What I Learned About Taking Baby Pictures

Ah, my poor, neglected little blog.  Remember back in this post, I told you that my blogging would be pretty sparse until Daddy's Girl started taking regular in-her-bed naps?  Well, she does now... but those regular naps are only a half hour long.  Any advice on how to help her to sleep longer?  I know she needs it...

Anyway, I took my little munchkin's 7 month pictures a couple of days week or two ago while back (wow it's hard to find time for blogging with two little ones.  And they've both been sick off and on since January.  That isn't helping), and I thought I'd share some things I learned.  

Lesson 1:  Use neutral/soft colors around your baby.  Daddy's Girl turned 7 months in February, so I thought this Valentine's Day blanket would make an excellent background.  Add to that its wonderful fuzziness and the nice contrast with my little girly's outfit, and I was sold.  Until I pulled the pictures onto my computer and saw the red color cast the blanket was bouncing back on my darling's face.

Also, the bright red was distracting from the soft beauty that my baby (and all babies) naturally has.  Nope--the red has to go.

Lesson 2:  You can always process the picture into black and white to fix the funny color casts and otherwise distracting colors.  I found this tip on making your black and white pictures really pop--thank you, Pinterest--and I use it every time.

Lesson 3:  Try to get your baby's personality, not just their likeness.  Part way through this photo shoot, I realized I was not really getting my little one's  personality in her pictures.  So I gave her her pacifier.  Now, Daddy's Girl doesn't really need to suck on her pacifier ("plug," to us) unless she's sleeping, but she sure likes to play with it.  And the ribbon of her plug-catcher is always in her mouth.  So even though you can't see her face in this picture, you see who she is.

Lesson 4:  If possible, have a helper to entertain your baby so you can concentrate on picture-taking.  It's really hard to keep still enough to take crisp pictures while playing with a baby.  

And two more quick tips I like to use for all portraits:

Tip 1:  Soft natural light is the best!  If the light is too harsh (think direct sunlight, camera flash...), you get ugly shadows and blown out lights.  Try going by a large window where the sun is not streaming directly through.  (North-facing windows are great for this.)  Sheer, white curtains can help soften the light if you are getting direct sunlight.

Tip 2:  If your camera has the option, use a wide aperture (small number).  This make for nicely blurred backgrounds, like in the first picture.  I love the look of a nicely blurred background...It also helps your camera be able to use a faster shutter speed, so you have a lower risk of motion blur (from baby or you).

Happy picture-taking!

I Finished the Baby's Christmas Stocking Just in Time!

First off, thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments! I love knowing people are reading my posts and wanting to do my projects.  (If you have questions, I'll try and get back to you, but just know I'm not checking my blog very often at this point in new-baby-life.)

Second off, Merry Christmas!!!  I hope you're all having a great holiday and aren't even reading this until the 26th.  :)

Third off, I got Daddy's Girl's Christmas stocking done!  Just barely in time, too.

You like where we hung the stockings?  We don't have a fireplace in our apartment, so we put up a shelf to be a mantle.  :D

I think DG's stocking looks smaller than the other three, but I used the same pattern for all of them...Do you think it might be because I used a different (fluffier) batting?  More of the fabric is being taken up by the up-and-down from quilting the fluffier batting...Oh, well.  It's just a little bit smaller--hopefully the little ones won't notice, even when they get bigger.

The pattern I used, of course, is the one from this post.  (Just click over for the pattern and tutorial.)

But here's a trick I came up with between writing that post and now.  You see, I always have a hard time keeping all those little squares in order.  Oh, sure, I try labeling the rows, and keeping everything in order, but it doesn't always work out, and I end up laying it all out over and over again to make sure everything stays in its place.  Then I thought, why not label all the squares?

See?  The rows have numbers, and the columns have letters.  This way, I will always know where all the pieces go.  Boo could stick them in her bag, carry them around all day, and pour them out on my table in the evening, and I'd still be able to easily put each and every little square back in its place.  I'll never make this kind of quilt project any other way.

And just to make sure you've gotten your daily dose of cuteness, here's my little Daddy's Girl.  Isn't she precious?  I love that baby.

Tiny, But Healthy

Remember back in the day when I used to actually post on this blog?  Yeah, it's been a while.  You see, I've been working on a continuing project...

Meet Daddy's Girl.

Boo was definitely a mommy's girl, but this little one is a daddy's girl.  And she has her daddy's red hair, so that's lots of fun.  I hope she keeps it.  :)

This precious little baby joined our family a month early, and she certainly is tiny.  She was only 4 lb 10 oz at birth.  (It was really funny--while she was waiting in the hospital nursery to be checked by the doctor, right next to her was a 10 lb newborn...just in case we didn't realize how very tiny she was.)  If you remember from this post, she was small for how far along in the pregnancy we were, and we never did find out why.  So we were worried about her, and when she came early, we expected some time in the NICU.  But she's a healthy little squirt.  No NICU, no breathing problems (very common for 36 week babies, as I understand it), no jaundice, even.  (Well, it wasn't bad enough to need light therapy, anyways.)

So we've been adjusting to having two (healthy!) little ones.  (I have kids now--as in plural.  Weird.)  But we love it.  Boo is a great big sister; she loves to have tummy time with the baby.  ("Let's have a floor party!")  She goes and gets pacifiers, diapers, burp clothes--whatever we need.  Sometimes she's a little more clingy than before, but really, Boo is adjusting amazingly.

My blogging is going to continue being sporadic at least until Daddy's Girl starts taking regular not-needing-to-be-held naps, but you'll see me every now and again.

And the rest of the time, we'll just be enjoying our little baby.

Mommy School--The W Book

I kinda' fell off the blogging planet, didn't I?  I have been working of stuff, but I've also been having pregnancy complications that make it hard to do too much, including blogging.  Anyone else had the problem of their baby being small for gestational age?  My doctor says there's not too much we can do for sure to help, but anything that's good for me is good for the baby--that means more food, water, rest, sleep...  And more doctor's appointments.  So that's what I've mostly been up to of late.

 Hopefully I can get caught up posting the projects I have been able to get done, anyways.  One thing I'm trying to keep up with is Mommy School.  Boo and I like to make books for the letters, so here's what we did for the letter W.

 I try and come up with lots of words that start with the letter of the week, draw simple pictures, and then Boo colors them.

 This week, we also looked up information (and pictures) about walruses.  Boo had fun seeing the pictures of the walruses, and she decided that she was Baby Walrus and I was Mommy Walrus.  Funny girl--we're different animals every day.  :)  I also used this opportunity to teach Boo about ice--that  water turns into ice when it gets really cold, then it turns back into water when it gets warmer.  We turned some ice cubes back and forth (and back and forth).  It was a fun little science experiment.

Then when all the pages were done, we sewed the book together, like Dana did in this tutorial.

Sometimes Boo chooses her Mommy School books for her bedtime stories.  :)  And she always loves watching me sew the books.  I like having something tangible for Boo to show Daddy and to look back on later to remind her of what she's learned.

(Edited to correct bad writing 10/17/12.)

You'll Never Buy Hamburger Buns Again

When I got pregnant with Boo, it changed how I thought about food.  Before, I liked margarine better than butter because it's softer and easier to spread on toast.  Now, I only use butter to avoid the unhealthy trans fats of margarine.  And I liked Cool Whip better than whipped cream because it tasted better (or so I thought then).  Who cares that it's really sweetened hydrogenated veggie oil?

Basically, now I'm trying to eat real foods now, not the super-processed stuff I used to eat.  That's not to say I eat only garden-fresh, straight-from-the-farmer everything, because I don't.  I buy regular food from the grocery store just like everybody else.  But I just buy less off the processed and fake stuff.  A little bit at a time, I'm trying to replace my artificial flavoring-, additive-, and preservative-laced foods with natural, preferably homemade versions.  (Because homemade = usually cheaper.)

One delicious substitution?  Homemade hamburger buns.  I know, why would you spend all morning making hamburger buns when you can spend ten seconds adding them to your grocery cart?

Because you don't realize how tasteless the store-bought buns are until you make them yourself.

AND this recipe takes less than an hour, including rising (no work needed) and baking (ditto).

It is a seriously easy recipe.  I mean, if I can do it with Boo awake and "helping," it's an easy recipe.

Since it's not my own recipe, I'll just include the link, but be sure to click over and try it!
Taste of Home 40-Minute Hamburger Buns Recipe

You know you want to.  Mmmmmmmm.....  I will definitely be making some of these for the 4th of July.

"Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" Subway Art

I really like all the subway art I see as I stalk Pinterest.  (Who doesn't?  Love subway art, I mean, but who doesn't love stalking Pinterest, too?)  So I thought I'd give creating subway art a try.  I'm very much not a graphic designer, but here's what I came up with.

What do you think?  I think the first version is easier to read, but the second is more fun and happy.

If you like them, I hope you'll leave a comment.  And feel free to download either image and print it out.

An Unexpected Stress-Buster

I've been having a hard time lately.  Nothing's even been that bad, but I have just been feeling stressed about it.  I blame being pregnant.  It's the perfect excuse for anything--forgot a commitment?  Pregnancy brain.  Too tired to do whatever?  Growing a baby--and in this case, my pregnancy hormones probably really are the reason.  But something unexpectedly snapped me out of it.

It started two days ago when Boo decided to not take her nap.  She was super tired by dinner time, but life happens and she got to bed late.  And then she slept badly.  I figured she was just having a hard time sleeping because over-tired little kids have a hard times sleeping (ironically).  Come daylight, we could tell she'd come down with a runny nose, poor thing.  No wonder she slept badly.

And, of course, when a two year old sleeps badly, so do the parents.  Especially not fun when you're pregnant and so tired anyways.

Then I had a pre-migrane.  My migraines always start with strange sparkling lines in my vision (imagine streaks of TV static), but they don't always escalate into a full migraine headache.  This one didn't, thankfully, but I just felt kind of off for a long time.

Next was lunch, and we had one of my favorite foods.  And I ate too much.  So I had a stomach ache.  (I know, poor me, ate too much of my favorite food.  I told you life wasn't actually rough, I just wasn't processing it well.)

After lunch, Boo again had a really short nap, and she woke up all sad.  (Still runny nose, and I think she's trying to outgrow naps.  I hope not, though!)

In the evening, dinner was rushed so Mr. MadeIt could get to scouts on time.  (He teaches the 11 year old Boy Scouts.)  And I had to wait for people to come and pick up some stuff I had for them, so Boo got to bed late again.  She didn't want to go to bed, but at least she settled down fairly quickly.

I needed to wash dishes, but if Boo heard me, she'd want to get up and help.  It would have been...probably half stalling going to bed and half actually wanting to help with dishes.  She loves helping to rinse the dishes.

So while I was waiting for her to be soundly asleep, I decided to take some pictures for my blog--not an easy task after eight at night in a dark basement apartment.  But Mr. MadeIt made me a light box, so I tried to set it up, but wasn't sure how to get it all together.  It kinda' worked, and I took a couple pictures.

I figured Boo was well asleep by that point, and was about to start on the mountain of dishes--really, it was bad--when Boo started crying in her room.  Dang.

I wasn't really feeling up to working through Boo's stall tactics, so I was glad when Mr. MadeIt got home from scouts while I was trying.  We got Boo back to bed, then my wonderful husband rubbed out the knots in my shoulders while I listed out all the things that were making me stressed.  (Including the lack of natural light in our apartment.  I read the other day that women are, as a category, more sensitive to that then men are, so maybe that's why it doesn't bother my husband nearly so much as it bothers me.)  I knew my problems were small, but I just felt that my stress-threshold was really low right then.  It was nice to explain how I was feeling, but I didn't feel less stressed.  (The massage helped, though.)

Then the last person finally came to pick up her stuff...and our talking woke up Boo.  Ugh!  Mr. MadeIt went to help Boo while I helped the visitor.  But when I was done, Boo was still wailing.  I went in to help and I found my husband supporting our little girl over the bathroom sink while she vomited into it.  No wonder she was wailing!

I took over for Mr. MadeIt, and he cleaned up what hadn't made it into the sink.  Sorry if this grosses anyone out, but I figure that if you're a mother, you've probably already had this happen to you.  To avoid too much detail, though, I'll just say that two outfit changes (we thought she was done before she really was, a bowl of Cheerios, and several stories later, Boo was back to sleep in her bed.

Great ending to my already-stressed day, right?  But actually, it was.  Not that I am glad Boo was sick--far from it--but focusing on my little girl's troubles made me not even care about mine anymore.  Who cares about the dishes or the dark apartment when my baby needs me?  I always knew my problems were small, but now I felt that they were.  And so I wasn't stressed anymore.  I just loved my sweet little girl, and wanted her to be happy and well.

(PS  Boo is doing better.  Hopefully she'll be fully over the illness tomorrow.)