2013: Adding Sophia to the Father's Day mix!

Every year since he was born, Joshua has taken part in my little Father's Day tradition for David -- my attempt to get a cute little triptych of photos with letters spelling out DAD.  By now, Joshua is somewhat used to the drill, and he got really excited about playing with the big D and A when I brought them out this year.

And thankfully, his sister isn't nearly as persnickety as he was.  :)  (Remember Father's Day 2010 and 2011?)  It did take a little doing, but we managed to get some really sweet photos for this year's collage!

I took the kids out for our first attempt early in the morning, in order to take advantage of the lovely morning light pouring into our backyard.  It was already really hot outside, and we were running really close to Sophia's nap time, so I was a bit concerned as we headed out -- but the light was just so perfect that I had to at least give it a try.

I put out a blanket for the kids to sit on, and tried to speed up the process by giving them each a letter to play with, figuring I'd be able to merge or split photos as needed in post.  And then I made the grave tactical error of trying to get them to switch letters.  Joshua was very, very upset that I wouldn't let him hold both letters at once, and then he got even more upset that I wanted him to let Sophia hold the D.  And then poor patient Sophia, having endured several minutes of sweaty heat plus a big brother trying to steal the fun new toys away from her, finally reached the end of her rope and clearly just wanted to go to bed.  So I gave up for the morning -- I'd taken a bunch of photos, but wasn't convinced that I really had anything worth keeping.

So I tried again later in the afternoon.  The light was decent, and the kids were in better moods, so I had high hopes!  I also did a lot of prep work with Joshua beforehand, which I should have known would be necessary -- I told him that we were going to play with "just one letter at a time," and that he could play with them both once we were back inside.  He dutifully repeated the "just one at a time" mantra over and over again during this second afternoon session.  :)  And I caught some really playful moments between Joshua and Sophia this time around!

Later that evening, I looked at the photos on the computer monitor.  And I actually really loved a number of the shots we got during *both* sessions!  What can I say, our kids are super adorable and photogenic even under difficult conditions...  :)

So I put together two different triptychs for David.  He ended up choosing the morning set as his favorite, so that's the one I'm having printed out for him, but I wanted to share both, just because of how stinkin' adorable our kiddos are!




And just because I get super weepy when I look at the whole progression (look how LITTLE Joshua used to be!), here are links to all of the Father's Day posts: 2010, 2011, 2012.

Hope you all had a lovely Father's Day, celebrating the wonderful men in your lives!