The Most Beautiful Kids in The World

Back on Memorial Day weekend Molly and Ben were playing in the backyard (Jack was riding bikes with friends).  I've made a conscious decision to try to sit down during these moments and try to read (a former favorite pastime which has been relegated to the dust heap for the last decade or so).

And I tried, really I did.

But the light was too perfect and the kids were too beautiful and even though I talked myself out of it the first few times, I finally had to listen to the voice in my head and get my camera.  They were filthy, exhausted and giggly, after a day in the pool and sun.  Molly even had ketchup on her cheek.  But still, they were the most beautiful things I'd ever laid eyes on.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love kids.  All of 'em, really.  Can't you just see all the possibilities in the world in their eyes?  All the innocence?  All the goodness in the universe?  It's present in EVERY child, I swear.  TRUE beauty that is, not the kind promoted in Hollywood.  I can see true beauty in all children: the teeny tiny ones, the big and stumbly ones, long and gangly ones, short and round ones, curly haired ones, straight haired ones, freckled ones, scarred ones, buck teethed ones, missing-teethed ones, no-teeth-at-all ones, blue eyed ones, brown eyed ones, dark ones, light ones, shy ones, loud ones....all beautiful.

But when I look at my own?  Ah, there's something magical there.  Maybe it's because we see a bit of ourselves looking back at us when we look at our own little ones.  And when I say that I mean MORE than just genetics, because I know adoptive parents who feel the same way about their kids.

It's got to be something about the LOVE we pour into them as parents that shines back at us in their smiles.

So that afternoon in the backyard, with my new 6 year old and my almost 3 and a half year old, I just couldn't resist trying to capture with my lens what my heart saw.  Do you see it?