Special Delivery!

Hey friends!

Today I wanted to show you some of the images I captured on my very first newborn lifestyle session! I was so excited when a high school friend of mine let me into her home so I can practice my lifestyle photography skills on her family. (Or lack thereof) :-)

This is all so new to me so please don't judge to harshly. I still want to practice more before I start offering these sessions out to people. So if you know anyone with some interest, send them my way! rc2photo@yahoo.com

And now introducing: The Watson Family

Here are some of my favorites.

Thank you so much for looking! And special thanks to Heather, Loren, Evan and Miss Norah for allowing me to shoot their beautiful family.


xxx

Ryan

Progress and daily life update!

Hello my followers!

I know I haven't written an actual blog in a while but I promise it's only because I've been so busy lately. I say this all the time but I will be SO glad when Ryan's night shift is over. Looks like it will be just in time for summer too. That makes me happy because we will get to go out and do stuff together with Charlie while the weather is nice. It hasn't been terrible during the winter but I would hate to spend the summer nights without my love.

SO! As most of you know I started a weightloss competition on January 5th. I'm in one with all my friends, who are totally kicking ass by the way, and considering most of us girls had babies last year we totally rock for wanting to get back in shape as soon as we could. (I'm a little late, my kid is almost 1 :-) ha)I'm also in another one on a website called dietbet.com. Totally genius idea and concept but you really have to be focused to at least win your money back. I bet $125 that I would lose 10% of my body weight by July. I'm well into that bet, I've already lost 6% and I fully intend to lose the 10% plus more. My friendly diet bet ends in April so I really need to kick my butt into gear for the next two months.

I've really been focused on eating right and staying away from fast food and garbage that I know my body does not need. I haven't totally kicked the diet cokes, I maybe have 2 a week but I know I need to give those up too because really they do absolutely nothing for me. I've been running 3 miles a day 5 days a week and sometimes my weekend runs are a little longer. Running at 530  in the morning is really the hardest thing ever, especially in the cold, but I would rather knock my workouts out early so I can spend time with the little bug when she wakes up. My pace is getting better too. When I first started running again my pace was like 12:50 per mile. haha. I'm back down in the 10's now so that makes me smile. 

I've decided not to run the mini or any of the triple crown races this year. Those races take so much out of me and by the time they are done I don't want to run again for like 6 months! So, I've decided to take this year off and focus on fun running for ME!

I'm still working on my 365 project and it's coming along. Shooting everyday has done wonders for me. It sometimes hard to think of things to photograph though. Especially in the winter. Especially this winter. IT'S BEEN SO FREAKIN' COLD! Ugh. I'm so ready for it to be over, but nope, snowed again last night. Jeez.

So yeah, that's what's been going on with me lately. I'm also planning little bugs first birthday party! That's probably a whole different blog I should write because there is no way a 1 year olds birthday party should stress me out the way this one has. More on that later. Probably after the party.

I'll be posting another blog later with the 365 update and following that up with a special blog about a special client of mine having TRIPLETS! I've snuck some in on Pinterest. Check the link--->

Hope everyone has a great day!

xxx

Ryan

"Turn the clock to zero, honey. We're starting up a brand new day."

Good Morning! "Turn the clock to zero, honey. We're starting up a brand new day."

I know, I know, you're probably like huh? Well as a part of this photography journey I'm on, I'm also doing a 52 week photo challenge with some of the ladies over at The Photographer Within that incorporates song lyrics in photographs. This week was Sting's Brand New Day lyric. So, this is day 3 of my 365 project and week 1 of the 52 week challenge. Whew. This year is gonna be fun!

This morning Charlie was a little fussy because she's had a cold. (She always has a cold. Daycare is building up that immune system!) So around 5am she wouldn't go back to sleep in her crib so I brought her into bed with me. Crazy husband was up at 130am to go duck hunting so he was already gone. Well anywho, I was hoping she would sleep a little longer this morning so I could get some daylight into our room because the lighting in my house SUCKS! (I can't wait to take Sarah's On Camera Flash workshop on the 20th) I managed to get this image about a minute after she woke up at 8am. FYI, she never sleeps this late on the weekends. She must get that from her momma.

Charlie wasn't really ready to start a brand new day this morning but momma has to work so we had to get rolling!

Well there you have it. Week 1 of the P52 and day 3 of the 365. Hope everyone has a great day!

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xxx

Ryan

Hey-o friends!

I love saying that I'm going to keep up with my blog only to forget about it for 6 months and then realize that I should write something.

Well....duh dun duh.....I had a baby! Miss Charlotte Leigh Cecil was born on her due date, April 14, 2013 at 12:31 pm. She weighed 8lbs, 2 oz and was 19 inches long. She was totally perfect and had the most hilarious cone head for a good couple of hours after she came out.

The day prior to me going into labor was UofL's spring football game. At this point I was convinced that Charlie was never going to make her appearance and I was already planning her first birthday inside the womb so I decided to waddle my 9 month preggo butt down to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium with Tiff & Fredie and have some fun. After the basketball team was announced during "half time" we decided to split and go get some food. We went to The Cardinal Cafe to grab some grub.  My back was starting to bother me just a little when we were eating so I was ready to get home and relax.

April 13th was opening day of Turkey Season so Ryan had been hunting all morning and he managed to wrangle himself a bird. So he was dealing with that most of the day. We went to bed that night and around 1230 I woke up having contractions. I was always worried that I wasn't going to know when I was actually in labor but I knew that it was going down! I started timing my contractions at 8 minutes apart. By 2 am they were 6 minutes apart and then by 3am they were 4 minutes apart so I knew that we needed to head to the hospital. We put Rexie outside, grabbed our bag and then got on the road.

As we were driving my contractions were getting worse so Ryan started making the phone calls to let our parents know that we were heading to the hospital. When we got there, they examined me and told me that I was going to be having a baby today. That's when shit got real! Yikes!

I got my epidural around 530 am and after that the rest of the morning was a breeze. We had family in and out to visit and I was eating a ton of popsicles so all was good. Ryan took a nap and I played Candy Crush most of the morning. I was too excited to sleep.

My doctor came in around 1115 am and told me we were going to get this show on the road. I was nervous! After an hour and some change of pushing our little baby girl came out and it was the most awesome thing ever. I asked if she had all of her fingers and toes (she did) and I asked if she was cute (she is) haha. After that almost everything else is a blur. I remember hanging out, then being moved upstairs, then eating some food and we had a lot of visitors that day. We have a huge family and some awesome close friends that came to visit us that first day.

We stayed in the hospital until Tuesday and then finally got to come home. But that's worth a whole seprate post. Those first few days were rough.....more on that later. I'm blogged out for the day. I really do plan on keeping up with this....haha.

I'm a tiger. Rawr!

Until next time...........................

Well would ya look at that?

So much for keeping up with my blog last year huh? Let's just say I had A LOT going on over the past 11 months and couldn't really find the time to sit down and tell my little three followers on my blog what was going on with my life. Besides, they know, we're real life friends too!

Since the last time I've posted, one of my baby sister heads got married, I stopped running, and I've gained oh about 30 pounds or so. Yeah....that happened. But at least it's for a good reason. I mean, you can't really grow another human being in your belly without gaining a little weight ya know?

Pregnancy is pretty awesome, it's about the only time in my life I've been able to eat whatever I wanted and not really felt bad about it. I always said that I would have never wanted to be pregnant in the summer but I already feel like that might have been a better plan. It's SO hard to stay active in the winter! Walking outside sucks because it's freezing, walking on the treadmill is boring, and I can't go swimming. Maybe next time we will plan this out a little better haha. And boy do I miss running. I never in a million years thought that I could miss running the way I miss it right now. When I hit the 10-14 week mark in my pregnancy that's when my shortness of breath started and I haven't ran since. The last run I went on was with Ryan and I managed to squeak out a measly 1.5 miles. Some of my friends have become such awesome runners and I'm SO jealous of them every time I see their Nike posts on FB. I'm counting down the weeks until I can run again......sigh.......

So let's talk about this magnificent little human being that is currently kicking the crap out of me right now. First of all, the little bean is a girl and her name is Charlotte Leigh. Charlie for short. I'm so obsessed with her nickname. I should have just named her Charlie but I wanted her to have the option of a girls name and a boys nickname. Kids weren't always the nicest to me since I had a boys name, although now it's more common for a girl to be named Ryan. Not the case when I was 0-15 years old. Anywho, she is due on April 14th and I hope she comes a little earlier than that. I'm so anxious to meet her and I know Ryan is too. Everyday I feel like my belly grows another inch so if she does stay in there another 7 weeks I'm not going to be able to function properly anymore. And that could be a problem considering I plan on working until the minute I go into labor! Yikes!

Miss Charlie has another baby shower this weekend. She's already had one and she is very blessed and lucky to have so many people that love her and can't wait to meet her. Ryan finished painting the nursery a couple of weeks ago and I love it. I think it's so cute and it's exactly what I pictured it looking like. The idea came from Pinterest and Ryan drew his vision for it all free hand. Here is a picture of the progress....

The longer tree branch extends over the crib. My husband is super talented. I'm thinking I should be his manager and rent his services out to others for a reasonable fee. Hah! In all seriousness.....I love this room and I can't wait for Charlie to be in it!

Well, I that's all I have time for today. I do hope to really start keeping up with this more regularly! Thanks for reading friends!

Ryan & Charlie!