Megan and Carly’s children continue to amuse and delight another year later! Last time, their son was just a lil baby and Big Sister was all decked out in shark shoes and a variety of different outfits, all of them fabulous. This time, Little Brother has just turned two and loves puzzles and cars and slides and his big sister. Big Sister is four and is incredibly theatrical and loves everything and everyone, and still prefers multiple outfit changes a day into really fabulous clothes. Both of them majorly love glitter and intentionally overuse it in their craft projects. Little Brother, at one point, spilled red glitter all over his blue paints. Big Sister gasped, paused, then said, “I love that for you!” They both looked like they had murdered someone covered in glitter by the end of the project and were quite pleased with themselves. Both love dancing and playground equipment and piggyback rides and racing, although Big Sister can’t help herself regarding early starts. They’re wonderful kids who are joyful and sweet and love each other and their moms so much. I’ve loved watching Megan and Carly’s family grow over the years while watching Megan and Carly remain the same loving, compassionate, hilarious people they were when I first met them years ago.
The first time I met Lyla she was a very sleepy and chill baby and now she has the energy of one thousand highly-caffeinated hummingbirds. Harper, her older sister, is also extremely energetic but concentrates most of her energy in two areas: jumping and changing outfits. She would just…disappear and change her outfit. She changed her outfit no less than 7 times during the session and I told Clare I’d need to go home and apologize to my mother, because I did the same thing when I was Harper’s age, except that I would put the clothes I just wore for 5 minutes into the dirty laundry basket instead of hanging it back up because it really hadn’t been worn, causing my mom to do excessive laundry until she realized what was happening. I’m sorry, Mom. I am glad I’m not alone though; I’m glad some other kid out there is rapidly changing outfits throughout the day as the mood strikes them. I think Harper has a future career in fashion of some sort, and Lyla has a future career as a high-powered CEO for some very cute company like Sanrio or some other business involving sparkles and animals, OR she’ll fulfill her dream job, which is to become Taylor Swift. Both girls are on the path to success and how can they not be when they have Clare and Dan? I love this family and I love their color and pattern-filled home and I love their British accents and for introducing me to a British marshmallow called a Flump. Thank you for letting me be a little part of your life.
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: in-home lifestyle family shoots are my absolute favorite. But, they’re especially my favorite when they involve breakfast. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because making a special breakfast has always signified to me that it’s the weekend because that’s when you have time to actually make sausage and french toast and all that other yummy stuff. So I enjoy hanging out at other peoples’ houses on Saturday mornings while they make breakfast and wear their pajamas – this is comfortable and fun for me. And sometimes it’s fun and comfortable for the kids too, particularly when their names are Andrew and their favorite activity in the whole world is being photographed.
So here we have Allison and Nathaniel, two very intelligent people with lots of incredibly fun hobbies (Allison used to make balloon animals for parties!) who have interesting jobs and a good sense of humor (plus a killer selection of vintage My Little Ponies). And we have Samuel, the very cute baby who we occasionally forced into a cowboy hat because he was wearing a bandana bib and it just felt right. And last, but certainly not least, we have Andrew, toddler extraordinaire, who immediately smiled at me when I walked in the door like he knew that I was another shot at the big time for his inevitable career in show business. Then he continued smiling directly at me throughout the entire 1.5 hours I was there. He was *this close* to winking at me pretty much all the time. He is a total ham and hilarious. When he’s not waiting for his career to take off, he enjoys walking like a penguin, working in his garden, making OJ, cracking eggs for french toast, and helping his Grandma June play the piano when she visits. I immensely enjoyed hanging out with this crew on a weekend morning.
