With my three year old starting school later this year, I’m more aware than ever of time slipping through my fingers.

It may be that I have spent the last two years working and rushing around non-stop, so it’s only now that we’re more settled I can fully appreciate the need to savour all the little moments. This time last year I spent so many of my days exhausted and powering on until bedtime that I’m not convinced I made the most of every second.

It’s a bit of a paradox, this time thing though. When you become a parent you’re constantly told, “Make the most of it, they grow up so fast”. And you can see it yourself, when you blink and your newborn is suddenly a chubby toddler. But at the same time as wanting to savour those moments and feeling them slip away all too quickly, you’re trying to stop ketchup being smeared up the wall and fighting an exhaustion that will only be quelled by sleep. Your days both zoom past in the blink of an eye and drip along in a slow trickle, like a smear of thick treacle. 

I always find looking at photographs reminds me how lucky I am. Whether it’s scrolling through my Instagram account or looking back on photos on my laptop, I am instantly taken back to a day or a moment that seemed important enough to capture at the time.

With the weather so cold and dismal recently I’ve been hankering after some summer sun. I’ve been drawn to photographs I took last August, when the sun was hot and we ate ice cream, drank fizz and explored the beaches near our new home. We went on a camping trip to Cornwall, near the Devon border. We ate sausages for breakfast and flew kites on the sand.

These were a series of tiny moments. But they were moments that mattered.

***

Thank you to Lloyds Bank who encouraged me to relive these moments with their Moments That Mattered campaign. This post is written in association with them. For more information please see my disclosure page.