Taking the Year 2 Pics

For the first year of Kayla's life, and now the first year of Tyler's life, we're documenting their monthly growth through pictures at Picture People.  But after 12 months of this you're kinda over it.  The background is almost always white, the pictures are pretty posed, the props have something lacking... don't get me wrong... we've gotten some really cute pictures out of it, but 12 months is enough.  After that we kinda only wanted to go for special occasions, like Halloween or Christmas.  And by we I mean me.  Eric was definitely over it. 

So, for her "Two Year Old" pictures he asked that we not do picture people.  I had a friend who has a digital SLR and she's always taking cute pictures of her son so I asked her to borrow her camera.  It took us a few weeks to get together but we finally did it.  And, it ended up that she took all the pictures so I could help corral Kayla, pose her, get her to pay attention, get her to laugh.... and Eric could keep Tyler happy in the stroller for the 1-2 hours it took to get all these pictures. 

We went to a local park that I do Stroller Strides in twice a week - Red Hill Park.  I decided on that because it has a duck pond at one end of it and that pond is surrounded by giant trees and a lot of green grass.  And there's a playground, of course, that I thought would give us some cute pictures as well.  I changed my mind about the date a lot because I was going off the weather.  I had gotten a really cute sun dress I wanted her to wear but obviously only if it was warm enough.  I got lucky and it was in the 70s here most of January so it worked out. 

We didn't really have a plan as to what pictures we were going to capture.  We just figured we'd walk around and Toni, my friend, would just snap away with her super fancy camera.  I got her to run towards the camera, run away from it, look at the ducks, sit on rocks, run around rocks, look at trees, attempt to blow bubbles, eat a sucker (that wasn't hard to do), walk on walls, and generally just play and laugh.  When we were by the duck pond there was a lot of "Oh my god, don't go in the pond!" moments.  A lot.  Because even if she didn't mean to go in there, she'd trip over some air and go head first, I just knew it.  But she didn't.  Not this time. 

She was actually in a great mood, having a great time, so we ended up with a lot of great pictures.  I am sooo happy with them.  I'm even happier that they were free and that we have the digital files that we can do with what we like.  You don't get that at Picture People! 

The turtles were out sunbathing. 

It was a beautiful, blue sky, day.

And Kayla was the star of the show. 

Couldn't have asked for more!

Here's a few of my favorites!