Obligatory Halloween update

Why is it that on a random afternoon of no importance, I can haul out my camera and take 50 million amazing photos of basically nothing -- a pinecone on the ground, a droplet of water on a leaf, a slant of light coming through a pane of glass onto the floor? But on holidays and memory-making life occasions, I forget to put batteries in my flash, leave my memory card plugged into my computer, and have to rely on blurry iPhone snaps? This is the Murphy's Law of momtography. It happened on the day we brought A. home from the hospital -- all of our pics of her first precious (and hard-fought, after a weeks-long NICU stay) moments at home are orange-casted and weirdly halo-y. Quelle dommage!

It happened yesterday, too, of course. I got some really shitty photos last night. Greasy sugar-cookie fingerprints on the lens (my bad!), no time to haul out the tripod for night photography, people running around and refusing to sit still long enough for me to preserve their images for posterity. It was a very blurry, often underexposed Halloween in these parts.

Nothing says childhood memories like a big honkin' box of garbage bags. And a cranky aunt.

Here are some things I wanted to get photos of but didn't, because I was running around, finding shoes and barrettes and flashlights and buying union-made candy and assembling a makeshift bear costume (when Anouk decided not to tolerate the pumpkin in the morning for Zoo Tales): my baby trick-or-treating at each of her great-great aunts' and uncles' houses. My baby eating a lollipop for the first time. The look on her face as she saw the cat pumpkin we'd carved especially for her (cats are a big deal in Anoukland). Clapping along with the singing Elmo that my cousin Di gave to her , which belonged to Di's mother, a truly special lady. Anouk with her friends, her cousins, her family, her cats, her dad. I didn't get one single picture of James all night. He might not have even been there. If I outlive him, I am going to tell my great-grandchildren some crazy story about how he wasn't there that night because he was in jail or something.

Here are the things I really want to remember about last night: Listening to Anouk blissfully nom-nom her way through a miniature Hershey bar. Sitting on the porch to hand out candy and hearing her laugh from across the street as she visited the neighbors' haunted house with her daddy. The feel of her little sticky hand in mine as we climbed the steps of my Aunt Catherine's house, her first ever trick-or-treat experience. All of those moments I will try and relive, forever. And not one of these moments can be captured in a photograph, even if you try.

So maybe it's OK that I put the camera down for the evening and just lived them.

FWIW, I did end up taking ONE nicely staged pic of Anouk's first real Halloween. Out of about 400.

(But I might even like the shitty ones a little more).