It’s not always easy to get sibling photos of my boys together, as they are always busy moving around and full of action. Sometimes instead of the lovely portrait I had in mind, I will end up with just 3 bodies blurring across the screen! When I do manage to capture a decent picture of them all together, it quickly becomes one of my favourites as it’s so rare to get one that is just right. If you’ve read the blog before, you may remember me talking about my favourite photo which for a long time was my entire blog header. Because it captured all three of them so well it’s remained as my favourite for quite a while, it was taken over a year ago now.
This year, there is a new monthly family portraits photo linky with the theme of siblings. I love this theme! Having my children all close together in age, siblings have pretty much always been an important and constant presence in their lives. Mr Z as the oldest doesn’t remember the time before he had his brother, as he was 17 months old when he arrived. Then there is another 19 months between Mr T and Mr R.
Siblings were the best thing about my childhood (I’m an identical twin, plus have two older brothers), and I hope my boys will feel the same about each other as they grow up. They are very close, despite of course the usual sibling bickering and disputes over the most desirable trains and hot wheels cars!
For this months project, I decided to focus just on my younger two boys as I realised I have pictures of the boys all together, pictures of my eldest two before the youngest was born, pictures of my eldest holding my youngest when he was born, and not really so many of just the youngest two together.
These two (Mr T and Mr R) are very close and are pretty similar in all their interests. Mr T is 4 and Mr R is 2. They both have some difficulties and delays with their speech so they just play together wordlessly. Despite not being able to talk to each other, they really enjoy each others company (of course other than when they are smacking each other over the head, in the way that toddler brothers do!!) When we go out, these two sit together side by side in their buggy. Because of Mr T’s additional needs, in many ways he is a lot more like a 2 year old than a 4 year old and it seems like these two are almost like twins without being twins.
To take their pictures together, I decided to put them both into our ball pit (it’s actually a travel cot with plenty of ball bit balls added. I’ve re-purposed it as none of them would ever sleep in it!!) with a load of balloons added for extra fun.
My logic was they will be in a confined space so it will be easy to get good pics of them together. Well it wasn’t quite as easy as I had hoped as they were quite over excitable and naturally more interested in jumping around, squealing and chucking balls than smiling at the camera – and who can blame them! So, I did get my quota of blurred and unusable pics as always but here are a few of the slightly clearer ones.
You Kind of can’t tell if Mr R is laughing, crying or shouting – but he was just laughing as they were throwing up the balloons and catching them!
In some of the photos, you can’t always see them both so well, as one is hiding:
Mostly it was Mr T actually, as he got quite absorbed in the light up sensory balls we have in there
The balloons I used for the photographs are from The Letter Room and are a sample that I was sent a while back. We have a set spelling out Party Fun
I got quite lucky that both Mr T and Mr R’s initials are found within those words! So I wanted to use them for props to take a solo portrait for each of them too. Quite lucky Mr Z was at school while we were doing this as there is no Z in “Party Fun”
Mr..
and Mr..
His is a little blurry. It’s because they were just having too much fun with the balloons!
The balloons are 1.50 per letter and you can order any combination you would like. They do make handy fun props for photos as well as of course being great to decorate for parties, or for general fun and games. If your kids need to burn off some energy and excitement, jumping around in a pile of balloons and coloured balls does tend to do the trick!
Linking up to:
Anna Marikar, mum of four and seasoned blogger, has spent over a decade sharing her parenting journey and passion for kid-friendly crafts and free printables.
Her easy-to-follow craft ideas and practical parenting advice have transformed In The Playroom into a cherished resource for parents.
That’s a impressively long post for this linky! I love that as siblings they somehow manage to find the common ground to have fun despite the communication difficulties 🙂 Lovely shots, happy memories x
I was thinking to myself “hmmm, this is getting quite long” but just kept on going! 😀
Such a lovely post Anna and fab photos of them together. It’s a great Linky 🙂
What fantastic pictures! I also struggle to get organic snaps of my two together and they are older and easier to boss around 😉 I love the baloons – great touch, and it looks like they had loads of fun 🙂
They’re lovely photo’s, and I totally agree they don’t all have to face the front – 2 of ours will very rarely let me take a photo unless they’re in a particular mood, in which case they’ll photobomb and drive me bats!
In the photo where you say you can’t tell what he’s doing, you can easily tell he’s laughing, his eyes are full of joy! 🙂
They look they having so much of fun!
That looks like such fun – can I come round and go in there too please? Pleeeeeeeeeeease?
I totally get what you mean about like being twins without being twins. There’s 13 months between Kit and Ozzy and people often ask me if they are twins!
Lovely and happy shots here – makes me want to play! x
Lovely photos Anna, the boys are lucky to have each other
Oh my goodness, they look like they are having THE best time playing with those balloons. What a pair of cuties. x
Lovely photos – it must be so nice having three boys so close in age – I bet they will be great friends as well as brothers.
Lovely pictures, looks like they have lot’s of fun together 🙂 x
Loving the photos – looks like a lot of fun!
Awww they are so cute mashAllah!! love the idea of the balls in the cot!
Great shots! They look like they were having tons of fun. I should do that with our travel crib too!
What lovely happy colourful pictures. Your boys look like they had great fun.