I've been holding on to a very cute secret since January! I'm a first time aunt! I have a niece! TATUM IS A BIG COUSIN!
My brother and his wife had a baby and I flew to Arizona to see her, snuggle her, and take one million pictures. They never announced anything on the interwebs and I've been given permission to shout it from the rooftops! SHE'S HERE! AND SHE'S CUTE!
I think she's an actual princess. Who else lays amongst the cactus snuggled up on their mother's wedding dress?
I've flown and driven to Texas specifically looking for cactus. Big cactus. Who knew it was all in Arizona? Shoutout to my mom for the pop of green color under the wedding dress. A beautiful hand knitted blanket for the grandbaby! (She didn't count on us having kids only 10 months apart, second blanket she's had to knit in under a year!)
"I made dis."
This is my favorite picture of my niece. She. is. milk. drunk. And I love her.
Whenever people ask me what my brother is up to I have a hard time answering. My usual response is, "I haven't know the answer to that question since the answer was "he's graduating high school." He just took off and his life has been like throwing darts at a map. Well now I can say "He just received a Phd from Arizona State University!" If you want to be an astronaut, you have to take my brother's class. I got an inside look at all the nerdy stuff that he does. And then I did what I do best and used their beautiful landscaping to take pictures of my niece! (Can't tell you how many times I've written neice trying to write this blog. Guess there's only room for one Dr. Stribling in this fam.)
I brought 30lbs of hand-me-down baby clothes so really I didn't have room for anything else. I only packed 3 shirts for myself! Including my Auntie-saurus shirt! I was so surprised to see she had a matching "My Auntie is my Bestie" shirt. It's hard to hold a baby and show off matching tshirts at the same time. Picture on the right is my first time holding her! My brother told me to support the neck...
Speaking of my baby at home. She went to visit my husband's family in Tennessee. I came to Arizona to help out. I didn't think adding another baby into the mix would be helpful. Don't worry she had a great time and was very very safe. There was lots of hiking, swimming, and apparently they offered her beer.
3 major challenges for this photoshoot.
1. I only allowed myself to bring a 50mm lens, my oldest camera body, and no lighting equipment!
2. This baby is already 6 weeks old! No sleepy curled up poses, but that's ok, again I couldn't bring any props anyway!
3. The heat! We headed out at 5am to avoid the harshest lighting and hottest part of the day. (none of us were on a normal sleep schedule anyway.)
Oh that amazing morning light. I could never have imagined it. This is Arizona?!
Did I mention all the outfits came from Goodwill, bought the night before?
My brother enjoyed photographing his daughter wearing all the different hats he could find in Goodwill.
We all got lots of snuggles, belly laughs, and yummy foods.
It didn't occur to me that when I posted a picture of myself at the Grand Canyon on facebook with no context that people would believe I just photoshopped it. Thank you for thinking I could do that.
To make a long story short. My parents took their RV to Arizona to see the baby for a month and ended up having to evacuate to a campsite 3 hours away because of wildfires. When my brother and I went to meet up with them, we were only an hour away from the Grand Canyon, so we had to go, some of us twice.
So what do we think? Does she look like her dad?
Or does she look like her mama?
Or her "sister"...or big cousin? (Big cousin left carseat, little cousin right carseat)
All I know is she's already got her aunt's attitude. And I love her!
The last thing we did before heading to the airport for my first red-eye flight, was take a group selfie. It was a little chaotic until we decided to let the puppy skip out on the fun. (First red-eye flight and first time running all the way down an up escalator because I left my laptop at security.)
Until next time my little squishy face niece! Mwah!
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