Motherhood isn't just made up of milestones, birthday parties, and family vacations. These are the beautiful moments that we often capture and hold in our memories.

But a lot of motherhood is messy, and periodically mundane. It's pouring a thousand bowls of breakfast cereal, and putting on hundreds of tiny shoes. It's long lines at the school drop off and lots of sweet discussions about the secret lives of toys.

It's sick days.

Recently, my daughter stayed home sick from school. She wasn't very ill, just sick enough that bringing her into the classroom would illicit looks from other parents and her teachers. (Hey, I get it -- I don't want anyone bringing a sick kid into my office, either!) So we snuggled up on the couch and prepared to spend the day together.

Me, honestly, thinking about all the work I'm not getting done.

It occurred to me that when I look back on raising my daughter, it's probably not the highly-styled, carefully-planned birthday party days that I'll remember. It's the sick days. It's the afternoons when it's just the two of us, being our most authentic, snuggly selves. We looked through the many photos and memories in her baby book (which she loves doing); we built a fort; we tried to teach our dog about forts (he didn't get it); we wrestled and snuggled and watched tv and made breakfast and fought the laundry battle.

So I set up a tripod, and started snapping. The reason I treasure documentary photography is that it aims to capture these genuine moments, and depict what our family is really like in these everyday, seemingly-boring moments.