Some chilly swimming

Our neighbor behind us owns a pool, and though he gives us a free invitation all summer long, we only ever seem to make it over once a year. I don’t know quite what’s wrong with us!

His pool is chilly, but it does have a cool slide.

I don’t often use the action setting on my camera, but it is awfully handy for water slide pictures.

Lisey, shivering.

Zoe was smart enough to realize that the pool was too cold for anything but dipping her feet.

The most wonderful thing about swimming at this pool is that all we have to do is take a walk through our yard, and we’re home.  Easy-peasy.  Remind me why I don’t do this more often??

I will do better next summer.

Peaceful.

This is my nephew, who will soon be 4 months old. I plan to do an honest-to-goodness session with him to mark that, but for now, here’s a quick snapshot I took of him at the pool last week.

One lovely thing about babies is that it’s so easy to catch them sleeping. I hardly ever get to take sleeping pictures of my children anymore!

These are Zoe’s flip-flops.

She’s obsessed with every sort of creature that lives in the ocean, especially fish. But, Old Navy had no fish flip-flops…only seahorse flip-flops. Zoe didn’t mind, though.

See the two little black dots on the inside of her flip-flops? Those are there because even though there’s a 50/50 chance of getting flip-flops on the right feet, Zoe gets it wrong 95% of the time. So, before she puts on her shoes, I tell her to make her dots kiss. She loves doing it (she giggles every time!) and it works like a charm.

Mmmm….soft serve.

Due to her propensity for dropping ice cream cones onto the sidewalk, Zoe had her ice cream in a cup.

And so did Sonia.

Joshua and Lisey can easily handle cones.

Have I mentioned that I feel really fortunate to have two blue-eyed subjects that live with me? My husband and I both have brown eyes, so having two blue-eyed children was a nice surprise!

I like my brown-eyed ones too, though.

Happy Birthday, Miss C!

This morning, I had a photo session with a young client whose first birthday is right around the corner.

We met bright and early.

And it was quite a hazy and warm morning.

I love baby hands (I can still call her a baby, right? She’s not technically one yet).

And doesn’t she have an adorable little smile?

Of course, I can’t resist doing a few black and whites.

I’ve said this about Sonia before, but I think Miss C looks just like a perfect little doll too.

I’m still busy sorting through the mountain of pictures I took, and I’m thinking I might feel compelled to share at least one more post’s worth of her pictures before I’m done.

Bubbles are no good for eating.

I brought some bubbles along on Saturday for my photo session with this little guy and his family.

He was pretty fascinated with them.

And all was well, until he tried to eat them.

He decided that maybe wasn’t the best idea.

A few pictures from this morning’s session…

I thought that we weren’t going to be able to use my favorite dock at all because in order to avoid direct sunlight at this time of year, you have to arrive there at some ungodly hour. Happily, though, we got partly cloudy skies this morning, and we got to use my beloved pier.

My Nephew-8 weeks

I’m really late getting these edited and posted, but he was 8 weeks when I actually took these!

He’s smiling now, which is so much fun!

He has some snazzy new initials decorating his room.

I just love this one. The plain wall makes such a nice undistracting backdrop.

He got hungry while I was there, and I snapped a few pictures of him crying while he was waiting to be fed.

He does a nice slow yawn for me every time I see him!

I love baby blue eyes so much.

The Last Non-Biker

Specifically, that would be Zoe. Joshua and Lisey ride their bikes now with no training wheels, and Sonia is going at a pretty good clip with her training wheels. I think she might be able to ride without them by the end of the summer.

Zoe has a small bike, but she cannot seem to get the hang of pedaling it. So most of the time she rides her little tricycle.

She’s much happier on this than on the bike.

But my goodness! Those little wheels make for a slow ride.

I walk alongside, watching her cute little legs push her small pedals round and round and listening to her sweet small voice. “I’m going faster and faster, Mommy! See dis? Can I ride to da stop sign, Mommy? I wanna do it again!”

While I’m sometimes anxious for the day when she can ride a real bike all on her own, I know that a few years down the road when she goes zooming by me on her two-wheeler, I’ll look back and miss these days.  So, I’m savoring this…I don’t want to be so busy yearning for the future that I miss these moments.

Zoe’s First Movie

Yesterday we did something uncharacteric for our frugal family…all six of us went to the theater to see the movie “Up”. We did go to a matinee showing, but it was still pretty pricy. We had something to celebrate, though (my husband got a new job), so we decided to splurge a bit.

The light in the movie theater was, um, less than delightful, so like my Fourth of July pictures, these are on the grainy end of things.

This was the first time Zoe had been to a theater.

Actually, it was Sonia’s first time too!

Lisey’s last trip to a theater was in 2002.

I think Joshua’s last one might have been slightly more recent.

Oh, hey…I was there too! The last time I darkened the door of a theater was in December of 2005. Quite obviously my husband was there too…he took this picture. And you can see a very blurry version of him behind Joshua in the photo above. I would have taken an actual picture of him but he is awfully camera shy. So, he hides in the bokeh.