Maternity photos

I had wanted to get maternity pictures taken while I was pregnant with Julie. Part of it was sentimental, and part was pragmatic. I knew I'd have another child someday after her, and Ben and I thought that if we had some nice pictures to show her of Mommy with a growing belly, that might help her get used to the changes better. Alas, you may recall, she came a month early, and I never had the opportunity to have them done. This time I was determined. I scheduled them months ago with a professional photographer who is a friend of mine. At the last minute (well, a week and a half in advance), I cancelled that session with her, in favor of saving the money toward a family photo shoot in the spring before she moves. I talked with another friend of mine who is, like me, a photographer building her business and clientele, and we got together on super short notice to do this shoot. We were supposed to have lots of sun the day we went out, but ended up overcast instead. I'm glad we didn't wait though, because we did have gorgeous fall color, and the weather wasn't too cold yet. Since then, we've dropped temperatures quite a bit, and we've had so much wind that many of the leaves are gone from the trees.

Anyway, these were taken on the day I marked 34 weeks. Sometime between this photo shoot in the afternoon and when I went to bed, my baby "dropped." I'm now at 35 1/2 weeks. My c-section is scheduled for November 18th, but I'm pretty confident I won't make it that long. I'm glad I got these photos done when I did.

Julie came with me for this shoot, and she was so well behaved. She was in some pictures, which was fun, and just ran around during the rest.












I love the colors here:

Giving "Baby Robyn" a hug:

Sometimes I like these shots with the heart over the belly, and sometimes I think they're contrived. Today I like it. Tomorrow...we'll see.





Sillies:

This is one of my favorites, even though my face isn't in it (though that means you can't see my double chin...). To me, this is one of those photos for which the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" was invented.

Self-portrait

While visiting my in-laws a couple weekends ago, I was able to do a fun photo shoot (that I'm still editing) with my father-in-law. He'd gotten a new Harley the week before (his second), so we went out to celebrate and immortalize it. Allow me to just say how hard ti is to photograph chrome (up close) without getting yourself in the photo. I do kind-of like how this particular shot framed out though. I just can't decide if I like it better in color or in black and white.





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Practice makes perfect

Julie has been getting plenty of baby-tending practice lately. Like many toddlers, she goes through phases with her toys. Recently, she found the long-lost bottle that belongs to her "Baby Maddie." Said bottle has rekindled her interest in the doll. She is quite nurturing: she feeds Baby Maddie, burps her, rocks her to sleep, sometimes even changes her diaper, sings to her, and is generally very caring. I think she might actually understand that "Baby Robyn" isn't just a game -- she'll really be a baby in our family.