To 52 and beyond

Have you ever tried herding cats?

I haven't but I think I'd be pretty good at it. After 52 weeks of getting Hunter to "pose" for me, I feel like I can do pretty much anything.

For the last 5 months, Hunter has refused to sit still for longer than 5 seconds.

Which has made our little weekly ritual of Saturday photo shoots increasingly more difficult.

Gone are the days when my biggest dilemma was getting him to let go of his pop-pop (pacifier) or getting a smile while I took the picture.

Now, I'm lucky if he stays in one spot for long enough to get one photo taken, let alone a good one.  

Actually, I've needed Chris to help me out and be the "distracter" while I snap away making funny noises and trying in vain to get Hunter to look at me (it's like he knows that I'm trying to get a good picture and refuses to let that happen).

This baby-wrangling thing is easily a 4 person job. One person to place the baby.  One to dance around making funny noises and faces, and another to dangle things above them, while simultaneously keeping Ketchum from jumping into the shoot.  Lastly someone needs to actually take the pictures. Most of the time, I'm all four of these people and I look crazy (luckily Hunter doesn't know any different).

So, when we endeavored to do our final photo shoot (last weekend), of course Hunter was none-too cooperative.

He is such a little mover and shaker, that the second I got him placed in front of the fabric, I had to start snapping pics with my other hand, while dangling his pop pop above his head, only to get 1 useable photo.  I tried to get him to stand for this photo, since he's doing that all the time lately, but of course that didn't work.

So we ended up with this... 

This is the only one where most of his body is still (only his arm was caught in motion).  It seemed like a good "celebration" picture to cap off our 52 weeks of documentation- what a happy little guy.

So now that we have reached the end of our weekly pictures, I am not sure where to go from here.  I think weekly pictures are too much...especially with how cooperative Hunter is during this shoots. Not to mention how much he loves to change his clothes.  And he shows that love by squirming, twisting, kicking, yelling and batting my hands- so putting a plain onesie on him each Saturday morning and then changing him again after his pictures is less than desirable.

I'm going to aim for monthly pics from here on out- and he can wear anything he wants (maybe I should do them naked- as that is his favorite thing ever).  We'll see how I do.

I'm pretty pleased with our photos from the first year of his life.  I really enjoy seeing his growth, and I plan on making something cool out of all the fabrics I bought (don't ask me what).

So, for the last time, here is where we started and where we are today. 

 

Looking at these two photos makes me laugh.  I totally though Hunter was the most adorable thing when he was born and that he didn't look like an alien at all (clearly I was wearing mom-colored glasses).  Obviously he will always be cute to us, but he's soooo much cuter now, especially with his little personality to go with it.

And here are all 52 weeks for your viewing pleasure.  I think I am officially choosing week 18 as my favorite one.  We were in Sun Valley (Ketchum, ID) and I snapped it on the floor of our rental condo.  I absolutely love the expression on his face (not to mention the great memories from that trip).