kids

I’ve started a new work­shop at Clickin’ Moms called Find­ing The Light and although I have only com­pleted one assignment(there are four) I have already learned so much! The class is about how to use nat­ural light to take good pic­tures. (It cov­ers angling, back light­ing, etc). I wanted to share some pic­tures from my first assign­ment with my read­ers to show how much I have been learn­ing in terms of my photography.

I am also going to include a list of the things I love about my children(this blog is a gift from me to them which they can one day look back on and know how much their mother loves them).

These are all shot using nat­ural light(no flash), on Man­ual (no auto), and they have only been cropped and sharp­ened for the web.

(Except for this one below)

Check out those catch lights in his eyes! (yay! that is all natural).

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Deen is 3 1/2 years old.
What I love about Deen right now:
– I love that he comes up with his own cute poses for the cam­era.
– If he is ever bored or in a room alone(within six feet from me) i hear him singing, “I’m so lonely… I’m so lonely… I have nobody…” and my heart imme­di­ately melts!
–The way he holds me tight and touches my face with his warm hands when I lay down with him at night to put him to bed.
– That he is such a book lover! “Mama, just one more!”
– He learned this song that he sings before he eats at school and he sang it for me…. “Bless­ings on the blos­soms, bless­ings on the roots. Bless­ings on the leaves and trees and bless­ings on the fruits”….. then he closes his eyes tight and sings some mush that I don’t even think he knows what he is say­ing… and then ends it with “bless­ings on our meal.”
– He stands on our cof­fee table and throws us a Bar­ney Show…. “Ladies and gen­tle­men… this show of Bar­ney is brought to you by….. YOUR imag­i­na­tion!”
– When he says “Mama… I’m so Proud of you!” for what­ever rea­son he might be proud of me… just hear­ing him say it to me makes me proud!
– That I can actu­ally have a real con­ver­sa­tion with him and he has some very inter­est­ing thoughts.
– I don’t think I can ever get over how gor­geous Deen’s dim­ples are… see­ing him smile makes my heart melt.
– Because of his Montes­sori school, he now calls his puz­zles work. “Mama, can you help me with my work.”
– He is always so eager to do activ­i­ties with me and I can see how much joy he gets out of each and every activ­ity.
– Deen loves to just hang out with me and will some­times just sit around with me doing noth­ing.
– He doesn’t mind that I give him a mil­lion and one kisses a day… I know these days wont last for long.
– That he can some­how make you feel so incred­i­bly loved!
– Deen’s favorite song is Mama Mia and and Di Dee.

He made me laugh so much when I heard that while he and his cousins were watch­ing TV they saw some prod­uct on TV that they wanted and he imme­di­ately announced to them, “No! You don’t get that here in South Africa… only in Amer­ica!” because he has obvi­ously heard me whin­ing to my hubby that its so hard to find things here in South Africa and that you get EVERYTHING in America.

Aaliya is 14 months old right now:
What I Love About Aaliya:

- Aaliya is my lit­tle diva! She loves dress­ing up and wear­ing pretty shoes (even if they aren’t the most com­fort­able!).
– She cur­rently says: mama, daaaaa (for dad), Deee (for deen), Shoes (I kid you not!), this (for any­thing she wants and points to), nadia!, iloveu(yes bunched together like that).
– I love how con­fi­dent she is. If she is in a group of kids she doesn’t stand by me the entire time, she looks out to the world and walks around while inter­act­ing with oth­ers.
– I love how cheeky she is and how when she gets mad she backs away and lays onto the floor to throw a tiny tantrum… as if its the end of the world as she knows it.
– I love the sweet kisses she gives me when­ever I say “ouch!” or ask for a kiss.
– How active she is and how she loves to climb on to every­thing. Her favorite thing to climb on cur­rently is a chair… I think she is going to love Gym­nas­tics when she gets older.
– Her beau­ti­ful hair locks (even though her hair is some­times so messy! Appar­ently it is like how mine used to be when I was young)
– I love how she smiles with her teeth show­ing (although I do not have a pic­ture of that par­tic­u­lar smile).
– She cur­rently has 6 teeth… 4 on top and two at the bot­tom.

– I love how she sings Barney’s “I love you” song all day… Even if she is mad or if her stom­ach hurts if I sing I Love You to her she stops cry­ing and looks up at me with her beau­ti­ful eyes and smiles at me.
– I love how her world is all about me and how spe­cial she can make me feel know­ing that she needs me and always wants to be by my side.

(oh and this was one of the exam­ples of how NOT to take a pic­ture (because the back light­ing isn’t good… But I love how you can sort of see her dim­ple here and she just looks so hug­gable that I had to include it!)

– She loves to talk on the phone.
– She is so proud of the baby signs she cur­rently knows and uses. She knows the sign for milk, drink, and eat.
– Although she can’t speak like an older child can, Aaliya under­stands things very clearly. If you tell her to sit or to give this item to Deen or any­one else, she lis­tens.
– If you give her a tis­sue she pre­tends to blow her nose. It is adorable!
– She likes to choose her own shoes every day and if she doesn’t like the one you chose she will find the shoes she wants and will make sure you change them.
– Every night she brings her “ daaa” his slip­pers so his feet wont get cold.
– I love how she copies me(her mama). If I kiss some­one, she kisses them too. If I give some­one a high five, she does too!
– She is full of facial expres­sions and if she doesn’t know or like some­one she gives them a very inter­est­ing look.

Before Aaliya was born I always won­dered how I could pos­si­bly love another child as much as I love Deen since Deen filled up my whole heart but I learned that as a mother we appar­ently seem to get another heart hid­den inside some­where ded­i­cated to each child….
I love you my lit­tle angels… to infin­ity….. and beyond!

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As you can see, my light­ing seems to be pretty good on my pic­tures and I am so proud that I did not need to use my flash even though these pic­tures were taken indoors. Clickin Moms has proved to be such an amaz­ing com­mu­nity where infor­ma­tion is shared so freely amongst mem­bers… I hope to become a life­time mem­ber there soon!
Are you inter­ested in learn­ing pho­tog­ra­phy? Do you want to take bet­ter pic­tures of your kids? All you need is a dSLR cam­era. If you want to join a group of moms who love pho­tog­ra­phy check out Clickin’ Moms.

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