Fun in the Sun!

Sing it, Katen!




I took Katen to the aquatic center this weekend. She had a blast! On Saturday the weather was really nice. It was warm and in the lower 80's. Having never been there before, I was really happy to find that there was a HUGE area for little kids and a large shaded area for babies. I still get nervous about taking Katen in the sun even though she had sunscreen on. Daddy says I am over protective. Yep, probably. Oh well.





The other neat thing I saw was that a lot of kids were either wearing the 3/4 sleeve swim shirts and trunks like Katen's or they were wearing shirts over their suits to guard against the sun. I haven't been to a pool since probably high school, so that was definitely a change from back then when middle school girls slathered tanning oil all over themselves. ha!





It didn't take Katen long to get used to the water since it was shallow and pretty warm. She sat right down and started swishing her hands around in it. I think her favorite part was smiling at every single little kid that passed by though. She's such a friendly little peanut. Little kids seemed to be attracted to her too. One even wanted to take her down the baby slide. I explained that she wasn't quiiiite old enough yet. Cute!





I guess that once every hour everyone has to get out for 10 minutes so I took that time to teach the pickle how to feed herself. We had some Gerber puffs that become just sticky enough in wet hands. After about three tries she finally figured out that using her thumb and first finger yielded the best results. After that she got about 65% in her mouth without dropping them. The cutest part was when she started using her other hand to help shove the fingers holding the puff into her mouth. Team work!





Soon the whistles blew and we spent a little more time in the water before going she got hungry again. I gave her a bottle that I'd packed in her cooler and she was out like a light, so I packed up our stuff and called it a day.





On Sunday we went for brunch and then the pickle took a nap. Daddy was gone golfing for the afternoon so when she woke up I decided to take her back to the aquatic center. It was a little cooler on Sunday. Probably high 70's and gorgeous so the water was a little cooler and Katen wasn't as sure about it. She did get brave and try to scoot around the pool on her tummy though. It started out as a bear walk (on hands and feet with her bottom in the air) but soon she was splashing around like a little turtle on her belly. That is until some bigger kid ran by splashing her in the face. She wasn't traumatized (thank goodness) and didn't cry, but she was pretty ticked off. There weren't as many kids for her to watch on Sunday so we didn't stay as long but she still had a pretty good time. I don't know why I didn't think to bring her there sooner. We'll definitely go back.

P.S. look how curly her hair gets when it's warm. Just like Daddy's. :)




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Baptism day

Katen had her Baptism today. She was absolutely fascinated with John who presided over the ceremony. I'll include the video below. I will only be keeping it up for a little while, because it gives too many details about our name, location, etc. It's about 8 minutes long so grab some popcorn.



Oh! and in case you're confused... John calls me "Heather" a couple of times during the ceremony. Heather is my sister. (Between the two of us, she's the more memorable one. Trust me.) He was just mixed up, bless his heart.



Before the ceremony even started, he called me Heather and Mike said, "Honey you'd better tell him that's not your name." I blew it off because pretty much everyone calls me Heather and I get tired of correcting them. I didn't think my name would be part of the ceremony. Guess I was wrong. It wasn't really a big deal to me though.



After the ceremony Katen showed off by trying to crawl in her oh-so-girly dress. It also made her break out in a rash so I promptly took it off and she was comfy in her cotton sundress for the rest of the day. At dinner I decided to try something fun and give her an actual pickle spear to suck on. I fully expected to see her wrinkle her nose. Of course in true Katen fashion..... she loved it! She wanted more. She was even ticked that I wouldn't let her finish it. (There's way too much salt in a pickle for her tiny digestive system.) Go figure!



Got your popcorn? Okay, here it goes...

(edit: Ask me for the video. I took it down since it uses our full names.)

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Taking Pictures

Many of you family and friends have seen pictures that we've had taken of Katen. My plan is to have the pickle's 1,3,6,9, and 12 month pictures taken professionally. That leaves some gaps though and I learned very quickly that babies change in the blink of an eye. (and she's not too keen on having strangers take her picture.) So, we also do photo shoots at home.

Sometimes (on a good day) the sessions from home turn out better than the pro shots do. I think a lot of it is because Katen is more relaxed at home and I have the patience to wait for a good shot. At Katen's very first pro shoot she did great. She was one month old and amazingly was alert for the whole thing. The second pro shoot was quite the opposite. She was all smiles during the morning of the shoot but once we got her to the guy's house and set up on the backgrounds she stonewalled us. Not as single smile... until we buckled her into her carseat and began to leave. (What a turkey!) Pro shoot number three had potential but we had to wait 45 minutes to get in because they were running behind. You just can't ask a 6 month old to behave that long so those shots were not great either. Two smiles. I think that's all we got from the six month shoot. Fantastic.

In doing my own shoots there's definitely been a learning curve. Her two month pictures show my green-ness but they have endearing traits to them nonetheless. Four months was better. At five months I was getting closer yet. As I continue trying to get a little bit better, I've had to dig into the users manual of our camera and I've also gathered tips from others.

What tips can I share for more successful picture sessions at home? Let's see...
-Use natural light when possible
-Outside shade is your friend
-Fill the screen with the object you're shooting
-Try editing with PicniK for some fun enhancements
-Buy remnant fabric and use it for backgrounds – solids are better than busy patterns
-Learn the features of your camera and use them to your advantage
-Take a million pics to get 20 good ones ;)
-Use the ‘burst’ or ‘continuous shooting’ mode to get several consecutive shots at a time
-Frame your subject for a neat effect – try a window, fence, doorway, etc
-Try angling your camera – the pictures don't have to be exactly portrait or landscape
-Get down on the baby's level

And great tips from others...

From “DavezWife”
-I used a sunny window with sheer white drapes, that looked nice.
-Textured blankets or fake fur make good backgrounds
-I turn off the flash and hold a naked lamp behind me, or above.
-I'm partial to photoscape for editing
-Use the macro feature on camera. You can make the nearest object sharp while the background blurs. (This is the F stop on regular cameras.) -My note: You can also fake that camera setting by using Picnic for editing.
-Weird noises get kid's attention more than just yoo-hoo'ing... bark, blow a whistle, sneeze loud... those get her to react more than "hi baby"

From “Wvagirl”
-If you are using a point and shoot camera be sure to turn off that flash when possible. The flash can overpower your baby/subject especially indoors.

From Robin
-Change your perspective, to get a better shot, stand on a chair, lie on the ground.
-Don't take pictures of just happy subjects, crying babies photograph well, too, as well as pensive babies!
-Be sure to take pictures of parts of babies, too. Feet, hands, etc.
-Use perspective to your advantage. Get the favorite toy in the foreground, baby in the background.
-Bounce the flash off the ceiling sometimes!

From Pamela
-Be patient
-A great photo does not always have to be a calm, quiet baby
-Pay attention to shadows – watch your screen for shadows
-Use props...favorite toy, blanket, lovie
-Focus on just one part of the body, such as feet, hands, little belly button, tight shots of face but not the entire face, eyes

From Rachel
-Don't be afraid to get close up.
-Be creative with the focus
-Shoot on manual exposure, you'll get much better lighting than on auto

I'm sure I'll continue to learn even more tips and tricks as we go. My next challenge will probably be learning to get photos of a very high energy mobile baby!

If you want to have a little fun, click this link to see if you can pick
out the pro pics vs my pics. (You probably can. Some of them are obvious, but humor me. I'm still learning.) I'll post the results in a couple of days. :)

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