This is a little video montage that Myles worked very hard to put together. He is teaching himself imovie, and I think he is doing a great job.
The song is "Eyes" by Rogue Wave, It was one of the songs that I listened to while in labor. We have come to think of it as Simon’s song.

It has come to my attention that many of you out there in cyber space do not know about the wonderful simplicity of the "Feed Reader" So in an effort to improve the quality of your life here is a little tip…
If you read more than 3 or so blogs a day you will find this very useful. No longer will you have to go to the blog to see if it has been updated. You can simply configure a little tool known as a Feed Read to go and check your blogs for you and to report back on which have been updated. The tool brings everything to one location.

I use gmail and the google reader is very easy to set up. If you use gmail here is how.

(click on the images to make them bigger)

1) under "more" click on "reader"
you will be taken to a page that looks like this… (well sort of – at first yours will be empty)

2) click the "add subscription" button and start pasting in the web address for the  blogs that you read.

it is so simple!
the blogs you read will be listed on the left, the blogs with new updates will be bloded.  Click on the blog name and you can read the update, once you have read it the bolding will automatically go away.

If you don’t use gmail there are other feed reading services that compile  blogs in the same way. Some  times they are called feed readers or feed aggregator.

here are a few you can check out if you don’t use gmail.
www.feedreader.com/
http://www.blogbridge.com/

I hope that this simplifies your life, now instead of going to your favorites and going to each individual website only to see that your favorite blogs were not updated you can just check them all at once.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Chanda told me that now that I have my own little model I will not be needing to borrow hers any more. This is absolutely not true. I need a girl fix every once in a while and sometimes it is nice to work with a subject that can take direction (unlike Simon, Elle will now go stand where I ask her)
So here she is. It was bitterly cold so she didn’t get to wear the cute outfit that I had planed for her but maybe next time.

she is into this serious moody stuff and would not smile for me no matter how silly I was.

She loves Simon (baby Si as she calls him). The pictures were taken on Saturday, she came over because her big sisters both had softball games. She was so sweet with Simon, and played with him in his bouncy seat. When he began to fuss she said "baby sad" and went and got his pacifier and put it in for him – too cute.

Everyone mistakenly thinks that Elle and her sisters are my nieces, in reality they are my first cousins once removed. Their dad is my first cousin (our moms are twins). That makes Elle and Simon second cousins, which I think is pretty cool because I have never met any of my second cousins and I didn’t grow up around any extended family.  Simon doesn’t have any first cousins (yet) but at least Simon will grow up around Elle and since we are also neighbors they will be in school together. Simon also has his second cousin Natalie (who is 3) she wanted to take Simon home with her the last time she came over : )

Everyone says that it goes by fast and it really does. It seems like we just brought him home and here he is 2 months old already.

Sometimes he looks so much like his dad…

but other times I can see that he looks a lot like me…

I think right now he is trending a lot more towards his dad.

well warm enough that I felt like I could take Simon out for an outdoor shoot. I had  fun though I did receive some strange looks for carrying my baby around in a laundry basket.

The sweater Simon is wearing in these photos used to be Myles’ sweater.

A lot of people were curious about this whole canvas thing, since a picture is worth a thousand words I thought I would post one.

The digital painting is printed on canvas material and then stretched around a wood frame. So the picture actually extends  around the edges just like an oil painting.

Since I had my camera out I because I never posted a photo of the finished nursery I thought I would take the opportunity to snap a photo of Simon’s nursery. The rooms in our house are very small and I don’t have a wide angle lens so this is a good as it gets : )

I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that this is actually the first time Simon has ever been in his crib. He looks so small in it!

yes our grass really is that long and that green. 

well maybe…

Simon is officially out of newborn diapers now. We had our 3rd and final postpartum check up on Tuesday. I have to admit that I am a little sad that we will no longer be seeing our midwives until we get pregnant again (and may that be a long time from now).  We are both as healthy as can be. Simon weighed in at 10 lbs  12 oz. He has gotten quite a bit longer too and no longer fits on my lap  (length wise). And just look at that double chin and wrist rolls. He is getting so chunky!   

This is a digital painting of one of my photographs done by the talented PeaKazza. You can see more samples of her work on her blog www.canwebefrank.blogspot.com She paints a photo using Corel Painter and Photoshop, the resulting image is printed on canvas and wrapped on a wooden frame. I ordered this as a 30X20 to go over our bed. Once it arrives I will take a photo of it : )

For my clients – if you are interested in having one of your images painted please don’t hesitate to ask.

These are just some of the photos that I have taken over the last couple of weeks trying to get that elusive smile. In putting this together I realized that if I keep it up that pretty soon I will have enough expression to make one of those "Today I feel" posters.