Stephanie Cotta Photography

It’s late, my eyes are closing and bed is calling my name but I’m determined to get a quick post up… It’s been a very long day starting with a very early (5:00 am) makeup call with the amazing Emily Miller.  From there, I booked it over to have my hair styled by the talented Brittany Diebling and made my way to my studio to begin filming an awesome project (that I am so excited to showcase soon!) with the incredible TJ Ingrassia.

More exciting stories later but for now, a few fun moments from the day…

5:45 am.  Post makeup glam session 🙂  Check out Emily’s website here.

In front of the camera… captured by my little sister who not only greeted me with breakfast and Starbucks but also assisted my newborn session that morning.

Mid session snack.  Such a gorgeous newborn… previews coming soon on facebook!

And later.. after our afternoon filming, we retreated to my parent’s house for a dinner and were happy to find both of my grandfathers there.  Meet Poppy.  Who shares “World’s Best Great-Grandfather” title with my other grandfather, Papa.  Poppy’s best known to the little ones for his “not too tight” hugs.  And I so love watching him interact with his great-grandchildren… scooping them right up on his lap and loving him.  So, so grateful that my children can grow up with these amazing people in their life…

And with that, goodnight 🙂

I’d like to tell you that I am mom that can give my little ones twelve or thirteen hours of perfect-patient-fun-creative time each day but let’s face it, we all need an hour or two in the middle of the day to regroup.  And while recently Jacob has given up his afternoon nap in exchange for a slightly earlier bedtime, there are still days when he asks me to curl up with him in my bed to take a rest (I used to always call it napping but thanks to my good friend Allison, myself and my Jacob have taken on the phrase “take a rest”).

And when my little ones have both went down for their rest and I have quietly slipped out of Jacob’s snuggle, my hour or so of productivity begins…

I clean the floors, wipe down the counters, dust around the house, finish up two loads of laundry, slap on my apron and prepare dinner and batch of homemade cookies and quietly retreat to the laundry room to iron Audrey’s dresses…

Bahahah… did I have you fooled?  I’m actually sitting here laughing and thinking about how my husband (or my family) might be laughing at that thought.

For what’s it worth, some days I might actually do that… or part of that.  Other days, I most certainly don’t.  Still a good mom?  Absolutely.  Because whatever I am actually doing during this time (editing, cruising facebook, online shopping, etc…) is helping me regroup for the second part of the day and that’s important… because I like the fact that I  do get the kids going with arts n’crafts, outdoor playtime and other fun things that keep them thinking that I’m one good momma.

And on this afternoon… I choose to sneak back into the little’s room and capture a few macro shots of my sweet babes.

Longest eyelashes ever.  People think Jaocb looks exactly like me when I was little but in reality, he looks just like my little brother… who still has these gorgeous long lashes.

Yes, my little boy still uses a binky at rest time.  But he promises to trade it in for his fourth birthday party and I think that is a grand plan.

Love these curls and and they are the biggest reason that I am having trouble taking this one in for a haircut right now…

Audrey Rose is a little harder to capture during nap time… she started stirring with every click of the camera so I grabbed just a few.

 

It looks like I may actually have a bit of time left during today’s rest.  Maybe I’ll go start a load of a laundry…. 🙂

I take a billion photographs of my kids.. some days one or two and other days a whole big bunch…posed, not posed and everything in between.  And while these images are backed up in fifty different places, my main problem is that I struggle with finding a time to edit a few of my favorites, particularly during these very busy seasons when there are ten+ sessions of my clients to be edited.  So tonight after putting to bed one very tired baby girl and one still-on-a-trick-or-treating-high (can I eat one more piece, momma?) little baby boy, I did what I should do WAY more often.  I downloaded, scrolled and edited my favorites.   Right then.  And then?  I decided to blog.  Blogging is something that I so miss – the little every day moments I used to write about.. mainly because it’s how I remember every last detail of certain parts of our life.  Our old family blog is here:  http://jacoballan.blogspot.com/ … I often revisit it and always feel the same tinge of sadness that I haven’t kept up.  But now my friends, things are changing.  I am determined to get back to my writing, back to doing something that truly is so important/relaxing/therapeutic/enjoyable to me.  And I can’t promise it’s going to be the most perfect thing you will ever read… and some days it may just be a sentence or two.  But most importantly, it’s just us…. exactly how we are.

Halloween compliments of The Disney Store this year… Audrey Rose’s tutu compliments of my little sister when she was about two or three during her dance recital (and thanks to my momma for storing so many of these goodies for us).  Meet my Mickey Mouse and baby Minnie.

The kids great-grandparents (Mama and Papa) play such a big role in their life and frankly, that’s just awesome.  It’s tradition to always stop by Mama and Papa’s house before any outings so they can oooh and aaaah at how stinking cute their great-grandchildren are.

Sometimes trying to get Mama’s attention for a picture is worse then trying to get a two year old…. she always just wants to love on these little ones – smile at them and give them kisses – that sometimes she forgets to flash me a cheese 🙂

Couldn’t get enough of that mouse tail…

My own momma is always up for a quick costume… we actually trying backing Audrey Rose into her arms so that she couldn’t see her face and be scared.  did.not.work.

And as our halloween evening continued, so did another tradition… our halloween night with these friends…

Perfect shots for these blog posts?  Not always the case… It was literally almost completely dark outside and I think I was shooting at ISO 6400.  But hey, the grainy feel kind of works for halloween shots, right??

I just loved, loved how stinking cute Jacob was trick-or-treating this year… “Come on guys, let’s go get more candy!!!!!” and “My pumpkin is really full, my arm hurts.” “Do you want me to carry it, Jacob?”  “No, let’s go get some more!”

Until next year, pumpkins and costumes and way too much candy 🙂

And as for these posts?  Mission accomplished on day one.  Hopefully you’ll be seeing way more of this…

Goodnight!