Standstill

I stood completely still for a second. I was totally in awe, standing in front of that tiny little person.
She was so small, so fragile and yet so perfectly created.
I hardly dared to breath let alone press down my shutter because I didn´t wanna interrupt her precious sleep.
I was once again reminded, that what I am doing for a living, is actually not "making a living" but to capture memories and moments for others.

Although you might think that I´ve seen and photographed enough babies to get used to it, I never do.
Every.single.time I am reminded of that loving father in heaven, that has such love for us and such hope in humanity to keep creating wonderful, sweet, gentle little babies.
And every time I am thankful, that I am there to witness that love!

10 fingers and 10 toes...

The other day I went to this family that I knew from church to take pictures of their newborn son, Noah.
His Mom, Aleksandra, originally is from Poland and she has a knack for old furniture. She has various pieces of antique furniture in her home that she restored herself and gave them a nice new modern-ish look by painting them in bright colours.
If you love old furniture as much as I do you would have loved that house! 
Plus, they speak polish at home which sounded like music to me ears!
And Noah is just the sweetest baby. He slept almost the entire photoshoot and he´s just perfect with those tiny fingers and tiny toes and that cute little bubble nose... 

There were supposed to be two...

When Sophie´s parents Julia and Daniel found out that she was pregnant with twins, they were just a little bit shocked but extremely thrilled about the double blessing.
Julia experienced a very uncomplicated pregnancy and there was no indication of anything not going "according to plan".
When she was 29 weeks pregnant she went to the doctor for a routine check and found out that her sons heart had stopped beating.
No one who hasn´t lived through something like this will understand the unbelievable strength it takes to know in advance that when the day comes, there will be only one baby in her arms.
Despite the unbearable pain, Julia still remains an optimist, knowing that by God´s grace alone she was able to carry Sophie through to her 34th week of pregnancy.
And by God´s grace alone Sophie was strong enough to breath and drink by herself and leave the hospital after only a week.
Capturing these moments made me really emotional and editing them as a "normal" newborn photoshoot while I had prepared for a twin photoshoot made me realize that something was truly missing from these pictures.
Sophie´s brother, whom they call "Little Star".

Meet our niece!

In August, Dannys sister and her husband had a baby. But since they are living in England we only got to see our cute little niece SAVANNAH via skype.
With two siblings in South Africa and two in England, Danny doesn´t get to see them very often anyway.
So when Maggie and Raf, the two "english" siblings came to visit us with their loved ones shortly after Chritmas, we were thrilled.
We went on sunny walks, climbed up a watch tower, had gigantic steaks with them for lunch in the beautiful but unfortunately rainy town of Freiburg and as a highlight for everyone we went to Europa Park.
I loved looking at the lights and all the beautiful little houses and towns they created there and really enjoyed to hear the kids laughing and delighting in all the beautiful things to see. The ONE (!!!) roller coaster ride I went on with Josiah was enough for me as I am not a big fan of roller coasters.
I don´t know why, maybe the two pregnancies have made me slightly more sensitive towards that but I can hardly sit on a swing without getting nauseous. So roller coasters are not for me. :D
But everything else was lots of fun and we had an awesome time together.
But now I am getting a little carried away, as I actually wanted to show you pics of our gorgeous little nice.
So here you go!

 And then one night, she discovered her feet!

Levi and his brothers

Today, as promised, I´ll show you the pictures of my friend Doro´s third son, Levi.
Her three boys look a lot alike and are yet so different! I had a blast shooting those pictures with so much laughter and plays and craziness going on and seeing the two bigger boys shower their little brother with kisses was just immensely cute!