Noah, Sick and Sleepy

Project 365 – Day 22

Noah’s getting a tiny bit more fuzz on the top of his head. We think he may start out blond if he ever gets enough to fill in to form a color!

He was sick with this stomach bug yesterday, but seemed a lot better today. He must have been super tired this evening since he was mildly cranky from about 5pm onward. He went out like a light at 7pm and still hasn’t stirred once, as of 12:30am.

He’s been sleeping so well lately. He seems to be really comfortable in the bed and knows that if he needs me, I’ll be there. I love seeing independence take shape. Soon we may try laying him to sleep at night in the pack n play. He’d likely come back to bed with me in the middle of the night if he woke though I would really enjoy some room on my side of the bed to spread out. I have no idea how he does this, but we’ll start out fully on my side of the bed with room to spare and by 4am I’m a quarter of the way into Mark’s side of the bed. And we have a king sized bed! Elias was the same way.

We never even tried moving Elias out of our bed at night until he was 10 months old and started to crawl. For a few weeks prior to that, I’d awake to find him flipped with his feet up near my head, or he would try to climb over top of me half asleep. It was pretty obvious he wanted some space to himself and he had zero problems whatsoever transitioning. I don’t know if it’s time yet for Noah; I guess we’ll see.

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: age - 07 months, pictures, sleeping habits

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Through my Eyes

Project 365 – Day 21

This was taken through my eyeglasses of this photograph (which is quite a bit better than my photo here leads you to believe!) [I searched specifically for a file with the attribution creative commons license, so hopefully there's no issue with my use of it.]

I was inspired after seeing the same idea in another 365 stream.

I’m not quite happy with how this turned out, but I really like the idea and may revisit it! I’m especially excited to try it taking a picture of something other than my computer monitor.

Flickr notes: I’m so excited this was Explored! It appeared on page 17 of explore tonight. I don’t know if it will stay there or how it really works, but more exposure to my images is exciting!

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: pictures

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Noah Sitting Up

Project 365 – Day 20

Noah is still wobbly sitting unassisted, but today he was able to sit upright long enough for me to go get my camera and take a picture. He played with the toys in front of him for a good couple of minutes before tipping over. The pillow behind him is not propping him up, it’s just in case he falls directly backward, which he didn’t.

He’ll be 7.5 months old on Friday. Elias started sitting unassisted well around 7 months, 3 weeks. We captured his first time sitting unassisted as well:

This stomach virus Elias brought home has been making its way through the family. All was well on Saturday and Sunday, so we thought it must have been food poisoning. Then I got it on Monday and spent Tuesday recovering. Today Noah and Mark are experiencing symptoms, though thankfully no vomiting!

I can deal with runny noses and congestion. I don’t like this stomach bug one bit!

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: age - 07 months, pictures

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Easy Potato Side Dish

Project 365 – Day 19

We ate dinner late. Lemon pepper chicken, this potato side dish and a vegetable side dish which included carrots and sugar snap peas. The potatoes were super yummy and easy to make! This made about 3-4 servings:

RECIPE:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 new potatoes (depending on size), cut into 1 inch chunks
• 1/2 medium white onion, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• Dried thyme, oregano, salt and pepper to taste (about 1 tsp of all except pepper)*
• Olive oil

* We would have used rosemary if we had any – use whatever herbs, spices or seasonings you like!

ASSEMBLY:

1. Cut all the vegetables and place on a cookie sheet.
2. Drizzle with olive oil (1-2 TBSP)
3. Add herbs, salt and pepper to taste.
4. Mix well on the cookie sheet, spreading out evenly.
5. Cook about 30-40 minutes until potatoes are tender, tossing well every 15 minutes.

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: pictures, recipes

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Little People

Project 365 – Day 16

I didn’t think much of this shot when I took it, but looking back on it, I think it’s a really sweet moment! I originally had this photo as 365 shot.

Elias loves playing with this door. He’ll ring the doorbell and laugh when I pop a little person through the other side to inspect the scene. He loves it when I have the people look through the windows and he’ll instruct me on which ones to send them to. This doll house is COMPLETELY different than the Little People Doll House I had as a kid. I loved that thing, not that the new one doesn’t have some cool features.

Elias was feeling a lot better today, but he still didn’t want to eat much of anything. I think tomorrow his appetite will return. (Too bad we’ve run out of bananas!) I’ve enjoyed cuddling him so much these past couple days. He’s such a sweet little kid!

Poor Sick Elias

Project 365 – Day 15

When I went into Elias’ room this morning to wake him I found him already awake. He and his bed were covered in vomit. We still have a monitor in his room and he was just making his usual waking up sounds. At no point did I hear anything that sounded like he needed attention. My poor little baby! We immediately got him into the bath, which he seemed to enjoy. He was actually in such a great mood we thought it might just have been a one time thing. After his bath, we gave him some milk and before long, he vomited again. He didn’t seem to be bothered by it, fortunately.

I sent Mark out immediately to get Pedialyte and cleaning supplies. While he was gone, Elias vomited again while leaning into the storage ottoman to retrieve his coloring supplies. What bad timing! Mostly, he hit blankets, but it still took a while to clean up.

After downing about three cups of Pedialyte he started feeling better and stopped vomiting. He climbed up in his booster seat around lunch time, so we gave him a half of a banana and tried offering him some soup, but he wasn’t interested.

We set him up on the couch to nap because we didn’t want to take the chance of him throwing up all over his room again. He was delighted to go “night night” on the couch. Since he gave up the pacifier, I’ve learned that I need to get down next to him for naps and bedtime and place my head on his pillow to cuddle him for a while. I really enjoy it and I think he does too. I did the same for his nap on the couch. He slept from about 2pm until a little after 4pm.

He got a whole banana and some crackers for dinner. We could tell he didn’t feel 100%, but he was in wonderful spirits and very sweet throughout the day. It seemed safe to let him go to sleep in his room for the night, checking on him every hour or so. He’s been asleep since 9pm and seems just fine. I think the worst is over. This was the third time in his life he’s had such an episode. He’s handled it well each time! I really hope Noah doesn’t get this!

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: age - 02 years, pictures, sick, sleep

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Fun with Aperture, Shutter Speed and Metering

Participating in Project 365 this year, I hope to learn a lot about photography. I will write about my journey here as much as possible. I have a lot of really good photographer friends, so if I say something completely off-base, please correct me.

A couple of months ago the 18-55mm kit lens for my Nikon D50 stopped focusing correctly. I’d just taken it out of the closet with the intent of getting back into photography, so I was crushed. We don’t have the money to buy even a simple, inexpensive lens, so the camera was useless to me. I even contemplated selling the camera body for some extra spending cash over the holidays. Then, a very generous person close to me offered to buy me a new lens as a replacement.

I diligently researched lenses for close to a week before deciding on the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8. It was roughly the same cost as a replacement kit lens, but the fixed focal length would lend my photos more clarity. It also has a wide aperture for a shallower depth of field and vignetting, both of which I’m really into right now.

I mentioned the other day I started reading Understanding Exposure. It’s incredibly interesting so far! It’s well written and there are tons of photos which all give lens, focal length, ISO, shutter speed and aperture information along with any other important technical notes.

Thanks to Sherry at Photoblog.net, I already understood the basics of aperture. As simply as I can state it: the lower the number, the more specific the field of focus and the higher the number, the more general the field of focus. So if you like bokeh or macro photography, a wide aperture (lowest f-stop number) is a good thing! If you can’t tell from the photos I’ve taken lately (background’s usually very fuzzy), I’m into shooting with a wide aperture.

For me, the easiest semi-manual camera setting is the aperture priority mode. I tell the camera what aperture and ISO I want to shoot at and it’ll figure out the shutter speed. If you’re like me and just starting to learn how to use your dSLR, you might want to try this setting as it does give you a tremendous amount of control over how your final product looks. Just refer to your manual for how to change the aperture setting.

After reading through the first chapter of Understanding Exposure, I really wanted to try shooting manually. First though, I had to figure out what the heck metering was, how I could use it with my camera. The author kept referring to the camera indicating that the exposure was “correct” through its light meter. This sounded magical to me! I broke out my manual and read it cover to cover. (Does this count as one of my 50 books for the year? I think it should; the manual is over 130 pages.) There are a lot of options!

After a couple of hours, I figured out that the light meter looks like this through my viewfinder. Little blips off to the left or right will indicate that the shutter speed selected will not create the ideal exposure for what is metered. My camera has three options for metering set through the camera menus:

1. Matrix: The light meter will take the entire viewfinder area into consideration when calculating correct exposure.
2. Center-Weighted: The light meter primarily measures the center of the viewfinder when calculating exposure. The outer edges of the viewfinder are taken into consideration at a lower weight.
3. Spot Metering: The light meter will only measure the very center of the viewfinder when calculating correct exposure.

I set my camera to spot metering so I can pinpoint exactly what I want to measure in any given photograph. My manual says that center-weighted average metering is good for portraits though. This is definitely something I’m going to be playing with more.

While choosing the metering, I set a couple of other options for my camera too. There’s an AE-L/AF-L button on the back of my camera. It stands for Auto Exposure Lock / Auto Focus Lock. It’s now set to Auto Focus Lock ONLY, which means that when I have my shutter button depressed halfway, holding that button will lock the focus. This allows you to lock focus on your subject which is handy when you want to recompose your photo without the subject being dead center.

The AE-Lock doesn’t work in manual mode, of course since there’s no auto exposure going on there. For the other modes, I set the exposure (shutter speed) to lock when the shutter button is halfway depressed. This way, I can meter what I want to set the exposure to, lock it and then recompose my photo to focus on my subject. Have you ever taken someone’s photo and they look completely shadowed by the background? With AE-Lock, you can meter against their face, lock AE and then step back and compose the photograph. This will ensure their face is properly exposed.

Below, the photo on the left was shot with auto exposure. The entire hallway appears darker than real life because the exposure is compensating for the brightness of the opening ahead. The photo on the right was shot by metering the area of the wall above the opening, changing the shutter speed until the meter indicated a correct exposure, then recomposing the picture to straight ahead. Because I metered the light reflecting off the walls of the hallway instead of straight ahead toward the opening, the walls of the hallway are better exposed.

Choosing the shutter speed manually is actually very easy once you understand how to use your camera’s light meter. I’m excited to continue the book, now knowing all the basics of manually operating my camera!

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: pictures, understanding exposure

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Bwah-hahahaha

Wordless Wednesday

(You should know by now I can’t make a blog post without words.)

Elias must have caught another cold from daycare. Last night he kept coughing and coughing, poor little thing! You can see his red nose in this photo.

I bought a pack of 24 regular sized crayons and a coloring book to help keep Elias busy tomorrow when he’s at home, but I left them out and he found them, so we colored with them tonight. At some point, our cat Leah decided to plant herself on the opposite page and watch my toddler color.

Mark and I don’t particularly care for the cat, but she’s really good with babies and toddlers.

I made it through Holidailies! It certainly got me into the habit of blogging again. My blog posts may be cut down to 2-3 times a week now, especially since I’m trying to devote more time to learning about photography. Look for a post soon detailing what I’ve learned this week!

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: holidailies, pictures

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Noah’s 6th Month

The day before Elias turned 6 months old, we gave him some mashed banana and were so excited to start him on solids. He was not nearly as excited as we were. He did not like mashed or jarred baby food much at all. He didn’t start getting into food until he was about seven and a half months old and discovered the joy of Cheerios. After that, we mostly stuck to baby-led weaning, allowing Elias to feed himself. I swore with my next child, it would be baby-led all the way. There would be no spoon feeding mashed foods in our house!

We tried feeding Noah some left over jarred food that hadn’t expired from Elias’ baby days and he loved it. We were truly surprised that he got excited when he saw the spoon and angry if I took too long between bites. Noah also frequently eyes us when we’re eating. As can be seen from the Stevie B’s Incident, he will get downright angry if people are eating and he cannot eat. (Why I didn’t offer him something acceptable from the salad bar, I don’t know!)

Elias never did this! He couldn’t have cared less about food until he was around a year old and I was fine with that. Elias had zero interest in being spoon fed. He still prefers to feed himself with the spoon or fork, even though he’s not especially good at it. (Getting better!) Noah is a different baby. He sees people eating and wants to eat. He likes being fed. He truly seems to enjoy the food, smiling and giggling as he’s tasting it. Honestly, I thought when parents talked about their babies enjoying spoon fed food this much, I thought it had to be their imaginations.

As different as these children are, they are both very sweet and love to laugh. Noah is a joy to be around, though he is quite demanding with the attention. He makes you have fun with him and entertain him. Constantly! He’s starting to really get into sitting in the bebePod, hence all the pictures of him in it lately. It puts him at a better eye level with us while not needing to be right in our face. He has a beautiful, soft face – don’t get me wrong! Independent play is an important skill too and it’s nice to have breaks. Hopefully he will soon learn to sit up without support and balance himself while reaching toward toys. He’s not close to crawling at all, but he’ll turn around in a wicked circle if you put him on his belly and give him 45 seconds.

Originally published at Lynda's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Tagged: age - 06 months, flickr, holidailies, photography notes, pictures, solids

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