Growing Up



This is one of my favorite photos of the kids. It was taken on one of our visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, at the Wave Crash Gallery. I love the look of delight on their faces as 600 gallons of ocean crash into the rocky shore behind them.



Last weekend we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium again, for the first time in two or three years, and I couldn't resist taking another photo of the kids in the same place. They're still as gorgeous as ever, but I have to admit (with some sadness) that the look of delight is no longer there. They're smiling because they're happy to be there (and because they know mama wants them to smile for the camera), not because of what's happening behind them.

Not that there's anything wrong with that; I didn't really expect a wave of water to elicit the same reaction in sophisticated 10 and 7 year-olds as it would in 5 and 2 year-olds. At least they're not rolling their eyes -- at least not until they're 12 and 15. When I take this photo again in five years, I'll probably look at this one with the same sense of nostalgia that I'm looking at the first one. It's the nature of things, and just like the ocean, they keep rolling along.

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