Our Neighbor-Through the Lens of a 4 year old

October 6, 2021

Once a week (sometimes more) we visit our neighbor, Mrs. Carolyn. During the pandemic, we got to know her more and to care for her more. We help with getting her newspaper and trash cans every day/week, but we also visit. She just adores our children. When we visit her, she feeds our kids cookies (every. single. visit) and we sit and talk. The kids run around her yard being absolute crazy collecting “special” gifts (pine cones, leaves, etc.) for her and she loves it. Depending on the weather, we sit inside and we have recently started a puzzle together. (Mrs. Carolyn realized that Kylie likes puzzles so we have a 500 piece puzzle going…it might take us awhile to actually finish it! But Kylie loves that Mrs. Carolyn has a puzzle for her.)

We enjoy our visits to Mrs. Carolyn’s house and we try our best to look out for her. We even bring her special gifts like flowers (the pictures above) or baked goods.

Visiting and loving our neighbor is just something we do. We don’t share about it often, but the other day Kylie grabbed my cell phone and took pictures of our visit. I didn’t think much of it at the time but Kylie did an amazing job capturing the moment. Kylie photographed the people, the action, and the details of the visit. The flowers in the first two pictures were both flowers we gave Mrs. Carolyn. And I love that Kylie photographed that – she realized it was something special to her and photographed it.

This is a very different blog post, it isn’t perfectly posed pictures, they are not high-resolution pictures, and they are not even pictures that I took.

But I wanted to share the pictures with everyone. I wanted everyone to see, in many ways, what I see at sessions.

I see the people, their personalities, and their smiles. I see the action or the interaction between people. I see the details of life from rings to flower to invitations to ribbons to shoes. To most people the small details of life don’t matter, but the details do matter. The details bring the story to life. And I am amazed that our almost 5 year captured that.

This is Mrs. Carolyn our neighbor!

And here are the details of our visit. The car and truck that just had to come with us filled with parts of the magnolia tree that the kids collected.

And of course a picture of me. Mrs.Carolyn and I try to sit and talk about whatever while the kids play.(Do you see the cookies?)

Kylie took a picture of herself. Right before this picture Kylie asked to use my colored Chapstick, which she did in a very kid like manner. Kylie’s messy job of putting on Chapstick had Mrs. Carolyn laughing so hard. It isn’t just a selfie picture, it is a really funny memory.