Sweet, sweet Kailaya

Well, let's just say I had a hard time picking pictures to post from this session because nearly EVERY picture of little Kailaya was perfectly adorable. She was such a JOY to photograph -- she had so much personality and she did such a great job of looking right at me at the perfect moments, with the perfect expressions on her face. We had a lot of fun on this shoot!

We started out at Kailaya's house, in her parents' bedroom. Her mom, Misty, said Kailaya loves to play on her parents' bed.

Right from the get-go, Kai warmed up to my camera and smiled for me.





Then we moved over to Kai's bedroom, where we pulled out some of her favorite books. These pictures have special meaning to me, as my own daughter spends so much of her day flipping through her books, too. Emma is actually one year younger than Kai and it was so fun for me to see what I might have in store for me next summer with a 2-and-a-half-year-old.







Then we walked a short jaunt to a small park near Kailaya's house. I love this picture. She seems like a celebrity, like she's waving to fans from the red carpet.





I will always take pictures like this. I love toddlers' eyelashes. They're always so thick and beautiful. And something about taking a picture where the child is looking down like this is just so peaceful.



Then, we swung on over to the ice cream shop for a little treat.

Seriously, is she just not a natural? We didn't even tell her to pose this way!

Sometime during this session, I was telling Kai about the "bug" in my camera (my shutter). Several times she looked so intently into my lens, searching for the little snap that meant the bug moved. I asked her what color the "bug" was and she said it was red. :)

Kai got "pink" ice cream (strawberry) with gummy bears. YUM!







She shared some of her mom's ice cream cone too.



After ice cream, we ventured out to a bigger park, where Kailaya really ran around played. I love this next picture.



Of course we pulled out the bubbles. Bubbles are a must with toddlers (if they like them) and make for some fun pictures!

Thank you, Misty and Kailaya, for sharing the afternoon with me and for being patient with me as I took forever to get these images up. As soon as things wind down from summer, I know Emma will LOVE to come play with Kai sometime!

I have three other posts I'm working on and hope to share by the end of the week (if not sooner). In the meantime, if you want to see what the McMahan family has been up to the past couple of weeks, don't forget you can visit http://mandymcmahan.blogspot.com!

Sweet preview

This is Kailaya. And I can't wait for you to see more of her!

Sinclair Family

Little Addelyn is so sweet ... and she clearly gets her sweetness from her parents! I had a blast with these great people last week. They were troopers ... they climbed up on big tree stumps when I asked them to, walked through pathways that were just covered in yucky ants (that was by accident) and got drenched in bubble machine mixture just a few times when we carried Addy's favorite toy around the park with us.

Addy made me work a little harder for a smile this time than the last time I took her pictures. She's very contemplative and her pretty eyes just seem to have so much knowledge behind them already. She says, "Thank you," when she takes something from you and also did an awesome job pointing out the birds and saying, "Bird!" when we saw them.

















Addy did SO WELL at listening to her parents. I am thrilled with how many of these pictures have all three members of the family looking at my camera. So often with toddlers, it's tricky to get them to look at me with enough time to capture the right moment. Her mom would just say, "Look at Mandy! Look at Mandy!" over and over again each time we were posing for pictures and Addy always listened to her and obeyed. Some of the time, it was, "Look at Mandy and you can get a treat!" and she for SURE listened to those requests and was rewarded with Cheerios. :) Even without the Cheerios though, Addy was a great listener. I was impressed.







Another few reasons I say this Sinclair family is sweet? Well, for one, they didn't laugh (long) when I slid and fell dramatically on my bum after jumping off of the huge tree stump I was standing on when I took this picture below. I still don't know how I didn't blow out my knee, given the way I landed. I guess that's what you get when you wear cheap Old Navy flip-flops and try to jump from a high distance down to slightly soggy grass. I'm sure I looked ever so graceful -- do you think the Sinclairs would believe me if I told them I was a ballet dancer for 15 years? :)



They also stayed with me for nearly 30 minutes and helped me look for my sunglasses when I realized I'd lost them somewhere along the way (we never found them, but I went to Target the next day and picked up the exact same pair I'd lost!). They SO didn't need to do that, but I'm grateful that there are such kind people still out there in the world these days. Little Addy needed to get home to bed but they didn't hesitate to unbuckle her from the car and come back out to the park to help me search. It was so kind.





I LOVE LOVE LOVE this bubble picture! Addy had the coolest bubble machine. She loved turning it on and off (and on and off and on and off) by pressing a big button on the top of the machine. I have to go find one of these for Emma!





Pictures like this one below always get to me. It's images like these that make you realize that sweet angels like this grow up way too fast. Addy, like my daughter Emma, was quite the independent explorer. She always looked back to see if her parents were following her, but was completely content going on a trek of her own choosing. I love watching children this age -- they're so inquisitive.