The other day I did some housekeeping on Girl in a Party Hat, which included updating the blogroll, and I was struck by how many of my fellow bloggers have stopped blogging — or, at least, haven’t updated their blogs in a year or two.

I get it. I started my blog when Sophie was 5. Today, at 11, she’s so savvy she writes guest posts, wants to read what I write, dictates when I can and can’t take her photo (on Saturday it was okay, as long she added a long orange braid to the ensemble I was eager to capture), and the other day she asked to borrow my computer because, she says, she’s writing a book. Her self-awareness prompts the same in me. Some days, it does feel invasive, writing about Sophie. More and more, I self-edit. Or try to, anyway.

And yet I still feel compelled to do it. Last week, Brain, Child published a piece I wrote about Sophie and puberty. Last month, I wrote a cover story for Phoenix New Times about the year-long struggle to find a charter school that would take Sophie. My friend Robrt included some images of Sophie in a show at his art gallery. Once in a while, KJZZ (the local NPR affiliate) is kind enough to share the latest in what I’ve long called The Sophie Chronicles.

Oversharing or illuminating? (Wait — don’t answer that.)

Why do we write about our kids, document their every move on Facebook and Instagram, in blog posts and elsewhere? I don’t know about anyone else, and maybe my own reason is BS, but I’ll share it anyway. I began Girl in a Party Hat in an attempt to document what Sophie’s life is like, to show how similar she is to typical kids and also how different. And, to be honest, to figure her out.  Before Sophie, I had never found writing to be therapeutic (to the contrary, it’s always been a painful, tooth-pulling process for me — which sucks since I chose a career as a journalist) but GIAPH did become for me a sounding board and a confessional and I still find often that after I finish a post I feel a sense of peace.

Before Sophie, I’d never met another person with Down syndrome. If this blog or the other things I write help even one person to be a little less wary of people with DS, if anyone finds it relatable — parents of kids with or without disabilities — it’s all been worthwhile.

All of which sounds more defensive than I meant it to, and it’s not even the reason, really, that I set out to write this post. I wanted to tell you about My Star Wars Family. Whether you have a spare 4 minutes or not, stop what you are doing and watch it. It’s phenomenal. I don’t want to tell you much more than that.

When my friend Timothy Archibald recommends something, I know it will be stellar. Tim’s own photography — which I’ve admired since we worked together many years ago — is truly great.  I remember that he and I used to drive around crappy parts of town, looking for a story idea. Turns out, that’s the worst way to find a story idea. And ultimately, Tim had no shortage of ideas — he gets high profile commercial and editorial work and (something I recall from our days working together) he tends to find a personal project in an assignment. You can see it all at timothyarchibald.com. But my favorite work of Tim’s is about his older son, Eli. I’ve written about Tim and Echolilia before in a little series I did for GIAPH called “Should We Be Writing About Our Kids?” You can learn more at echolilia.com.

Four years later, I’m still asking the question: Should we be writing about our kids, particularly our kids with disabilities? Should we be photographing them, letting other people photograph them? I’m too close to my own work to say anything there, but when it comes to a journalist/artist named Annalisa Brambilla, the answer is YES.

When he posted the video, Tim wrote this on Facebook: I can’t repeat this enough: Brambilla was an outsider, a journalist, an artist, but these images feel like they were made by the family themselves, and some of them were. I do believe this is the way stories will forever be told when they are told well.

I completely agree. Make sure you watch My Star Wars Family.

My old friend Tim is popping up everywhere these days. He was the staff photographer at Phoenix New Times when I arrived in 1993 (a position that sadly hasn’t existed in years) and we pal-ed around for a few years, working on stories together and wasting time the way people waste time before they have kids. A long time ago, Tim and his wife Cheri moved to northern California, where he’s got a great mix of commercial, editorial and personal photographic projects going. You can see it at timothyarchibald.com.

I keep up a bit with Tim on Facebook these days; it’s been years since our paths crossed. He’s got two kids of his own now. Yeah, we’re both busy. No more time for making web sites devoted to gummi candy (really! embarrassing!) or driving around south Phoenix, waiting for story ideas to emerge.

Back to the popping up “everywhere” thing. First, Tim popped up last week in a book I’m reading — Bonk by Mary Roach. I highly recommend it and yes, it’s about what you think it’s about: sex. Sex and science. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Roach showed up at an event for a photo book Tim did years ago, about sex machines (literally).

Then, just a day later, Sophie got to a top shelf in her room (I guess she is getting taller) and pulled down a stack of snapshots. “Who’s this?” she asked, holding up a photo of a bald guy in glasses cradling a tiny baby. “That’s my friend Tim holding you,” I told her, remembering (again) that I hadn’t yet posted a piece about Tim’s work, vis a vis the question of whether we should be writing about our kids. So now I will.

Tim does something that’s arguably even more personal and potentially invasive, I suppose, than writing about his kids. He photographs his kids. I’m not surprised, looking back on the days we worked together, that he mines his life, pushes the envelope in this way. I was always impressed by the fact that no matter the assignment, Tim would take extra time with the subject (be it person or object) to make his own work. For him, it was never just about the job, and it was incredibly inspiring to watch.

I feel the same when I look at the work involving his children. You can see it on his web site, and in his latest book, Echolilia — details are on the site about that, too. There’s an image above from the book, and here’s an excerpt from an interview Tim did with a blog called Too Much Chocolate on the topic of what it means to make art about your kids.

Like Trish, Tim has encouraged his kids in their own creative pursuits, particularly Eli, who makes his own images (featured in Echolilia) and actually has his own blog, which I love (but won’t link here because I’m not sure how private Tim keeps it).  This stuff goes beyond writing about your kids, but I think you’ll dig what Tim had to say in the interview with Too Much Chocolate:

If your subject is your kid, access is rarely the problem- everything you need is right in front of you. Being the Dad and then trying to let go of that role and then try to collaborate with my son… oh that is the problem. What will I do to get the photograph? What license will I give him? What line will I cross myself to make the image happen, only to then switch over and be the Dad moments later when the shoot is over?

Here we are re-creating an accident together. Here we are wrapping him in rubber bands….something he did already but this time in just the right light. Is he consenting to this stuff? I showed this work to a friend who responded “ Photographers always claim to be collaborating with their subjects. The truth is we are willing to do anything to get what we want from them. We’ll steal what we can as quickly as we can or pay any price after that if the stealing doesn’t work. You know that is true.” I didn’t disagree.