Baby Jensen Number Two | Announcement

I had a simple idea for our baby announcement photo. I realize doing this isn't necessary but it's fun and I loved the way our photos turned out with Evelyn's baby announcement. While we were visiting home for the 4th I asked Steph to take a few photos for us, assuming it would be a quick thing...

First we headed up the street to the park by my parent's house. We were all dressed up and I assured everyone this would be quick. We made it fairly quick, but it just wasn't working. The backdrop and lighting was all wrong, and Jay and Evelyn were not in good spirits. Later that afternoon I convinced Jay to give this another try. And I felt guilty doing so, knowing how he feels about pictures, but I was so set on getting the right photo! (I can be a very particular person especially when it comes to pictures. It's a problem and I fully own up to it.) 
It wasn't meant to be...

 First of all, Jay doesn't like getting his picture taken. Not formally anyway. But he loves me and so he does it, and I sincerely appreciate it. Just before these photos Evelyn somehow managed to reset Jay's phone completely and he lost a lot of work-related information. He was frustrated, rightfully so.

Secondly, Evelyn did not want to be held. We were in my parents backyard and all she wanted to do was roam around and play with rocks.

And thirdly, the '"big sister" shirt played kind of a key role in these photos and it was important (to me) that the letters were visible. This was a challenging task while holding a squirmy child, trying to make her smile by bribing her with food.

These unfortunate circumstances created A LOT of tension during these photos. Kind and most patient Steph took many photos. And there STILL wasn't one that I was excited about. We were sweating, Jay and Evelyn were past their limits, so I settled on working with the shots we got. It became a bad experience where I felt embarrassed for being so obsessive over this whole thing and inflicting stress on my little family. 

A couple days later while in Corona I was admiring Renee's beautifully landscaped backyard and couldn't help but envision all of the potential it had as a perfect photo backdrop. I wanted to give this baby announcement photo one LAST try. It's not that every single picture we previously took turned out horrible (I only included the bloopers above) but I had this vision that I couldn't let go of and I'm not always good at settling when it comes to pictures. (Again, I'm fully aware of my craziness level.) The "big sister" shirt didn't work. So I moved on to another idea of using a sonogram picture in our photo. It could work. But do I dare ask my sweet husband? By now he's pretty used to my craziness and he apparently REALLY loves me because he agreed to give it one last go. It didn't matter if we weren't looking at the camera, my only goal was to capture everyone smiling. Thanks to Marin and Renee we got the shot in about three minutes!

I didn't have a current sonogram picture of our baby and even considered printing one off of Google, but that just really gave me the creeps. I felt confident I could Photoshop in a sonogram picture after we received a current one at our upcoming doctor's appointment.

I'm pretty thrilled with how the announcement turned out. Also pretty grateful for a patient and forgiving baby girl and husband. And we're all definitely pretty stoked about baby Jensen number two!