Family Ties

We drove almost two thousand miles this week, and it was all worth it for this...



...the beaming faces of Matilda's grandparents, who haven't seen her since she was two weeks old. She is inches longer, pounds heavier, and an entirely different baby since they met her. It was also worth it for the quieter, poignant joy of introducing Matilda to my father's parents, her great-grandparents:



I am the oldest of their fourteen grandchildren, and Matilda is the youngest of their four great-grandchildren. There are only four years between the youngest grandchild and the oldest great-grandchild, so we are the beginning and end (for now) of a 26 year long family baby boom.

Matilda also met several of my mom's siblings and my cousins when we stopped in upstate New York on both ends of our roadtrip:



And she spent hours being held (wrangled, really - unless she's sleepy, she's more curious than cuddly) by my brothers and my Massachusetts aunts, uncles, and cousins.



These aren't even half of the family members who loved on her, snuggled her, exclaimed how much she looked like me or Joshua or one of my cousins, and treated her as if she was just known to all of us forever.

My brothers were laughing about how many photos Joshua and I took every day. Besides the fact that we love (too much? can there be a too much?) documenting Matilda's life, we are also having fun playing with our new camera's lenses and settings and seemingly boundless options that hopefully end up as glowing, gorgeous photos. But along the way to this emotional moment as my parents were saying goodbye to Matilda:



We also had some moments of rage against the paparazzi:



What can I say, Matilda may be completely immune to the shutter click of the camera, but obviously my dad was still getting used to it. I'm sure by the time we left days later he barely noticed it either.

Some people, like my brother Aaron, just embraced it -and he will kill me for posting this, but I don't think he reads this blog. Ha. So yeah, it was also worth the 2000 mile drive to see him in these girly sunglasses and scarf:



What a delightful trip!