Newborn Photography: Alexander David Braaten

Right around the time I did this photo shoot, we found out we were pregnant again! My bursts of energy with editing completely died away as the first trimester exhaustion hit, mostly during my usual hours of work: Sophie's naptime and at night after she went to bed. Hence, the massive lack of recent blog posts, and the delay of all my editing!

I'm nearing the second trimester and my energy is coming back. Today, I didn't have an afternoon nap for the first time in two months. I caught up with some editing and now want to present to you this gorgeous little baby boy, Xander, who is now almost three months old.

Grant and Tabitha (click here for maternity shoot) lived with us for 8 months and had a home-birth, with baby Xander being born on Jan 28th. We got to enjoy the first 6 weeks of Xander's life before they (sadly) moved back home to Kansas City, Missouri. We miss them so much and are so thankful for facebook, where we can watch Xander grow through Instagram! He's already changed so much!

Here, finally, are Xander's newborn pictures, taken at just one week and a half:

Newborn Squared

Today, I'm enjoying the rain and taking an editing day to catch up on recent shoots. It's nice and cosy, I've had my cup of tea, John is making a fire, and I'm settling in to enjoy the dreariness outside that oddly enough warms my heart.

Here is a sneak peek on the newborn twin photo session I did last week. Absolutely adorable babies:

Baby Isabelle

My sister-in-law, Beth, recently framed and put up on her wall some photos from the shoot I did with them last summer, when she was almost 39 weeks pregnant. She realised that she didn't have any of her baby, Isabelle, so we decided to do a quick shoot with her yesterday. She was a bit tired, so when we next hang out, we'll do some another little photo shoot in order to get more of her cute little Isabelle expressions.

I have to admit, I enjoy taking photos of my family the most. And in particular, my nieces and nephews. We now have five nieces and four nephews, with another nephew on the way. We are so lucky to have such a large family, and we love that Sophie already has loads of cousins and will have even more cousins as our siblings and their spouses continue to procreate, if you will.

We head off to visit my older brother and his family next week. We're making the 8 or so hour drive up to Tacoma, WA, on Wednesday and I'm desperately hoping that my new Canon 5D arrives in the mail before we leave. My nieces and nephews are my best test subjects for new equipment and this next week will be perfect as I'm sure I'll be taking loads of photos anyway. We shall see, we shall see...

Here's some from Isabelle's shoot:

My beautiful Sophie...

I have completely been failing in my blog challenge the last few days. To be honest, it's been hard to get out of the house this last week as we have been working on my baby girl's naps. It's a whole long story, but it's very hands-on, so it's hard to get out for more than 30 mins to 1 hour at a time right now. Hopefully as we continue on with this, her naps will get better and consistent, and I can once more venture out into the world. We feel like today was a pretty good day actually, so we're hoping that we've made some breakthrough!

So I'm postponing my current blog challenge and seeing if I can come up with something else right now that won't require me to leave the house!

During one of Sophie's awake times last week I was able to do another little shoot with my darling baby. She seriously is the light of my life and her smile makes my day. I never knew how amazing it would be to be a parent and have so much love for such a small bundle of cuteness. She's so much fun! Here are my favourite pictures from the shoot (in case you didn't already catch them on facebook!):

a portrait a day... Day 9=Noah

When I started this blog challenge, my newest nephew, Noah, wasn't even born yet! He was born 4 days after I started it on Jan 20th, at 7:25pm, exactly 4 months after his cousin Sophie. His full name is Noah Robyn Daniel and he loves to sleep and cuddle with his mummy and daddy. He is still getting used to the world and just celebrated his first week birthday. He has a cute little newborn squishy face which to me definitely has a good mix of Stebel-Burtness elements. He is excited for when his cousin Sophie and his Uncle John and Aunty Marie come visit soon. I took this photo via Skype when we met him for the first time. I just love technology.

a portrait a day... Day 7=Sylvie

Sylvie was born just 2 months before Sophie so she is around 6 months old. Again I feel so lucky that Sophie has another cousin close in age to her. We were able to go up and meet little Sylvie when she was 2 weeks old and I took this photo of her. She now has a crazy amount of hair, so long that they can put it in pigtails and she looks a lot like her older brother, who likes a lot like their mum, Tracie. We're heading up to Tacoma again to visit the family in February and we're all so excited to put the little cousins together to hang out!

a portrait a day... Day 6=Isabelle

Isabelle is now almost 5 months old, she was born 3 and a half weeks before Sophie. It was really fun being pregnant with my sister-in-law, Beth, and now we have little babies less than a month apart. She has an adorable little smile and an amazing blonde mohawk. She makes cute little cooing noises and even has the cutest cry. This picture of her is when she was just a few hours old. I was honoured to get be at her birth and take the first photos of this gorgeous little girl.

a portrait a day... Day 5=Sophie

I wanted to do Sophie today as today (well, yesterday, I'm a day late) is her 4 month birthday! I can't believe she is 4 months old already. As everybody was warning me, it really does go by so fast. She is the light of my life and my little angel bear. She is super friendly and will smile at anyone. She loves to be out and about looking at lights, and likes to be held up high in the air. Her cousins, Emma & Adi, will tickle her until she giggles and she loves to interact with them.

I've posted this photo before but I just love it. It truly is her personality.

Introducing... Sophie Burtness

Fifty minutes after midnight on September 20, 2010, Sophie Francine Burtness was born! We long anticipated her arrival and it has been wonderful to have her with us. She is now almost 8 weeks old and is doing really well. She is sleeping amazingly at night-time and is a happy baby during the day. We have really enjoyed being a little family and going on little outings together and introducing her to all our friends. Neither of us realised how much we would enjoy being parents and having a little one to care for and hang out with.

We are glad to have made it through the first six weeks. Man, they were and hard! Lack of sleep and post-partum hormones are not a good combination. Add to that, figuring out her cues, learning breastfeeding, working through the pain of breastfeeding and waiting for the healing of, you know, down there, it definitely was a challenging time. Lots of ups and downs, joys and frustrations, laughter and crying! Moments where we loved it, and moments that are some of the hardest I've gone through!

However, we made it through and feel like we know her cues, know how to help her get to sleep, have got breastfeeding figured out, have her sleeping for longer and longer stints at nighttime. More sleep for her means more sleep for us means we're all just happier!

Anyway, I did a mini-shoot with her a couple of weeks ago and here are some of the photos:

Sylvie

My fourth niece, Sylvie Estelle Bonjour, was born July 18th, 2010. My dad, husband and I had the privilege of being able to drive up to Tacoma, WA, last week to meet her and visit with my brother and his family. I totally fell in love with her; with her gorgeous blue eyes that caught the light amazingly, and her pretty, thick, brown hair. She's a mixture of my niece and nephew, with her own little gorgeousness thrown in.

Here are some of my favourite photos that I was able to take of her: