Peek A Boo

This is Eli's version of peek a boo. If you say, "where's Eli?" he goes right into it. He has always from the very start put his hands up to his ears instead of over his eyes.




I am not sure exactly what he was drawing my attention to here. I always have been tickled by the babies when they get into pointing. I love that little tiny pointing finger, so small yet it can communicate so much.



Eli loves to run down the sidewalk. He is getting faster all the time and I often can't focus on him in time.

What I've Been Up To

I rarely post anything here other than pictures of the kids. Well, I haven't been taking any. I am itching to shoot Eli sometime soon, because he is in a really cute stage where he is very expressive and determined and willful, all in a tiny little toddler body. He makes us laugh (and drives us pretty crazy) every day. I always love to photograph the girls but they usually don't let me. But mostly, I have been busy photographing other people's adorable children, so I thought I would post some of my recent favorites of those.

This is the fourth holiday that I have worked with this family and their beautiful girls.




A high school senior and her goofy 7 year old brother. They were very cute together and lots of fun to shoot.




An adorable 4 year old plays hide and seek with me. She hid behind the tree and then would pop out and run around it in a circle. Her little sister has a matching dress, but she perferred to stick nice and close to mom.




A sassy little 3 year old on a beautiful fall evening. I got to go to her house ealier this fall to photograph her new baby sister.






Going back next week to photograph this tiny guy a little more. He wasn't really in a picture taking kind of mood. I love Daddys who are so obviously enamored with their newborn.


DOes this little 12 week old have killer eyelashes or what? Still editing this one, but I skipped ahead to this image.


This sweet little 2 year old brought Thomas trains from home. And his puppy, too.




Last but not least, this awesome family. I had a hard time choosing only 4 favorites from this session, there were many more that I absolutely love.





Four more sessions to go this week and then wrapping up for this year, I think. Thanks for looking!

...

On my fridge this afternoon :)

Discovered

My boy, he likes to climb. He also likes to sit in things. Laundry baskets, toy boxes, that type of thing. He spent a good 15 minutes the other day taking every single file out of the bottom drawer of my lateral filing cabinet and then was trying to figure out how to climb in there when I moved him. Today, Derek went to check on him in the bathroom and found this.

4 years

We took this back in September and I never posted it. I edited these sloppily, rushing now in betwen sessions. How long do you think we can keep this up? I am picturing her at 18 in a little red skirt wedged into that tiny chair. Who's with me?

9-11-05


9-11-07


9-11-09

A guilty confession

Second post for today :)

My guilty confession - while I was typing that last post Eli fell. Off the kitchen table. Nice. I was sitting 10 feet away but obviously not paying adequate attention. It was a clean and fairly graceful fall, actually, and he landed sitting down on his butt. He's fine.

An even guiltier confession - after I picked him up and determined that he was not hurt I actually said out loud, "see? THAT is why I keep telling you not to climb on the table."

That didn't take long

Day 4/5 and I already missed a day. Oh well, maybe I'll post twice sometime to make up for it. Or not.

These are some of my favorites of CHharlotte's recent artwork.

THis she made on the first day of Kindergarden. It says "I love Gracie". Awwww.


A worksheet that she brought home. I like her little short person. ANd how she wrote 0 and 100 above the full and empty words.


THis is a worksheet she brought home a few weeks ago. THe one side says, "Wemberley worries about". I don't know that story, but apparently it involves butterflies and a parade. On the side that says, "I worry about" she put boys hitting her backpack on the bus. The picture has smiling boys leaning out of bus seats while the backpack wearing person is frowning. I guess that's probably all pretty self-explanatory really.


Much less self-explanatory, this is a flow chart with 13 steps for making turkey shaped cookies. At risk of boring you all, I'll list the steps as they were explained to me. Follow along, it really is all there.

Step 1: Get a cookie sheet
Step 2: Get some dough
Step 3: Roll out the dough
Step 4: Put the dough in circles on the sheet
Step 5: Cut out the shape of your hand in the dough (I think, that's a knife there pointing to the cookie sheet)
Step 6: Decorate the turkey's face (it's hard to see, but there are eyes and a beak now)
Step 7: Put the cookie sheet in the oven
Step 8: Wait 15 minutes
Step 9: Take the cookie sheet out of the oven
Steps 10 through 13 are a little fuzzy to me. THey involve different methods of adding details and colors to the cookies.

SHe did it all from memory, I thought that was pretty good.

Day 3

Grace is a vision in shades of pink as she waits for Charlotte's bus.



She was very cute standing out there looking down the street for the bus to be coming. I wanted pictures of the reunion. They get so excited to see each other at the end of the day. Grace, however, did not want pictures taken. I snuck this one when her back was turned.

Day 2

I had Gracie home with me today, but she politely declined to be photographed for NaBloPoMo Day 2. Here are two from the archives of my iPhone instead. Lame, I know, but I have 28 more days to go (thanks, Heidi!) and I am pacing myself.

Eli at the Pumpkin Patch petting zoo. He really liked the animals. Eli loves dogs and cats. He giggles maniacally when he sees them. This past weekend he impressed Derek by taking some cat food from the bowl at Jerry and Allison's house and trying to feed it to the cat. Derek couldn't figure out where he learned to do that.

Gracie sleeping in the car sometime this summer. It made me laugh.

NaBloPoMo

November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). A blogger that I read regularly organized it as a spin off of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I don't think I have a novel in me, so I thought I would give the 31 blog posts in 31 days a try. Let's see how well I do.

Day 1 - my trick or treaters. The little dinosaur didn't want to pose for the picture.



Charlotte was Tinkerbell. She was hoping for wings that lit up, but we couldn't find any. Gracie was Sleeping Beauty. This was Charlotte's costume from last year. It was obvious how much taller Charlotte is than Gracie, Grandma had to hem the dress almost 2 inches. Eli was a dinosaur in a costume he inherited from Kat. I think there were maybe pants originally, but we couldn't find them. We had fun trick or treating with Shawn and Cheyenne. The girls got lots and lots of candy, most of which they won't eat. They have very specific ideas about what kinds of candy they each like, which we don't discourage. At least for now it keeps them from the traditional Halloween gorging experience. We'll see how many years that lasts.