Having a baby is hard. Having a baby six hours away from your own mother is extremely difficult. (For those of you that live further or maybe don’t have mothers yourselves, I bow down to you!) Luckily for me, my mother got me the hook up when she randomly started talking to another new mom while we were out shopping a few days after Leo was born. (And me, being too tired to play nice, or even shower that week day, was befriending no one.) And unlike myself, this nice new mom had her act together and told my mother about a class that was starting in Charlestown for new moms with newborns, which my mother reminded me of as she was digging the nails out of the death grip I had on her arm when she told me she had to leave Boston to go back to NY. Luckily, I followed her suggestion and met a whole group of amazing new friends that are trying to navigate this strange new world called “motherhood”, together. So if I can’t live near my own mama, I feel really lucky to have found a group of people in the same position as my support system. (Actually, it kind of feels like pledging for my sorority my freshman year of college all over again. You meet a group of people who are thrown into this crazy unfamiliar new world together, and create this crazy bond over how terrified and clueless you are about everything and everyone is functioning on a minuscule amount of sleep no human should ever have to endure. If I sewed a few greek letters on my chest and threw in a frat party or two, there’d hardly be any difference.) Much love to you ladies as your probably reading this during an early morning feeding!
So when I was asked to photograph another “new moms” group, I was thrilled. And unlike my own group of new moms with little immobile newborns, this group was getting together to celebrate their babies’ first birthdays together. Yup! That’s right. Fifteen babies celebrating their first year together. (And that’s fifteen mamas planning a party collaboratively–talk about impressive!) The celebration was held at the Little Loveage Club, an adorable space in the South End, and the perfect place for baby birthday bashes! The babies were entertained with a music class by the talented Erica from Little Groove Music. When I had started planning for the day, I had imagined all the babies sitting in a circle tapping on their tamborines in perfect rythm and singing their little songs during the musical portion of the party, and myself calling each family over one by one to get a family photograph in the corner with each baby sitting perfectly still on their parents’ lap for the shot. Ha. 15 one year olds in one space? Yeah right. The party was pure chaos. Wonderful, adorable, loveable, wiggly, giggly chaos…and I couldn’t stop laughing at the cuteness the entire day. Between the babies in bowties, and babies with bows in their hair, they all looked so stinking cute with their chubby little one-year-old cheeks and baby teeth poking through their gummy little grins. But the thing that really was most enduring was that it was impossible to tell which baby belonged to which set of parents. Somehow, this group of 15 families seemed to melt into one over the past year that the babies went from mom to mom without even batting a cute little baby eyelash. How awesome that each babe has this group of people to surround themselves with and baby friends that they’ll grow up with and be able to say they knew their entire lives…because they literally have! Being there made me feel so lucky to have a group similar for little Leo, and who am I kidding? Myself!
South End mamas, thank you for letting me sneak a peek at what’s in store in a couple months! It was so fun to spend the day celebrating with you! I loved meeting each and everyone of your little cherubs. And congrats on making it through the first year together!
How cute are these adorable little cupcakes? Courtesy of Oakleaf Bakery.
CUPCAKES!!!!
Happy birthday babies!!!
