Orange County photographer | Tara Whitney – Orange County's Leading Photographer. Family, Pregnancy, Maternity, infant, Newborn, Baby, engagement photography in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego

July is going to be pretty hard to talk about, seeing as how I can hardly remember what happened now. What day is it again?

It was the coldest July we have had in southern California in 100 years. I am not complaining.

We took a vacation, but we didn’t go very far. (This photo was taken on the ground of the Orange County fair, after all of us took a turn in a photo booth.) I remember reading in a magazine years ago, about a great way to save money while going on vacation. The people in the article – they called it a “Staycation” and spent time at home and in their city acting like tourists. It was the perfect fit for us homebodies who live in an area full of things to do. We thought it would be perfect for Mckenna, who doesn’t like flying or traveling. And it forced us to get out and do the things we have always said we would do. Like rent a boat, see a play in Balboa Park, go to the local water park, spend a day in Mission Beach, take the kids to a concert, do a food crawl at the OC Fair…

All in all the week we spent together was full of good memories, but it really brought to the forefront something else that is hard to talk about. Mckenna. I don’t often talk about how hard it is to parent a child like her. I choose to focus on the good things, and each good thing is such a celebration that it is easy not to tell the whole truth about our life with her.

But…

Mckenna doesn’t like doing things. Mckenna doesn’t like to be in, what are to her, stressful out of the norm situations. Like vacations. Mckenna would be happiest alone in our house, with no noise except for the noise she creates. With full control of what she wants to eat and when, what she wants to do and when, and the remote control. Her natural tendencies lean toward an isolated hermit in the middle of nowhere. With a Target for dollar stop shopping. That is always empty, except for one cashier and her. Because of this, Mckenna tends to impede on the sense of ease and fun during a vacation, and what really became clear to me on this one is that we need help. What really became clear to me on this one is that my burning desire to have my family unit always together, may be actually tearing us apart.

Now that the younger three have surpassed her emotionally, we are in this impossible place. Parents to a child like Mckenna, but also parents to three typical children like Drew, Nathan, and Anna. They both need us equally as desperately. And as I stare, slightly stubbornly, down the barrel of parenting an adult with special needs, and the rest of my life, I start panicking. I don’t know what this is supposed to look like. I don’t know if I can do this. I certainly know I don’t want to be doing it alone anymore. It isn’t fair to the rest of them. I focus so much of my mothering time and energy on Mckenna, and the rest of them are so easy in comparison, that they get the last bits of me. The tired worn down please just make this easy for me bits of me. I don’t want that for them. Yet, I don’t know how to make a safe place for all of them, while giving each of them what they need. I have thought for so long that I can handle this. That I can be this mother to all of them. That I can make Mckenna happy or healed all while giving the others everything they need. And I can’t. I am feeling my limits crash into me all the while fighting them.

The confusing thing with Mckenna is that there are moments of astonishing peace and joy for her, like when she sat at the front of the boat like a mermaid statue and smiled for an hour as the ocean splashed her face and the boat bobbed in the water, or when we walked out of the Train concert and she said she loved concerts and the next one she wanted to go to was Alicia Keys. Those are the moments that hold me over through the bad ones and make me sane, but they also tease me into believing that she can have MORE moments like that, if only I try harder. If only I give more. If only I fix her.

And I can’t. She is not “fix-able”. Whatever good moments she has, are most likely nothing to do with me. Just like whatever bad moments she has, are most likely nothing to do with me. They just are. They just exist for whatever reason the synapses in her brain allow them to exist in that moment. She is unexplainable and impossible to solve. Mckenna is not free. She is locked up and hidden from me most of her days and most of her life. Those moments that I cling to are few and far between, and yet I kill myself everyday to try and get more of them.

What I saw on our staycation broke my heart. I saw the five us of, wanting desperately to have the kind of time “normal” families can have, time to be free, and failing. And in that failing, feeling completely broken down in moments when she was broken down. And guilty for feeling that way. The flow of the vacation stops and everyone has to stop being who they are, to fit into the box Mckenna needs in order to function and feel less stressed. We are good at it. They are better – they have been doing it all of their lives. I saw my other three children sick to death of people staring at us, the curious public the unintended paparazzi of our outings. Usually our outings are broken up – we spend a lot of time at home in between recuperating. But with several days outside linked together, the staring and the issues involved became overwhelming. Everyone stares. Not just children. Adults, groups of people, will whisper and point and think I don’t notice. I just want to be invisible. For me, getting stared at is especially hard. I think Anna hates it almost as much as me. Mckenna is the only one who doesn’t notice. She thankfully doesn’t have to feel that pain, but the rest of us do.

One of the reasons I fight my limits is because unless we are all together, I feel like we are not experiencing things to the fullest. If Mckenna stays home, I feel weird, off kilter, and guilty. I know that even if there are three hours of hell, she may have one second of bliss in whatever we are doing, and how can I deny her that? This is how we have ALWAYS operated. “Ohana means family – nobody gets left behind!” It is an idea Jeff and I have always had – and our family has flourished in it a lot of the time. But things are changing. Like I said – the other three have surpassed her emotionally. A lot of families have that, with older children and maybe a surprise younger sibling. But it isn’t like having a younger sibling who is a toddler. Because Kenna will never grow out of this. I don’t want them to grow up resenting us, or her, for what we did when we thought it was what needed to be done.

And so I am here, trying to figure out the best way possible to go forward for our family. Thinking of Mckenna. Of Drew, Nate, and Anna. Thinking of Jeff and I. How can we make this new time in our lives work in the way it has worked in the past? Maybe that means getting daily in home help. Maybe that means bringing an aide along with us to care for Mckenna so that we can focus more on the other three. Maybe that means leaving her at home while we do the things “normal” families get to do, with no one staring at us, and not having to mold into her  box, just getting to be free of the locked up parts of her brain for awhile. I know for certain, it means dropping a lot of the preconceived notions I have had for her life and ours.

I am scared. I am uncertain. I am tired. I have cried a lot this month. I wish more than anything for my family to be able to be together, all the time. But what I want even more is for each of them to get exactly what they need from me.

And yet, there are so many reasons for us to be at ease, and happy, and there is a sweet escape in that. We are in love, so in love. We have this great big family. They mean everything to us. We like who they are. It is summertime, and we have no major responsibilities. We get to take them to basketball camp and surf camp and horse camp. We get to watch them explore the ocean in a boat, their chins hardly poking out above life jackets. We get moments of extreme lucidity from Mckenna, where she asks us how to smile. We get to hold hands and scream out songs we sing together in our car, outside at a live concert with twinkling lights and cell phones held up in the sky. We get to nudge to the front of the crowd to show Anna the newborn piglets and listen to her squeal just like them. We get to stay up late in our hotel room, and have a midnight dinner at Denny’s. We get to enjoy possibly one of the last summer’s that Drew will really want to spend time with us instead of his friends. We get to watch him spread his wings. We get to float on our backs in the pool, while holding hands with Nathan, staring up at the clouds. We get to cuddle him at night, because he asks every single night for one of us to cuddle him. We get to plant strawberry plants together in wooden containers in the backyard.

We get to simmer in the life we have made for ourselves, with all the good and bad.

We are the only ones who fully understand what it is like to live with Mckenna. We have each other to lean on. And most of the time, that is enough.

xo

Tara

This picture makes me laugh and I don’t like it and I love it all at the same time.

We were on a walk on a local trail. A trail I found a few months ago and have visited several times since. There aren’t many areas locally with this type of tree cover and natural habitat. I LOVE it. We like to sneak off the trail and walk up the dried riverbed looking for treasure. It gets dark and spooky. They pretend to be in a pirate’s cove. We bring our iPod and play it in a portable dock/speaker. We coax Mckenna, we challenge each other, we try not to let the whining get to us.

June is one of the months in the year that I look forward to. I love that we are nearing the end of the school year and that summer and freedom and sleeping in are upon us.

Anna ended first grade. We made a dolphin diorama for school. She showed off everything she learned and made, walking us around her classroom with her proud shy little face. She started reading chapter books. I catch her in bed, on the couch, in the backseat. She likes books about dogs and horses and girls. It reminds me of me. She sings constantly – remembering words to songs that I can’t believe she can remember. Her favorite shirt is the blue one that says: Pony Rides 5 dollars. After a month in the pool, we have started calling her our brown berry – her olive skin just browns right up, no matter the 50 SPF sunblock, it laughs in my face. And she is just as scrumptious, as ripe, as juicy as a berry.

I love her.

Nate ended fourth grade. He is the tallest in his class. He towers over the rest of the group. Towers over the rest of his friends. I loved going into his classroom, he loved showing us everything he had created. He was giddy asking Jeff and I the questions that were tacked on the board – testing us – which one of us was not smarter than a 4th grader? He likes reading books about dragons. He likes to come home and put on his pajamas. It reminds me of me. His favorite spot on the couch is the corner, with his feet kicked up. I call him the accelerator – you can never hear any specific noise when the boys are rough housing, just grunts and giggles, but you can hear Nathan, he makes sure of it in order to get someone else in trouble. I am onto him but he doesn’t realize it yet. He broke his arm falling off his bike just a week before school was out. He picked blue for his cast. When you tease him he bows his head, but you can see the smile on his cheeks, the sweep of his long hair, his freckles.

I love him.

Drew ended seventh grade. I think I may have witnessed the last time he will get out of the car and say “Bye, Mom. I love you.” With a flip of his hair, shoving his phone in his pocket, hitching his backpack onto his shoulder. But I hope not. It never mattered how many other kids were on the sidewalk. I was always surprised by that. I always secretly loved that. He saved a years worth of English papers to burn in a bonfire at the start of summer. This was the first time his yearbook has been important. It reminds me of me. He carried it to school on the last few days, the only thing needed was that and a pen. He looked so big. It was filled with big sloppy girlie letters and declarations of awesomeness. I so wanted to read through every little bit, but they are his to savor. He picked out his own shoes for the first time. He didn’t need me to help him, or show him what I liked. He knew just what he wanted. Black low top Vans with turquoise laces.

I love him.

Mckenna ended seventh grade, and for me the ending was like a dragged out, bumpy landing with an abrupt stop. We bounced and jostled and gripped the arms of our seats through this year of school, until suddenly, the wheels touched down. Not soon enough. But with relief. She has had issues at school – spitting and cursing at teachers, bathroom accidents, showing a lot of stubbornness and willfulness. Acting out in ways we rarely see at home. She is unpredictable yes, but she is predictable in her unpredictability for us. All of this is so unlike her, I know it is her way of telling me she has had it. I am hoping that two months off can help us to see what needs to change for her. Because not a week out of school, her entire demeanor has changed. She is less stressed. She gets to go slowly through her routines. She wakes up at ten or eleven. She spends a lot of time listening to the music on her iPod – literally sitting in her room for hours, playing the same songs over and over, singing as loud as she can, rewinding to get the words right. It reminds me of me. She likes to run errands with me because she can be in charge of the music in the car. She begged for weeks to go shopping at the mall. I told her as soon as school was out. Two days into summer, I took her to the mall and let her buy whatever she wanted. She wanted long dresses and pajamas from Justice. A pretzel and a cheese on a stick. A new Backyardigans plush doll. Kool-Aid lipgloss and a red rose hair clip from Claire’s.

I love her.

I think this is my favorite time of the year. I revel in the lack of routine. The laziness. The open day. I love asking them what they want to do today, and then doing it. I love not having to shuttle them around to school. I love being home with them. I love that right now I can hear Mckenna belting out “Tomorrow” from the Annie soundtrack in her room. I love that Drew is off ice blocking with a group of friends. I love that Anna is tucked into my bed, watching James and the Giant Peach. I love that Nate is settled onto his favorite spot on the couch, playing his latest video game. We realized this weekend that we only have five more years with Drew until he heads off to college. Five years. Five. Years.

This is time for us.

Summer is ours.

xo

Tara

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** all images in this entry were taken by my friend Bonnie Berry.

We were so lucky in May to be able to have our family photos taken by my friend Bonnie. It was a lovely experience, that started out with Bonnie and I spending almost four hours in a booth at my favorite Mexican restaurant, talking and sipping margaritas, and letting time slip right by. We got an alarmed phone call from Jeff at almost 5pm wondering where we were…he was home manning the ship and waiting for us. We got home and got everyone ready as fast as we could. Mckenna spilled chili on the shirt I asked her to wear, Anna coudn’t find her bucket and shovel, I had to dry her hair a bit, Nathan had lost his rash guard, Kenna was losing it a bit, it was craziness. I had to let it roll though, that is my life, and Bonnie was snapping away. We got to the beach and it was windy. REALLY WINDY! Snappy cold kind of windy. I swear the wind is out to get me this year. We made the best of it. The kids changed into their suits and played in the water. Bonnie pulled each person that is dearest to me away, one by one, to spend some time with me and her camera. It is all a blur really, a fun, happy, love filled blur. It will be a memory I think of with fondness for the rest of my life. I am so grateful. Bonnie was nice enough to sneak me a few of the images to use for this post, I have yet to see the rest, and I can’t wait.

Oh and these photos of us. Of us. That is us. And I didn’t take them. I didn’t see it first. She did. The colors and our faces and Mckenna’s mischievous eyes and the sticker residue on the back of her hand, Anna and her favorite pony sitting on her favorite place (me), Drew leaning on me with major beach hair, Nate’s hands, Jeff in my favorite green hoodie, the one I want to snuggle in and that has his smell attached, the pink band aid on my finger. I have stared at these images for so many minutes at different times of my week that I might have spent hours. I can feel the beach on us. She captured a moment for me that I love so much, all of us just off the beach, sandy and salty, cold and in sweatshirts. I love us like this.

I have been fighting off writing. I haven’t been able to focus on it. I have been sitting here forcing myself to look at the month of May, and I don’t want to force this. I had to let myself off the hook for a few days and work on changing my attitude. I do want to do this. It is better not to force it. This is important to me. This is important to Jeff. If I keep this up, we will have a permanent keepsake and record of the year we had in 2010. It might not seem like much right now, but in ten years it will. The 43 year old me REALLY wants the 33 year old me to do this. And so with a happy heart I return, to talk about May.

Jeff and I got to see two of our personal favorites in concert this month. First was Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, for him, although I love that Roger Clyne quite a lot. He performed to a very small crowd, and he performed like it was Woodstock. He let the crowd choose his set list, so we got to hear some rarely played live songs. We got a deal on our own private room at The Coach House. We shared appetizers and drinks and talked and laughed at ourselves. We also might have gotten caught making out (twice) by our waitress. We were carefree and fun and silly and it was a magic night. Second was Ben Folds, for me, although he loves that Ben Folds quite a lot. We saw him at the House of Blues and after scoring stools in the balcony decided that yes, we are old now. And that is okay. But stools are much better for concerts. We no longer want to stand for hours in a crowd of sweaty drunk people. Stools are GREAT.

Drew started guitar lessons this month. He melted me on the drive to his first class by saying, “This is the first step in becoming who I want to be.” And then grinning at me, laughing, teasing, and saying, “Will you put that on your blog?” I said, “No, that one might be good enough for Twitter, though.” He has learned chords for several songs: Smoke on the Water, Happy Birthday, Stray Cat Strut. He named is guitar Bessie, after my iPod.

Our patience is tested daily with Mckenna. She struggles and we all struggle with her. It seems like in May, her behavior has kind of regressed. Or at least hit a point that we haven’t been in for a long time. She is extremely unpredictable when out in public, almost as much or more as a baby or toddler. She can’t stand to sit at the kitchen table and eat dinner with us, the noise we all make is too much for her. She puts her head down or screams unintelligibly in her frustration. She fights literally everything we say. In that respect she is a typical fourteen year old girl, I guess. But I can’t talk to her. I can’t listen to her. I don’t understand so I can’t help. I feel like she is pulling away from life, and I am scared, and I am not sure how to wake her up again and get her freed a little bit from the limits and compulsions of her own brain. I hope that Summer will bring some relief. An ease of schedules, and some time alone for her, less stress.

We spent time with our Uncle Mike, my parents, and Shane & Rachel one weekend. The boys played board games with their Uncle and we cooked bacon cheeseburgers on the grill. It is a wonderful thing to me that they are experiencing all that Uncle Mike has to give in the same way that I did. He taught me how to play games, he shared music with me, he took me places like Disneyland and Grateful Dead concerts and Stanford. He keyed in on the things we had in common. I love that they get to do the same kinds of things with him. For them, it is all about games and strategy and teaching them how. They were also able to experience the iPad for the first time because of him. They were obsessing over Google Earth and Plants VS Zombies. It might not be Jerry Garcia, but still.

Anna asked me one night to snuggle her, but I was dog tired and sandy from a beach shoot, so I asked if we could do it in the morning instead. That instead of me cuddling her, she could come to my bed when I woke up and cuddle me. She loved the idea and snuffled her way into the crook of my neck at 7:30 the next morning. We dozed for a little bit, definitely snuggled, and spent two hours whispering while Jeff snored next to us. She told me that she was so glad she didn’t have to sleep with Daddy every night, because he was so loud. I told her that I was used to it, and that I almost couldn’t sleep without it.

Nathan had “gold rush day” at school, and he got to dress up like a ranch hand. He wore a cowboy hat and a flannel shirt and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him all day. The look suited him so well, it was quite a surprise! That gold hair flipping out from the cowboy hat. Sigh. He is such a soft hearted little boy, quiet and watchful, he keeps everything very close to his chest. I love to surprise him with something I say just to watch his face light up. He is also sarcastic and sharp witted, and I have to keep myself from squelching that natural tendency of his, and instead teach him to use it for good. His teeth are falling out left and right. He told me, “Mom, I HATE my mouth right now.” He can hardly eat with all the loose teeth. But he just made $10 off the tooth fairy, so that should help. (The tooth fairy only had $10′s and $20′s. Score one for the kids.)

We hiked.

We played in parks.

We watched TV marathons all piled in the big bed.

We worked, cooked, got up early, got up late, opened bags of chips, toasted bread, baked cookies, shared cookies with neighbors, brushed our teeth, fought, made up, read, played video games, loved, took baths, swam for hours in the pool, cried on the phone, got mad at someone, got hurt at someone, went to the grocery store, went to Target, went to the mall, went to the post office, went out to lunch, had babysitters, felt our hearts burst, got the mail, got off the bus, sliced tomatoes, laughed so hard our faces hurt, lost a tooth, ate a lot of guacamole, kissed, plucked eyebrows, sent emails, got emails, took pictures, went to school, ate popsicles, rode bikes, fell down, needed band aids,  listened to music, drove on the freeway, waited in traffic, danced, got drive-thru, took vitamins, put our feet up, cleaned a closet, put gas in the car, played games on the iPhone in bed, watched the finale of LOST, helped with homework, made a diorama, painted waves on cardboard, wanted to go on vacation, wanted to throw up our hands, got lunch with friends, paid for parking, broke our ice machine, bought an ice cream machine, did laundry, stepped around messes, and lived.

It isn’t easy. But I’m glad I’m here.

xo

Tara

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