MoseleyWorld

A friend told me having two kids wasn’t double the effort, but triple the effort. I think he was being conservative in his assessment. Yes, there are a couple of reasons why the updating of MoseleyWorld has slowed - and their names are Saxon and Samantha. But without Saxon and Samantha, MoseleyWorld would be much less interesting. So, I’ll update with some posts that should have been made a couple of months ago, rather than just skipping over them like they did not exist.

Home Building - Gingerbread Style
My friends at the Rosewood Crescent Hotel hired me to photograph a party right before Christmas. The party was a gingerbread house building class for the wedding & event planners who refer business to the Crescent. As a special treat, I got to take home a ready-to-build gingerbread house along with all the "building materials." Carey, Saxon and I had a great time creating our little cottage.

A wide-eyed Saxon, in her PJ’s, ready to build the house at breakfast.

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sisters. samantha with her baby’s first christmas hat, saxon with her cinderella dress (thanks aunt christy and cousins alex & avery)

Christmas in Wichita
We traveled to Wichita to spend Christmas with Carey’s family. A very special visitor welcomed us to Kansas with open arms. A sinister virus was not simply lurking in the Edison household but aggressively seeing out its next victims with the speed and vengeance of an Ebola virus. Pops was completely missing in action for the first day, missing the big Christmas dinner, which was on Christmas Eve.

Saxon and I walked into the bathroom just in time to see Carey barfing in the trash can. Saxon asked, "Mommy, what are you drinking?" Had I not been so focused on damage control and personal self-preservation of the food I had just eaten, I would have probably laughed so hard at Saxon’s very observant question that I would have wet my pants. We went to a special dinner at one of the log-cabin style lodge houses at Flint Hills Golf Club and although Carey didn’t eat, Saxon again walked in to see mommy vomiting. Almost three months later, we’re still talking about Mommy throwing up at the "wooden house."

saxon putting a bow on her cousin mac

saxon with her cousin avery (yes, that’s a tinkerbell costume - thanks again fassnacht cousins!)

samantha taking it all in on christmas morning

dad and samantha - smiling on the way back to Dallas

It took a while, but Saxon is finally understanding her mom and dad (a) were little babies and little kids just like her and (b) may have looked any different than they do today.  I found a photograph of Carey, circa late 80’s (big hair and all) and showed it to Saxon, who had a puzzled look on her face when I asked if she knew who that person was.

When I told her who it was, Saxon immediately replied, “That’s not my mommy, her hair is too furry.” Later when I showed it to her in front of Carey, Saxon said, “that’s not you mommy, her hair is too big.”

The other day, Saxon looked at me and said, “Daddy, you don’t have any hair. Samantha doesn’t have any hair. Mommy has hair and I have hair, but you, Daddy, don’t have any hair.” I heard her the first time.

By popular request, here’s a picture of Saxon and Yadi, her nanny. Saxon’s wearing her “white princess dress” made by her Aunt Christy and her “slippers.”

Saxon is just shy of being 30 months. Carey says I can stop quoting Saxon’s age in months now. So, since Saxon is almost 2.5 years old, I thought we should post some current photos.

Carey took these photographs of Saxon trying on her mom’s cowboy hat (yes, Saxon is trying it on backwards  - she’s just two and doesn’t live on a ranch, so cut her a little slack).

Samantha is almost six months old. Like her older sister, Saxon, Samantha is very curious, wants to grab everything and loves to chew on paper. Much to her Mommy’s chagrin, Samantha is almost in full crawling mode. Crawling backwards is no problem, it’s the forward motion that has yet to be mastered. She loves to watch her big sister and smiles when Saxon walks into the room - just like I do.

Most of the time, I actually prefer to stay behind the lens. But sometimes, when I see a great opportunity to have a portrait made, I’ll jump on the other side of the camera. I attended a photography lighting workshop conducted by my friends Anne & Joseph Stefanchik, whose studio is just three doors down the hall from ours. We did some on-location shoots just down the street at the State Fair.

Twilight + State Fair of Texas + Big Tex + Camera in one hand + Fletcher’s corny dog in the other = the perfect storm for a portrait!

photograph by jvs