It was a gorgeous 50 degree February day here in Boston today, so I dragged Jordi outside from work for a few quick photos to enjoy the nice weather.

Josie is playing around with her modeling. I am playing around with white balance by kelvin and higher ISOs. It seems that I have some decent good light in my living room around 1pm.

This is Celia at Waldo Park, she keeps trying to throw herself off the structure. I’m not sad that we can’t play there much as it is winter, but today it was almost 60 degrees, so we played even though it was sopping. Josie asked why so many dogs had peed all over the park. Uhh that’s melted snow dear.

Look at all those teeth! Don’t notice that her eyes are out of focus because I had such shallow depth of field. But I don’t get many good views of her mouth like this!

Here’s Josie reading, in her cinderella dress. I’m liking my compositions lately peeking around door frames.

Another common theme for me lately has been figuring out how to do back lighting and getting dreamy hazy photos. I find they make me feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. I thankfully didn’t have to even ask for these poses, they just walk down the street like this now.

Yes they’re sorta yellow on purpose.

We haven’t had much snow this winter. So yesterday and today we played finally in it!

The day after Christmas and our last day in Florida we wanted to do some stuff together as a family. The girls were feeling a bit better although as I look back at the photos I can still see they’re pretty sick. We thought about the seaquarium, but Josie had already taken a nap by 9am and her mood wasn’t the best so we didn’t want to pay a couple hundred dollars to all get in and have her be miserable. So being the northerners that we are, we said, hey it’s 80 degrees! Let’s go to the beach! It was amenable with everyone and off we went to Miami Beach. The girls dug in right away, they needed no coaching on what to do and how to do it. Except for reminding Celia eventually that sand was not for eating. We even got a bit wet as the water was probably as warm as it ever gets in Boston. I saw a jellyfish but kept that to myself since I didn’t want Josie to freak out. Celia likes to do a lot of head stands these days and the beach was no exception, so they did some yoga (downward dog) together. Towards the end of the afternoon Javier buried Josie with a mermaid tail, and Celia with tiny castles. We all had a great time and it was a fun end to our trip in Miami. And some pictures…

Actually while Celia was digging in the sand like this picture, a group of people came walking up the beach with big cameras and stopped and started taking photos of her. I walked over and said ‘hey that’s my kid!’ and they walked on. Probably nothing but it brought out the mama bear instinct quickly.

Today was Celia’s first day of gymnastics class, we’re back with Arlington Recreation and the two girls have back to back classes. They’re really laid back and so Josie gets to mill about while Celia has her ‘class’, which given that she’s 1 is mostly a free for all. But they both liked it a lot and were both really tired by the end. Josie made a new friend with a girl who also has a little sister in the baby class. Josie’s friend Sophie is also in the big kid class with her.

We also came home and had a photoshoot later with one of Josie’s Christmas gifts. Somehow Josie learned to tie a knot, she says from her lacing cards. I guess tying her shoes is next. We won’t be having my mother teach her. I had to relearn how to tie my shoes from my dad later because her bows are always crooked.

Guess what I served for breakfast… Josie said

“Daddy, I’m going to have lots of energy at gymnastics today because I’m eating milk and cement.”

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Oatmeal of course! plus eggs and veggie sausage and cantelope

Today we made bagels which is something I’ve never done before. We eat a lot of them so I thought we’d try. Part whole-wheat, and some flavored ‘everything’, others flavored parmesan and a few plain. They were a lot of work. The dough was so stiff that they mixer couldn’t keep mixing it, it started to smoke. So I had to finish kneeding it by hand. Josie and my mom helped out some too with the kneeding to start with. Then they rise again and we boiled and baked them off. The recipe had us flip them, but mine seemed to have no problem cooking through and flipping the bagels made their tops look terrible so next time I may not do that. I’d definitely bake them on parchment next time too, rather than a lightly greased sheet then they’d stay a little more whole. But they are/were tasty. We ate a lot of them already.

Celia got her hands into it too by making the ‘worms’ with her best effort. Here’s Josie’s discussion of the bagels later.

Now that we’ve got this sweet camera and Josie’s gotten a little older and more careful with things, we’ve given her our old point and shoot camera to use for herself. It gives me some opportunities to discuss photography with her and gives her some chances to be the one on the other side of the camera. I’ll have to upload some of hers sometime, but I haven’t sorted through them yet. She wanted to do the classic taking a picture of someone taking a picture, picture and here’s mine when she showed me what she took. I love it when I can get her eyes to be not so dark!

This year Josie learned that some kids write a letter to Santa. Probably from one of the books from the library. This one was a great one for anyone interested in the history of Santa. I sat down with her to write it. She thought she needed to tell Santa where we lived so he could bring our stockings, thus the beginning of the note. Then I reminded her we’d be traveling. She suggested he could just leave them on the front porch and we’d get them when we get home. What patience! But I intended to bring our stockings with us so I suggested that maybe she could ask him to bring them to us in Florida. She agreed, but again didn’t know what to write. So I told her that kids usually asked Santa for things in their stocking. So you can see what she asked for below in the picture [click on it to make it bigger]. Remember Santa, above all, you should be polite.

She signed her name and wrote Santa on the envelope and I scanned it before she dropped it into the mailbox. I expect the post office gets a lot of mail like this at this time of year.

So that sent me onto the hunt for candy canes, a picture (of unspecified variety), and a thank you note, but I was sick, so I delegated. My mother in law bought some festive candy canes. Javier drew a cute picture of the north pole and Jordi wrote the thank you note. I think the picture was her favorite part of the stocking as she decided she wanted to recreate it herself on Christmas day as shown in the photo below.

Earlier in the month, after she had written the letter to Santa we had gone to the mall to buy my dad some pants (with him). It was a Thursday afternoon around 4 and so things were relatively quiet. I pointed out to Josie the Santa sitting and taking pictures from far away on the second floor. She was interested but wary. We bought the pants and then went down for a closer look. I asked Josie if she wanted to go say hi, she didn’t. But she wouldn’t walk away. Finally as we go to leave, she says she wants to say hi. Thankfully there is no line and I drag her through the maze to get in. We decline the pictures and I try to walk up to Santa with Josie, but she prefers a more comfortable 10 foot distance between them. My dad walks Celia up closer and at about 5 feet away she starts to cry and reach back for me. This seems to be a normal Santa reaction I find as I look at my friend’s pictures. Why do people do this again?

To continue, I tell Santa that Josie wrote him a letter and that gets her going a bit to actually walk up to a more comfortable 5 ft speaking distance. She tells him where to bring the stockings and he asks her what she wants for Christmas. And she is silent. Santa then starts making suggestions and I hope he notices the death stares I am giving him as I am not too thrilled with his ideas as they are largely plastic, big and loud. Then he offers a candy cane and Josie is won over enough to touch him and take the candy. He gives the Celia a candy despite me saying no thanks, which I then have to take away because she puts everything in her mouth. She continues to refuse to sit down but she just wants to stand there and stare pretty much. Thankfully no one is in line behind us for a bit, but we eventually drag her away.

I’m very curious about what she thinks of all this but she isn’t sharing. Later on, at Christmas, she tells cousin Sonya that there is one Santa that lives at the mall, and another at the north pole. So I ask her what the Santa at the mall does the rest of the time. ‘Oh he goes shopping and walks around.’ We’ll have to keep our eyes out for him if we ever go again.