once upon a time, my mother lived in NYC, with the Beels family. the two kids, Jessica and Alexander, were around 10 and 12. maybe 8 and 10. anyway, you get the idea. and now, my mom would say that felt like an entire lifetime ago. but the memories they have of my mom are the best. trying to start out as a sports writer, taking their dad to his first baseball game and baking chocolate cakes every week. chocolate cakes which i remember from every birthday party as a kid ever. every year my mom made a chocolate cake. she, to this day, is sort of funny about finding the best chocolate cake. challenge her and she'll make you her flourless chocolate cake. but she'll deny to the end that she has a thing for chocolate cakes. anyway, i digress.

last weekend i was in DC visiting my sister in law. but with the new baby and the cozy quarters, i needed a place to stay. enter Jessica and her awesome brood. she has this amazing place with two amazing kids, a great chef husband and a very, very sweet dog. so to pay for my stay i got to do a portrait session with her and her two kids Anika (15) and Max (12). did you follow all that? kinda crazy huh? plus! Jessica does this amazing jewelry/sculpting which you should see here. so i drank wine, ate delicious paella, stayed up way too late watching SNL and conked.

a longer post from their session is coming, but when i started going through these, these two particular photos just jumped out at me as being so Max and so Anika. they are both such fantastic kids, and i'm not just saying that because i should. they really are just both really amazing, interesting, talented, kids who actually give a shit about interesting things. it's pretty great. i want Jessica to write a how to for me...

i mean, Anika is just gorgeous and confident and counting down the days to her 16th birthday and Max is 12 and that's what these pictures say. i hope.

xo isabel

if you're reading this, it means you made it! yay! now, onto all that newborn goodness i was going on about. sometimes i can't even believe i am writing what i am writing. that i was lucky enough to be a part of such a time in one's life. my dear sister (in law) Tricia just had her third baby. little Olivia joined the world on 2/2/11 at a whopping 9lbs1oz. but my sister and her husband and my other niece (Luci) and nephew (Joseph) live in DC which really sucks because i love her in a crazy person way and wish she lived on my block. as i've mentioned before, my husband is #seven of nine children and they're pretty much all local with two exceptions, Tricia being one. long story short she just really misses being home and i thought she'd like me to visit right after the baby comes and maybe take some pictures, because they never get any pictures of them all together, or of the kids, and Tricia has been one of my biggest cheerleaders. when i told her i was coming she cried and it was glorious and wonderful and kittens and rainbows. i basically got to do my two favorite things, combine birth/postpartum care and photography. drool. happiness drool that is.

so, here you are. the story of little Olivia coming home and getting to know her rad siblings and letting her crazy aunt photograph her the entire time she settled into her role as #three.

and then my sister went and got all "i'm so gorgeous, i totally didn't have a baby 4 days ago" and sat for family shots. rock star.

gee, i hope you guys like looking at pictures. there are a lot in this post. also to note, this was my first time playing around with the posed infant shot. and let me tell you, it is hard! maybe it's because she's like a tiny football player and at 9lbs difficult to "collapse" but i guess we all start somewhere and so here i start.

well, if you're still here, that's pretty great. i've really enjoyed sharing my journey so far and think it's pretty awesome and also a little crazy, that anyone besides my mom reads this. and thanks to my sister who let me in for a couple of days and let me do my favorite thing ever, tell a story in pictures.

xo isabel