Charlotte, Age: "o-most free and a half"

Charlotte was very excited about dying Easter eggs this year, so much so that we tackled one dozen before lunch and another before dinner.  Upon opening the first kit this morning, she eyed the dye tablets as candy and started to tear at the package.  I  blurted, "No! Poison!" and she reluctantly retreated.  Fast-forward to the afternoon while hard boiling the next dozen:  Making sure we were adequately prepared, she asked, "Mommy, do we have more of those little poisons?" with her thumb and pointer squeezed together to illustrate the size of such delicious dye lots :)

A couple of our poisonous masterpieces: Sha-Sha's veiny marble creation and Moo's "spiderman", the result of repeated throws from the high chair tray, followed by belly laughs and squeals.

But my favorite photo of the night was not a holiday snapshot; instead a moment where Charlotte was in conversation with her friend across the street.  It tells the story of great neighbors, of lazy Friday nights around the dinner table, of windows open and easy-breezy spring air.  More importantly, it tells the story of our little fashionista: sporting not 1 or 2, but 3 swimsuits, layered overtop her freshly grass-stained play clothes, and underneath her pint-sized strawberry apron.

These are the moments that a studio or professional photographer cannot capture for us. The times when f-stops and shutter speeds don't matter much.  This is our Charlotte, Age: (in her own words) "o-most free and a half."