We are currently in Skagway, Alaska and have been in either Seattle, a cruise ship, or Juneau, Alaska for 6 days now (with our animals being petsat in our home back in South Bend), but really wanted to share with you Emilia's adorable and fun Infant Session! Jenny went to school with Emilia's mother Brittany for 8 years from 1st through 8th grade in South Bend at Christ the King School (where Jenny has coached volleyball for the past few years). Jenny and Brittany were close friends and enjoyed many great laughs together (especially when showing up to graduation in the same dress!) during many school projects, sports (volleyball & basketball), birthday, and the like. They hadn't hung out for probably 17 or so years prior to Emilia's Infant Session a week and a half ago, so it was a great treat to see Brittany once again and meet her husband (Emilia's father) Jason! (Great women pair up with Jasons it seems). Brittany, Jason, and Emilia currently reside in Chicago, Illinois a quick hour and a half away, so they made a trip of it to head back to Brittany's hometown for Emilia's Infant Portraits.
After catching up early on Sunday morning before the Session, we got to work capturing photos of Emilia in the studio! Since Emilia was about 7 months when we captured her portraits about a week ago, we can think of this as her 6 Month (plus a bonus month) Portraits. Her parents had so many amazing outfits for her Half Year Session and we utilized about 5 of them for this (pairing those with 3 different colors for backdrop and about 3 different set layouts)!
Emilia's personality is very kind and sweet. She didn't fuss and cry, rather she was calm and sweet during the entire Portrait Session. She is a bit of a stoic baby, but definitely squealed and giggled for her parents and us throughout the Session as we tickled her with a feather tail, gave her her stuffed animals, showed her mirrors, and played some of her favorite tunes for her (with "Baby Shark" playing a key role in soothing tunes). One of our absolute favorite outfits on little Emilia was her dinosaur onesie paired with her dinosaur stuffed animals! They had had a dinosaur themed baby shower for her previously, so they thought it only fitting that she break the mold and don a dinosaur outfit during the Session.
It was hilarious watching the early morning Emilia just hunker down and cuddle the blankets (something we wished we could do too since we're not morning people) and become mesmerized by Jason's beard, so we all had many laughs that morning last week. Emilia is a very cuddly, sweet girl hugging and smiling at you and we absolutely loved working with her (and totally think she could be a Gerber baby)!
Thank you so much Brittany and Jason for swinging over from Chicago to have us capture Emilia's Infant Portraits in our studio in South Bend! We really enjoyed catching up with you and meeting your new family member Emilia and hope you all have had a great week and a half since. We hope to see you all sometime soon and know that Emilia will grow into a sweet, hilarious, intelligent young girl with your guidance!
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____ Unrelated to the Session: We will be in Alaska for a couple more days until heading into Canada on Saturday and back to Seattle on Sunday. We are so thankful for Sarah, Marie, and Travis watching our fur babies in our own home this week and could not thank them enough for giving us that ease of mind-! We return very, very late on Sunday and will be back in our offices and studio on Labor Day on Sept 3rd. We did actually bring a little bit of work with us on this family bonding/ anniversary/ birthday cruise, but tried to abstain from working as much as possible since of course it is meant to be a vacation. Any prints or albums that we need to create will be created in the coming week once we return to the office (we hope to have 300 printed and sent out to two couples on Tuesday or Wednesday!). Thanks for your patience and we'll catch you next Weekly Wednesday for the Lehmans' recent Sunrise Family Portrait Session!