If you give a kid a camera…

I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I heard Miss L shout to me, “Hey Mommy! Can I take you picture?”

There, in her tiny little hands, was my giant dSLR camera and she was grinning and walking towards me. I shrieked & asked her to please put the camera down on the couch. Well, that elicited some giant crocodile tears and a wail of, “I just want to take your picture mommy!” echoing throughout the house.

“Wait here one second L,” I said and quickly ran upstairs to the camera cabinet for a look. There, at the tippy top of the cabinet, was a box with my very first digital camera in it: my precious Pentax Optio S. (I used to keep it in an Altoids tin!)

It’s small, it’s got small buttons, a rechargeable battery, uses SD cards and it has a viewfinder and a screen to look at. And it’s old and kind of beat up but everything still works like a charm! In other words, it’s the perfect REAL toy for Miss to play with.

Since she got it in her hands, she’s been going around the house taking photos of our knees, her fingers, and lots of blurry objects. But her favorite photographic subject is definitely Memphis.

No matter where Memphis is in the house, Miss L will find her and start snapping photos. She always asks first though, “Memphis? You wanna take a picture? You…. you wanna have your picture taken?”

“Say CHEEEEEESE”

“Oh yes. That was a good one!”

Here’s a small sample of the photos Miss L has taken in the past few weeks (on  her camera):

I’m incredibly happy that Daylight Savings time is here, despite my complete inability to wake up an hour early this whole week. It means that when we get home from work, there is actually a chance to enjoy a tiny bit of sunshine before it goes down for the day. And for Miss L, that means that we can entertain her requests to go outside and take Memphis for a walk.

She really didn’t quite understand why we couldn’t go for a walk at 6:30pm in the dark (and the cold!), but we’ve now escaped from trying to amend her reason to our logic, and can just get up and use her request as an excuse to hop outside.

We have yet to find the perfect balance between walking distance, opportunities to enjoy lake views, and kiddo/doggie fatigue, but perhaps with more practice we’ll figure out what works best. For now, walks involve Miss L holding the leash, Memphis sort of leading her but trying her best to give her slack on the rope, and either/both Mr. M and I nudging both of them to keep walking. Yes… nothing is super simple with a 2 year old, but what the heck… it’s worth it.

Anyone else head out for an evening stroll this week?