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.

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 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?

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.

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.

This is supposed to capture just how they look, good, bad or whatever.

This is how I feel I spent a lot of my day, looking at the back of Josie’s head while she’s running off to do something and oh yeah Celia’s there too.

Celia has been working on a few skills as of late. She’s still a big talker and has lots to say, I think we’ll have a loud house from now on, but she’s also working on grabbing and shaking things. She can often get what she wants now and has managed to stick her hand into our dinner a few times now too. Her favorite is to grab things and shove them into her mouth. She’s also clearly working on her sitting up muscles and standing. Josie was starting to sit independently at 4 months so I imagine Celia will be a fast learner  too. Here she demonstrates her grabbing of the spoon at the dinner table.

Of course there is nothing better than the toy that your sister has, even if it’s a baby gym.

Here’s a snow day photo of the four kids all together!

yowza’s, I knew Celia had grown but it looks like she’s up at 13.2 lbs according to our home scale at three months, that’s a lb and a half this month. Josie was 12 lbs at this time, someone’s growing a bit faster! No wonder those clothes look like they keep shrinking in the dryer. Good thing I’ve been working out.