'Magination

This morning, Jessica said:

I just had a 'magination--Frankenstein's monster isn't really under my bed.

Preschool, Year Three; Two Teeth

Both of our children have significant milestones to report:

Today, Jessica starts her third year of preschool at St. Matthew's! Her teachers are Ms. Michelle and Ms. Kathy. There will be thirteen kids in her class (thirteen!), only one of whom Jessica knows from previous years. (At least that's how it looks now. That child wasn't at last week's orientation, so maybe there won't be any kids Jessica knows.)

Elyse has two teeth! We felt the first one poking through her gums about two weeks ago, and this past weekend we felt the other. She already knows how to use them to bite down on the spoon and not let go when we feed her her favorite foods--carrots, sweet potatoes, squash.

Christmas in July

Jessica doesn't worry about waiting until November or December to celebrate Christmas; we've been watching "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "The Year Without a Santa Claus" and "Frosty the Snowman" all summer long. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me the other day when Jessica was pulling her Christmas dress (the one we bought after last Christmas, for this coming Christmas) out of her closet and trying to get it on. She didn't have any trouble convincing me to let her wear it when she told me she wanted me to take some pictures of her. And here they are:

(You'll probably be seeing more pictures of her in this dress, in about five months when it really is Christmas.)

Elyse at Six Months

On Monday, Elyse turned six months old! Here are some pictures I took of her to commemorate her half-year mark:

And finally, a picture with her Daddy:

(It took Mommy off-camera several tries to get that smile out of her!)

Cousin Naomi

While we were in Minnesota last week visiting Anna's family, we went to Molly and David and Naomi's house so I could do a photo shoot with Naomi. Naomi has a beautiful smile and was very cooperative; here are five of the pictures from that afternoon:

Identity

One of the many interesting things about life with Jessica is that I never know exactly who she will be, or who I will be, from day to day--or hour to hour, for that matter. For example, our early morning conversation might go something like this:

Daddy: Are you ready for some breakfast, sweetheart?
Jessica: Yes, Peter Pan.
Daddy: Okay, Wendy. Do you want some grits?
Jessica: I'm Tinkerbell.
Daddy: Oh, okay. Do you want some grits, Tinkerbell?

By mid-morning snack, I might learn that now I am Santa Claus, but it's up to me to figure out whether Jessica is Mrs. Claus or Rudolph. If she's Belle, I'm always the Beast. If she's Dora, I'm inevitably Diego.

And when she's Snow White...sometimes I'm Dopey. It's something I've come to accept.

Rice Cereal

Elyse has been showing a lot of interest in "big people" foods lately--reaching for our pizza, attempting to grab spoons, trying to get her mouth to the straws on our cups--so we decided it was time to start her out on solid foods. Here are some pictures from her first, very successful feeding of rice cereal:

(It was Jessica's idea to put the headband on her. Elyse put up with it because she was so excited about her rice cereal.)

Playing in Lilburn with Lucye

On Monday we met Audrey and Lucye at the park in Old Towne Lilburn to play and have lunch at the Blue Rooster Cafe. Here are some pictures from the day:

Portrait of the Artist as a Zane Grey Character

I've been doing self portraits lately, which I've been trying to give a Julia Margaret Cameron-like feel. Here are two of them, one from Vines Gardens and one from Stone Mountain:

(Zane Grey was a novelist who is remembered primarily for his westerns--Colonel Potter was often reading them in various "M*A*S*H" episodes. The hat I'm wearing in these pictures isn't really a cowboy hat, but in the first picture, because I'm wearing a vest, I look at least a little like something out of Zane Grey. Or so I want to believe.)

Jessica's First Movie; Elyse; Pictures

Last Wednesday, June 9, Granny kept Elyse for a couple of hours so Jessica could go with Mommy and Daddy to see her first movie in a theater! We saw The Tale of Despereaux, based on Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Award-winning novel of the same title, at the Snellville Stadium 14 theater as part of the Regal Entertainment Group Free Family Film Festival. Jessica enjoyed the movie, despite a few scary parts and the tendency of her seat to fold up with her in it (one of the problems associated with weighing only 31 pounds), and especially enjoyed Daddy's Junior Mints. We'll probably be going back in a couple of weeks to see The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, which, being a Veggie Tales movie, hopefully won't have many scary parts.

A couple of weeks ago, Elyse had her four-month doctor's appointment. She's up to 18 pounds--the 95th percentile (that means that if you got a random group of 100 baby girls her age, Elyse would be larger than 94 of them, and only five of them would be bigger than her)--and 25 and 1/2 inches tall--the 90th percentile. The doctor tells us that when she starts crawling, she'll slim down some, but that won't make her any shorter. At this rate, she'll be taller than both of her parents by the time she's in first grade! (Fortunately, "this rate" lets up quite a bit pretty soon, and she'll be gaining height much more slowly. Still, she could be the tallest of us.) She's not quite five months old, but she's already wearing six-to-nine month clothes.

We've created a photo gallery of 50 recent pictures, some of which you've seen here on our blog before, some of which you haven't. You can see them by going to:

http://www.planetburdett.com/galleries/june2010/

About half of the pictures were taken at Vines Gardens, the park/formal gardens that's about two and a half miles from our house. Most of the rest were taken at home, though there are a few from Jessica's play date at Granny's house with her second cousins on Pa's side of the family; those pictures were taken by Granny.

(And yes, two of the pictures are of the possum who regularly visits our backyard. Every night we put out table scraps and the leftovers that have been stuck in the back of the fridge for three weeks and are on the verge of going bad. Sometimes, if I go to bed late enough or get up early enough, I can peek out and see one of our visitors having supper. One morning a couple of weeks ago, I got a few pictures of him. (It was actually still pretty dark, but I braced the camera against the sliding glass doors, and later brightened the pictures in Photoshop Elements. If you ever see a possum out in true broad daylight, you should probably call Animal Control--when a nocturnal animal like a possum is out during the day, that can be a sign of rabies.))

Recent Photos

Here are some pictures I've taken on recent photography expeditions:

Behind Publix
Loganville, GA:

(This wasn't really a photography expedition, I was just waiting for our pizza to be ready at Little Caeaer's, and I happened to have my camera with me.)

Flowers
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

"Mama, What is Daddy Doing?"
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Geese Heading in for the Night
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Abstract: Sunset on the Lake
Vines Gardens
Loganville, GA:

Round Oak, GA:

Elyse's Baptism

Elyse was baptized this morning at our church, St. Matthew's Episcopal, almost exactly three years after her big sister was baptized. Elyse did a fine job of maintaining her baby dignity and composure, and it seemed clear to us that she will take her baptismal covenant seriously--most importantly, I believe, the vow to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being," perhaps the finest ideals to which any human being can aspire.

Jessica also did very well. I've never been prouder of my two daughters.

Here are four pictures from the event.

(Pictures taken by Uncle Jeff) 

Also pictures above are Father Doug Coil and Anita Genung of St. Matthew's, and, of course, Granny and Pa.

* * *

Whenever I hear or read the baptismal covenant, especially the vow I quoted above from the Book of Common Prayer, I think of this from the last page of Madeleine L'Engle's novel The Arm of the Starfish:

"...If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody, and you're stuck with it."

You can't pick and choose, it's everybody. As Father Doug points out, we are commanded to love and care not just for those people we like, or who have the same beliefs as us, or who look more or less like us, or who live in the same city or state or country as us.  We vow to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. A daunting promise, yes, but one worth contemplating and trying to keep.

I think also of a line from one of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories, "Gospel Birds," when the members of the Lutheran church congregation are sitting in quiet contemplation for a few moments, and they remember "times when they had performed acts of kindness and love and mercy despite the embarrassment of it." I have long thought that this is one of Keillor's keenest insights, that performing acts of kindness and love and mercy can be embarrassing, especially in the culture we live in today. But that we do perform those acts can also be, as Keillor says, a sign of "a presence of grace in the world that lifts all of us up."

I think also of the unnamed man in John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High," who is "seeking grace in every steps he takes."

Madeleine L'Engle, Garrison Keillor, John Denver...perhaps not the people most people think of when they contemplate baptism, but they all have something to say to me.

Self Portrait

This is my new favorite self portrait:

ExerSaucer

Elyse is now four months old, which means she is ready for the ExerSaucer! Here are some pictures of her on her first ExerSaucer outing:

The pictures of bananas and apples and grapes made her hungry for her knuckles:

(You can see Jessica in the background above, telling Elyse how much she enjoyed the ExerSaucer when she was little enough to use it.)

While she was exploring, she managed to push the Cow button hard enough to make it moo at her, which she found very intriguing:

Old Planet Burdett Studio Pictures

Looking around at old files on my computer today, I came across some pictures I took in my studio basement at our house in Lawrenceville, back in 2003. Here are six of my favorites:

The Renaissance Festival

On Sunday the four of us went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival in Fairburn. We'd been talking about it for weeks, and looking forward to it for months. This was Jessica's third trip to the Renaissance Festival, but the first time she could really appreciate at least some of what goes on there--namely, that there are lots of "princesses." Jessica wore one of her own princess dresses and also a tiara, borrowed from the dress-up trunk she has at Granny's house.

After the hour and fifteen minute drive from home, we arrived just in time for Jessica and Mommy (and Elyse, in the sling) to participate in the Maypole Dance:

Here's Jessica in a pensive moment by a pond:

Jessica rode the peasant-driven carousel, and enjoyed it a lot more than her expression indicates:

Finally, here are the King and Queen of the Festival: