Pictures of a cute three year old

On Saturday morning (before Kaden's party), we took him in to Kiddie Kandid's (yes, they are open again) for his three year pictures. :)

I gotta say, I was not at all impressed with the photographers. They used to be so good and could make any kid smile. We went there last December (right before they went bankrupt and closed all the stores) with my entire family and did pictures and the lady was good about getting Kaden to smile. He's so shy and just locks up in situations where he is the center of attention.

He SO did NOT get that from me. ;)

This photographer was pregnant with her first child (due 3 days before me) and just didn't understand how to work with difficult kids. I told her beforehand that Kaden is extremely shy and she just didn't understand to give him space rather than crowd him like she did. Anyway, eventually, she hung onto the camera clicker thingy and "left" the room. Shane and I took over and got some good smiles and giggles almost immediately.
These all have the watermark logo thing on them, but ignore that and look at the cutie patootie little boy....

Kaden was covering his face in every shot before the lady left.

So, we tried putting Lexi next to him just for a second to loosen him up. She LOVED it and Kaden stopped covering his eyes. Not the rest of his face, just his eyes. :)

This was when the lady left. He kept pointing to her to let us know where she had gone.

This was an okay one, but I knew we could do better.

Shane pretended to run into a wall and Kaden loved it. I think this is so cute!

As much as Kaden loves soccer, we ditched the soccer balls for a while and brought out the big guns trains. He totally forgot about the camera and loved just playing for a bit.

He was watching Lexi being thrown around by Shane here.

Now is when I started working my momma magic to make him smile BIG. Wait for it....

Better.....

BEST!
Seriously-can he possibly get any cuter?! Look at that expression! Totally perfect. :D

For those of you wondering, I actually wouldn't recommend Kiddie Kandid's anymore. Not for a while, anyway. Because they are slowly getting back into business, they only had three backdrops to choose from (black, white, and blue) and very few props. They called us the day before and let us know to bring our own props that we wanted. They still have the cute benches, but hardly anything besides that. And I didn't like the photographer, but that could have just been that particular lady and the other ones might be as good as before. They also don't print your pictures while you wait anymore (unless you want to pay an extra $4) and it sucks waiting two weeks for one 8x10. Anyway, I'm glad the one we got is free (even if we do have to wait two weeks to get it)!