It’s pretty hard to capture Lexi’s personality in photos.
I’ve been told that I’ve done it pretty well, but there are still so many facets to her energy and liveliness that don’t come through in photos, or even videos ( though the latter has a much better chance of being true to life).
It is mostly due to the fact that a lot of her actions are centered around us, as parents, or other people, not objects and, as the main “photographer”, I cannot both be in the moment and have fun with her and take photos/videos. So I choose to laugh with her and goof around and rough-house and enjoy her cutest giggles and smiles.
If I were to pull out a camera or an iphone at that moment, everything would be ruined.
That’s not to say that I haven’t been able to capture some of her fun personality on video…. Like her singing, drumming,  running, jumping into the pool.  I have!
The reason why I started the post like this is because for once I was able to step back a few times and take photos of Lexi doing what she does in her true “habitat”. Andrew and I decided to go to her music class together. I happened to have my camera with me….
As a result, you can finally see Lexi the way she is, a crazy fun girl who’s full of energy and spunk. I absolutely adore these photos as they show her true self and I know will cherish them for years to come.
Lexi is sooo cute! My daughter also was extremely active and liked doing her own thing at that age. Our pictures of her looked just like yours, with everyone else sitting down and her standing up, or off to the side getting some toys. She was unstoppable! But don’t worry, at some point kids mature. and soon she’ll be able to sit and attend like the rest of the kids in those pictures. Enjoy her!
She has such a great spirit, that Lexi! My daughter is an only child as well, and I’ve found that classes like that are a wonderful way to teach her how to share, let others take turns, the importance of giving up the spotlight for a moment so others can experience it as well, and learning how to exist as a community (instead of just as the much-adored only child who can do no wrong). It wasn’t always an easy road, but I’m so thankful for those classes and for the patient parents and other kiddos who put up with my attention-hogging kid while she figured things out! Lexi is such a total cutie, I love reading about her adventures. 🙂
I think at that age of 17 months it’s less about attention ( at least for Lexi) and more about being able to move around and get excited and come up close to things she’s interested in.
She loves some attention too of course like any kid, but it usually shows through in one on one interaction rather than in groups, when she tends to get shy towards individual people.
She looks like such a little girl instead of a baby, so cute!
Our local Kindermusik (that’s the spelling, btw) has 0-1 and 1-2 classes. It seems strange to have a 0-1.5 class. that’s a huge range!
Yeah I knew that. lol 🙂
It is a somewhat inconvenient range. Lexi wanted to move as soon as she started walking at 11 months and the baby class was way too restricting for her.
Now in the 18-36 months class it’s much better, since she’s learning from and watching the older kids all the time.
Finally, a smile! Look at that adorable grin on those last two pictures!
I’m curious- what is your technique for convincing parents to let you publish pictures of their kids on the internet? Every time my kids have a party, I get so many cute pictures that I would love to post on Facebook, but I always feel weird about doing it without permission. Do you just flat out ask them? Do you ask them to sign something? lol I don’t know. Maybe I’m over-thinking it.
It depends on the situation and who I am with. It’s always better to ask or crop kids out, or take photos from angles where their faces aren’t clearly visible. In a public place or an event, it’s almost unavoidable that you’re going to get someone in the picture, so that’s to be expect in this day and age of everything ending up on the internet.
Hahaha love Andrew’s face in that bottom one!
I just searched Kindermusik classes in our area and they have classes but only from 2-4 years!, boooo
Oh two is fine. You’re close enough. Go for it. Especially considering she’s really active like Lexi. She’ll have no problems keeping up with the older kids.
As a parent who has taken both of her children to years of activities it’s often very obvious and really annoying when younger children are ‘pushed’ into classes with older kids. It might possibly benefit the younger child by modeling the older children’s behavior, but it’s also pretty distracting for the older children when the younger ones aren’t participating in an appropriate manner…. I’m in no way implying that this is your child, or her friend, but I wouldn’t necessarily encourage other parents to do the same…. I’m sure most classes handle it by a case by case basis and in my experience younger children are asked to go to their appropriate class after a few weeks.
In this class it’s a bit different. The younger class has babies sitting down and both Lexis were too active to be sitting all the time. The older class they go to now encourages kids to get up and participate except for during story time.
You should see what the other 18-36 months class looked like where it was all boys. Pure madness.
When a class involves or expects a skill it’s a different story.
Cute! She looks like she’s really having fun 🙂
Just a quick note – you’ve got a typo in the first paragraph; I think you meant to say “facets” where you’ve got the word “faucets”.
Ha! Thanks! We don’t want no faucets 🙂 lol