Grandparent Daycare
It has been on a my mind a lot the past couple weeks, how grateful I am to the grandparents of the world, especially my own parents. And apparently yesterday was National Grandparent Day and I missed it. Like many, I’ve had to lean in hard to parent/grandparent support during this pandemic. When childcare is abruptly swiped out from under your feet, that solid ground we all thought we were on the first month or two of 2020, I had to ask for help in a big way. My superhero mother came to the rescue and supported our family a ton March-August so I could continue working; pandemics aren’t great times to quit as a nurse, and although photography initially came to a standstill, I think the experience of the last six months has brought many people to desire capturing the phase of life they’re in even more.
The heartbreaking thing for my own family, and likely many others this fall, has been that after getting even more time than usual with the grandparents, we now have to break off to protect them for awhile. And that’s new and messy and sad. We’re trying to get creative and did a socially distanced hike with them last week. It ended in my kids crying for half of the hour long drive home, about how very much they miss grandma and grandpa, but it was obviously still worth it. The uncertainty of not knowing exactly when we’ll catch up on all the lost hugs is painfully hard. Anyways, this wasn’t meant to be a story just about my family, because from talking to others, they’re in a similar boat.
So let’s celebrate all the grandparents, not just on grandparent day! This session was about another family, actually two, that had to lean on the grandparents for regular daycare over the past six months. To the four kids this was probably like a weekly vacation escape. And I’m sure to the grandparents it didn’t feel like that in every moment (4 kids under 5!), but they sure made it look easy. I loved capturing this “Day in the Life” of some of their family adventures including exploring in the garden, breakfast at a gourmet restaurant where the kids had a personal waiter and chef, and of course lots of playing! The family film is at the bottom after a few photos from the morning.
