Wilder.
Age 3 · A Category 5, in the very best way.
"His name isn't a coincidence. It's a prophecy."
He showed up to the park with a bubble gun and, for one glorious minute, I was absolutely his target. Bubbles flying, that hair going everywhere, that grin completely unhinged — and then just like that, he was done with me. He had a whole playground to get to.
And that's really the story of Wilder. He moves through the world on his own terms, at his own pace — which is always full speed — and he doesn't need an audience or a plan. He just goes. Slide to ladder to whatever looked climbable next, every section of that playground visited without a single pause to check if anyone was keeping up.
Wild and free. That's the only way I know how to describe what I watched. Not performance, not chaos for chaos's sake — just a three year old who is completely, utterly at home in his own body and his own joy. The park was his and he knew it.
Enter: mama Jennifer
She wasn't watching from a bench. She was right there — recruited, drafted, fully on duty — steadying him here, spotting him there, following his lead from one end of that playground to the other without missing a beat. This is what it looks like to mother a wild one. You don't direct the storm. You run alongside it.
Jennifer told me he is “constantly on the go” — that it drives her a little crazy, and that she already knows she'll miss it desperately someday. Watching him move through that park, I believed both of those things completely at the same time.
Because here's the thing about Wilder that I couldn't stop thinking about: this same boy — this tiny force of nature — shows his love by grabbing hands. By pulling people close. The wildness and the tenderness aren't opposites in him. They're the same big feeling, just wearing different faces depending on the moment.
Jennifer wanted this moment preserved before the world starts asking him to be quieter, smaller, stiller. These images are her answer to that future. Proof that he was here, exactly like this — hair flying, no care in the world, mama right beside him — and he was absolutely magnificent.
