Easter Portrait

So I'm a little late in posting this, but I mentioned back here that I took Zuzu to have pictures taken for Easter.  We did not do a traditional Easter celebration this year (no bunny pictures or dying eggs) because we were in Arizona, and because I think the bunnies are uber creepy looking, and because I wasn't going to mess with dying eggs for a nine-month-old.  BUT of course she still had to have an Easter dress and Easter portrait.

Although there are about a million adorable Easter dresses out there, this year I decided that Zuzu would go vintage for her portrait.  She wore a dress that was mine when I was a baby.  Here I am modeling it:

I was five-and-a-half months old here.  This picture of me is weird for a number of reasons.  Note my square-shaped head and thinning hairline, which gives me an Elizabethan forehead.  (My bangs didn't grow in until I was three years old).  Also my hand appears to be enormous.  (As far as I know, this is an optical illusion and my hands were reasonably proportional).  And no matter how cute (or not) the baby is, the background is undeniably ugly (let's put your baby up against...  a nice muddy BROWN!).

What I realized in studying this photo is that Zuzu looks nothing like me now that she's not a newborn, although she does have my nose and mouth.  Her head shape is totally different from mine (less, uh, square), and she definitely looks like David through the eyes.  (Unfortunately we don't really have any baby pictures of David post-newborn until he was a year old, when he and his mom moved in with his grandparents, so I don't have a good side-by-side to compare how closely she resembles him.  I'm going to see if his grandma has some at her house next time we're there).

The dress is size nine months, so I assumed I was older than 5-and-a-half months in this picture and waited to have Zuzu's picture taken in it until she was 8-and-a-half months.  But regardless of our ages, I don't think we look much alike.  And I skipped the hairbow because I wasn't wearing one in my picture (although I could have used one to cover up some of that forehead...).

Anyway, I guess Zuzu is really just her own little person much more than she is a mommy-clone or daddy-clone.  She does, however, look good in my "vintage" dress:

She would only smile with her tongue out. That was her look for the day.  

I love this sweet expression.  Such a pretty girl.

I had the portraits taken at JCPenney (I scanned them, so the photo quality isn't as good on my computer screen as it is in the prints).  I don't think a studio can usually capture the full personality of a kid (at least, not the way our six month photos did, remember?), but I do think they are perfect for a photo session like this, when I mostly wanted a picture of the dress.  Plus, you know Zuzu looks cute, and the prints are very affordable (I had a coupon for an $11 portrait session that included one 8x10 and two 5x7s, then I bought two additional sheets of wallets for $4 each, so my total was just over $20 with tax.)  They tried to upsell me on everything, but I resisted since we are having nine month photos taken in Forest Park this weekend (and then I went home and tried my own photo shoot).  I love the journalistic style of the personal photo sessions at a park or at our home, but there's something about the slightly cheesy formal portraits that I really like, too.  I gave a 5x7 to each of the grandparents and tucked the wallet-sized prints into Easter cards.

And I think we can all agree:  Zuzu looks good in vintage!

Also hilarious (though blurry):  these pics I snapped with my iphone during the photo session as I was trying to make Zuzu smile.  Looks like Zuzu was over her photoshoot.

Being a child model is exhausting.  How much longer do I have to do this?

You think that noise you're making is funny?  You are embarrassing yourself, Mother.