Embracing The Awkward

We are a family of late bloomers. This is part memoir about embracing the awkward and part parenting about how it is to appreciate your beauty I wonder if everyone thinks that their own personal middle school/junior high awkward periods were worse than anyone else’s own personal middle school/junior high awkward periods. Right? Does that sound like you? Well, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re wrong.

Embracing the Awkward:

I was much more awkward than you. I was really short but my hair was gelled as high as my entire head. There was an ill-fated perm that took years to grow out. There were the two front teeth that were accidentally (I think?) knocked out by my paddle-wielding-brother and so I was either called “One-Tooth Willie” or, later, I had braces for over two years to correct my Willie-itis. I think I dressed ok, if you consider wearing size 9 jeans on a size 1 frame ok. Puberty wasn’t even in the distant horizon, really until after I had a baby and learned you could be skinny AND curvy. And it’s cool like that.

I survived, boy did I survive. Every physical problem I described above was corrected to my own satisfaction – thick, wavy hair, straight teeth, a six inch growth spurt, wearing clothes my own size…but I feel a little awkward every now and then.

It occurred to me that awkward periods still happen to me, after all this time!

During periods of great growth, both physically and emotionally in my case, come periods of great awkwardness. Sometimes it seriously is physical. Cutting my hair too short, being lazy or in November and not wearing clothes that fit, whatever. Mostly, it’s not physical. Lately as I’m ironing out some changes in my life, I’m in a weird in-between state. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s just…awkward. Although one of my major awkward symptoms now IS physical. I’m in that weird, in between stage where whether or not I’m “showing” in my pregnancy yet depends on who you ask.

If you ask me, yes, there is a stomach where there didn’t used to be a stomach. If you ask my mom and Cassidy, yes, there is a stomach where there didn’t used to be a stomach. Other people tell me it looks like I had a night of heavy drinking or heavy eating. Not cool, guys. Not cool.

Anyway, now we are very slowly transitioning to a huge step in our lives – Scarlet starting pre-school.

She will start in September, I suppose, unless I can get her in somewhere before that. Having a three-year-old and a newborn both home all day, every day with me…kinda scares me. She is so darn independent. I almost hope the next baby is slightly more clingy, but no, I know I have it good. She can leave for days on end without a backwards glance. I know she loves us like crazy but she needs her space as well. She has made that clear.

So now we know pre-school is eventually coming and we’re trying to give her the space she needs – she goes with her grandparents, sometimes for hours and sometimes for days. I find myself both loving this transition and getting anxious for a more permanent one, but also a little sad that our days together will change. Ultimately, it’s a great thing. I am itchy right now to do something – work full-time, work part-time, or just have more Scarlet-free time, but on the other hand, it’s strange knowing that in 5 1/2 months, I will be pretty laid up at home.

For now, well…we have now. An awkward part of the year for me. Embracing the awkward part of the year.

Even though winter just started, it already feels half over to me. The extra sunlight is slightly noticeable. I don’t want to spend my days waiting for more sunlight, though. I want to make the most of what sunlight we have now.

And with what I don’t have?? Any desire at all to go out in this arctic air. Well, I guess the thing I’m so against – using anything other than natural light photography – well, screw that. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em:

I will always love natural light best and nothing could change that. But I do love the way the flash brings out things I don’t normally see – lighter eyes, poutier lips, different shades of hair and eye color from what I’ve ever seen.

I’m kinda embracing the awkward. These shots are priceless.

I want to do better than to live my life waiting for the awkwardness to iron out; waiting for the perfect, posed portrait, waiting for all of my ducks to be in a row. I want to embrace the awkwardness! My in-between belly? It’s kinda awesome. It’s hard and not at all jiggly like beer belly is. This in-between sunlight thing? Fine, then. We’ll just use half natural light and half flash, or all flash. Whatever it takes to embrace the now. Waiting for my kid to go to school? Well, right now she is my job and I vow to enjoy the heck out of this job because one day she’ll go to college and I’ll sob into my pillow a lot.

Awkward is the new cool, I think.