The Saturday that the Lind family and I met for our session we had perfect weather! Seventy five degrees, sunny, and just a splash of fluffy clouds painting the bright blue sky. This was my first time photographing the Lind family. Courtney and Eric have four kiddos all under 3 (almost 4) years old, two of which are twin girls! When I met up with them they were all so sweetly dressed in blue tones and all the girls matched in blue sear-sucker outfits and blue bows. Y’all know I’m a sucker for a bow so having three girls in matching bows was precious!
You may remember seeing this family before on my blog, the first time being in 2015 when it was just baby Lucas! Wow has my editing style improved since then! Jacquelyn is my big from our sorority and so we’ve known each other for a long time and had a lot of goofy times together, a lot of which involved Chanello’s pizza 🙂 Well now she is a momma to not just one sweet boy like in 2015 but three! These blonde cuties are sweet like Jac and goofs like their dad Quest! We always end each session with the boys picking a pose for their own goofy solo portrait. These have ranged from big-shot baseball players, to Captain America, to cowboys, etc. Always so fun and I love that they love this little tradition. 🙂
In the past, I have always taken Sterling and my pictures. We set up a tripod in a gorgeous area, connect our wireless clicker, set the manual focus and “click, click, click” we snag the shot we want. We’ve done for major celebrations like announcing our pregnancy, the gender of Finley, paying off our car loan etc. We’ve also done this every year for our family holiday cards since getting married. But not this year.
Getting to see Catherine and Kyle for their family session was a real treat. Who would have thought that it would be in the 90s in Virginia at the end of April!?! Regardless of the heat, they were real troopers and were amazing to work with. They came prepared to Manassas Battlefield with their own cooler of snacks, and water to keep the girls happy and cool. They also were willing to take breaks and go slow to get the best shots. Boy did it pay off!
Whew! My mini-season was FAST and furious!! Over the course of two weekends (plus two rescheduled dates for weather), I met with 25 families and spent 12.5 hours taking pictures for them! I culled through thousands of images to find the best for each family and spent roughly 50+ hours editing! All in all, I delivered 2,424 images (which is a little deceptive because it includes the black and white duplicates). Whew!
I have been trying to get this post created for (obviously) two months ::face palm::. I have been making a concerted effort to get TONS of pictures of our life with Finley as she gets older. I’ve been taking my camera everywhere and unapologetically been demanding pictures because the cliche saying that they grow up too fast is too true – THEY GROW UP TOO FAST. I’m so glad I have these images and these frozen moments in time but now I have a back log of images to share :). A good problem to have, no doubt.
That other cliche saying of “I wish there were more hours in the day” is also very true of parenthood. In the hubbub of Fall Minis, a 12 week growth spurt, the holidays, Christmas shopping, and a four month sleep regression, I have found so many excuses to put off writing this post. The thing is, I WANT to share these images because in a few months, a year or more I will be so glad that I can look back on this post. I have been blogging here since 2011 and every so often I’ll go back in time and look at personal blog posts of what I was randomly doing. This place is like a scrapbook of my post college life and I LOVE it! So as much as I’m sharing these images for you to see – I’m totally sharing these images for me. 🙂
NOW the reason for the post – Finley updates!!
In the past two months she has really grown SO much! Not only is she significantly bigger but she also has a bigger and bigger personality! Between 3 and 4 months she became so much more interactive and you can see it in the pictures below. At three months she’d make eye contact, track us and smile but also had a real serious face (as seen below) and would still space out. Jump to 4 months and she smiles ALL the time, has tons of little facial expressions and even laughs! Even her doctor kept saying at her four month check up “WOW she is so expressive!” :).
I love that she LOVES being read to and will even grab the book and push to move the pages. She is OBSESSED with her play mat and all the things we have hanging from it for her to grab, chew on and feel. She found her hands and loves chewing on them. She LOVES the bath and makes a HUGE mess as she kicks like crazy – splashing water EVERYWHERE. 🙂 At 11 weeks she started sleeping through the night but has recently hit a bit of a sleep regression. We’re hoping it won’t last long but who knows. It’s hard that she struggles to fall asleep but I do love that she’s easily comforted by being held and snuggled, so I’m exhaustedly soaking up the snuggles.
I’m so glad to be sharing these images and want to give you fair warning that this is a pretty big photo dump. 🙂 We love this girl more and more and as hard and exhausting as it is – it is truly the so much fun watching her grow and learn!
Finley LOVES this fox. We named him “Mr. Fox” and she thinks he’s the greatest. The face on the left KILLS ME – I’m DYING laughing!!
The next few pictures are from the beginning of October when Finley had just turned two months (and was in her third month – thus being included in this post). We had just taken the Perez family pictures and we hung back after their session so Sterling could get some pictures of me and Finley. She looks SO different here! It’s amazing to see the difference, she’s so much more interactive with people and her surroundings now.
One day this past October I was driving past the Maryland Agriculture Resource Council and noticed this GORGEOUS road that was tree lined with BEAUTIFUL colorful leaves. I came home and said to Sterling that we HAD to get fall pictures there before the leaves fell. Thank God we did because three days later I drove past it again and EVERY leaf had fallen off. We tried so hard to get a family picture together using my tripod but the distance was too far for the phone remote app and none of them turned out. I’m so grateful I got preordered a clicker for my camera to own for any future spontaneous photo shoots. 🙂
When we were in Richmond for minis Sterling’s family came over from Charlottesville to have a socially distanced lunch with us. Sterling’s sister’s family had never met Finley so it was especially nice. His mom even got a COVID test so she could hold Finley.
GiGi and her Granddaughters
FOUR MONTHS
Now for some iPhone pics
These bear outfits kill me 🙂 Holding her bottle for the first time. I only sobbed a little bit 🙂 She looks so much smaller here!!My friend Jessie, Finley and I went to a park and walked around together. We took off our masks for a second to snag our own socially distanced pictures in front of this really cool painted barns. Oh she just loves her DaddyHappy Halloween indeed.
As I wrap up another amazing fall season with over 30 families served I have made a goal for myself to actually blog and share the images from this season! You see, every year I get so wrapped up in the hustle of the fall season and holiday minis that I always lapse on sharing the images! The Perez family is a perfect example! The images from their second milestone session last year were some of my favorites of the season but I never got to share them! So this year I cheated a bit and combined the images from their second milestone session from 2019 and this years fall session ☺️. You can check out their first milestone session here.
Julia and Chris are friends of ours from college and we have many a late night shenanigan story shared with them. What’s fun about our sessions is that we have recently tried to schedule them so that Sterling can come at the end and we can at least spend time together. This year with COVID we haven’t gotten to see them so it was especially exciting to get to take their pictures and meet up at a park to socially distance spend time together. Finley was only 2 months old so we planned for Sterling and Finley to drive with me and hang out at the park while I took these images. It worked out great because they got to meet Finley in a socially distanced way.
What’s crazy to see in this joint post is how much of a difference a year makes! Jackson looks SO much older in the 2020 images than from the year before! He’s notably taller but has lost some of his baby face too. Each boy is so uniquely different and great in their own way. Jackson is outgoing, adventurous and a strong leader. Ryan is observant, loving, sweet and independent. I had a blast walking through Black Hill Park near Gaithersburg Maryland for our session this year and downtown Frederick last year with this sweet family. We played games, used our imagination and laughed a lot!
Enjoy this joint blog post of our sweet friends and their precious family!
This is the most delayed I’ve ever been on writing a “best of” post but it deserves its moment because 2019 was an AWESOME year for me with photography! I did a grand total of 50 total sessions with a mixture of newborn, family minis, milestone sessions, senior sessions and more! Read More »
This session was the perfect POP of spring colors and fun! Christina is a sorority sister of mine and I realized as I was driving down to DC that hadn’t seen her since we graduated! CRAZY! Last time we were together we were dancing about to pop hits of 2010 and jumping about in general 22-year-old excitement for life. Now she is married with a 1-year-old little boy – Lincoln!
As I drove down to DC on Saturday morning I was a little nervous… it had rained the whole night before and was still overcast and drizzling. I kept looking at the sky saying “Common now – you need to break up these clouds for me”. Sure enough, as I got closer and closer to the location the clouds started to move apart and let that sunshine come through. The day turned out even better than I could have imagined – bright sun, 75 degrees and simply beautiful! Read More »
What I love almost as much as Christina and her sweet family is the colors from this session! What you can’t tell is that we are literally in a parking lot of the park but the trees in this small patch between lots had the most beautiful fall colors. Christina came to the session in this deep blue dress that looked stunning on her. Her little girl Florence was all dolled up in a velvet pink dress but the accent of her flower headband made her curls pop off the background. Some of my favorite images from this session are definitely those of Florence and her Dad. Tommy knows just the way to make Florence laugh and these two giggling together is everything I’d want from a picture of my (one-day future) children and Sterling. They are so precious! The colors are beautiful in these but more so you can feel how much these three (now four!) love each other!Read More »
