It had been a long and busy weekend – football game into the early morning on Friday two hours away, family visit, a birthday party and a baptism (thank goodness no sessions!).  Driving home from Fall River at 5:45 I looked at the sky – the beautiful, sunlit sky and asked my son if he wanted to go do his six year old photo shoot at “our field” which we discovered a few weeks ago.  He said sure, so when we got home we changed in record time, he put on his new red puffer vest and we went out to our field.  20 minutes of shooting was what I got.  I could have done more (and so could he!) but it was getting late.

These are perhaps my favorite photos of him ever.  Not only because the light was gorgeous, the location was everything I had imagined and my subject was one piece of my heart.  Not only because I was truly shooting for myself and no one else.  But because in 20 minutes I captured over 40 images (edited, much more were shot!) of my boy as he is.  His total and true personality.  I got the serious, the giggles, the jumping, the running, everything.  I got the 6-going-on-30 side of him in his serious face as well as the 6-going-on-3 side of him when he told me to take a picture of his bum as he rolled around.

My first baby is six years old.  Six very big, loud, excitable, wonderful years.  He’ll be passing me soon in height (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, he’s only 4ft tall and I’m 5’3″ but he’ll get there soon enough).  He eats enough that the teenage years’ grocery bills are scaring me already.  He loves his legos and is really getting into dinosaurs and loves all things Cars 2, though we’ve yet to see the movie.  He started kindergarten (he missed the cutoff by four days last year).  My baby is riding a bus and going away to school.   He has to shop in the 4-7x boys section now.  The “t” clothes are gone.   He inhales books, zipping through them in mere hours – right now he is obsessed with Hardy Boys and Geronimo Stilton.  He talks all of the time and is the most amazing big brother I have ever seen.  He lives and loves so passionately and so fully it terrifies me the idea of releasing him into the world in case anyone would ever hurt or disappoint him.

He is my first baby and my growing-way-too-quickly big boy.

He is my one giant third of my heart.

Evolution of a laugh…

Look at the clouds, mommy…

Let’s run again, mommy.  I’ll race you…

Make some faces for me…

Oh Captain, my Captain

My boy.  My love.  My heart.