Today

Kaitlin is my third child. She has, in the past few months, reached the stage of in between. She is in no way any longer a child but doesn't yet fit into the adult world. As with Craig and Stephanie at the same time in their lives, every now and then I will catch a glimpse of the women, or in Craig's case, the man, she will become. It's a quick fleeting moment in time that always throws me off. I am never expecting it. It will be a sudden smile over their shoulder or a few steps on their walk to the school bus stop. Sometimes its in the way they laugh at something silly one of the dogs or I have just done or just the way they will put down their fork. Always it shows itself and then disappears before my mind processes what I just saw.

It floors me every time.

But with Kaitlin, I have a little bit of a practiced eye. I am starting to catch more of these moments. And today, our photographer caught one on film, or in technology's language he caught one on a digital chip.

Kaitlin and I spent about a 1/2 hour in the studio to get her school photo package done. George is an award winning professional photographer who has taken my children's annual photos since Kaitlin was 3 yrs old. He does an absolutely fantastic job of it, but today, he out did himself.

The very first shot he took to test the lighting was the winner of the bunch. He took about 15 shots total, in various poses, but after looking at them all, he didn't really have to. This one is the kind of photo that could be in a wall of photos and would call me from across the room and I would have to stand and just look back at it for a while.

It is going to be very hard to wait the two weeks for the package to be printed and to give them out.