New Lens!

I have been waiting almost three weeks for Amazon to deliver my new camera lens and it arrived today - woo hoo! Behold, my new super-fast fixed-focal length 50mm f/1.8 lens!!!! YEAH! (I was trying to explain what all that meant to Ralph, and he did the old 'nod and say uh-huh'... kind of like what I do when he explains football to me) In laymans terms... this new lens takes killer portraits:

Emily Baker's 2nd Birthday

My dear friend (college roommate, maid-of-honor and all-around partner-in-crime) Jen Baker, had a tea party for her daughter Emily's 2nd birthday on sunday. We had a great time, and so did all the other kids! I think Jake was a little jealous that he couldn't run around with the big kids because it looked like so much fun!

Welcome Baby Lily; and other Birthdays!

Some of you may remember all of the pregnant bridesmaids at my wedding - my maid of honor Jen was pregnant, as well as my two good friends since childhood - Kelly Demaitre and Sarah Kee. They have all had their babies by now (duh), and in fact - there are a lot of exciting updates on the babies!

Most exciting, my dear friend Kelly and her husband Peter JUST had baby #2! Announcing beautiful baby girl Liliana Rose Demaitre. She joins her gorgeous big sister Ava.





Yesterday, we went to Emily Baker's 2nd birthday and had a great time! (Pictures coming later) Long-time blog readers may remember the pictures of us with the monkey at Emily's 1st birthday last year. Emily's mom, Jen, was my maid of honor at our wedding. Emily's actual birthday is today. Tomorrow is Charlotte Kee's birthday - Charlotte turns 2 tomorrow, and was also in her mommy's belly at our wedding. What blessings!! Now I just have to remember all these January birthdays!

Congratulations to all of the beautiful girls and their gorgeous wonderful mommies! Love you all!

A Million Years ago...

Some of you might remember me telling you of our trip to Vegas last fall, and how we bumped into Mario Lopez outside of Pure Nightclub at Caesar's Palace. He was fresh off of Dancing with the Stars. Well, we only got one picture with him, on my cell phone. I immediately tried to send the cell phone pic to my email. It failed. I tried again and again and again. it just stopped working. My one and only celebrity picture was trapped in my phone! I called Cingular to see if they could fix it. They told me to go to the store. I went to the Cingular store. The store told me to call customer service, and customer service would tell me to go to the store. ARGH!!! Months of this. My cell phone bill has charges left and right for trying to send messages that never went thru! Argh argh argh Cingular! Now I have a blog and I am mad! (Boo Cingular! Boo!) ANYWAY....

Fast forward a few months: So on my way to NY tonight on the long Amtrak ride, I decided, ah, what the heck, why don't I see if the pictures would send again? I sent one to Ralph's cell, one to my email address. Ralph's phone never got the message, so I was shocked to open my email and see this picture! It is really, really bad quality, even after I photoshopped the heck out of it, and this is what I got:

Bathtime!

Ok, I am sure y'all are darn tired of looking at the crusty-eyed and booger-nosed pics, so I'd better give you something good to look at this time! Here goes:

Jake has now learned to pull himself up while holding on to the side of the bathtub. Ralph is just out of the frame here, we are ready to grab him if he stumbles even the slightest bit. Safety first!



That's my happy, crazy-haired baby!



I love the splashing water here!


(For photo-nerds like me who might be interested in the details: ISO 1600, 1/200, f/5.6, shot with a 70-300mm lens (at a very safe distance from the water), using the on-camera flash - which I almost never use, but apparently it works well for bathtub shots)

Eeeewwwww! Gross!!

If you are tuning in today in hopes of seeing adorable pictures of a cute baby - well I'm sorry to inform you that you won't find any here. At least not on today's post. But, if you came here looking for extreme close-ups of a baby with nasty eye boogers and facial snot - woo hoo! - today is your lucky day! I thought it was pinkeye when he woke up with two eyes gooped shut on friday. Daycare also let me know pinkeye was going around the center. Oh fabulous! Behold our sickly little boy, who has a severe cold, with congestion that has moved up into his eyes (it's not pinkeye afterall).



We kept cleaning his eyes out all weekend, and they still look this nasty.



Jake is completely sick of seeing me come at him with a cotton ball soaked in saline solution. If my hands go anywhere near his face, he SCREAMS! But who wants to look at this eye goo all day?



If you've made it to this picture without hurling, then you deserve a little gift. Behold! New baby teeth! (with a side of boogers....eeeewwww!)

Jake in the Jumperoo

What you can't see in this video is me behind the camera, arms flailing, body jerking, yelling funny things to make Jake keep jumping. Too bad the little camera doesn't have sound because it would have been HILARIOUS!!!!