boy day

after madelyn missed the bus this morning (i wasn't watching the clock like i should have been) and loading everyone up to drop her off, the boys and i have spent the morning just playing. last night's mops speaker was a self-made photographer (meaning she has little to no formal training but has some God-given talent and passion that she has built into a business) and she gave us some tips for photographing our children at home. i was really just playing around because i don't feel like i have enough pictures of mason and manning.

manning has two little 'wings' where his hair flips out next to his ears on both sides of his head.

this isn't great of manning, but shows mason's new picture face perfectly. he really, really wants to make sure that his eyes are open!

and another new favorite picture pose - the silly face.

i liked this one of all three boys with 'silly faces'. it also used her tip about getting heads in a 'triangle' instead of 'stacked' on each other (i.e. holding a kid on your lap and it looking like your head is sitting on top of theirs)

and they came upstairs when i went to put manning down for his nap and i thought they could try building some new things with mason's legos. it turned into mommy trying to help both of them at once, but we still had fun. and a few more silly faces.

after a while we got hungry and i made lunch. of course seeing manning eat his fresh homemade yogurt made maddux want some yogurt with his lunch. (yes, my yogurt maker came and i am thrilled with the first batch! i am already planning on getting a second set of jars so that i can keep whole milk and skim milk options in the fridge at all times.) one of the tips she gave us was to take pictures of 'who they are' at each phase. maddux was shoveling in his yogurt with his head almost in the bowl and that is 'who he is' right now so i went to get my camera. i used two of her tips, getting close up and calling their name and snapping without a 'pose' or smile.

he really likes having his picture taken and did the yogurt eating 'pose' several more times for me. notice how he switches yogurts as he finishes off the peach yogurt mason decided he didn't like.

and maddux wanted pictures of his closed eyes. he would ask me to take it, squint up his eyes and then ask to see the picture. i did catch him after the squint too.

manning got into his 'cross-armed' pose while he was eating lunch. he does it a lot so i don't really think anything of it, but the photographer at jcp was pretty excited when he did it during the photoshot and had to take a picture. since she was so excited, i thought i should take a picture of it.

and then the last tip (which she recommends for every subject), take a picture from above. it makes everyone look thinner (she was speaking to the moms here) and she said it always makes kids look cute and is one of the easiest shots to have them cooperate on. so here is manning from above.

and now back to legos with the boys. love.