We decided to book a full Day in the Life session with the incredibly talented Jenna Shouldice when Morgan was 2.5 and Farrin was just under 1. For 2 years, of the last 2.5, I’d been on maternity leave from my nursing job, pouring my heart and soul into raising these two little girls. And sometimes, it felt like there was little to show for it, other than keeping us all alive at the end of every day. This phase of life came with a lot of challenges, having two toddlers in the house at once is definitely exhausting, and I was rarely feeling my best (at anything, but particularly parenting). But, I was absolutely trying my best all day every day. Another reason, I wanted to book a session at this time was that I was supposed to go back to my nursing job part-time soon and so it sort of marked this period of time where I spent significantly more time with the girls than my husband. I always found it so hard to sum up our days, when he’d ask what we did in a day. For example, the day Jenna was photographing us, I can’t really say anything that we truly “accomplished” - I mean we got the dogs out for a walk and I did shower while the girls napped which was a fairly big success, but otherwise if I was to describe it, it would sound boring - like we got dressed, we ate, we made messes, we cleaned messes, I breastfed Farrin a lot, Morgan used the potty a lot, and then 200 temper tantrums later, my husband was home from work. BUT our days (and this day) were SOOOO much more than that. They were full of love, laughter, and lots of hard work. I want to remember all the in between moments, how my girls look at me, the little connections we have throughout the day, how our dogs add to the family love + chaos, and how all the hard exhausting work of being a parent 24/7 truly is worth it. These photos show me all of that and I can feel the love when I look at them, and I know they’ll only increase in value over the years! Take a look at a little slice of my life below; these are only a very small portion of the hundreds of amazing photos we got back from that day. If you want to check out more of Jenna’s work, you can find it here: www.jennashouldice.com