Photography by Whitney

My nieces are very close in age... 11 months & 5 days to be exact. In fact, the 4 month old is almost as long as the 15 month old! With them being at those ages, one not being able to sit up & the other not being old enough to hold her little sister, it makes it quite difficult to get a good picture of the two of them together. In fact, nearly impossible. Not to mention that you have to get them both looking at the camera (hopefully) and maintaining a pleasurable facial expression. It's hard work. Anybody would agree.

Well today it was close to naptime for Miss Nora (the older of the two) & she was sitting in the bean bag chair that we have in the living room, and feeding herself a bottle while she watched tv & calmed down. Sarah wanted to be held, and I had her on my lap, and we sat next to the bean bag in the floor. I knew Nora was tired so the outcome of my idea was either going to be a good one (meaning she'd be too tired to fight me on it) or a bad one (meaning that she'd REALLY fight me on it.)

I took Nora's bottle away from her and placed Sarah next to her on the bean bag and placed Nora's arm around Sarah's shoulders. Nora gets close to her baby sister occasionally to give her a "hug" but most of the time she's told "be gentle!!" or "be sweet!" or "no no, leave Sarah alone..." so she knows that she's got to be pretty tame around her.

The look on Nora's face when I put Sarah in her arms was the sweetest thing. She got this little sweet smile on her face & just kept staring at Sarah sitting so close to her. Sarah seemed to be in a good mood for the moment so somehow it all worked out. The hard part was getting them both to look at me at the same time... this is when Aunt Whitney broke out her weird noises and crazy dance moves, and then snapped my camera as quickly as I could in hopes that I caught something. The entire time, Nora sat as still as could be and didn't move anything but her eyes! I dont know if it was because she was tired, or because she knew he had to be extra gentle with Sarah so close, but she was a very good big sister! :)

Here's an outtake of Nora sitting as still as she possibly could. She didn't even want to move her head... in fact, i think she liked resting it on Sarahs. Awww, love! :)

And here's the winning shot! (the only thing that could have made it better was if Sarah was smiling, and maybe had her eyes open a bit wider... but im not going to be picky!)