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Reagan’s 5 Year Pictures- Knoxville Children’s Portrait Studio

Sniff sniff.  So you know time has went by way too fast when you are now celebrating your first born’s birthday with all five fingers on your hand.  5 years!  It pains me to say it.  While it has been such an incredible venture watching her grow and blossom into a little girl, it just breaks my heart to see her not be a baby anymore.  She’s losing her sweet baby voice.  Ahhhhh.  Come on, just let me pout.  🙁

Reagan Kay- “Rea Rea”, my #1, my princess.  She was the one that taught me that this life wasn’t about me at all.  She’s the one that helped me to realize how much love my heart could really hold and how it felt to truly feel “worry”.  She’s the reason my school-teaching career was so short-lived and why I am now a photographer.

She is the typical firstborn personality type- a perfectionist, over-achiever, intelligent, compliant, orderly child.  She seriously has a heart of gold.  She is so kind and thoughtful—has a magical imagination.  She literally brings me to tears at least once a week at the incredibly kind things she says.  I am not even kidding.  When I look at her, I think “No wonder God wants us to come as a child.”  God really does “wonderfully” make and knit every person that comes into this world.  The level of innocence, goodness, purity, kindness, and love that just naturally exists inside her is so refreshing.  I think that is why it bothers me so for her to get older.  I don’t know what happens between birth and adulthood, but I ache to think about it.  The world and what it does to that pure child-like soul is not something I care to entertain.  I was recently talking with a friend whose daughter has just been in school a couple years and she compared it to watching her child’s innocence being chiseled away bit by bit.  Ugh.  ANOTHER reason I want to home school at least through elementary school!  I know I cannot shelter my kids from “life” forever, but while they are still so young and impressionable, I want to nurture them and cultivate the good that is already inside them.  For weeks now, I have been feeling such a strong call and duty to be responsible for teaching them to be Christ-like, little disciples. That’s a whole other blog post that is probably out there somewhere in the future.  🙂

Six years ago, out of college, I NEVER would have guessed where I would be at this point in my life- 3 young children, stay-at-home mother with a blooming small business.  Wow. I went to school to be a school teacher and now this?  ha!  I recently read a quote that has just stuck with me, and I’m reminding myself of it everyday- “God is the best author of fairy tales.”  So even though my life has been quite different from what I expected it to be, I’m good with it. I am blessed and highly favored.  And I have come to realize as long as I have His favor, everything will be okay.

When Reagan was born, I was really protective and wanted everything to be perfect.  EVERYTHING.  I mean like crazy perfect.  I still chuckle at some of the first time parents that come in my studio with their newborns- remembering myself as a new mother.  Wow….. again, I never would have called how time could change me.  Three kids later, I am really at ease and comfortable with chaos and imperfection.  At times, I almost feel numb to it.  I have learned to not care and not worry.  It has been life-changing.  (Remember, I’m the firstborn personality, too!)   I mean, I still have my moments.  I say it all the time- unless you have babysat all 3 of my kids by yourself for hours at a time, you don’t get it.  It’s okay, though.  🙂  I know that I am a much better mother now than I was five years ago.  It might not look like it on the surface, but yep, definitely true.

So, back to Reagan- she loves to sing, dance, paint, and do any kind of hands-on project (cooking, gardening, building, creating, etc.).  Her favorite color is “all the colors of the rainbow”.  Is that even allowed?  Doesn’t seem fair to me.  She enjoys telling jokes.  I will laugh hysterically at her jokes even if they don’t make sense.  And I adore that she really thinks that I think her jokes are THAT funny.  🙂  She is really trying to get her “cartwheel” down.  She is into dramatic play these days- she was just playing a waitress at “Reagan’s Pizza Place” earlier.  She said, “Can I get you a table for one?” ha!  She knows the words to a lot of praise and worship songs and sings them quite well.  I love that she loves to sing and that she actually can sing in tune!  One day I caught her singing harmony!  (That’s my girl!)  She likes so many different things on tv right now and is getting pretty hooked on our ipad.  I have to really watch how much time she spends on them.

She sees the beauty in simple things- flowers, glitter, animals…  Oh she loves animals!  She comes by it honestly.  I was picking up strays and bringing them home as soon as I got my driver’s license.  I feel that my payback days are not far away.

She knows all the names of the My Little Ponies and Disney princesses (of course!).  Her dream of visiting Disney World is finally going to come to pass in just a few more weeks.  Lord, help us.  Who am I kidding?  I can’t wait, either.  Our first Disney trip.

She is a sponge soaking up all the information around her.  I think she even learns in her sleep!  She has an outstanding memory.  Oh yeah!  She is learning to read!  It’s a pretty big milestone, I think, right?  Yeah.  I have been working with her almost daily when we can catch some quiet one-on-one time (rare).  I have taught her to read with a pretty strong phonics approach and am now trying to get a better balance with some leveled readers.  I have been kicking around the idea of starting a home school blog.  (Like I need one more thing to keep up with!!)  I have people that ask me about how it is going all the time.  I wish everyone could see how neat it is!  I know people have preconceived notions about home school or whatever.  But really, it is wonderful.  Our days just go by so fast and it is so hard to balance home school vs. mommy vs. wife vs. photographer.  HELP!!!!  My goal for the next few months is to find better balance and work on a little bit more structure/routine.  The story of my life…

Being the big sister has really helped her to become quite flexible.  She is constantly getting her toys and stuff messed up and broken.  She knows that taking care of the babies is important and has often had to take a backseat to them.  (Literally, too!) She has had to help me watch the other two and alert me when they are getting into trouble.  I don’t know what I would have done without her help, at times.  She knows she is responsible for them and their care.  I guess that is a good thing.  She will probably be a tattletale as time goes on, but what can I say?  I have trained her to be that way.

One more thing- she is learning a memory verse every week for Sunday school.  (Oh yeah, I’m the Sunday school teacher,too! ha!)  It brings me so much joy and comfort to hear God’s word coming out of her little lips.  Learning the verses with her each week is giving me strength and endurance to keep on going!

You’re probably tired of hearing me ramble on.  You know the saying that “Each thinks their crow is the blackest.”  LOL  I don’t feel like I have time to share a lot of personal stuff on my blog because I am always so busy turning around sessions.  So every now and then I enjoy taking some time to give you glimpses into our lives, our home.  I am just a regular person taking my life one day at a time.

Reagan, if you ever get big enough to read mommy’s blog, please know that I am so proud of you.  You inspire me to be a better person than I was the day before.  I love you- always.

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