Guys! Tyler has now gone from a baby to a toddler. How does that happen? Science, I guess, and time. And now that he’s older, he’s starting to show some preferences and affinities that I hope he carries with him through the rest of his life. Namely: his love of cats and his overuse of sprinkles while making cookies. When I say cats, I mean their two pet cats Bongo and Max who stare at us from the top step and then run, and also his orange stuffed cat named Tom who does not leave Tyler’s side. And when I say overuse of sprinkles, I mean that 99% of that cookie is comprised of sprinkles, and I’m really not sure how you’d eat it, but I support it.

Tyler also likes painting his parents, running through bubbles, and looking aggravated while sitting on top of a gnome stool. He also likes making Super Target stores out of sand in his sand box (he is going to be such a catch). We are told that he wants to be a “big fat morning dove” when he grows up, and he enjoys riding his tricycle, identifying dogs on walks, and feeding ducks when they are at the pond. Laurin and Tim enjoy really wonderful art, really wonderful wallpaper, Game of Thrones, and keeping up with Tyler. The best part of taking photos of repeat clients is seeing how they got a large print made of Tyler looking aggravated while sitting on top of a gnome stool. We absolutely adore this family.

Are my fellow American blog readers prepared to feel really inadequate when it comes to the number of languages you speak? Good! You’ve come to the right place. Meei contacted us a while back to do a family session with her husband and two daughters. They love the age of their girls and wanted to get it documented (and we agree; 1 and 3 are super fun ages!). We knew that Meei is Chinese, and we knew we’d have about a 5% chance of pronouncing her full name correctly, but she was super nice about our American handicap and told us to call her May. We also knew that her husband’s name was William, so we were 100% confident in our ability to pronounce his name (we were right!). But what we didn’t know is that William is actually Dominican! And William speaks Spanish and Meei speaks Chinese! They met while they were living in New York and they speak English to each other! And William speaks Spanish to the kids and Meei speaks Chinese to the kids and the kids respond in Spanish to their dad and Chinese to their mom and English at school and I’m sorry for all the exclamation points but this is so impressive to an American who took 6 years of French class and forgot everything! Holy smokes. We were and continue to be incredibly impressed by these trilingual kids and their parents. Such a cool family. The best part of our job is meeting people from all over the world and hearing about their experiences. So glad this family got to be our clients this year!

Johanna and Brad don’t know it yet, but we’ve already submitted the paperwork for them to adopt us (no offense, Mom and Dad, but paying adult bills is expensive and we know you already took care of us for half of our lives so we don’t want to ask you to have to do it again). Surprise, Johanna and Brad! You want us, right? Please? We won’t make too much noise living in your basement, and we can provide free babysitting services in exchange for whiskey slushes and bacon tortellini. We don’t know how to work a boat, but we’re sure we could figure it out. If you don’t sign the adoption paperwork, can we at least pretend we’re the cool aunt and uncle to your kids who aren’t really related to anyone in the family but the kids grow up under the misguided assumption that we’re actually blood relatives? Or are Laurel and Sam too old to fall for that at this point? Okay okay, we’ll settle for photographing your family every once in a while and being friends on the side. We love you all. A lot. Thanks for bringing us into your lives, feeding us, driving us around on a boat, showing me the true wonderfulness that is Garden & Gun and Duke’s mayonnaise, and being awesome.