Napping

Oh, this little photo makes my heart swell. :)

(Via Smallest Things)

Napping adventures

As her maternity-leave hobby, new mom Adele photographs her baby daughter Mila napping. Oh, the adventures she has!

(Thanks, Liz)

Edward Mapplethorpe

How amazing are Edward Mapplethorpe's children's portraits? The New York photographer takes portraits of one-year-olds sitting up (he insists that the shoot happen right around their first birthday). Interestingly, instead of giving the parents a big selection to choose from, he shows only one or two frames from the shoot (pretty bold), but apparently the parents have always been thrilled. Not hard to see why. (That first little dude kills me.)

P.S. Ridiculously adorable baby profiles and newborns.

(Via The Year in Pictures. Thanks, Jenny)

Baby profiles

German photographer Bettina von Zwehl took this photo series of one-year-old babies at an instant of total (rare) concentration. Aren't they gorgeous? Von Zwehl used toys, dvds and eye contact to get the little guys to stay still. "They sat on a table, looking at me, and I took the picture with a long cable release," she says. Since many of the babes were still too wriggly to photograph, it took more than a year to get six final portraits. And the goal of the project? "I was hoping to present each baby as an intelligent human being," she says.

P.S. Baby mouths are so adorable.