Suggestions for Grandmother Grandson shoot

[james_in_baltimore]

A friend of a friend has asked me to do a shoot of his Grandmother with his 2 year old son. The Grandmother is house-bound so the setting will be limited to their house. It might be warm enough to go outside, but I don't want to depend on it. I currently have a couple umbrellas, a softbox and flashes for lighting, but don't have any background equipment. I know that they want photos that look traditional. I don't have a lot of experience with this type of shooting. I have mostly done weddings.

So my questions are:

How do I get around the backrgound problem? I assume I should look for a background that wouldn't be too busy and make sure there is some distance between the subject and background so I can blur a little?

I would love suggestions or examples of poses to try. I assume I sould do a few with the kid on her lap with some different crops, but any ideas or examples would be great!

My equipment is in my signature.

Really any suggestions about how to go about this would be much apreciated, since I don't have much experience with this type of shooting and have some obvious limitations with no background equipment and a limited setting.

[bsaber]

You can try killing the ambient with your flashes and make the background go black. Standard two light 45-45 degree setup would be a good place to start. Have the 580 in a softbox as main and the 430 in an umbrella for fill.

Having the kid standing with his/her head on the grandmother's knee and looking up at her and her hand on him looking down would be a nice pose IMO.

Hope that helps!