Jonah's 2yr pictures

A week or so ago, we took Jonah's two-year-old pictures! I always feel bad because I somehow always miss doing official photos of Joshua, but part of that is he is so hard to capture that I usually end up using some chance picture I took around his birthday. For instance, this year I think I'll use one of those when we were looking at wildflowers, because he was pretty cute. 

Jonah, however, is like Elora: he likes to have his picture taken (so far) and is generally pretty cooperative. I knew I wanted pictures with his new cowboy hat, because he loved it so much, but I didn't want him to look like an actual cowboy...because well, we're not. I didn't really plan ahead on what he should wear, so I kind of like his shirt because it's his favorite color, but I also kind of wish I'd chosen something that went with the hat better. But it works!

We went to the rodeo grounds (right by the pow-wow grounds) because I thought it was suitable for the theme. 

 

I was afraid he'd be taking his hat off all the time...

but even though it made him sweaty, he wanted it back on his head whenever it came off- he really likes it!

At first we took some pictures around the fences and gates:

They turned out okay, but the light was a little glaring (despite the cloud cover) and he was getting mad at me and wanted to get down. (Yep, that's how I got him to hold still...put him in positions where he can't get down himself!) Then we found the perfect spot, up in the observatory booth (is that what you call it?) where we found not only a paint splattered wall, but also a little stool where I could set him for our pictures! We got a bunch of grumpy ones where he kept saying, "I done now! I done now! I get down!".....

 

But then I got him talking and singing and he warmed up a bit. We got some shy pictures (I like the black and white one best),

and some sweet pictures, ( I love the thoughtful one down in the right bottom corner). 

 

When he really was getting tired of sitting there so long, I let him sit up on the window ledge, or whatever it's called.  A lot of these were cute- I liked the fence in the background- but the light was being weird again and it was hard to get a good balance of the foreground and background details.

Then it came time to narrow them down! The hardest part. I went from about 90 to 50, then to about 25 before I started editing. I know I'll still print way too many, but the following are my favorites for his big wall picture for the year, as they all show his personality:

And out of these, there are probably three that I like the very best. I think I know which one I'm going to use (though I can't promise others in this group won't end up on the wall too). Which ones would you choose?