Mommy's Playtime

Tonight my mom sent me a couple of the pictures I'd taken with her (really nice!) Canon camera while she and Dad were visiting last weekend. They turned out pretty good...and it made me want a nicer camera. I remind myself of my dad..."I need to get a bigger pump!"

My New Favourite Photo

Today at church. Taken with my BlackBerry.

Baby Steps

This was Kayla's first attempt at taking a picture of Daddy. She grabbed the camera while I was holding it, so I put her hands up to help her take a picture. This was the result. She thought the front part that stuck out would be easier to hold onto. At least Daddy is in the picture. Her second attempt was only slightly better:

Spying

When taking pictures in public places I tend to be nervous that someone will a) be offended, thinking I'm taking a picture of them, b) think I'm weird, or c) arrest me for invasion of privacy or taking pictures of people without their knowledge or taking pictures of government buildings. I'm sure I look just like their profiles of terrorists: Blonde hair, blue eyes, overweight, driving a Toyota... So occasionally I try to take covert shots in the hopes that no one will know. My sister did this recently on a street in Kolobrzeg, Poland. Apparently it runs in the family. I took this one on my way back from a staff development luncheon this afternoon. And I took it with my phone, so it looked like I was just doing something with that. Clever, I know.

Unaware

Today I took the opportunity to get some more photos of our gorgeous baby girl. In the above photo she is wrapped in the beautiful blanket hand-stitched by her Nana (Jason's mom).

Growing

Today while Kayla was happily lounging on her changing table (she really likes it there - I'm considering moving it out to the living room so we can leave her there and be comfortable at the same time), I decided it was time for some more baby digits pictures. The one of her hand turned out okay (except that she got her head in the way), but she wouldn't hold her feet still enough for me to get a good angle. I guess the only way to get good shots of these things is to do it while she's sleeping. I'll have to work on that.

Mini Photo Shoot

No, not with miniature photos. The shoot was mini. Because I only took three pictures. While Kayla was in a good mood today I took advantage of the situation and shot a few black and whites of the two of us. My mom and I have realized that we don't have any pictures of me with Kayla except in the hospital. Funny how that works, but it's because she and I suffer from the same problem: We're always behind the camera! So this was a small attempt to remedy that situation...at least a little.

Outdoor Church

When I was in high school, we had outdoor church a couple of times. On Sabbath morning they'd drive carloads of students to the mountains and we'd have a church service and outdoor activities all afternoon. It was great! I loved the change of pace, and church in the middle of a forest in jeans was a lot better than wearing uncomfortable dress clothes and sitting in a stuffy church with other teenagers who smelled funny. Today, instead of church (since it was campmeeting and our church wasn't meeting), Jason and I went to Rooks Park. We took the camera I showed you yesterday and had fun taking pictures of the beautiful area. There are a ton more, but here's a small sampling of what we took.

Photos by Jason

(This one is best viewed if you open it and zoom in.)

Photos by Becky

(See the heron?)

Practice Makes Perfect

This afternoon Jason and I decided to pull out the travel system and give it a try. I'd been wanting to try strapping the car seat into the car for a couple of weeks but we'd never gotten around to it. Since we have to have the car seat in the car in order to take the baby home from the hospital, I figured it was best to learn how to install it now.

Our travel system came with a stroller, a car seat base, and the "infant restraint" as they refer to the carrier. It took us about half an hour to put the stroller together and figure out what everything did. We'll probably forget the first time we use it for real, but hey - we're new at this! Then we took the car seat and its base to the car and went through the instructions for making sure the seat was secure in the vehicle. We practiced both with and without the base, and it seems pretty simple, actually.

That wasn't the only thing we practiced this afternoon. The WWU library got a new digital camera this week. It's a super nice Canon something-or-other (I'm NOT a professional photographer, so I have no idea how to describe a camera). Here's what it looks like:

Jason brought it home to figure out how it works and give it a try, and I had a LOT of fun today running around trying to find things to photograph. When I discovered the macro setting, that was all I wanted to do. So here are a couple of my first attempts with a nice camera with macro setting capabilities. (FYI, "macro" means you can take shots of things super close up.) They aren't the best, but if I could practice more...like with my OWN nice Canon camera, for instance...I'd probably improve.