I mentioned Daphne’s tooth coming in but forgot to tell everyone that she started saying “mama” and “dada” this week. She has been making “mamamamamama” sounds for a few weeks now but this week she officially repeated “mama” back to me, clear as day, several times. Same for “dada.” She is still much more interested in learning to walk than talk to us, although she is becoming more vocal everyday. She’s really changed a lot in the last month.

Dear State of Louisiana,
Why is it so freaking hard to find a decent, inexpensive hotel somewhere on 12/10 between Slidell and Lake Charles?

My go-to website for reservations is TripAdvisor. We do a lot of road trips and TripAdvisor has always helped us find a decent hotel and some local food (lest we get stuck at the dreaded Cracker Barrel). Chris is driving Daphne & I down to Houston in the xB and flying back to get the rental truck and load everything up. But the xB is not a great big comfy road trip car and my butt starts to hurt after about 6 hours of driving, so we decided to break up the trip into two days. I think that will be easier on everyone, Daphne included. There are a lot of terrible reviews for LA hotels on TripAdvisor. I think we’ve decided on a Fairfield Inn outside of Baton Rouge. Luckily it will be a long time before we have to drive through Louisiana again.

Speaking of road trips, I’m also very happy that we don’t have to drive through Arkansas anymore to get to Tulsa. Woo hoo!!!!!! I really hate Arkansas. For those of you that have never had the pleasure of driving on I40 this is pretty much what you see the entire trip through Arkansas:

Semi trucks as far as the eye can see and if I remember correctly they have to go slower than car traffic. We fly through Alabama and Mississippi and as soon as we hit Arkansas it’s just a bunch of slow trucks, traffic and accidents. I don’t think we’ve had a trip through AR recently where we haven’t been held up for at least an hour for an accident. Oh, and construction, although I think they have most of that under control now. Give me Houston-Dallas-Tulsa any day over driving through Arkansas.

Daphne’s music table has a little compartment that I put a few Cheerios into today. In this photo she was crawling underneath the table to pick up a few she dropped. Good thing I steam cleaned the carpets this morning.

Just a sneak peek at Daphne’s birthday outfit. I know it’s over the top and really bright but I love it. The hat from Itsybitsybunny is AWESOME!!! I highly recommend their Etsy shop.

Daphne finally has a tooth coming through. It’s actually broken the gum line. If she will ever let me, I’ll try and take a picture. Today I could tell she’s been in a lot of pain so I broke out the Hyland’s Teething tablets, Tylenol and frozen bagels. She didn’t want anything to do with chewing on a frozen bagel and promptly launched them, frisbee style, off her highchair tray. Then I tried some no sugar added popsicles. She loved it and now her mouth and chin are stained red. Hopefully I can keep her comfortable and happy today so I can get some packing done.

Some of Chris’ pictures from City Stages last weekend. He had a media pass and was right up front.

Here’s a quick video of Daphne playing with an early birthday present. She LOVES it and now she can chase after us without sticking to the perimeter of the room or furniture:

Another picture from Sunday with Totally Rad & Nichole Van actions and another toy camera overlay. I’d like to try this again with a photo that has more empty space, the hydrangea takes up too much of the frame I think:

Tonight while Daphne has been napping I’ve been playing around with some Photoshop Actions by Totally Rad! & Nichole Van. Fun, fun, fun.

This first photo is of a local B’ham sign, which has since been removed. The first image is SOOC (straight out of camera, from 2003 with our crappy P&S) and the second has been processed with Nichole Van’s toy camera action/overlay. Neat effect:

Next is one of Chris’ photos that was published in Birmingham Magazine. I just tweaked the photo a bit and added some texture with Totally Rad!’s Dirty and Used Up:

I realize I need to up my Photoshop/Lightroom skills before this can happen, but I totally need a job post-processing photos. It’s so much fun. I’d love to do it everyday. And now that Chris won’t be doing as much event photography work, and I can spend more time on each photo, I’ve been delving into Photoshop more. I really enjoyed Chris Orwig’s portrait retouching series. One of the last videos I watched showed how to do a “tummy tuck” in Photoshop. Let me just speak for women all over the world and say that alone is totally worth the $650 price tag for the software.

To celebrate Chris’ first Father’s Day Daphne and I gave him a terrific gift- we let him sleep in til almost 10:30. I slept on the couch and listened for Daphne during the night, giving him a break since he’s normally the one shuttling her back and forth for early morning feedings. We got him actual gifts too, like a new Wacom tablet (actually their lower priced Bamboo line) since we lost the irreplaceable pen to our Genius tablet. Later we went to Firebirds for lunch, where Daphne had a complete and total meltdown. She was not happy. We quickly boxed up our lunches and stopped at Aldridge Gardens to snap a couple of quick pictures before going home. Here are a few more:

Happy Father’s Day, Chris!! We love you!