Henry has the most amazing smile. He started really showing it off the first week of April and now smiles constantly, as evidenced in the pictures. We've even had a few full-on giggles in the past few days. They are the cutest thing you've ever seen or heard.
He also absolutely adores Big Sister. He and Emma will stare at one another, giggle and smile for long stretches. She's still jealous of the attention he gets at times, but you'd never know it by the way she dotes on him.
I've enjoyed going back and looking at Emma's pictures from her early months and comparing her progress to Henry's. If you subtract his 5 early weeks they're pretty much progressing along the same time frame. We were thinking of putting him in his excer-saucer this weekend, for example, which it appears we did with Emma after about 4 months, too. (And, coincidentally, Paul and Jessica did with Bailey this week!)
Looking back at those early pictures also reminded me just how awful shooting film was. I vividly remember spending hours scanning prints and then tweaking and tweaking to make them look right. Hooray for technology!
@ 9:59 PM by TNorthcutt | Comments (2)
In the last days of March we were innundated with Painted Lady butterflies. They migrate through the area each year but because of our amazing rainfall this winter, this year's migration was spectacular.
Literally hundreds of the Painted Ladies fluttered by each minute. It was an amazing sight! (For more on the migration, see this collection of newspaper articles. The bottom one from the LA Times is best.)
Emma and I went out to try our luch at chasing and catching a few. We used the nets from her Elefun game and had some success! Our final tally was 2 in hand and 4 more in the net that escaped before we could look at them up close. Emma was ecstatic, of course.
They're predicting another huge migration in another few weeks from the eggs laid along the way during March's migration. Our nets are ready!
@ 4:49 PM by TNorthcutt | Comments (2)
A sign of things returning to normality: the slip-cover is back on the couch. I'll let Marla explain this in more detail, but suffice it to say that Henry has largely given up his nightly wailing fits and settled into a regular sleep routine while Emma is retuning - slowly - to her non-terrible self. (She certainly still has her moments.)
It's always a treat for me to check out the pictures taken on Marla's camera. I'm rarely around when they're taken or else I'm asleep and not aware they're being taken!
This batch stretches back to early February and goes through this past weekend. You can see a lot of change in Henry. Look at how scrawny he was in those first few pictures!
You can tell that Emma dotes on him. Lots of cute shots of the two of them interacting with one another.
Pardon the "poop" picture, but it was too impressive not to share (and I was too lazy to delete the slideshow and start over). Those pants ended up in the garbage. They were too far gone. (My game name was "p00p ExpLOSiaN" in Henry's honor for the week.)
You'll notice a few shots with heads chopped off and obviously shot from a low angle. Emma is on her way to mastering Marla's camera. She can review pictures all by herself and just started snapping pictures last week. Daddy is so proud to have a budding shutterbug! She can't quite lift my camera yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it to her and buying myself another one ;)
@ 10:10 PM by TNorthcutt | Comments (2)
I have no idea where time goes, lately. I think the addition of a second child to your household does something funny to the space-time continuum.
I recall having plenty of free time and lots of energy to play game, read books and post pictures with Emma. Now I turn around after supper and it's 11:30 PM and time for bed. (I must admit, though, I have found time to play Knights of the Old Republic.)
There are a bunch of really cute pictures in this batch. See if you can spot Emma's version of the Baby Bjorn, Henry's ever-growing smiles, the bags under my and Marla's eyes and the effects a wired 2.8 year old has on a gift basket full of shredded paper padding.
@ 10:36 PM by TNorthcutt | Comments (1)
