These Two…

These two definitely make my life complete. A big thank you to Jeni Prosser of {framed} for capturing these precious moments while strolling through downtown Cincinnati on a beautiful April Sunday morning.

 {Taken in Over-the-Rhine, Downtown Cincinnati and Lytle Park}

Happy Easter & The Ears Tradition

I feel like Easter is always a nice time to snap a few pictures of Myles. I mean, yeah of course, we all like to take pictures of the kids at Easter. But when I purchased these bunny ears you see him wearing…. before he was even born, I wanted to make it a tradition to have him wear them each year (even if I have to bribe him when he’s older and filled with embarrassment) to see how much he has changed from year to year as we celebrate Easter.

It’s pretty incredible! Below are the past two Easter pictures:

Man, this little guy is sure growing fast. The picture to the left is from when he was just 14 months and had him out egg hunting and attempting to ride a tricycle and the picture to the right is tiny tiny Myles at only 3 months, or actually 2 months old!   He couldn’t even sit up or anything, It’s hard to remember him that way.

Anyway, we hope you all had a fabulous Easter!

 

Monkey See, Monkey Do! Myles P. Turned Two!

This past weekend we had Myles’ 2nd birthday celebration. It’s hard to believe yet another year has passed. I felt like we *just* had his first birthday party!

Anyway, here are just a few pictures of our small but fun, sock monkey themed celebration.

I absolutely love this picture. He was having such a great time and couldn’t be more pleased that he got his own cupcake- all to himself.

We had the cutest invites. (Thank you Posh Pixels for the design). All I  had to do was sew a little line around the edge of the invitations which was fun! I hadn’t sewn paper in awhile- or anything for that matter.

My mom making the cupcakes — cause everyone knows I can’t bake and if you didn’t, well now you do!

 

The cupcakes finished! John made the little toppers for the plain cupcakes and I made the little monkey ones using pieces of vanilla wafers and brown gel icing. Oh, and I made the stands. You can find out more about how I made them here, on cincysavers.com

Of course we had to decorate the chalk board/mirror to go with the sock monkey theme…

Another cupcake shot and the cookie cake I decorated. Not too bad, right?

Decorations. These little pennants were made with just random pieces of scrapbook paper in different colors and textures that I thought would go with the theme. I really like how they turned out!

So I’ll admit, this is sort of weird but it was fun and everyone got a good laugh out of it. I took a bunch of random pictures of Myles I found on my computer, enlarged them and printed them in black and white. They are from when he was three months old to just several months ago. I would have liked to add more to the birthday hats I cut out of the extra scrapbook paper but didn’t have the chance. If anything, Myles loved it so I kept it up until this weekend.

The uncertainty of fire on his food tray. Don’t worry, we were really close and he knew not to touch it.

Present time!

I still can’t believe my little guy is two! Time goes fast, that is for sure.

On a side note, I blogged about Myles’ party on cincysavers.com last week with tips on how to throw a kids birthday party on a budget. You can find that blog post, here: My Baby is Two and How to Throw a Birthday Party on a Budget!

My Friday Baby: Week 104 (2 years old)

Our Family Trip to Boston

Earlier last month we went to visit Aunt Jody & Uncle Mike in Boston.

We had such a good time exploring downtown Boston, eating delicious food and just spending time with family that we don’t get to see nearly enough. Myles also got to see the beach for the first time. It was hilarious. He kept saying “Ready…Set…GOOOOO” as the waves crashed.

Here are just a few pictures from our trip:



My Friday Baby: Week 78

P.S. Below is a really cute video of Grandpa & Myles swinging while he was visiting South Carolina back in May. The joy this kid has when at a playground is something I wish I could feel and have all day, everyday!

Five Tips for Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids

Photographing kids can sometimes be a tricky task, but don’t let that stop you from taking great in-the-moment photos! I am no expert in photography. In fact, most pictures of Myles are taken with my iPhone because it is always with me. I don’t own a fancy camera. (Although I wish I did). But using these few tricks, I’m able to get some decent shots.
Here are a few tips when trying to chase down your little one for that perfect in-the-moment snapshot:















Take multiple photos in a row. You know how kids are, they can’t sit still at times. Taking multiple pictures of the same shot will usually leave you with a few good photos to choose from. When little Myles was a baby, I loved catching his different expressions.
Try taking your photos from different angles. It’s not always important to see their entire face in every photo. Sometimes I am more pleased with the candid photos than the ones of him looking right into the camera, smiling. They look less posed and more natural.
Get down to their level. Okay, so maybe shortly after this picture I had a shoe in my face, but I got a good shot! Getting down to “kid-level” adds dimension to the picture, makes it more interesting and also you can see what everything looks like at their height.
Take photos of everyday life. When I first brought Myles home from the hospital, I took a few pictures of him swaddled tightly in his bassinet–complete with his little hat on and binky in mouth. I almost deleted it because it wasn’t the most attractive photo. But looking back, I’m thankful I have a snapshot of that memory. Not every photo needs to by styled or look like a professional portrait. Take pictures of everything, because the time goes so fast and with every new stage brings an end to another. Document them all–even crying in their little snow suits!
Lastly, Avoid bright flashes. Using natural light is the best way to go because it doesn’t create fake and sometimes harsh lighting. Taking photos outside is probably the easiest, but you can take some great photos inside if you open up the curtains and allow for natural light to pour in.
Have any tips you’d like to share?
[This post was originally written for cincysavers.com. Click here to find more of my writing on cincysavers.]

Myles’ First Birthday

I can’t believe it has already come and gone. My baby is officially one. (almost 13 months now!)

To be honest, I went back and forth deciding if I wanted to have a party or not. We had thoughts of renting a place out, having it at our neighbors or just doing something small at our house. About a week before his big day, I chose the latter option. I’ve never mentioned it before, but I have a little PTSD going on from the terrible birth experience. Think nightmares, flashbacks and there for awhile it was so bad, I couldn’t stand seeing pregnant women. It was never something I wanted to bring up because who wants to here a depressing sob story about my miserable after effects of a bad birth experience? Majority of the past year I was in complete denial and thought by not mentioning it or dwelling on it, everything would go away.

But it didn’t and it only got worse around the one year anniversary of having Myles which of course, was his first birthday. I can openly talk it now, because the symptoms of my PTSD have pretty much diminished. But for the sake of not knowing how I was going to react at the party, I kept it small with only Myle’s closet friends.

For putting it together in a week, I was extremely happy with the outcome. I decided on an owl theme, since his room has a woodland theme. Knowing I probably won’t be able to pick out his birthday themes for much longer, I chose what I wanted and loved how everything turned out.Thanks to all the wonderful people we are blessed to have in our lives, Myle’s first birthday was absolutely perfect.

My Friday Baby: Week 52 & the last one!

My Friday Baby: Week 51

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