For what it's worth, you don't need a "professional" photographer to take good shots of your kids. You just need some sort of "advanced amateur" with all of this fancy gear sitting around. I've had multiple friends ask me to do things like this, and for a friend, I'll happily do it. It helps justify the money I spent on my far-too-expensive camera. Sigh.

The only thing the pros have that I don't have are professional strobes, with those neat reflector umbrellas, soft boxes, etc. Now, I have a friend who owns all that, and I can borrow it if need be, but then it starts to be less fun, and it's preferable to have a full-time photo studio where you've set everything up and balanced all the lights in advance.

You can very effectively compensate for this by shooting pictures on a *cloudy* (but not raining...) day. The clouds do an excellent job of sending you a uniform wall of light that give you great soft shadows.