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Beautiful evening light and a boy full of smiles.




Grace makes this goofy face, too. I never really thought about the similarlity until looking at these pictures tonight.



This one's my favorite.


By the way, he was making raspberry sounds which is what was cracking him up so much. Every other frame looks like this (but I usually just edit the giggles).

New tricks

So today I was getting the studio ready for a session tomorrow. I got everything ready and then brought my little buddy over. As soon as he looked up and saw the camera pointed at him he said, "CHEEEEEEEEEESE". And a little part of me died inside. Oh little boy, who taught you that!?


He's kind of cute cheesing for the camera, though, I will admit. The good thing is that he thinks he's hilarious saying "cheese" on cue, so he cracks himself up and I get a smile in the next frame. This one still has a little cheese left in it, but it was too cute to toss.


This one's a better Eli smile.


I have a big smiley series of these, too. I only edited two.

Birthday

Birthday boy looking at his cake.


Birthday boy burns himself on hot candle wax.


Birthday boy consoles himself with ice cream cake.




A favorite of Eli from our trip to North Carolina to visit Aunt Mel and Uncle Greg this past week. Boy, do I love that kid. My son is beautiful.



Where did 2 years go? Eli is a fun and funny little guy. He sings more than he talks. He knows most of the words to all the typical preschool songs. He knows numbers up to 15 and can point to and name any number 1 to 10. He counts forwards and backwards, actually. He sits in his crib at night and reads his board books, sometimes for over an hour. When he falls asleep he covers himself with his pillow for a blanket - it's really cute. If he hears so much as the jingle of a car key he heads straight for the front door and gathers up his shoes. He doesn't know where you're going, but he knows he wants to go too. His disposition at two is overall quite endearingly sunny. He can definitely storm when he wants to, but it usually blows over quickly.

Just this week Eli started to say both of his sisters' names. I remember before he was born talking with Charlotte about how old the baby might be when he would learn to say her name. He now loves to point and name all of the members of the family, including himself. Mommy, Daddy, Charlie, Gracie (pronounced sort of like Cee-Cee) and Eli (minus the "l", like Ee-i). We are truly blessed.

Berries

We inherited a nice clump of blackberry bushes in our backyard when we moved in. The girls let me take some pictures of them while they were picking them yesterday.

I really like this one. Web-size doesn't do it justice.


I asked Charlie to tickle Grace and this is what I got :)


They looked at what we shot on the back of the camera, and they felt the berries weren't featured enough. So I climbed up on the swingset to take this one.


Charlotte lost her first tooth a few weeks ago (at Cayden's birthday party actually). I think her gap-toothed smile is cute. She has been waiting for a long time to lose a tooth. She was really excited. I've got a funny tooth fairy story about it, but I'll save that for a later post.


I asked Grace to look closely into my lens. This is what I got. When she was a baby I always thought she had the biggest, roundest eyes. She's still got 'em.


Some snaps of the berry picking. Those bushes are really prickly - you have to be careful where you step.






It is interesting. The berries are in clumps, and the middle ones ripen the fastest. Right now many of them look like this, with one ripe, black berry in the middle.