I am a bit of a picture addict. I love taking pictures of my kids and having them professionally taken. Usually if I am going to take the kids in to have their portraits taken, I put weeks, if not months, into planning their styling and how I want the pictures to look. I wanted to share with the hive a set of my favorite pictures that I had taken and how I came up with the styling.
A few months after my twins were born, my mother gave me a gift that I treasured deeply. She gave me my grandfather’s Purple Heart, medals and dog tags. I come from a military family and this was a huge honor to me to be the caretaker for these items. She told me they were for my little Joe when he gets older so he has something from the man he was named after. After lots of tears on both our part, I tucked these little treasures away. It was this gift that gave me the idea for a set of pictures. I wanted to take a picture that would commemorate who my children are named after. I don’t have a lot of items from each of the family members, but I thought if I could make a special picture for their baby books, that would be great.
This set of pictures took me over a year to bring to life. I spent time collecting items both new and old. What I really wanted for each picture was to have a toy that represented something important to the person they were named after. I wanted a picture if the person was deceased, or the actual person for those they were still alive. I wanted them dressed in a way that represented their namesake. I also wanted something that belonged to that person. Here is what I came up with:
My oldest son James is named after Mr. Train’s grandfather (Great Grandpa Train). Since he is still alive, we wanted him to be in the picture with our little guy. I don’t own anything that used to belong to Great Grandpa Train, but we did find a cute set of plastic kids’ golf clubs that James absolutely loved. Great Grandpa Train loves to go out and golf. When we drove out to visit them, the kids had a great time playing in their golf cart in their garage. I thought it would be a fun way of honoring that part of him and the memory the kids made while visiting them. I dressed him in a simple argyle sweater to go with the golf theme. Something simple made it easy to coordinate with Great Grandpa as well.
James with his Great Grandpa all done up for a game of golf
Coming up with three little boy names in a year was not easy. Luckily there were plenty of people we wanted to honor that helped us come up with names for our twins.
Nicholas is named after Mr. Train’s cousin. They were close as children, and unfortunately his cousin passed away when my husband was just out of high school. I had to get information from Mr. Train on this one because his cousin is someone I have never met and didn’t know much about his personality or his interests. We found a picture of him as a child that Mr. Train said everyone had in their house as their favorite childhood picture. I thought it would be perfect if it was a picture that meant so much to his family. The toy we picked was a stuffed husky. His family had raised huskies for his whole life and they often had multiple dogs at a time. One item that Mr. Train has from his cousin is a black leather jacket. It is hard to see in the picture, but Nick is sitting on top of it. When talking to Mr. Train about how Nick should be dressed for the picture, the only thing he could remember was that his cousin liked to wear page boy hats backwards and had simple clothes. I was able to find a small page boy hat and we put him in a white shirt and khaki pants.
Nick wasn’t giving us many smiles that day so I had to go with the not screaming picture.
Joe was the main reason I wanted to do these pictures. I had the idea in my head as soon as my mother gave me those medals and my grandfather’s purple heart. I knew exactly what I wanted. This one was easier for me to stage because it was my grandfather and each detail held a special place in my heart. I used a picture of my grandfather in Germany during World War II. I can’t explain why I love looking at that picture so much, but he is so young, proud and full of life. I hung the Purple Heart from the frame and brought his dog tags along with us. The toy I used to represent my grandfather was a space shuttle. After getting out of the military, my grandfather worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a bunch of the Apollo missions. (I know that this is the shuttle Discovery, but it was really hard to find Apollo toys and the ones I did find were way more expensive.) I was lucky to find a used little aviator jacket for 5 dollars on ebay. I think it really added to the look of the picture.
It brings tears to my eyes to see this picture and remember the man I honored with my child’s name
Lilly came along after these pictures were taken, but I knew when she was born I would want to do something similar for her. Lilly is my only child that doesn’t have a first name as a family name. I just couldn’t give up my favorite little girl name. She does however share my sister’s middle name. I started planning her picture before she was even born. I knew I wanted her to take a picture with her Auntie, but that wasn’t easy since my sister doesn’t live near us. I had to take the picture when Lilly was 2 months old while my sister was here for Christmas. The toy I picked out was a stuffed Christmas tree. My sister lives for Christmas and she gave us that toy as a gift when the boys were born. My mom gave me the dress Lilly is wearing. It was one of my mom’s favorite dresses to put my sister in when she was a baby. Luckily it fit perfectly. We took several pictures that day and my favorite one is the one where they were both wearing Christmas hats. The silly spring hat fits my sister’s personality perfectly. I tried to hang up the other pictures that were a little more serious and fit with the other pictures, but I couldn’t. The silly one is just perfect for these two.
Two of my favorite ladies in my life showing off their silly sides
These four pictures have a permanent spot on my wall. I love that they commemorate something as important as their name.
Do you have anything that represents your child’s name or namesake?
coconut / 8234 posts
This is such a great idea and a wonderful keepsake. Also a great way to honor deceased loved ones. I’m wondering if I can put together a photo like this before Mother’s Day. Our daughter’s shares a middle name with DH’s great grandmother, who he was very close with. DH’s grandmother would love a photo like this.
apricot / 274 posts
Truly beautiful and thoughtful. Thanks for sharing.
pear / 1998 posts
I can’t tell you how much I love this! Our future children will have middle names that honor special people in our lives. I would love to do this.
bananas / 9229 posts
I love these!!
nectarine / 2771 posts
These are amazing!!!! Wow.
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
I think I’ve told you before how awesome I think this idea is. I have no idea how you manage to accomplish things like this. I can’t even seem to consistently brush my teeth, and you whip out genius creativity with virtual triplets. You are soo super woman!
hostess / wonderful honeydew / 32460 posts
Wow. What an awesome idea. This post totally brought tears to my eyes!
blogger / watermelon / 14218 posts
This is so beautiful, and this is why I wish we had family names. Both Wagon Sr. and I are the first generation in our families to have American names for first names. Korean naming tradition does have a convention that you can follow to be traditional, but it’s more about linking to the father’s line and that generation in that line rather than honoring relatives.
I totally teared up reading this post too!! Thank you for sharing!!!
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21628 posts
I teared up reading this. What an amazing idea.
blogger / pomegranate / 3300 posts
@mrsjazz: you could totally pull it off for Mother’s Day. There are a lot of studios that don’t require appointments and do same day printing and framing like Picture people. I think it would be an awesome gift.
@TemperanceBrennan: I am glad you are considering something like this. They are truly some of my favorite pictures, and I am a huge Bones fan! Temperance Brennan is one of my all time favorite TV characters.
@Mrs. Blue: you are still in the thick of newborn twin madness. I promise you will come out of the fog eventually!!! @chopsuey119: @leialou: sorry for making you cry. hopefully no one was watching.
@Mrs. wagon. I wanted to honor my husbands side as well with our oldest. He didn’t want a junior necessarily so we did other family names from his side.
pear / 1895 posts
This is such a great idea! We are using family names for our children as well, and I definitely plan to get a photo of LO with his namesake soon. Maybe now I’ll try to make them look a little more professional
clementine / 930 posts
What a wonderful idea! Our son will have my day’s first name as his middle name, so I will definitely be stealing this idea. Thanks for sharing, and the pictures are all so wonderful.
blogger / persimmon / 1398 posts
I cannot tell you how much I love this! So, so fabulous!!!
cherry / 175 posts
This is a wonderful idea! My LO is named after her great-grandmother (on her father’s side). She passed away the year before she was born. It would be great to do something like this to commemorate her namesake alongside her.
guest
wow..this is wonderful!! And so very special!! My mother passed away before I had my son. In honor of her, his middle name is her middle name(Jo). This is such a wonderful way to show the connection and love of the name they were given. I’am always trying to bring her into things so he knows who she was. Now I have to start thinking of what props to put with him and my moms picture. Thanks for the beautiful idea!!!