Beyond the Beard

My dear Dash is continuing to hit milestones and yesterday she experienced something she found mildly tragic: her father shaved off his beard!
My husband has had a short, neat beard since December 2010, when our middle child was just 5 months old. He recently succeeded in achieving some health goals he'd set for himself and decided he wanted to know what he looked like without the beard.
So he shaved it off. I love his beard and always have, so it was a shock to see his naked face again after so many years!
Dash was not impressed. For the first few hours she refused to look him in the eye. She let him hold her, but didn't want to make eye contact at all. This morning the beard shadow is starting to show and she spent half an hour playing with him while I cooked breakfast. By the end of the half hour, she was laughing and smiling at her daddy again!
Within 48 hours, his beard will be back to it's super-short length that he sometimes goes with but we have a couple of photos of him all naked faced.
My husband comes from some seriously awesome genes and his family ages incredibly well. His parents are in their 60s but could easily pass for being a full decade younger than they are. Each of his sisters look younger than their actual ages, too. (I got get-old-early genes, so I hope our girls get their looks from their dad and not me!) With his beard, I have never thought that he looked like he was over 32, although that birthday came and went years ago. Without the beard?
Even younger.
And with his improved health, he could pull off the Mr. Clean look if he wanted, complete with fitted white shirt and a wicked wink!
I love that man of mine. Beard or no beard.
Dash? She wants the beard.
Middle child? She wants the beard.
Oldest child? She wants the shaved face.
"His beard tickles and scratches, Mom."
Why yes it does, and I love it. *grin*

On a completely separate note, Dash and I have a short session with a professional photographer this evening as part of a Normalize Breastfeeding campaign. I'll put on a comfy pair of jeans and some sort of shirt and we'll head to a park we came across a week and a half ago while getting repairs done on our van. It'll be casual and quick, but a lot of fun.
I have taken countless pictures of myself breastfeeding my middle child years ago and my baby since her birth but haven't posted more than one or two online, simply because I worry some about being judged for "exposing" myself.
While my mother visited me after the birth of my second daughter, I commented once that I wished I could take pictures of my babies while they were nursing. At the time, my little nursling was just a couple weeks old and that was 5 years ago.
In response, Mom told me that she always wished she had pictures of her nursing her babies, too. It was one of the few regrets in parenting that she ever expressed to me and one that has stuck with me. I may never frame a nursing picture, but I have one small one of my oldest that she can keep when she leaves the home and a few of my middle child if I can hunt them down. Dash will have more, and she'll get to keep some of them if she wants, also.
The photographer is keeping the rights to all the photos and they may get shared publicly. This is a huge step for me and it isn't one that I just decided to do on a whim. I'm not the only one in these photos; Dash is in them, too.
This is a springboard of photos to come. Brelfies, if you want to use the new term (picture of oneself nursing a child), will be posted online more by me in the coming years.
One step at a time first  . . .