We all have our methods for making sense of life. To piece together the incoherent components that make up our realities and make sense of the noise. To palpate a day, and then another; a week, and then another, and in so doing map out the mountains in our landscape which are too big to see. This is my attempt to map out mine.

To reconcile being a dad with no time for myself, a husband, a chef, a photographer, a former contractor, and the occasional living room psychologist and how all these roles fit together and the direction in which this life leads. No story starts at the beginning, it starts somewhere in the disjointed middle and you weave your way forward by making sense of the past.

It’s the second coldest day of the year, with snow in Florida ( who would have thought?) and tomorrow it will be colder. Im in my garage typing this with gloves next to me for comfort. I cant type with them, but frequent breaks help. My Momo is sleeping and my wife has been wanting hot chocolate for the last few days.

*I’m miserable in this cold. Being bald and cold freezes all brain activity.*

Tomorrow is the night.

Her 7-month belly is huge, bigger than her first at 9 months. I’m still secretly terrified there’s a twin in there. Although the 11 ultrasounds so far have confirmed only one now ( there was a second sack at the beginning). Still, baited breaths until March or April. We’ll see then, but for now, plan for Hot Chocolate, jumbo marshmallows, something to put the cold away.

It’s been a few months since I posted on Youtube, and I feel terrible for my audience that’s been waiting for our videos. I’ll get to them, when my wife told me she was pregnant again, I was already juggling a toddler, housework, and how to grow both sides of the business, content creation and photography clients. Still in that process, so Videos have taken a back seat. In the meantime I’ve moved from the guest room to the garage, and had to move the garage into the attic.

This means installing an attic ladder, reinforcing the joists in the attic with insulation and plywood and loading everything that could humanly fit in a 3ft space so I would have a place to work that didnt interrupt the house functions. Easier said than done. But now the mess is mine and we get along better.

So to commemorate the blog, and the studio, I’m starting with a simple shoot-

Cereal. That’s it Cereal!

Cereal Photoshoot, commercial photography, Cereal Bowls with Milk

This bag has been on our counter for something like a week, it’s for the baby, I stopped eating cereal 20 years ago- but something caught my eye while i walked past the bag. It’s the pattern, the sades, and the color- muted. And that’s a good thing. No bright artificial, saturated colors- (we would never buy those for the baby anyways), but things like blueberries, carrots, and sweet potatoes gave the coloring. I can live with that. And it reminded me of the cereals of my childhood 30 years ago in Costa Rica

That immediately hit with the shot of nostalgia. Back to a simpler time without bills, back to saturday morning cartoons and hanging out with the neighborhood kids. A snapshot of a world that feels no longer exists today.

But that’s ok. For as long as I can, I can make that world for my kids, the one that’s here, and the one that’s coming. It’s a reminder to me to slow down, and while the mad rush of the world and the noise will be there, they can be put on pause long enough every day to enjoy something, sometimes it’s cereal for dinner while I shoot this, other times it’s cartoons with the family on the couch.