I’ve been blogging recently about my niece A in NYC. Today I’ll blog about my 15-months-old niece M who lives here in the LA area because I’m all about equal time. We’re all spread around this country (well, around the world) so this blog is actually a nifty tool for the rest of my family to check in on the kids until there’s a chance to synch up everyone’s schedules and get us all under one roof.

  

 

Parents tell me that before kids get to school age, children virtually grow overnight. Even if you see them every day you can see their changes.  In fact, a friend of mine recently told me that it’s not so much the changes in her toddler that she sees but that she hears. She sees his physical changes from photos and videos, but even in the weeks and months that blur from daily life, she can clearly mark his growth by his increasing grasp of the language. I call this the human science project.

While telling me this, she lamented the fact that raising a child full-time can sometimes feel unrewarding because there are no concrete, immediate goals that can be checked off as at her previous workplace.  Yes, successful potty training can be as important a milestone for a stay-at-home parent as achieving sales quotas for an exec, but there’s no white paper or strategic plan that can take a parent from beginning to end. And definitely there’s no recruiter who can bring in a replacement CEO if you get tired of managing the team.

 

So anyway, my California sister’s second human science project began in January 2008.

  

 

Just as with my other niece I documented this one’s hands and feet for future reference–what reference,  I don’t know; but reference nevertheless:

 

By the way, I’m a huge fan of the artist/photographer Chuck Close who leaves his subjects zero excuse for having a human face, so I try to take as many portraits as possible of people who’d let me. And at this point, my nieces are too young to object to my showing their portraits untouched! With the ease of technology today as well as the accepted norm of having one’s life splattered across the Internet, I simply want to witness my nieces’ lives through photography (even in these few 15 months you can see how much she has changed)…

 

…because who knows how many days we get to revel in their innocence during this wonderful project?

 

PS: since this blog is about fashion (sometimes), I have to make a note here about the fashion (or lack thereof) in my pictures. As you can see I like black t-shirts, but I promise I do wear other things.  And hopefully I can redeem my fashionista status in the next blog. One hint: shoes.