From newborn to one year old
After photographing newborns for a few years, in 2016 I introduced a 'Watch Me Grow' program for those Melbourne parents who had booked me for a newborn session and wanted to have their baby's first year captured with professional photos.
There are so many ridiculously cute stages during a baby's first year and this is why I just love photographing them! Your baby grows an astounding amount in their first year and it is full of important milestones. Being able to capture these and treasure them for a lifetime is so precious!
The 'Watch Me Grow' program includes three photography sessions after the initial newborn photo shoot. These are scheduled for:
4 Months - Watch Me Smile. At this stage, your baby is full of big smiles and giggles! They have an amazing range of face expressions which are all adorable. They are also learning tummy time and this gives a great photograph!
8 Months - Watch Me Sit. At 8 months old most babies are sitting on their own or sitting with little assistance. They are also grabbing their toes and interacting really well with others. Their personality is really starting to show and I can achieve a great variety of photographs!
One Year - Watch Me Stand / Happy 1st Birthday! By now you will be so proud of your little one and the milestones they are achieving. Most babies are standing with assistance and some are taking their first steps. They have also probably grown an attachment to a particular toy and their personality is shining through with their likes and dislikes!
Capturing these stages really shows the progress and changing face of your gorgeous little one! I love looking back through the photographs I've taken for parents within this program and seeing their baby's progress.
Pictured in the photographs in this Blog is gorgeous Evie. Evie and her parents are local, living in Upper Ferntree Gully. I asked her Mum if she could take a few minutes to chat to me and discuss how much she and her husband have enjoyed watching Evie grow in her first year and what it means to have these photographs:
"Holding Evie in my arms for the first time.... ...this moment was unexplainable & nothing will ever compare. Best day and best feeling ever, even after the horrible labour!
So much happened in Evie's first year. There were a lot of new things to learn, with being a new Mum and having a baby. Each of the stages seemed to go by extremely fast and she put on weight and changed quite quickly. You hear "cherish each moment" and you don't really believe it until it's actually happening right in front of you. That saying is very true. You feel like you've just got the hang of their new ways and then they change again!
"It's really amazing just watching how they grow. From the first time I realised that Evie really recognised me with her knowing eyes looking up and then her first smiles, but mainly when the rolling began, things just took a speedy road from there. She would reach a milestone such as crawling and I thought she would do it for a while, but before I knew it she was moving differently again and onto the next milestone! That first year just flew by and she was a year old and full of her own personality before I knew it.
"It was also really interesting to see how Evie's looks changed in that first year and how at times she looked more like my husband and then more like me. When she was first born my parents said she looked exactly like me as a baby and after finding a photo of me, I could see what they meant. Uncanny - she was a spitting image! I have always been able to see my husband in her. As she grew and I watched these very chubby cheeks appear, everybody kept commenting on how much she looked a lot more like her Dad which was really sweet. Coming up to one year she started to then look more like me again but overall we feel she really is a mixture and her own tiny individual person."
"I say to my husband every day 'how can I love this little human ANY more!'. The initial love you have for them is amazing because you realise there is this delectable creature you have created, that's half of you both. As time goes on and you get to know them more whilst learning about the relationship between them and yourselves as parents...it's surprising how your love expands more and more with each day and it's crazy to think that it's even possible to love somebody that much!"
"Photos have always been special in my eyes. You have your memories which are beautiful, but sometimes you forget little moments or in my case the different, cheeky, gorgeous and hilarious looks Evie used to have. I look back at photographs and they just jolt that memory of what she used to do and look like and take you back to that time. Having these beautiful memories and milestones captured with photographs is important because you don't remember everything, and later on I think it's really important for Evie to be able to look back and see what she looked like in her first year.
Those memories from beautiful photographs taken by someone who is so talented, these are the ones that you can really treasure forever. It is their job to create those important and stunning images. These photos are so different to just snapping away on your iPhone. In my opinion, they are the ones you will keep forever and proudly display on the walls of your house, making you smile when you look at them, always."
If you are interested in more information on my Newborn and 'Watch Me Grow' packages, please feel free to contact me (Michelle) on 0401 514 969. Kiddy Kats Photography is based in Ferntree Gully in Melbourne's Eastern Suburbs.
