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Our Kids Are Listening
Whether it’s on the news, at home, or in our schools. It’s up to us to make sure they hear the right things. This blog will cover all things family, relationships and home improvement. We hope you find our pieces to be of value!
Preparing your newborn for a photo shoot

As soon as your baby was born, you instantly fell in love. Those chubby cheeks, hands that are all wrinkly, and tiny appendages are more than enough to make your heart melt. When you’re a new parent, you often don’t have time to commit all these small details about your baby to memory because being a new parent is stressful! That’s exactly why new parents hire a specialty photographer, called a newborn photographer, to take pictures of their baby during the first 14 days of life.
A newborn photographer has the skill and experience necessary to capture those fleeting newborn moments, like their soft, tiny head fitting perfectly on your shoulder as you rock them back and forth to sleep. If you’re a new parent, you’ll want to cherish moments like this before your baby becomes a boisterous toddler.
However, preparing for a newborn photo shoot can be stressful. After all, your baby is very small and delicate. Safety is such an important factor. You’ll also want to choose a photographer who has the training and experience working with newborn babies. This is not a task to entrust to a photographer you know that’s only looking for some extra cash on the side.
To help you prepare, we’ve done some research and come up with several tips to help you prepare for your newborn photography session. Before we present those tips, we found this website, www.newbornphotographyniagara.com, to be very helpful while conducting our research. Be sure to check them out!
Tip #1 – Feed your baby 30 minutes before the photo shoot
Newborns are very hungry! The last thing you want is for your photo shoot to be disrupted by frantic crying for milk. If you feed and burp your newborn about 30 minutes before the session, they’ll likely become very sleepy and easy to pose! However, you should try and avoid giving them a full meal in the hours leading up to the session. Get them hungry, and then feed them 30 minutes before the session. That strategy has been proven to generate good results!
Tip #2 – Book your session well in advance
The key to capturing those perfect newborn moments is getting your photoshoot done before your baby is 14 days old. That’s a very small window of time to be working with, so scheduling well in advance is key to making it happen. Plus, any good photographer will be booked a few weeks in advance, so chances are you can’t just call when the baby is born and get a session within 14 days. The ideal time to make your appointment is weeks 14 through 27 of pregnancy.
Tip #3 – Don’t let your newborn nap before the session
Newborns sleep a lot, but don’t let them pass out after your feeding 30 minutes before the shoot. Play with them, entertain them, do whatever is necessary to keep them awake. That way, they’ll be tired when it’s time to do the photo shoot. You 100% want a tired baby for the photography session, because that’s exactly how you’ll get those incredibly adorable, sleepy poses you’ll cherish for the rest of your life.
We hope these tips help you prep for your photo shoot, and we especially hope this article inspires you to do your own research on newborn photography. If you’re not a parent yourself, a newborn photoshoot also makes a sweet, unique gift for a friend or family member!
The Role of TV in the Education of Your Children

As parents, we’ve grown accustomed to using some of our favorite lines on our children like, “Your clothes didn’t just get up and walk away”, “I don’t care who started it, two wrongs don’t make a right”, and the very popular, “Because I said so”.
In order to find out how much of children’s media is devoted to educational content, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a national survey of more than 1500 parents of children ages 2-10. The results of the survey prove parents may want to give a second thought before they use the classic line, “Too much TV will rot your brain”.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s report, Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America is the first comprehensive analysis of parents’ experiences with the educational media their children use. The survey covers children’s use of various media platforms: TV, DVDs, video games, smartphones, tablets, books, e-readers, and other mobile devices.
When it comes to educational media at home for kids, parents believe their children have “learned the most” from TV. 52% of respondents believe children learn the most from TV, compared to 47% from computers, 41% from video games, and 39% from mobile devices.
Additionally, TV leads the way in delivering educational content. The same study found that 52% of TV content consumed by children is educational, while 36% of mobile device content is educational and video games contain 18% educational content.
Is it time to review exactly what your kids are watching on TV? Regardless of the types of devices your children use, it’s the responsibility of the parents to monitor the content. That way, you can ensure that at least a certain amount of “device time” is also “learning time”.