Lifestyle portraits in the mountains: Waterfall sitting at 6 months old

I can't encourage you enough to take monthly portraits of your babies for at least the first year. I use these images to capture new developmental milestones, facial expressions or places we visited. Then I organize their baby books around the sessions and add some candids, so the books end up a mix of quality images and very real moments. I haven't actually started Piper's book yet...but when I do, it will be easy to start with the photos I've been sharing with you.
 
Now please excuse me while I inundate you with several more of these sessions as I catch up on posting. Piper was 6 months in these photos (though she'll be 9 months next week!). We take an annual fall Blue Ridge Mountain trip with my sister and her family, and this year we rented a house outside Blowing Rock, NC. Well, we thought we were just renting a house; we ended up with an entire private spiritual retreat center tucked into its own hollow (pronounced "holler" in these parts of Appalachia), complete with huge waterfalls and a creek wrapping around the property.
 
It was dreamy. The girls played with their cousins. The adults soaked in the quiet wherever the kids weren't playing. We hiked. We ate. We visited the town.
 
In our large family, there is never a lack of someone needing a little baby time. Piper always obliges. At 6 months, she was quite interactive, laughing her little cough-like laugh at anyone who would play, beginning to scoot around and sitting solidly. (At Piper's well check that month, the pediatrician tried to show her intern how 6-month-olds are usually unsteady while sitting, but Piper was sturdy and unflappable.) She also got her first tooth a week before turning 6 months. Let's call it a night to remember and leave it at that.

P.S. These shots don't capture the full glory of the waterfalls, because they are a ways behind her. The one in the back is several stories high and stunning.
 
P.P.S. For these photos, I dressed Piper in the same outfit Nora wore at this age for our holiday card photo that year.

 More of Piper's portraits: arrival, formal birth announcement, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months and 5 months.