saw from our shoot.

All of our images captured our family exactly as we are.  Silly, cheeky, fun.  The kids had fun, and were able to explore.  Ty and I were comfortable.  The end result is a beautiful gallery full of happy photos.  So many people have made comment on how happy we look.  How much fun we must have had.  And fancy that, not one person has commented about my weight.  I've had nothing but positive comments.  And sure I still need to lose weight, but I needed to have these photos more.  It wasn't really about waiting for me to lose weight, in the end.  It was capturing my family as it is now.  Young, fun, silly.  Memphis just before he turns 1, Zavian as his cheeky 3 year old self, and Lexi, our 5 year old school girl.  Still in those stages of innocence that seem to evaporate far too early these days.

I needed these photos as much for the kids as I did for me.  They'll look back on photos I myself have taken, sure, and there are many many many images of the 3 of them and also a lot of them with their Daddy.  But images with Mummy are sparse because I hide behind the camera.  Ty rarely takes photos of me with the kids and a lot of the photos of me with them are selfies from a camera phone.  So now they have beautiful images.  Images that they will look back on and say hey look, there's my mum.  I can pretty much guarantee they'll be looking at our family and how happy we are.  And that they won't give a rats ass about the size of my body.

Go and have photos taken with your children.  Every child needs a beautiful photo with their mum.  But more than that, every mum needs one with her children.  Lucky for me, I now have quite a few.

Faith in people: Restored

I'm a mum of three.
And I just flew, twice, in the space of 11 days.  With all three.
Single mums who travel with three?  My hat comes off to you, that is for sure.  It was a lot to juggle even with Ty there!

We flew Tiger Air amidst lots of well-wishes from friends - expect very little, I was told.  Hell, I was told to not even expect our flight to leave.  I was anxious.  Really, really anxious.  What if our flight didn't leave?  We couldn't afford to rebook with another airline, and well, who wants to explain to the 4 year old jumping out of her skin with excitement because she is mere hours from seeing her grandmother?  Her favourite person in the universe?
The stars all aligned though, and although we had a half hour delay (and we've had MUCH worse than that on other airlines), we were underway and headed to Melbourne.  With 4 very lovely cabin crew who were chatty and interactive with the kids and happily let me sway and rock the baby in the galley at the back of the plane until he zonked off in to a peaceful slumber.  

Coming home, that anxiety returned a little... I really didn't want to be stuck in Melbourne.  I desperately missed my pillows.   And my cat.  All good though - off we went, excited to see one of the same cabin crew from the flight down who had kept me company during my galley-sway-session on the previous flight.  The kids were CHUFFED to be on a plane again - they loved it.  And we had cabin crew who loved kids and babies.  And a half full flight, so less people to annoy hahaha.  

Taylah, Aaron, Jye and Mitchell - AMAZING FLIGHT CREW!  AMAZING PEOPLE!

AWESOME CREW!  THANKS TIGER!

These guys were amazing!  They bent over backwards to help us out as we juggled the kids and way too much luggage (bag of Easter eggs, anyone!), fell in love with Memphis, and gave my two very well behaved bigguns a hot chocolate each (much to their delight!)  It was amazing having people so interactive with the kids because it made the trip for them a whole lot more enjoyable.  

We were chatting about Memphis and his size, as he's small for his age - not a lot bigger than a newborn at almost 6 months old - and searched our phones for a teeny Memphis picture... of course we'd wiped our phones before heading down to ensure that we had them backed up and free storage space.  So we had a whole one.  But I showed the newspaper article/pic that Alexis and Memphis were in, because that's just what a proud Mama does!  They were all excited for Lexi, who was sitting at just over $2000 (towards her $2500 goal)... One of them decided they were going to tell the other passengers about it!  We weren't sure of the response we'd get but said sure, why not!  Every dollar counts!

Aaron held up a waving (totally adorable!) Lexi, whilst Jye got on the speaker and told everyone what Miss Alexis was up to!  She seriously was up there waving like she was the Queen or something.  Over the speaker they told everyone who she was, why she was raising money, and who she was raising money for.  Most of the flight had met little Memphis as the crew had stolen him for a wander and cuddle and to head up to meet the first officer!  Was a wee bit cute!
At the end of his little speech Jye told the passengers that if they wanted to donate, to press their calls bells and they'd come along and collect.
And then, the most amazing thing happened.

ding
ding
ding
ding
ding
ding

you get the picture....

Orange lights are call bells, and that wasn't even all of them!  Some had been turned off (collected from), others hadn't rung yet. It went on for ages!!!  Was amazing!

The call bells just kept dinging, the aisle lights lighting up.  Our plane was not full, there were HEAPS of spare seats/rows.  And yet nearly every single row that had a person/people in it, lit up.  People were getting out of their seats to open the overhead lockers to get out their wallets and purses.  One even sent Lexi back a chocolate with her change!!!  The crew walked Lexi down and they FILLED a bag with coins (mostly.. so it was heavy for her hehe) and notes.  $191.75 later - the passengers on flight TT572 Melbourne to Gold at 6:35pm Saturday 26th April, you are all AMAZING!!!

I can't even tell you the emotion when those bells started dinging.  The look on Lexi's face as she walked down and people encouraged her, praised her, and donated.  To a cause that is so close to our hearts, to a child trying to make a difference.  There's no words.  I cried, not going to lie.  Until Ty laughed at me for it, so I sucked it up.  But I couldn't stop smiling, and I will never ever forget.

As people disembarked that plane, instead of the usual rush and grumble, anyone who passed her spoke to her.  More encouragement, more enthusiasm.  People were happy.  As we stood waiting for the car we even had a few wave out, call out, honk their horn as they drove past us!  
It was an amazing and surreal experience.

So if you were ever wondering if anyone ever had a good thing to say about Tiger Airways?  The answer is yes.  I do.  And no I'm not sponsored to say that haha!

As of midday today (28/04/2014) Alexis' fundraising total sits at $2880 ($500 of that in cash, the rest online donations).  She has exceeded her $2500 goal and is now powering towards $3000.  People are quite honestly amazing, we've had so many generous friends and family jump on board and donate, and we've had so many strangers, also.

I am so incredibly proud.

Click here to donate!

Thanks Tiger & Passengers! <3

In The Paper

My biggest and my littlest were in the newspaper today!

In case you can't read it here's the link!