Ohhhh remember baby Alden from last year who loved to stare into your soul with intense, prolonged eye contact? He turned ONE during this session (happy birthday, Alden!) and now stares into your soul slightly less (disappointing but age-appropriate). Now when he looks at you, it’s quickly followed by a clever little smirk like he knows everything about you from previous soul-stealing baby sessions and is definitely going to use it against you in the future. His smile is hilarious and almost looks like he’s incredibly proud of himself… the type of smile that happens right before you’d get a big head nod and he’d open his mouth and say, “Hey bro,” except he’s a baby. It’s incredible. I’d be confident too if I knew how to successfully fish for cats at the age of twelve months. Also, his parents are Kathy and Andrew, whom we love, so obviously this helps to bolster his self-esteem. He’s cute and charming. We did a lot of activities and so by the time we busted out the adorable water table that Alden’s parents bought him for his birthday, he was way tired, and I can say with hands-down certainty that Kathy was the person who enjoyed that table the most (this may have happened even if Alden wasn’t wiped out… Kathy really loved that table). We’re so glad we were there to document this little future-cat-lover (and hopefully extremely good secret-keeper) turn one.

I’ve been really excited to photograph these guys since they listed Friday Night Lights as the best TV show and Pearl Jam as the best band on the contact form questionnaire. Then I completely even forgot to talk to them about it because I was too wrapped up in their awesome house and incredibly good looking selves. This family is adorable! Even Mason, the dog, is handsome and well behaved. Hannah and Sydney, the twins, are 3.5 and full of spunk and amazing dance moves. They’re fraternal twins instead of identical, but it’s pretty difficult for me to tell them apart, and if I were their parents, I’d definitely be dressing them as the twins from The Shining for every Halloween as long as they’d let me. They have Whitney Houston Wednesdays, where they dance around their living room to Whitney Houston songs, but they made an exception this week and moved it to Saturday. Adam and Rachel put the twins on their shoulders and then did some sort of synchronized dip like Olympic figure skaters and it was pretty amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I forgot entirely to talk to them about Coach Taylor.

It is so much fun to have repeat clients, and even more fun when you get to see newborn brunette baby clients turn into blonde big sister clients who have a whole lot to say. We revisited the ever-wonderful Rachel and Kevin (whom you may know from their first newborn shoot with us a couple years ago) and joined them in welcoming new baby boy Jonah into their lives. This also involved reuniting with previous Baby Evelyn who is now Big Sister Evelyn. Previously, she had done a whole lot of sleeping and eating. Now, her days primarily consist of running frantically from room to room, hiding from you in a cardboard box castle, eating string cheese, and jumping on the bed because the photographer asked her to, thus creating a terrible downward spiral insistence to always be jumping on the bed that I suspect Rachel and Kevin might still be dealing with to this day (sorry guys).

Jonah is currently in the Whole Lot of Sleeping and Eating Phase so he’s slightly less energetic than Big Sister at this point, but I’m sure that he’ll progress to the String Cheese Phase in no time (and hopefully Evelyn will have forgotten about my bed jumping request by the time he gets there). A big thank you and congratulations to the wonderful Rachel and Kevin – you guys are awesome and your family is really cute.