Morgan Crane: Personal Blog

I cannot believe that my little nugget has turned into such a big kid! Last year’s Valentine’s Day shoot was the first photoshoot where Q was able to sit up on her own and this year the only way I could keep her seated was to bribe her with M&Ms!

Please excuse the cat tree in the background. It is a personal goal of mine to NOT be an anal retentive perfectionist when it comes to editing my personal photos. I need to save that for clients or else I will go nuts with editing and never share anything. 🙂

And, now we have some outtakes.

Daddy’s favorite. She reminds me of Carrie Bradshaw in the intro to Sex And The City…

Mommy’s favorite. What is with this girl and standing on her head?

This week I waited until the last minute and handed the camera off to my husband to get a shot of us on the couch together. This was shot in low light with a low shutter speed and a broken autofocus so it’s a technical mess. The photographer in me wanted to chuck it but it’s the best of the batch. The mom in me will be happy that I didn’t give up on my project and be happy to have a shot of me and Q together. She loves being upside down and I thought it would make her smile. haha.

Next week will be better!

Winter time is my slow season for photography so I have more free time than I do the rest of the year. Even though it’s cold outside, I try to make sure that Q and I are going out and doing things every day. This week we went to Brookfield Zoo and to Kohl Children’s Museum. Forgive the focus in some of these shots, the autofocus on my lens has punked out and I need to send it into Canon to be fixed. So, the whole time at the museum I was manually focusing.

Enjoy!

They had a free flying bird area with sea birds and penguins. Q kept saying “Wow! WOW!!” as the birds flew around.

Then we went outside and saw even more birds, including this random peacock strutting around!

 

The next day we went to the Kohl Children’s Museum. We started off at “Dominick’s”. Every area of the museum has a corporate sponsor. It’s a little over the top but the museum is well run and really nice so it looks like they are putting that money to good use.

Then we moved on to the face painting station.

And then to a little area with puzzles and shape sorters. I don’t know how she is comfortable sitting like that!

Then we went into the music room and banged on some things.

And we saved the best for last, like we do at all museums, the water room! Q is content to stand and splash her hands for an hour or more if we’d let her.

My water baby!

That day we decided to join the museum and went back the next day with Steve. I left my camera at home that day and just enjoyed being with my family. We bought a two year membership so I’m excited to keep bringing her back as she grows and changes. I have a feeling that this time next year she’ll be doing so much more than she’s doing now and thinking about her two years from now totally blows my mind so I’m not going to do it! haha

Here’s a peek into our evening routine. We start with dinner after Steve gets home from work. Q loves clementines. She doesn’t call them clementines though, or even oranges, she calls them “eat ball”s. It cracks me up and we encourage it and call them eat balls too. She peels them by herself once you get them started and she’ll usually go through 2-3 in a sitting. The catch is that she doesn’t actually EAT them. She chews them and sucks out the juice and then spits them out into her bib. So, it looks like this.

After dinner is either bath time or play time and then Steve gets her into her jammies and they chat. Notice she’s wearing one of her necklaces that she loves so much. This one was won with hard earned Dave & Busters tickets.

After bath and jammies comes reading books with Daddy. I’m not usually in there because it’s special Father & Daughter time but when I get to see it I usually swoon. I love watching them together. I love how intently Q focuses on her books and how much she enjoys this part of her day. I love her post bath curls and her snuggly fleece pajamas. I love how much she looks like her daddy. I just love it all.

Finally comes my favorite part of the evening, my special time with Q. Her face lights up when Steve places her in my arms and she looks at me with such adoration that my heart wants to explode. We turn off the lights, rock in her chair and by the light of her nightlight she will sign for milk and say “Mi, Peas” (milk, please). She then nurses and I sing to her our special night time songs that only we know. I cherish this time, even when I’m feeling run down or tired from the day, it renews my spirit.

We’ve tried switching things around and nursing her before Steve reads to her and it worked just fine but I switched it back. This part of my day is too important to be truncated and I know that there will be a time when she no longer wants “Mi” before bed so I’m drinking it all in.

This is my favorite week of photos so far. I hope that I can keep saying that each week as this project goes on but this is definitely the winner of January at least!