My two kiddos are close, they get on well, and are both very protective of each other. If Annie gets put on the naughty mat I have to keep Ezra out of the room otherwise he goes over and tries to make her laugh – therefore undoing the work of the naughty mat.

Annie is quite a huggy kiddo. She has to hug everyone at nursery before we can leave, she hugs her Dad as soon as he gets home and she has even been known to hug the security guard in Asda even though he only said, ‘hello’ and she’d never seen him before!

All that being said though the kids don’t hug that much, Annie has long hair which tickles Ez’s face and up until very recently, Ezra has been quite heavy handed in demonstrating his affection. ‘I love you’ from Ez used to be a head butt with a smile or poking you in the eye while he babbled at you happily.

This past fortnight we’ve been working on getting Ez to use, ‘gentle hands’ and now he loves nothing more than to stroke your hair or face. He is also, to Annie’s joy, starting to spontaneously hug people, and enjoy or at least put up with, Annie hugging him.

This photo was taken after we’d spent a chunk of the afternoon playing in Annie’s room. I’d had to be a tickling zombie who wanted to eat the kiddo’s brains and tickle them, they’d dressed up, read stories, bounced on the bed and played Happyland. Just before I took this Ezra got out the Pudsey Bear ears from the dressing up box and given them to Annie to wear. In return, she found out the other set and put them on him and gave him a big cuddle.

The hug lasted for a good 10 seconds, which is 6 seconds longer than Ez is happy with, but he put up with it admirably and didn’t try to escape!

I love everything about this photo, it demonstrates perfectly how intense Annie is in her affections, how tightly she hugs, how she clenches up her eyes and pulls you in close. I love the little smile on Ezra’s face, that they’re both wearing bear ears, that Annie is wearing her favourite summer dress even though it was a cold February day and how they’re both happy and getting on together.

It is a photo that totally captures my kiddos right now and every time I see it I can’t help but smile at the pair of them and hope that they stay this close forever.

This post is Emma’s entry into the Printerpix Photo competition.