Family Ties

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of not one, but two visits: First, my cousin Patrick and his girlfriend Lauren came to brunch (Patrick is a recent grad of Notre Dame and just moved to Manhattan), then Marni came for "baby dinner" (and went out with the Mommy and the Daddy for grown up dinner- al di la, yum!) Clio took a while to warm up to all these family visitors (Marni's basically been my NY family for 10 years; I'd say she counts at this point), and our attempts at portraiture were far more successful on the adult side of things. (Incidentally, you can see Clio's full ensemble from the Home Depot excursion- minus, of course, the glam outerwear.)


Once she got used to the extra people in her house though, Clio spared no time in putting them to work. The scenario was similar with each visit: Patrick introduces this bean bag ball to Clio,

Clio throws several at once in every direction, encouraging all four adults to scatter and scuttle around like crabs. (the scuttling happened after this picture was taken.)

This even continued during the portrait sitting.


Then, Marni introduces her blackberry,


Clio gets "Clio's phone"


and Marni is forced to play "phone call" for the next 20 minutes.



(Phone call would be a lot more fun if Clio understood the concept of speaking beyond the "hello hello hello.")

Good times were had by all.