After Anabelle

Today we're talking about family. What is our family today, what does it look like today? It was difficult to choose between photos today, so I'm going to share them all. 

This was us a week ago. 

This is the day we became a family with two rainbows; the day our smallest was born. This was the first photograph of 'the four of us together'.  I love how adoringly Xander is studying his new baby brother. How gently his hands rested on Zac. 

This was our first 'official' of 'formal' family shoot after Zachary was born. This photo is the central piece on the storyboard frame from that shoot. It is one of my favourite photographs of 'the four of us'. 

For a very long time I struggled to call photographs like this family photos. I struggled, and still sometimes do, to say 'of the four of us' because that number should be five. I love these photos. I love having photographs of the four of us; this year my little 'project' as it were has been take a photograph of us on the 1st of each month - making an effort to get more photographs of us altogether. 

As altogether as it can be. 

Sometimes in our photographs I can almost see her. I see the space where she would be. A week ago I could see her space would've been on her Daddy's lap. The day Zac was born she would've been stood right next to Xander, in an identical pose, looking just as adoringly at her newest small brother. In that studio photoshoot she would've been sat on my other knee, snuggled in close, helping me hold our new baby Small. 

She is the missing person in all our family photographs, and I always feel it.  

We're the family of five that look like a family of four. We're five.