Pining

My Mom is now on her way back home and we miss her already. We've all been spoiled.




See? Evan misses his Grandma, too.

Exploitation

I've always enjoyed looking at creative newborn portraits-- soft and wrinkly new babies sweetly snuggled in little props. So I determined that now that I have a good camera (thanks to my brother), I would just have to try my hand at photographing my own baby.

So this morning when Evan was good and sleepy, Mom and I gathered our props and set to it. Mom did the baby-wrangling while I worked the camera. It was so fun. We laughed and giggled at his adorable sleepy expressions as the camera clicked away. We kept going until Evan ended the session with an, um, explosive outburst.

I selected a few of the 75 shots and did some post processing in Gimp to try to get that soft portrait feel. Can't say I'm all that good at it, but I'm happy with the results of my first try.

He Totally Is

"Handsome like Daddy"

(Though he also looks like the most adorable little old man ever!)

Into God's Kingdom

Our little Evan Timothy was baptized today!




His Grandma made a lovely cake to celebrate!

Newborn Daze

It's a beautiful evening outside with the air just cooled by a light sprinkle of rain. Perfect for some garden puttering. Part of me wants to go out and find some little jobs to do among my growing things, but the rest of me is more interested in another particular growing thing. I went out to the garden for a while this morning, and it felt good to connect with my garden for a few minutes, but I found myself very quickly tired.

I look forward to hopefully having some energy again in the near future (energy-- oh, how I miss it!), but for now, I'm also enjoying these sleepy newborn days. These days, where I have nothing more important to do than lie around and nurse and snuggle, are short, I know. Some day soon I'll have to get back to real life. Some day soon I'll have to get back into a routine for our little family. But for now, we're in a state of flux. Baby-gazing flux.

I don't have to think yet about the flow of my day or ordering it according to some predictable schedule. For now I can get lost in getting to know the newest member of our family. I'm just letting him get his days and nights straightened out and get good at nursing (and boy, does he like to practice that!).

There's something about newborns that seems to captivate every person who looks into their little faces. How is it that we could just gaze at a newborn for long periods of time and never grow bored of it? And that's what I get to do for now. Gaze.






In some ways I feel like life is frozen in time, just for me, and just so briefly. My thoughts are completely consumed with this new little person and I can't possibly focus on anything else. But I know that very soon Time will snap his fingers and the spell with be broken and life will resume it's galloping pace. I'll be swept up in it, too, and my little boys will grow up right in front of me.






And that's another thing. Boys. I have boys. Plural. Children. Kids. Boys.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet for me. We've been a one-child family for so long that I don't yet realize what it is to have children instead of a child.

And I love little boys. I love that Jonah has a brother. I love that they're brothers.

Everyone I know seemed to think that we should be having a girl this time, presumable because we have a boy already. Of course I would have been happy either way, but I secretly favored another boy. I like boys.

Do I sound all rosy and hazy and fuzzy and sweet? It's probably hormones. All I'm saying is that this part is good. I may be tired and sore, and the fussing of a tiny baby can be fatiguing. But it's a short time, and this time is good.

The Big Visit

MY siblings all came to MY house. All of them! (There are six... I have five brothers and one sister. And I'm the oldest, so I'm the boss.) And they were at. my. house. Seven years I've been married and living away, and I've never had my family at MY house. I loved having them here.

I also loved the fact that my new sweet little guy was present for this event (as we've been hoping for months) and he was, of course, the main attraction.






(Oh, and I loved the fact that I have a GREAT excuse to do nothing at all. I got to just soak it all up without having to do all the work of putting together a family gathering. My mom is awesome cuz she pretty much took care of it all.)

We made sure to fill the very short visit with lots of fun.




There was swashbuckling.







War wound showing...




Al fresco dining... (on MY porch! With MY new deck furniture! All my family, but minus Dad because he had to leave early to be back at work Monday, which we were very sad about.)




Baby gazing...





Baby snuggling...



Gymnastics...






Buggy riding...





Buggy driving...





Multi-tasking...



General cuteness...





Horse riding...






Fishing...





Little brothers with facial hair...






And of course more baby love.



Oh, and we took pictures. A LOT of pictures. Three photographers documenting this rare get-together makes for a lot of pictures. But it may not happen again for a looong time, so we knew we had to make the best of it.



(If you're interested in more of our reunion, as well as baby pics, check out my Mom's and brother's blogs: Pie in the Sky and Ten Million Pixels.)

Baby Love