Newsday names Long Island’s Cutest Baby Contest winners
Maggie Ruddick from Ridge and Cameron Abraham of Westbury. Credit: Kelly Ruddick / Trisha Townsend
Two sets of Long Island parents have some exciting news to post on social media. Their children have been declared the winners of Newsday’s third Long Island’s Cutest Baby Contest.
Learn more about the winners, who out-cuted more than 500 entries in the boys and girls categories by receiving the most votes during a weeklong voting period:
MAGGIE RUDDICK, RIDGE
Maggie Ruddick is perfectly happy to let her mom, Kelly Ruddick, take photos of her in silly hats. The photo of Maggie in the knit reindeer hat — which Ruddick bought on the handmade marketplace Etsy, is one of many that she has taken.
“She gets forced into photo shoots,” jokes Ruddick, 36. “Every holiday I take a photo of her.”
Though Maggie’s contest entry photo has a Christmas look, she posed with a Santa hat holding cookies for the holiday cards that Ruddick and her husband Matt, 38, will be sending out soon. For Maggie’s first Halloween, Ruddick dressed Maggie up as a Cabbage Patch Kid doll, complete with a wig.
Ruddick’s mom convinced her to enter Maggie in the Newsday contest and Ruddick, a web designer, says she was thrilled when her now 5-month-old daughter began leading the pack. Votes from Maggie’s relatives later gave her the edge over the competition.
CAMERON ABRAHAM, WESTBURY
At Thanksgiving last year, Trisha Townsend and Eddie Abraham announced the big news that they were expecting their first child. This year, they’ll get to announce that Cameron, who will be 6 months old on Nov. 29, is considered one of Long Island’s cutest babies.
Townsend, 27, an assistant station master for the Long Island Rail Road, said her goddaughter was a Cutest Baby contestant last year, and Townsend was so excited to enter Cameron after he was born in May. She and Abraham, 28, a Nassau County sheriff, asked everyone they knew — family, friends and co-workers — to vote for Cameron via Facebook and Snapchat.
“The power of social media is crazy,” Townsend says.
Cameron is 4 months old in the picture Townsend submitted, one of the many milestone photos she has taken. If she took a picture now, it might be of Cameron with his favorite toy, a jumper that he loves so much they once found him fast asleep in it.
“The first time we put them in there he jumped his way to sleep,” Townsend says.
