We have been busy planning an overseas family holiday for next year.  As this will be our first time on a plane with the girls, we have decided to make it somewhere close and will be heading to Singapore :)

People have told us that it is notoriously difficult to take passport photos of babies and, as a result, not too many places offer the service.   Since the guidelines online seemed pretty easy to follow, we decided to give it a go ourselves, and to do photos for the rest of the family at the same time.

Initially we thought that this blog post would be full of hilarious outtakes but the stars must have alligned, because there really aren’t any.  There is a great guide to taking baby passport photos here but, since Amelie is almost 3 months old, we didn’t really need to use it.  If we had tried any earlier, say when she was 6 weeks old, it would have been a struggle (unless we did it in the middle of the night!) because, being a premmie, she was very sleepy during the day.

The photos were taken first thing in the morning, in that short window of time between Amelie’s breastfeed and morning sleep, and that turned out to be the perfect time to do it.  We showed the big girls the sample photos and explained that this time when we said “Don’t smile” we weren’t trying to make them giggle, we actually meant it :)

Looking at these photos we are struck by three things: the first is the crazy resemblance between all of us.  You can literally pick and choose different features and see which parent they came from.  The second is that the older you are the more awful you look in a passport photo – bleh.  The third is the absolute lack of emotion, you can see that we are related but there is no other connection between us.

Our photography is definitely about the connection and interactions between families, so you can pretty much guarantee that these will not be going up on any walls in our house; we think that a friend summed it up well when he said that we look like a family of serial killers ;)

If you have been following our Facebook page you may have seen that our gorgeous new daughter, Amelie, arrived 4 weeks early on 28th April.

The few days before the birth were a little crazy due to the fact that Monika was suffering from undiagnosed appendicitis!  After a few sleepless nights and two trips to the hospital the decision was made to perform an emergency Cesarean Section as Monika was in agony and nothing was helping with the pain.  At 36 weeks gestation the odds of Amelie being fine outweighed the risk of keeping her inside when something was obviously wrong.  As you can imagine, Monika was pretty relieved when the epidural went in.

Luckily Amelie was fine, she was 2.91kg and 49cm, and didn’t need to spend any time in the ICU.  A few minutes after she was born, we found out what had been causing all the pain! A general surgeon was able to arrive quickly to remove the appendix and, although the recovery from a double surgery wasn’t pleasant, Monika is feeling fine now.

We are very grateful for Amelie’s safe arrival :)

Early days with a premmie have their share of challenges but we are pleased to announce that we are back to taking limited bookings as of the start of July.  Contact us today if you would like to make the most of the early sunsets and gorgeous winter weather.

We have well and truly descended into the newborn haze!  We wish all the mums a happy Mother’s Day :)