A week and a half ago we bid some immediate family adieu as they headed back to their home in Arizona. Jenny’s only sibling with her hubby and our Nephew Nash came out here to visit us & Jenny’s parents earlier this month. Our brother-in-law was in for about 9 days and Jenny’s sister & Nephew stayed for about 2 weeks. During that time we juggled photography work with most evening quality time spent with family! Every single year we head out to visit Jenny’s family in Arizona & Jason’s family in California (often on one 2 week trip/ 1 week per state) and we so appreciate Jenny’s sister & little family also always coming out to see us at least once a year around 4th of July.
Their visit this month that ended just a week & a half ago marked about 13 months old for our little nephew Nash, so he’s now just over a year old! Jenny’s sister asked us to capture some 1 Year Toddler Portraits of little Nash during their 2 weeks in town so we planned it all out and met them here in South Bend for the Session. Sadly we didn’t get to it until their last couple days in town, so Nash was feeling under the weather that day (and of course only that day), but he stuck it out and gave us a few smiles and giggles in the process! Without further adieu, Nephew Nash’s 1 Year Old Portrait Session-!
We headed to Notre Dame’s campus for Nash’s Session since Jenny & Jill’s grandpa used to be the football Team Doctor back in the Ara Parseghian days (but ND was also convenient because the spot we initially tried for his Portraits just prior was filled with so many mosquitos near a stagnant pond that we were covered in bug bites from the tops of our head to our toes after just 2 minutes of Location Scouting and had to leave immediately). We asked mom Jill to bring along some of her old favorite stuffed animals as props for little Nash (since that would have more significance) and he seemed to love them!
Nash lives in Cave Creek, Arizona near Phoenix and is totally a desert baby. Nash really had to get used to REAL grass because his backyard in Arizona is plastic astroturf and desert rocks & sand. At first he hated the grass here, but he came to not mind it as much as the weeks went on. Nash also got to stand in the shallow end of a lake and go on boat rides in Michigan, so his visit brought a ton of new sensations! He really enjoyed digging his toes into the sand in the water, so we let him chill out and do that a few times during his visit.
At 13 months old Nash already knew how to stand, but was really learning how to walk. He took a couple steps on his own during their visit, but really loves to crawl as fast as he can when he’s trying to go get something, so walking wasn’t yet his go-to. Shortly after their visit Nash began walking more (to shoot toy basketballs), so this little munchkin is definitely evolving in his abilities!
This was probably the longest Nash hadn’t seen his daddy in person (about a week) since his daddy went home/ back to work after over a week of visiting, but Nash did get excited to video call his favorite daddy throughout that week! He loved visiting with us here in Indiana & his grandparents up in Michigan about 45 minutes away, but REALLY loved getting to visit with our dogs again (for his 4th time in life)! Nash has 2 of his own medium-large sized doggies at home that he was missing a lot, so he squeeled with joy when we brought our dogs out to visit him!
As you can see in the 3rd photo above, Nash became obsessed with Jason’s beard because his daddy doesn’t have a beard like that, so we did enjoy distracting him with Jason. Every time he saw his Aunt Jenny he was immediately full of smiles and laughter too which is pretty crazy since he’s only gotten to hang out during a few different visits in the past year (due to the Pandemic).
The weather that 2nd week of their visit was unseasonably weird considering we’ve mostly been having a 90 degree drought since mid-Spring! The weather was rainy off and on for that 2nd week of their visit, but Nash didn’t seem to mind much! He did visit with some friend’s kids days earlier and ended up feeling under the weather with a cough mainly on the day we photographed him, so we felt bad that he was a bit under the weather & medicated by the time we got to photograph him, but we did manage to squeeze some non-drowsy smiles out of him at different points!
Shout out to and thanks so much to Jill, Adam, & Nash for your annual visit out here-! We had a blast getting to see you all again and were so excited to see Nash again earlier this month! We can’t wait to see Nash walk more and are looking forward to our annual visit out to you all in Arizona next year (since we already vaccinated visited this March/ Easter just 4 months ago). It’s so exciting to see little 1 year old Nash grow (especially after the very stressful past year) and we can’t wait to come pet your dogs again soon!