He doesn’t need staging. He doesn’t need a pitch. He finds the drawer, the light, the world, and it’s enough.

He’s not even one. Not the intended audience. But they got him. Already.

A tiny glint on the far left, his first tooth. A moment we waited for, quietly and curiously. It's here now. Just enough to prove it was always coming.

At first he flinched.
Then he watched.
Then he touched it again.
He’s learning how to look.
And I’m learning what that really means.

Bright green. Comes in threes. Looks harmless.
But it’s not.
Sometimes the most dangerous things
don’t look dangerous at all.

A t-rex. a triceratops. a smiley sun.
I didn’t expect balloons.
but they floated in anyway, like proof.

He held it for nearly thirty minutes.

A jacaranda fallen, passed from hand to hand.

Now the petals are under us,

and somehow,

it still feels like catching.

He looked at everything like it was teaching him something.
So I brought my camera
to remember what he saw
before he knew how to ask.

He starts to laugh before he understands what laughter is.
I try to explain the feeling using numbers.
And he answers with joy.

He wants to know what everything is.
So I tell him.
And when that’s not enough,
I tell him more.

I’d been waiting to take this photo since our first doctor visit. At nine months, he sat up on his own — curious, calm, and glowing. The light found him. I already had the camera up.

“Every day, I study him like I’m preparing for the biggest test of my life. And I am. One day, he’ll ask who he was before he could ask — and I want to have something to show him.”

He said Da Da. We smiled, we cheered — and slowly, we became a conversation learning to speak for itself.

One stroller. One baby. Zero preparation. It started with confidence and ended with a poop stain in the crook of my arm.

I didn’t set out to start a blogcast. But when my son turned nine months old, the idea took shape — a space between stories, parenting, and reflection.

Created by Brock Mills — a Black fine art photographer — AROUND YOU is a board book that blends art, learning, and representation in a way that's anything but ordinary.