My little Bub is turning 1 today and what a year it's been. This was my first year as a stay at home mom and my first year as a remote learning teacher ( and hopefully my last year doing that - LOL). This year definitely had it's ups and downs and even in this weird time, I'm still so grateful. My family has been blessed this year, even with the pandemic. My husband was able to work remotely, which has had challenges, but also has allowed him to be here, with us, while G as hit so many milestones that he would have otherwise missed while working. Having C home full time has been hard, only because I get so little time to myself that I don't get to focus on my photography as much as I'd like to, but I also know how lucky I am to have the flexibility to have him home and be able to focus on teaching him and creating memories with him. This past week, we did a fun little birthday photo shoot for G and what a wild time that was!
I don't know what it is but photographing my own kids is so much more stressful than when I photograph client's and their families. I think part of it is that I have a specific vision in my head, that often doesn't pan out, due to lack of cooperation from my children and that's SO frustrating! I had been planning this photo shoot for months, buying outfits, decorations and having my neighbor on board to make a cake. I monitored the weather for the week before G's birthday and picked the day that seemed to have the most favorable lighting conditions.
Well, none of that mattered. Despite the forecast, I awoke to the brightest, sunniest day - with not a cloud in the sky (not ideal lighting for photos). On top of that, G slept late, which sort of messed with my schedule for the day. Since I'd been anticipating the session for so long, I decided to just move forward and hope for the best. With the help of my neighbors, we got the setup done while G was taking his morning nap, and of course, the last 30 minutes of his nap was overcast and the perfect conditions for photos... By the time he was up, the sun was shining bright again, so we figured out how to use our giant beach umbrella to provide a little extra shade. It actually worked pretty well!
I lucked out and there were some clouds during the time I was taking the photos and the umbrella really helped too. Now the issue I faced was that G didn't want to sit still, and C wanted nothing to do with this photo shoot (typical behavior for an almost 5 year old). Despite the lighting working against me and C's lack of cooperation, I managed to get some pretty great images of them.
After getting some good photos of my little buddies, we brought out the cake! Cake smashes are the craziest sessions - you have to be 100% ready to capture as many pictures as possible in a short amount of time. In our case, Griffin seemed less than impressed by the cake (which, was made by our awesome neighbor - who not only helped make the cake, but had her kids distract C while I was setting up the decorations for the session/helped me determine where my decorations needed to be hung during the session).
I feel like cake smash sessions never quite go as anticipated, and this one wasn't any different. We've given G sweets before and he's always loved them, so I assumed he would go to town on this cake. I assumed wrong - he seemed so confused about what he was supposed to do!
Even still, I got some pretty cute photos of him with his cake! Eventually, we needed to call in reinforcements to help him smash that cake! C had been looking forward to only this part of the session for a while. He was pretty sad knowing that this birthday cake was for G and not for him (being his first year having his brother celebrate a birthday, he's a little jealous, despite the fact that his birthday is a month from now), but was willing to help if it meant he got to eat some frosting!
With his big bro's help, we finally managed to get G a little messy with frosting - which is obviously the whole point of a cake smash! He didn't eat much of the cake, but at least tried some frosting and a little piece of the cake!
Because my neighbor/cake maker extraordinaire is amazing (and knows C so well), she also made a second cake for us to surprise C with at the very end of the session. Before G was born, C decided that his name was going to be Bubba and that nickname has stuck... So, a "Bubba's Big Bro" cake was made and C got to have his own mini-cake smash with that cake!
HUGE thank you to my neighbor and her kiddos for all of their help with cakes, setting up, distractions, and making funny faces to get my kids to smile!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUBBA! We love you to the moon and back! <3
Thanks for stopping by!
~so~