Hitchhikers

Happy happy Saturday. Will has his first defense trial on Monday, so it feels as though it's perpetually Wednesday over here. Although the kids did wake up at 5am today, so it felt like we had him longer than usual this morning. -__-

The Wills have been going on little hikes over the weekends recently, and finally Zelie and I got the chance to join. We live at the edge of a valley and there are tons of small mountains around us. On Monday, we hopped in the van, parked at the edge of a neighborhood across our town's main street, and just hiked around for a couple hours. 

Will wore his fanciest socks.

You can see the windmills in the distance. Windmills. Windmills as far as the eye can see out here.

Toward the east is the Air Force base. To the right in the photo below is part of the dry lake bed the installation is on. SO scenic on base. Let me tell ya.

Atop one of the little peaks was a giant cross.

Zelie was not impressed.

She's the ultimate hitchhiker. She napped for about an hour of our two-hour hike. It was her best nap all labor day weekend. I was in a crouch that entire time so her head didn't bob all around. Extra ice cream for me that night.

Nursing sesh atop a mountain. NBD. 

Something tells me Bear Grylls has never done this. When do I get my own show? (We've been watching all the Running Wild with Bear Grylls episodes. Everything is so staged and product market-y, but always so very entertaining.)

Staged kids photos in 3… 2…. 

Aaaand we're done.

Budding Photographer

Trying to get back into blogging means breaking out the "good camera." For me, photography worth sharing just leads to the words flowing and to the blog posting. Because YOU KNOW it's a total faux pas to post more than one Instagram pic per day. (Did you know this? It's a social media rule of etiquette invented by high schoolers, I think.) But having an expensive camera in my hands is sort of like busting out the baby food. It becomes IR-RE-FREAKING-SISTABLE to my two-year-old. 

Just like the Puffs, if the kid begs and begs (+begs+begs+begs), my stoic facade is slowly but surely chipped away, and, finally, I relent. I'm no match for him. It happens just that poetically, but with about 5,000% more whining. So right, I let my two-year-old have at it with the DSLR (in aperture mode, the only setting I shoot in because … lazy).

BUT YOU GUYS, here's the first photo he took:

WHAT UP subject actually in focus. 

93 photos of the carpet later and I thought, let's get this kid outside and see if he can get a photo of me and the hubs. You know. There was that Love Your Spouse Challenge going on recently on Facebook where for seven straight days you posted pictures of yourself and your spouse. I was tagged to participate, but couldn't bring myself to even start because I literally could not find any photos of just Will and I taken after 2014. 

Face-swaps don't count.

But, look! August 2016, at your service.

47 blurry pictures of rocks later, andddd . . .

Dump truck: A still life.

WHAT IS HE TRYING TO EXPRESS?????

It's sweet, really. He takes SUCH delicate care of the camera (for the most part) because he knows what a privilege it is to use it. When the camera is away, he's taken to holding up various toys to his eyes and pretending that it's a camera. "Say cheese!" 

Yesterday, he managed these:

LOLZ Daisy. 

And my favorites:

I couldn't capture the light in these leaves like this if I tried. And I do try! So that's embarrassing. 

ANYWHO. If you want to schedule senior portraits or your next family session with my toddler, you know where you can contact this tiger mom.*

*$500 non-refundable session deposit

;)

A Boy & His Boots (+ the Rest of Us)

Fear not. This post is heavy on the photos and light on the rambling. I just wanted to share some new family photos we took over the weekend. Word on the street was that Saturday was going to be unusually beautiful, so during a Friday morning (black) coffee visit our good friend, Lauren, suggested that we crash her Youth Minister Retreat happening up the road from us in Belleville. We'd get to pop in and see her during their down time and she'd snap some family photos on the grounds. #momblogger was all LET'S GO. Win-win. 

Not much more explanation required. BUT, Little Will's cowboy boots are pretty torn up. We're not quite sure how they're even supposed to fit, but I'm afraid they're getting a little too small and we'll have a Chinese foot binding-type situation. (He really does want to wear them the moment he sets his eyes on them.) Well, we got him new boots. 

I present to you: the galoshes.

May they bring us as many spectacular memories.

He already insists on wearing them everywhere, even though we bought them a size up, so they are HUGE. Like, he tries to run in them, but they stay in the ground and he flies forward. You'll notice his knees are pretty torn up as a result. 

Despite the boot-related tantrumming, is this little boy PRACTICALLY HEADED OFF TO COLLEGE? OR IS IT JUST ME?

All the crying emojis ever iMessaged, inserted here.

And here.

And here.

The end.

Pictures from Winter

Bear with me while I catch the blog up on happenings from this past February because if I don't I will definitely lose the memory card containing these photos. 

I took the blog private while I worked full time from December 2014 to September 2015. I didn't blog hardly at all, nor did I take very many photos on my Nikon. I just lost all mental energy for documenting the little things going on in our family. It was seriously a blur! Our days looked a lot like this: wake up at 6:30, scramble to get out the door by 7:30, drop off at daycare at 8 to arrive at work by 8:30. Pick up booger by 5:30pm, drive home, scramble to get him fed and bathed by 6:30 or 7 (and he would be SO tired and cranky at this point after a long day of stimulation at school!). Then Will and I would make and eat dinner and then watch TV until we went to bed. For the first few months, weekends were spent cleaning and doing laundry. Then the week before I found out I was pregnant, I finally broke down and hired a housekeeper to come every other week. $$$ well spent! That freed up the weekends a little bit, but it just felt like there was no family time. Rinse and repeat for 9 months. 

This is why you don't see blogs from very many full time working moms. Just saying. It's a job only for the fittest among us.

And I'll never whine about working from home again. Okay, I'll try not to…. ;)

Will's First Birthday Party (February 6, 2015)

Snowstorm (February 28, 2015)

Photography Tips for the Eager New Mom

If you couldn't tell, I take wayyy too many photos of #babybillybrez (that's really his hashtag - I'm the worst). But! Something tells me I'm not the first new mom to do this, and that I won't be the last. At least maybe I can impart some photography tips I've learned to take presentable looking photos with minimal training and even minimal-er editing. It's the silver lining I thought up just now. 

Professional photographers go ahead let out a collective sigh because I am avoiding your services at all cost! (Unless you catch me in a moment of weakness. Fine.) 

Anyway, sometimes I get lucky and take some decent looking photos to post on my blog. And people are all like dang girl you got it going on (no one has ever said that to me but you get the point). So, here's what I do. 

(Note: Camera and lens deets are over here. Nothing fancy.) 

Lighting - So important. Natural light is the best, as they say. But I don't know about you, I'm not typically schlepping around my giant Nikon bag when I'm out and about in the sunshine. And photo shoots outside? Ehhh. Seems like a bit too much effort to do on a daily basis (i.e., how often I snap photos of my offspring). Put that baby by a window and call it a job well done.

I know that a simple lighting reflector can work wonders when taking photographs, but look. We're new moms. We don't have an extra set of hands for that (usually). So when the lighting looks good (like when happen to be bathing your baby in the sink and the light is hitting perfectly just so), make someone take over bath time so you can get to snappin'.

Aperture Mode - I used to think that in order to take nice pictures, you just had to take pictures in manual mode. When I have one hand on my wobbly baby and another on my camera, I do not have time to adjust shutter speed. I don't know what Pinterest article led me to aperture mode, but I'm so glad we are friends now. Let the camera adjust shutter speed for you. You deserve it.

I like to keep my f-stop in the 2 to 4 range when I'm taking baby portraits. Based on the f-stop I want, I set my ISO, and keep an eye on what the camera is giving me for a shutter speed. Since the little guy is moving, I try for this to be above 1/200s at a minimum. (When he was a fat, immobile blob I could get away with a slower shutter speed, around 1/100s.) For indoor lighting, I'm usually at a 400 or 800 ISO.

This is f/2.8. ISO 800. 1/640 shutter speed. 100% cuteness.

Exposure Compensation - My noob self finally figured out how to adjust exposure compensation on my D3100 via this tutorial and it has been amazing for indoor photography when you don't have the free hands to shoot in manual mode (which for me, is always). A little +.3 or +.5 on the exposure compensation (it's that little +/- symbol on your camera - I had to go into the menu on my camera to find it, but it's an adjustment of two clicks), will change your life. 

Exposure compensation is how little Will doesn't look like a dark shadow with all that backlight coming in from the window:

f/3.2. ISO 800. 1/400s. +.3 exposure compensation.

Photo editing - Please. Ain't nobody got time for that. I hit up the occasional crop and/or straightening in Picasa. (Phone apps are a different story - filters are a weakness and I could tinker around all day in Afterlight and VSCOcam.)

Oh, and having your subject(s) in focus is always a plus. But sometimes ya gotta share anyway. In which case, it's always better to slap a black and white filter on that bad boy. 

See? Now it's totally Instagram worthy. 

What tips and tricks do you use when you are documenting the ever-important milestones of your cherished offspring? Drop me that knowledge down there in the combox! I'd be ever so grateful.