Elyse at Eighteen Months

Today, Elyse is exactly eighteen months old. Here are some portraits we made to honor the occasion:

Self Portrait

I was playing around with my lighting setup a couple of days ago, and took this self portrait (and several others), which I then played around with in Photoshop:

There aren't all that many pictures of me here, mostly because it's usually me wielding the camera. Sometimes, though, I put it on a tripod and wield it at myself.

More From Faribault

On Sunday all of Anna's siblings and their families came over for a Father's Day cookout, and we took some pictures in the makeshift basement studio. Here are a few:

These last two obviously weren't taken in the basement, but they do show Jessica and Elyse's other cousin, and his daddy:

Pictures from the Basement

We're in Faribault, Minnesota, for a one-week visit with Anna's family. I've been slowly setting up a makeshift studio in the basement of Anna's parents' house, and last night I got Anna and Elyse downstairs to take a couple of practice pictures. Here are a few of them:

Elyse found one of her Uncle Luke's golf clubs, and was waving it around like she knew what to do with it:

Here's a picture of Anna I took while Elyse was exploring:

Here are Anna and Elyse together:

And Elyse trying to climb up Mommy's back:

(Click here to see the next post about this visit.)

Elyse

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours making a foam-board-and-duct-tape soft box that will fit in our suitcase for our upcoming trip to Minnesota. Here's a test picture I took of Elyse using it:

(She was moving when I took the picture, and I was shooting at 105mm at f/4.5, so her ear is more in focus than her face, but still I think it's a good picture.)

St. Nick and the Dragon

Here is a Little People reenactment of St. Nick slaying the dragon with his mighty candy cane, Ascalon:

Pa's Not-So-Excellent Adventure

The day after Jessica and Daddy's Stone Mountain outing, my father--Jessica and Elyse's Pa--went to the hospital with all the symptoms of a heart attack. That is exactly what it was, a heart attack, but fortunately a mild one--or one which was treated quickly enough to prevent its becoming something more than mild.

The doctors put a stent in one of Pa's arteries, which was 95% blocked, and will be inserting another in a couple of weeks to treat another artery that is 80% blocked.

Dad's doing very well; as I write this, he's still in the hospital, but will possibly--hopefully--go home today.

Here's a picture of Elyse and her Pa from about six months ago, when we took our Christmas pictures:

And here he is reading with Jessica a couple of years ago:

We're all very thankful that this episode wasn't more serious, and grateful to the doctors and nurses who have helped him to get better. Most of all, we're glad that my father was smart enough to say, as soon as he realized something was really not right, "Call 911!" That just might have saved his life.

Update: At about the time I was finishing this post, my father was headed home from the hospital. We went to their house for supper, bring Subway sandwiches with us. He seems to be doing well, but has been ordered to "take it easy" for the next couple of weeks.

Jessica and Daddy's Excellent Adventure: Stone Mountain

Tuesday morning Jessica and I dropped Elyse off at Granny and Pa's house and went to Stone Mountain Park for a day together. Here's a picture of the two of us shortly after we arrived, posing in front of the famous carving:

(This picture was taken by a Stone Mountain Park employee who asked if we wanted a picture of both of us. His uniform said Michael, but I don't know the rest of his name. In any case, thanks!)

Nearly everything in the Crossroads area was closed. How can you play, laugh, and pretend when the toy store is closed?

There were, however, plenty of rocks to climb on around the reflecting pool at the edge of the Memorial Lawn:

Jessica was so exhausted after all the walking and climbing that she had to lay down on a comfortable-looking rock and take a nap:

(She laid down on her own, not at my request as a photo opportunity. I'm not even sure she was aware I was taking pictures.)

We took a break and went outside the park to CiCi's for lunch, and then returned to hike around the walk-up trail for a while. Here she is posing on a rock on the side of a mountain:

As we walked, we picked up various detritus on the side of the mountain, including nuts, bolts, and washers, some of which may be remnants of the mountain's time as a working quarry. Here are a couple of pictures of Jessica showing off washers she found:

How They Do in Italy

Elyse knows how to eat spaghetti, and she does it just like they do in Italy. You eat spaghetti without a shirt on, and you don't use any utensils, just the fingers God gave you:

You certainly don't worry about getting it on you--spaghetti is a wearable food:

And most importantly, you enjoy your meal!

One More Elyse Picture

I posted a couple of pictures from our Easter portraits a couple of weeks ago; I've since decided that this is my favorite of Elye:

2011 Renaissance Festival

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I believe it's the fifth time Jessica's been, and she's only four!

Here's a picture of Jessica relaxing on a bench in the Parrots of the Caribbean:

And here's a closeup of the parrot that was behind her:

Here's a sort of M.C. Escher pose I caught as two of the macaws groomed each other:

Elyse was very excited by the sheepdog demonstration; you can't see her face very well here, but she's howling with delight as the dog chases the sheep into formation:



Jessica was very taken with the Arabian Nights-style storyteller:

(In case you're wondering: No, I won't be doing that to my beard.)

Happy Birthday, Lucye!

Today Jessica and I went to Lucye's fourth birthday party at Autry Mill Nature Preserve. We had a great time seeing the live reptile show, going on the nature trail hike, and eating cupcakes. Jessica especially liked running around in the grass with the other little girls, though I think she was even happier after all the other kids had been shuttled away by their parents and it was just her and Lucye running around.

Here are Jessica and Lucye sitting on one of the benches on the front porch of the Summerour House:

Jessica's "The Far Side"

A couple of days ago, Jessica found one of my collections of Gary Larson's "The Far Side" cartoons and, despite our assurances that she wouldn't get much out of it, spent quite a while looking through it and puzzling over each single-panel cartoon. Here are a couple of bits of wisdom she came up with while looking through the book:

Why would two cows be living in a house?

Those are empires. There really vampires, but empires are the ones who play baseball.

(I couldn't find this one online. Also, I didn't know she knew the word "umpires," in any form.)

Easter Portraits

Today we took some Easter portraits of the girls, and here are two of the best of them:

We tried, but could not for the life of us get a decent picture of the two girls together; I think herding cats would be easier. But I'm pretty happy with the pictures we did get.

Happy Birthday, Aunt Lois

Today is the birthday of my Aunt Lois--my father's aunt, actually; my great-aunt. Were she still with us, she would be ninety-three today.

Aunt Lois was one of the people who regularly babysat me when I was young and my mother needed to go to work or run errands or attend to other obligations. In the early seventies, Aunt Lois's house was one of my favorite places, and she one of my favorite people; she would let me look at the toys in her Sears catalogs, and help me plant acorns in her yard, and make milkshakes for me--real milkshakes, made with a true shaker, not a blender.

I don't know who took this picture, or when exactly it was taken; I assume from Uncle Arthur's uniform that it was sometime during World War II. I love the look of confidence on Aunt Lois's face, and the look of adoration on Uncle Arthur's. I also like to think the young woman in the background is watching with a certain amount of admiration, perhaps even envy of the young couple.

There were a good many people involved in my upbringing, and they all had a hand in shaping who I am today. I know that because of Aunt Lois's contribution, I'm a better person than I would have otherwise been. I am grateful for that.

Monday Photos

Here are a couple of pictures I took of the girls this afternoon:

(Elyse was really proud to be sitting in the big chair all by herself.)

Jessica and Daddy's Excellent Adventure

Last Friday, Jessica and I drove up to Chattanooga to spend the night on Lookout Mountain and go to Rock City and generally have an adventure. It was our first daddy-daughter overnight outing, and we had a great time.

We stayed at the Sky Harbor Bavarian Inn on Lookout Mountain. We had stopped at Gwinnett Place on the way up to get a couple of sticker books for the trip, and the first thing Jessica wanted to do was sit on the bed in our room and work on her Cinderella sticker book:

Here's the view of the Tennessee River and Chattanooga from our room:

When she was able to tear herself away from her sticker book, Jessica came out on the porch to try out the rocking chairs:

We went to the mall for supper that night, ate some Chick-Fil-A and looked around the Barnes & Noble for a while, and then went back to the Inn to go to bed. (Jessica had insisted that we get a room with two double beds because, as she said, when she and I shared a bed on our Pensacola trip after Christmas, "you kicked me.") It took us a while to get to sleep, and Jessica woke me up three times during the night to say, "Daddy, you're snoring too loud." But we did manage to get in most of a good night's sleep.

We awoke Saturday morning to this sunrise:

and a little later, when the sun was poking up over the horizon:

We met Kevin and Lisa Eames at the Starbucks across from Rock City and visited with them for over an hour; Jessica was very patient with us, working on her Cinderella sticker book and making her own occasional contributions to our discussion. But then we said our good-byes and great-to-see-yous (it really was), and the Eameses went home, and Jessica and I went to Rock City:

It was very windy up at the top of the mountain, here at the point from which you can (so they have for years claimed) See Seven States:

We had a great trip, but of course eventually had to come home. We left a little after two o'clock and drove straight home; Jessica slept almost all the way, and I listened to Bob Edwards Weekend on the UTC NPR station until the signal got too weak, then switched to some episodes of X Minus One on my MP3 player.

I'm so glad I had this wonderful trip with my daughter, and can't wait for our next outing!

Tempted About Tinkerbell

This afternoon as we were driving home from school, Jessica was going through the bag of goodies that she got from her classmates during their Valentine's Day party. I told her she could look at the candy, but we weren't going to eat any until we got home.

She looked for a minute at a green sucker embossed with the likeness of Tinkerbell. Then she called up to me, "Could you keep this up front? I'm tempted about Tinkerbell."

By the time we got home, more than half of the contents of her goody bag was sitting on the passenger seat up front. Most candy, it turns out, is tempting to a four-year-old.