Bathing Beauty

Daphne went swimming for the first time today. She was a little too tired, and the water was a little too cold. I don’t think she enjoyed it, and she loves bath time. Will try again tomorrow.

Are you kidding me? This water is COLD!!:

Relaxing with Daddy:

Can we just go inside now?:

Watch Out

Alright, this might be a TMI post for some of my male readers out there. So feel free to skip this one.

This video pretty much sums up my day yesterday, but the reason wasn’t a BC pill but wonky hormones/cycle due to breastfeeding:

And to top it off, Daphne is teething. I can actually see her bottom teeth, they just haven’t erupted yet. Poor Chris, hopefully Daphne & I will have a better day. Last night we even broke our rule of never arguing after 10pm. It was not a good day.

One More

Here’s another. This was one of Chris’ shots and he did the post processing on it (kind of a Lomo effect).

My Cup of Tea

Today at the park. I’ll have more pictures of the same series on my Flickr account soon.

Holiday Weekend

I can’t believe it’s already Memorial Day weekend. We debated taking a quick trip, but have decided to stay home. A thrilling 3 day weekend of lawn work, house cleaning, photo shoots and maybe a trip to the drive-in awaits us. We have one not far from us that is playing Indiana Jones/Iron Man and I don’t have to worry about finding a babysitter for Daphne. We’ll see how it goes. I have to say I have mixed feelings about seeing the new Indiana Jones. I don’t want to be disappointed like I was with the latest Star Wars movies (wow, those sucked). And I would normally have no interest in Iron Man, but Chris’ Twitter peeps have been going on and on about how good it was.

What are your plans??

SSA Top 100 Names

I was just checking the Social Security Administration’s top 100 most popular baby names of 2007. It still surprises me that Madison is such a popular name for girls. I can just hear Tom Hanks in Splash saying, “but Madison isn’t a name!” I actually think it’s a cute name, just way too popular. Daphne has moved up a tiny bit in popularity to 585. That’s good. I hope it doesn’t crack the top 100 any time soon. But that’s just the Jennifer in me talking. Hopefully Daphne won’t grow up hating her name and wishing I had named her Olivia or Isabella like half the other girls in her class. But starting this fall you will hear the name Daphne in two prime time shows. If you haven’t heard Daphne is a new character on Heroes. She plays Hiro’s arch nemesis. And as I mentioned before one of the characters on the new 90210 show will also be named Daphne.

Looking at the list also makes me think about what to name possible baby #2. For years we had the name Jack Stephen picked out if we were having a boy. Then Jack (and Jackson) got so popular and one of my cousins named her baby boy Jack. And everyone calls him Jack Jr. (he was named after my grandfather who also went by Jack). Jack got scrapped. We finally decided on Jake Ryan if Daphne had been a boy. (But with Jacob being so popular is the nickname Jake going to be too popular as well? We might have to rethink that name for possible future sons.) Then we argued about girl’s names. And argued. Well, argue is not the right word. We debated. If I had my way Daphne might have been named Charlotte, Natalie or Layla. Don’t get me wrong, I love the name Daphne, it just took us 200+ names to get there. Chris really liked the name Allison, with Allie as a nickname. Our DOG is named Allie. Chris didn’t seem to think this would be a problem. What would we do? Yell for Allie and have them both come. Of course, his favorite name for boys is still Buster. I think he should let me name any future kids we have.

Wii Fit

Guess what Mr. UPS man delivered today? Yep, one of my anniversary/Mother’s Day presents, a Wii Fit. So far Chris & I have done the preliminary testing and Hula Hooped. I have to tell you that seeing Chris attempt to Wii Hula Hoop was well worth the $89.99. I also did the step aerobics. Chris is currently Wii jogging. It’s fun!! Oh, and my Wii Fit age is 32. I have no idea if that means anything, but hey, I’ll take 2 years younger.

Cross-Eye 3D Photos

This link was in one of my photography feeds today and I thought it was pretty fun. Basically you can create 3D images by taking two photos, just slightly different, put them side by side and either cross your eyes so the images merge, or you can get software to do that. And here’s a link to the Stereophotography Flickr group. Good news is once your eyes get used to crossing to see the images it makes it easier, although I don’t recommend long term viewing. After 3 or 4 pics my eyes hurt now.

Monkey Toes

Daphne likes to ride with her bare feet propped up, whether it’s in her stroller or a shopping cart. In fact, she’s usually dressed to the nines complete with matching hair bow, but almost never has shoes on. It’s no use, she’ll just kick them off so she can curl her toes around the front bar.

This picture is from today at the park. I was practicing shooting in Aperture mode and manually focusing the lens (50mm), although I think this shot was on auto focus. I’m still trying to work out the auto focus settings on the D200. I’m still confused by the auto focus area selector settings. I was shooting on closest subject priority, but that just led to a ton of out of focus pictures. Today I was using single area and group dynamic auto focus. The feet still look a little soft to me. Maybe I should have chosen a different aperture. I think this was f/2.8. I wanted her feet in focus, and the rest of her blurred. And I should have taken that dang pig toy (Piggly Wiggly) out of the stroller. Oh well.

Party Planning

The RSVP’s to Daphne’s Labor Day weekend/first birthday party are starting to roll in. I’m getting excited and need to start making some plans. But I need a theme or some inspiration before I can get started. I saw this amazing Alice in Wonderland theme party for a 4 year old girl on Jessica Claire’s photography blog. Here’s the link. Aren’t all those colors to die for? So pretty. And can you believe that was for a 4th birthday? What on earth is her 16th or wedding going to look like? I’m also thinking of a various shades of pink and orange palette. Call me crazy, but I really like these tiny birthday hats from Etsy seller itsybitsybunny:

I know, I know, I thought the hat was a little too much at first, but it’s growing on me. Really growing on me. I just don’t know how Daphne looks in orange. We will have to experiment.

As far as the cake, I’m thinking Costco sheet cake (because they are just so tasty) and then have a local bakery make some really fancy cupcakes. Danielle over at Thompson Family-Life had some really adorable cupcakes made for her son’s first birthday with vintage cupcake toppers. Of course I’d have to find something more girly. Clowns freak me out. I also love her banner. I totally plan on making something similar.

Party planning is so much fun!