I officially have a problem. I am completely unable to narrow down which pictures I love, so I share them all... so, picture overload from Riley's indoor/studio portion of her third year shoot! I had this idea for a while now, and I had a 2 hour window to set it up and take all the pictures while Jackson was asleep. And by some miracle, it worked. It was perfect!! Had to sneak some daddy shots in there, of course! And no better way to end a photo shoot than sprinkle chocolate everywhere! I finally got around to taking her outdoor 3 year photos a few days ago, so eventually when I get around to editing those I will share them also!!
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Slowly chipping away at Riley's 3rd year album.... I like to have them completed and ordered and in my hands by her 3rd birthday, which means I better keep working! I'm actually not THAT far behind, surprisingly. I also realized I never shared the family photos we had done in February, so this will kill 2 birds with one stone. Although, since it's Riley's album, obviously these pictures are pretty heavily Riley-focused. I'm at almost 100 pages... still over a month to go... it's gonna be a long book!!
Project 365 days 3, 4, and 5... i realized I can't possibly title EVERY post for the rest of the year project 365 because, well, how boring. And my mom is ALREADY giving me a hard time about WHERE ARE YOUR DAILY PHOTOS! I said I would take daily photos but proooooobably won't post them daily!!! :) So.... January 3... was a bit of a rough day. Mark is out of town, for 3 weeks. Like, out of the country out of town. And Jackson has thrush and was tough work, and on this particular day, Riley had a massive meltdown and cried so hard she broke blood vessels under her eyes... I mean, WHAT? The best I could manage on that day was an iphone picture, because, well, it was just that kind of a day. Those dots under her eyes are NOT freckles. January 4, 2013. I can't keep up with this little boy with his tongue stickin' out. He's going to be 11 months old in 2 days. How did that happen? January 5, 2013. Today. Had a bit of fun with my macro lens and my little piano playing monkey. :) And now we're alllll caught up... :)
January 3, 4, and 5, 2013.... Okay so.. costumes. I was totally indecisive, I couldn't pick costumes for the little ones to save my life. So finally, last minute, I decided Jack was going to be a monkey (because he's my little monkey) and I let Riley browse online and pick her own costume. And she picked a PINK POODLE, all by herself. And just look at this little monkey boy... While Jackson was asleep, we took Riley trick-or-treating around the local shops with tons of other kids. She was stopped multiple times by random people who wanted to take her picture, she was that cute. Once we got back, we had some time to kill, which we spent playing on the trampoline. Look at his hair!!! And that hair too... And then finally, we were ready to go trick-or-treating... or at least, dressed and ready, we needed to take about a million pictures first. Now, we only made it to ONE house trick-or-treating. And I didn't take any pictures. But we had fun, Riley was pretty excited about being given lots of candy, even if it mysteriously disappeared after she went to bed that night... :) Happy Halloween babies!!
I took Riley and her Aunt Jennie out photo location scouting with me one day. They were my test subjects, and I must say they were pretty fabulous models! Love these two blonde-haired blue-eyed beauties.
A few things I'm loving right now... (1) On Sunday I pulled this bad boy in from the garage and we made a "boat" for Riley. She loves it. Big time. And of course she promptly asked me to get in with her a draw her a hexagon! a circle! a trapezoid! etc... (And those two extra big circles are meant to be steering wheels, in case you were wondering...) (2) Over the weekend I went to a used children's clothing sale, and found a bunch of Mickey Mouse clothes in Jackson's size. I thought Riley would be stoked since she LOVES Mickey, I mean look at this awesome shirt (and cute baby!): Instead, she was confused... She couldn't understand why she could see Mickey's body, but not his face. She kept saying "Wanna see Mickey! Mickey?" Hmmm... (3) I'm absolutely loving watching the bond between Riley and Jackson grow. He's obviously still really young, but Riley just loves him more and more each day. She now gets sad and sometimes cries when he has to go down for a nap, and asks to "go see baby?" about a million times. And then when he wakes up she YELLS "Yaaaaaaayyyy! Baby awake now!!!" She wants to share everything with him and show him all her things. But she always makes sure she asks me first, to see if what she wants to do is okay with me. And I MOSTLY let her do what she wants, things like "pour pom poms on baby?" "Put black pom pom on baby's head?" Sure, go for it. Her next request was to "pour coins on baby's head?" which quickly got vetoed. (4) Precious little baby hats. Even if he can't wear them anymore since they aren't 100% cotton and we're trying to eliminate all non 100% cotton items in attempts to help his eczema. Just put away a good chunk of his wardrobe, actually... More on that later. (5) Riley mimicking/copying everything Jackson does. Her fave is when he tries to put both his hands in his mouth. (6) The light in our house. So much light, all day long, which allows for taking photos all day long, and even trying some new things... a bit "moodier," not my usual style, but I like it. (7) Riley's hair. Hellooooo little curly! (8) Jackson napping in his crib. This isn't how he usually naps, normally he's swaddled on his back, but he was fighting it and so I rolled him on his side and he went to sleep (with a little shushing and patting). Only lasted 40 minutes, but it's a start! And I didn't dare wake him by taking a photo, so a photo via the monitor will have to do. (9) Riley's many expressions. I just kept snapping away, and she just kept being cute. (10) A little self portrait action. Not the most flattering, but who cares. It's me and my baby. (11) These squishy cheeks and big blue eyes and big bald head. I just can't get enough of him. (12) Riley's fabulousness. The girl is FUNNY. Wait until you see the video I'm working on. Oi. I'm sure there's more, but we'll stop there for now. I meant to stop at 10 but had to add the last two. :)
I had big plans for family photos this weekend. Outfits picked out, location chosen, I was even going to get out my new remote so we could have a photo with all four of us. Well... let's just say things did NOT go as planned. We started with a baby that just needed sleep, and only wanted to sleep being held. So that ruled out me doing my hair and make-up. Then we had a toddler who decided she did NOT like the dress I had picked out for her and screamed "off off off!" as soon as I put it on. Also, she got her face painted this morning at her gym class, and she sobbed when we wiped off her precious butterfly from her cheek. We decided not to even fight the battle of taming her hair. So we headed out to my predetermined location, much earlier than I had planned since the weather was taking a turn for the worse. It was cold. And windy. After being nice and sunny and warm all weekend. There was no sun to be seen. But we soldiered on, and got the little ones unpacked and ready to go... and the cranky little baby was finally asleep and we didn't want to disturb him, and Riley flat out refused to do anything even somewhat cooperative. Likely because there was a pond! With ducks! And a bridge! And she was obsessed. And when we tried to move away from the ducks to a new location? Tears. And she would take off running, yelling "go see ducks! go see ducks!" And then Jackson woke up from his mini nap. And then my hopes of getting a decent family photo, JUST ONE, were crushed. So we packed the babies up and headed home. Then on the way home, we decided to give it one last try, and we stopped at a random field. Something without toddler distractions (i.e. ducks). Or so we thought... turns out, toddlers have incredible playground radars, and if there are any slides in the near vicinity, they will spot them. Aaaaaaand off she goes. I've never seen her run so fast. Now we were able to use this to our advantage, and were able to get a few decent photos using the playground as a bribe, but I had to work fast, she literally only sits still for 20 seconds with full bribery in force... She was not pleased about all the grass that was accumulating on her feet, and was saying "clean da grass off the feet?" I look forward to the days when Jackson can sit up JUST so I can get a photo of the two of them without random fingers and arms in the photo (and by random, I mean my husband's...) Jack Jack was a little cold in the wind so he needed to be nice and bundled snuggling with mama. I sure do love these two little babies. And then finally it was time to go home. Which conveniently, provided the opportunity for this photo... my favorite. And once we were done, we could all relax in the warmth of our home, looking as cute as ever... And someone discovered he can blow bubbles, which Riley thinks is AWESOME. "Look mama, Jack Jack has bubbles! Bubbles in da mouth!" So the photos weren't a total fail after all. No family photos, but that's alright, we'll try again another day.
Let's start with Friday night. After a rough day, the night was not looking much better as Jackson screamed the house down, threatening to wake Riley up. We walked him and shushed him and tried the swing and the stroller and feeding him and everything else we could think of, and he was just overtired and not a happy little fellow. Mark and I were taking turns trying to get him to sleep, and it was Mark's turn so I went in the kitchen to get a drink and recharge. And then I hear silence. And I turn the corner, and see this: Mind you all the lights were off, but Mark had just propped him up just to see what would happen, and he was quiet, happy, alert, and even smiling... at 9:30pm... after crying and fighting sleep for well over an hour... And then after chilling there on his own for a little while, being nice and calm, he fell asleep in Mark's arms. Weird. But then he slept until 3am, so I'll take it! After that, we had a nice lazy weekend. Saturday was a rainy, inside kind of day. Jackson was much more settled (except for the 20 minutes before he went to sleep for the night), and in fact, in the middle of the afternoon he was SO sleepy he pretty much could not be woken. I decided that surely as soon as I tried to pose him for photos, he would wake up... WRONG. He pretty much let me pose him like a newborn, which was awesome, and a little disappointing since I didn't have anything set up for a photo shoot! But we made do with the couch and a few handy blankets. I started off just taking photos of him as he was, hanging out in his most favorite position. Keep in mind I was TRYING to wake him up, and the first loud click of my camera made me think I was doing just that. He rolled and stretched and puckered up his lips, making me think he was waking. But then he changed his mind and decided to go back to sleep. So I stuck him on a pillow while I got out some blankets, and back into his favorite position he went. So I decided to go for it, and I set up some blankets, and plopped him down, not expecting to get many photos, as surely an almost 7 week old would not let me pose him like a newborn. No way. Well... I couldn't believe it! He didn't even let me pose him like that when he was a newborn! Oh how I wish I had all my stuff set up, the blankets are just draped on the couch and it's not exactly perfect, but I thought for sure he would wake up as soon as I posed him! But since he was sound asleep, I decided to try my luck and keep going. We got some "easy" shots... And then we really went for it. This next one cracks me up because it's totally a newborn pose, and Jackson's head looks HUGE... he's one BIG newborn! I seriously could not believe he was sleeping through all of this. Such a good little model! I spent a solid hour fiddling with him and he barely batted an eye. Then Riley woke up from her nap and the photo shoot had to come to an end... almost. And can we just take a minute to compare (and please ignore how unflattering the photos are of me...). Jackson at 5 days, and then at 6 weeks 4 days. On Sunday we took Riley to her second soccer practice, and while I was kicking myself for not actually bringing my camera with me, I made up for it by snapping a few quick picks once we got home. She had so much fun this time! She loved running around and kicking the ball and scoring goals. Mark taught her to yell "gooooaaaalllll!!" and do an airplane celebration, which I will HAVE to get on video because it was possibly the cutest thing ever. We spent the rest of the day just hanging out. Jackson practiced using his huge neck muscles... can't believe how strong he is already!! I've got so many pictures of Riley, but you'll have to wait for her 21 month post tomorrow!! Until then, I'll leave you with this:
My favorite photo of February for the Click it up a Notch photo contest. My little man, 11 days old. Definitely my favorite photo of him!
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