Behind The Scenes

Last night, I told you about taking the little grandkids over to State College where we met up with my older daughter and her son, my grandson Alex -who is 10 now -and we had their pictures taken -some solo poses and some with the three cousins together.

I ended that post with one of the group photos of the three kids.

Tonight, I'm going to share a little bit with you of the preparations that went on prior to the photographer ever getting her sights lined up on the kids.

They had us in a fairly large room which very conveniently happened to have this big white curtain for a backdrop there that worked very nicely for Alex to use to have some privacy as he changed from his school clothes into one of the several outfits his mother, Carrie, had brought with her for him to select from to wear.
Here's Kurtis in his stroller, waiting patiently while Mandy gets Maya all decked out in her pretty new dress on the right side and to the left, Carrie is handing Alex clothes as he's stripping and giving her the other set of duds he'd been wearing.
Here's Alex, putting on his shoes and joking with Kate - the 16-year-old who got plenty of pictures taken of herself -all by herself! The photographer really did a great job with her too.
While the photographer was working with Kate, trying to position her, at one point, Kate remarked that she felt "uncomfortable" with her hands positioned around her head, her face, etc. I told her to just pretend she was talking on the phone -but without having the phone resting on her shoulder (which it the normal position for her) and can you believe it, she had the nerve to try to tell me she hardly ever talks on the phone! I was shocked! You could have fooled me so apparently that black thing she walks around with it cradled by her chin from about 2 minutes after she gets home until supper is ready, is some strange appendage that also just happens to make these ringing sounds, all too frequently. This picture below is the result of some of the photographer's positioning work that Kate had said made her feel "unnatural."
Here's Maya's first shot -all by herself.

And here's the first one of Kurtis, alone -he wasn't the happiest camper there at that time.

This one was about the closest she could come to getting him to smile but we really liked it. It's funny though because at home, if you aim a camera in his direction, he's usually all smiles. Guess it just wasn't his "smiley" day yesterday then.


And here's the one of Maya that I liked the best!
And my handsome 10-year-old "Prince" - Alex -here's one I really liked of him.
While we waited for the photographer to get the pictures set up for us to view and make our selections from, here's a couple of pictures of what was going on with the kids during that time.
While waiting, Maya found some crayons and coloring books and was happily playing with that -or so we thought anyway -until I happened to glance over and saw she was under that table ledge there below the mirror, crayon in hand, just ready to start doing her version of Picasso-type drawings on the wall! Sheesh! Can't look away for a minute, can you?
This picture I think was one of my favorites of the pictures I took of the kids before and after the photography session. Maya and her hero, Alex!
This picture though of Alex and Kurtis ranks up there too as a favorite for me. Alex really did a great job pushing Kurtis all around the area there in the stroller, entertaining him, trying to keep the little guy as happy as possible while we waited.

And now, I think I've probably got enough people in the snore zone from showing off all these photos of my grandkids as they had their first "professional sitting" for a group picture of the three of them.

I really do have to acknowledge the young lady who worked with the kids. She really knocked herself out trying to bring out the best she could considering how difficult it was to get Kurtis to sit still, to get Maya to understand the instructions of where to stand or kneel and to not move her head once the young woman got her all positioned too! The way the two little ones did behave though, overall, I doubt she even had a clue that she was dealing with two children who have "issues" -Maya, who has been diagnosed for almost a year now as being autistic and Kurtis, who has been evaluated as having developmental delays but who it does appear will also be diagnosed sometime in the future as being autistic too.

Sometimes - many times actually -you'd never know that though, to look at them, would you?