This weekend we stopped by the beach on our way home in Hyannis. Lesson #1 – don’t let Josie stand in Jordi’s shade as her face won’t be exposed properly and there’s certainly no way to meter on her face and then back up as it was hard enough to get her to even look at me! There is a lot of light, so the background is exposed beautifully. I love the snow boots on the beach.

Lesson #2 – Tell Josie that it’s time to leave so that she will then run back to the beach and ignore me, having two seconds earlier been complaining about the wind and whining non-stop. Then I can take pictures by moving around her.

Doesn’t look like Celia inherited a dimple like me and Josie.

Today’s assignment was to get a photo of  them doing something they love and that is a passion. Gymnastics isn’t happening right now and Josie has new and different interests every day and so it’s hard to define her hobbies as of yet. But one fun overarching theme is her enjoying art projects and making a mess. She’s very much into the process at this point as opposed to the finished result, still I often have to get her to slow down and not just rush to be done. She can use a page of stickers in a minute flat.

Here’s she’s working on two valentine’s day crafts. The string is dipping in watered down glue and will be molded into the hearts and dry ideally into a heart shape. I think that project might fail unfortunately but we’ll see how it looks tomorrow when it dries. Also you can see the pile of crayons in the corner which we’ve torn all the paper off of (that took a long time and she kept at it!) and then melted into a silicone heart mold to make new multicolor crayons to give as gifts. It was a crafty afternoon. We didn’t feel like going to Costco, guess we’ll have to make that trip tomorrow morning instead.

One thing Josie will do occasionally upon being asked, and frequently without being asked, is entertain Celia. Of course she balks most of the time I ask her to do it when it’s convenient for me, but it’s still a joy to see them interacting when they do. Josie can just laugh at the dinner table and Celia will literally laugh out loud back in response. Very funny for all as Mommy tries to eat and hold a squirmy baby. Here Josie gives me the gift of a few moments with a happy baby by reading her the baby version of Go Dog Go.

This assignment was to photograph the generations of the family nearby. Celia was napping or fussy for the photos and so she didn’t join in. In the second photo you can see Josie enjoying control of the remote control, that often helps her get into taking the photos when she gets to keep pushing the button!

This assignment was  to photograph something that they love. While at times Josie is jealous of Celia (who wouldn’t be?) she is clearly enamored with her sister and is constantly thinking of her.

And while we haven’t gotten to see Zach as much this year as I’m not watching him once a week, Josie and Zach are still friends and are excited to see each other. Here’s Zach tackling Josie upon arriving at the hotel this weekend.

I’m trying to take some more difficult photos, like this one which was taken in very very low light, using a tripod. I tried to take a big overhead photo of the tiny baby in the big huge bed, Josie kept jiggling the chair my tripod was on, but I at least got one cute photo of Celia sleeping. She didn’t nap much on vacation. I’m thinking I might want to ask for a new lens at some point with a smaller f-stop to add to the one we’ve already got that goes beautifully from wide to zoom, but only goes down to 3.5. What would you recommend?

Today’s assignment was to photograph something that you love to hate about the person. Josie’s got a bit of a picking habit, that most small children have. I’m often reminding her to be gentle with her nose. Look can you feel the summer with all these bathing suit pictures? We saw some grass on the cape too!

The girls in their swimsuits while we got a reminder of summer this weekend on vacation on the cape.

They’re both wearing one of Josie’s favorite colors, pink. Not my most inspired, it was a busy travel day.

Josie has decided what she and Celia will be when they grow up. She also made some predictions for Jordi for when he ‘grows up again’ but then denies them once I put her on video. So I suppose she see’s Celia as a person who enjoys inflicting pain on children? or she just wants them to work together?

A little late posting this… but it’s a video of Celia speaking with my dad on Christmas Eve. Video quality is poor, but it’s mostly there for the sounds anyway, she makes lots of funny ones! The video is from my ipod touch because it’s quick and easy, so you can expect to see some more of those. I just need to download them off my ipod, this one’s over a month old already, now she’s much steadier.