First steps

She did it! Grace took 4 or 5 real steps yesterday. I give her two weeks before she is toddling all over the place.



Here are the baby steps we caught with the camera. Click on the image to see the uncompressed version. It isn't perfect, but you get the idea. I may play with it some before printing it.


The last one is my favorite. Look how pleased with herself she is.


Check out those thighs! And the elbow dimple cracks me up.

More from the backyard

Here is Grace with her big toothy grin.


Charlotte demonstrates proper weed-pulling technique in our somewhat overgrown flowerbeds. This picture actually misrepresents the state of the garden. Derek has done alot of work cleaning up most of it and it looks great. This is the worst patch. Charlotte was eager to help out.

Louisa's baby panel

We shot Louisa's nine month pictures for her baby panel this afternoon. When she is 1, we will frame her 3, 6, 9 and 12 month pictures all together. I am fairly certain that Elizabeth Mohr Photography is not going to offer baby panels, so I am very glad to do one specially for my extra special little niece. She sat there and posed and smiled like a little baby model. Well, until Grace crawled onto the scene and then she decided it was more fun to play with her cousins than have her picture taken.

Here are the first few I looked at.




And here she is at three months


and at six months

some Grace smiles

to cheer me up, because I have had a kind of lousy last couple of days. How could these not make you smile?

Grace on her perch

Grace likes to climb up onto her little slide and survey the goings-on in the yard. She will sit up there for quite a while if there are interesting things to watch.

My favorite - a peek-a-boo giggle

I am sucker for good eye contact, and I work hard at getting it. I have learned it is not so much about calling their name or making funny (and loud) sounds or whatever noisy toys they use at the Picture People. It is really best, for me at least, to just patiently wait until they look your way. We all can tune out people whistling at us to get our attention awfully quickly, know what I mean? Grace will often literally glance in my direction for a split second, and if I am ready and quick with the shutter I get these shots that I love.


This is what she was really doing sitting up there on her perch. She was fascinated with our neighbor Bob spraying his awnings off with the hose.

The very rare shot...

...of both girls together. Whoopee! They even look like they like each other. (Don't be fooled.)

A few (cup)cake shots

Grace enjoyed her birthday very much. Grandma and Uncle Pat came over for some cake. Grace didn't really eat the cake, but she loved destroying it and smearing it around. Charlotte didn't like the sticky icing and wouldn't really touch it when she turned 1. Of course, now cake is one of her very favorites.

364 days old

Grandma and Grandpa Mohr came over to visit Tuesday afternoon. Charlotte promptly co-opted all of Grace's presents. This is going to be a problem, I think.

Here is the girl on the eve of her birthday with Grandma and Grandpa.

The look...

...that says 'please, mom, stop taking my picture.' I get this look frequently.

I clearly remember that Grace was mid-whine for this one. This kid can whine loud. Apparently, she can also whine without moving her lips. Her arm is outstretched because she is pointing straight at me. Well, she is pointing straight at the hose nozzle I just confiscated, which she wants back.

I love the colors in these. I am also in love with the shallow depth of field that I get with my longer lenses on the new, full frame camera.

Edited to add one more...Grace can climb up the little steps to the slide and come down all by herself. She is very proud of her ability. She can't quite get her feet out in front of her to go down sitting up, so she figured out how to turn around and go down backwards. I think this one shows that she is still just a big baby, at least in part. Her legs still revert back to that little froggy shape.

Girls in Green

The same colored shirts were a happy coincidence. Here are Charlotte and Grace in the backyard with Grandma yesterday. They are just thrilled that she is home for the summer.

A hug for Grandma

I liked this one so much, I cropped it twice :)

Haircut!

Charlotte got her long-needed haircut yesterday. She did really well. She talked to me excitedly the whole way there about going to the "haircut store". Everything is the "store" to Charlotte. Her favorites are the "toy store" and the "fry store", which is any restaurant. That gives away our dirty little secret that the only thing Charlotte eats when we go out are french fries and ketchup.

Here is the new 'do. Still a big curly mess, but at least it's a shorter curly mess.

Almost 1

Hard to believe that Grace's first birthday is next week. Here she is playing in the kitchen yesterday.

I liked this one so much I spent 15 minutes in Photoshop adding an extra cupboard to our kitchen so I could crop it like this. (behind her, we only have two cabinet doors, not three). I am breaking my rule of never pointing out my PS work, because then everybody stares right at it. Oh well, scrutinize away. It's not perfect, but it's just for me.

Isn't she cute?


This one makes me laugh. She was actually standing next to the chair and I called her name to get her to look at the camera. She decided all on her own to lean over and peek out at me through the chair instead. She was quite pleaed with herself.

Where did my baby go?

I look at Charlotte with her little stick thin legs poking out of her shorts and I wonder where my chubby baby went. She is 100% little kid now.

Kid exhibit A: correct TV watching position. Note the slouchy posture and slackened jaw.


Charlotte likes to go down the stairs on her butt, bouncing down a step at a time. One day, I made the mistake of imitating her and going down like that behind her. Now whenever she goes down the stairs she looks up at me with this devilish grin. "Mommy go down on bottom?" She is completely unmoved by my protests that I am much to old for this stuff. Here she is on the landing looking back to make sure that I am following her in proper form.


A couple more of Charlotte playing in the backyard. I will add some of Grace tomorrow.

Charlotte's third summer

This is our third summer with our delightful little daughter, Charlotte. The newest thing that she says that makes us laugh is "Char fine." As in, "Charlotte, would you like some lunch?" "Hmmm. *thoughtful pause* No. Char fine" She plays with her little animal guys all the time and they have long conversations together. She has a specific blankey (washcloth) for each guy and she carefully covers them up so they can all take a nap. She was searching this morning for the zebra's blankey and she found it in another room. She brought it in to where the guys were and said "Here you go, zebra. Here's your blankey" And then the zebra said "Thank you, Charlotte."

Pictures from June 1, 2006

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Pictures from June 9, 2005




Pictures fom June 7, 2004