Sunday, April 12, 2009

new tricks and Easter pics

Hannah has a few new tricks up her sleeve. I hesitate to call them "tricks" because she's a little person and not a pet... but they are just little cute things she does that shows that she's learning ways to communicate with us and having fun. This week Kevin and Hannah put a word to asking for a head-butt. When he says the word "shaboomie" Hannah will knock her forehead against his forehead. It's really cute, and it makes her giggle. Tonight when I was putting a teary-eyed baby into her bed, I pulled the blanket over her head and said, "Where's Hannah?" and pulled it back and said "peek-a-boo!" and she started smiling. I did it again, and then she grabbed the blanket herself to cover her head and uncovered herself, initiating peek-a-boo on her own. Luckily Kevin was nearby and he got to see a couple rounds of this. We're going to have to start taking videos again. We haven't done that in a while as we've been photography-centric lately.

Little Miss has had a runny nose, productive cough, and a slight on and off fever since Wednesday. Kevin has spotted tooth number three coming in on top. She's been a grump and not quite herself. Saturday night she cried uncontrollably and I started to think something was really wrong, and considered an ER visit if we couldn't sort it out. She had Tylenol in her for pain and fever, she wasn't putting things in her mouth, and she had a BM the day before. We gave her glycerin to make her go just in case it was constipation, and that wasn't it. She wasn't hungry and didn't want another bottle. Clean diaper. Humm. Let's try Orajel on her gums where a tooth broke through. Five to ten minutes later the sobbing was over and she settled down. That must have been it. Darn owie toofer. Now Mama and Daddy have the creepy crud with the productive cough and stuffed up nose. Apparently this family likes to share our germs!

As Mama would be busy working this past weekend, we took her Easter photos on Thursday. It was a sunny and mild day for early April. Hannah cooperated for about five minutes before she got fussy and wanted to be held again.

Easter - full length
Easter laughs

Easter smiles
Easter smiles

precious pearl - with text
precious pearl

Easter Sepia - Sharp
recolored sepia

looking down

I changed her dress, and then all I could see through the viewfinder is the top of her head. Love those little toes. The "pick me up" fussing started seconds later. Poor baby. I hope you're feeling better soon.

17 comments:

  1. Great pictures, Sarah!! Darling little feet!

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  2. Precious little pumpkin.
    Happy easter,guys!

    Andrea

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  3. Okay Mommy and Daddy,
    I'm know that I'm the cutest baby you've ever seen but you are tryin my patience here! LOL...
    Even her sulky, head down I'm going to cry if you take another picture pose is adorable!

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  4. What a precious Easter dress! I would love to see more of that last dress--it looks awesome! Where did you get it?

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  5. Hey, Carmen! I had a gal on Etsy sew three dresses and a peasant shirt for Hannah. Here's the link to her site called Little Daisy Designs: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5819257 The items were VERY well made, but they took 7 weeks to arrive... a lot longer than I had anticipated. She promised them by Easter, and she did deliver.

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  6. Stunning dress for a stunning little girl!

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  7. oh, I can't wait to get my hands on miss Hannah!!! She is just so darling!! I just love my future daughter-in-law already!! I keep showing Andy her pictures and saying "Ching Ling"...over and over...and he just laughs! Not sure if he thinks I'm an idiot or he actually remembers HC!

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  8. beautiful pics and beautiful baby girl.
    photo editing question for ya - how do you get your depth of the field so precise? i'm about to pull my hair out. you must have a very steady hand or is there a trick with it?
    god bless,
    mel

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  9. Mel, Getting the right depth of field has to happen to the photo in-camera and there's not so much you can do about it later with editing. Kevin showed me charts to help me make sense of how wide a depth of field is depending on what aperture setting the camera is on and how many feet away from the subject I am. Here's a link: http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html With my 85mm lens, if I am only 5 feet away from your subject with a f/4 the depth of field is 0.15 feet wide (4.93-5.08 feet away), but if I am 10 feet away it ranges from 0.6 feet wide (9.7-10.3). 0.15 feet = 1.8 inches. Obviously, you're going to have to work VERY HARD to get the subject focused just right and understand what anything plus or minus your depth of field range is going to start to blur. Other thoughts... are you using auto focus? Are you controlling which point the camera is autofocusing on or are you letting the camera choose what to focus on? With my camera, I was having problems with auto focus when using a narrow depth of field because the camera would never pick out what I wanted to focus on. I then learned how to pick a focus point to auto focus on and it's working out much better. Someday when my daughter is older and would sit still for me for portraits, I'd put the focus completely on manual and get exactly what I want... but that doesn't work with Miss Squirmy right now. Most importantly... take lots of photos and use different settings in hopes that you end up with something that you like. When you import your files onto your computer, sort through them right away and just delete all of the ones that aren't just what you want. I'll often take 60 photos and end up with just 3 that work for me... mostly because of closed eyes, bad expressions, bad hair in the wind, focus problems, etc.

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  10. grazie signora!!! glad to hear i'm not the only "crazy one" that takes tons of pics and ends up to only like 1 or 2. as for the depths of the field - it is in my photo editing program. i saw that i can use it on my cam by adjusting the portrait/faces switch and it does blur out the background somewhat, but i usually give it another kick or two on my editing program. it drives me nuts so since my hands (with mouse) are shaking all around the picture....ugh.
    and yes/no i use autofocus mainly, but not all the time. this cam has unbelievable amounts of settings (which i'm still working through), but so far mainly auto, portrait,scenery,close-up. i don't think i ever have time to figure out all the other ones, lol. do you have a editing program as well or does your cam mainly do the work?
    anyhow, thanks again for the advice and YOU do a great job with your pics. you're amazing!!!

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  11. Your daughter is absolutely beautiful!

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  12. Mel, Camera does most of the work, and then I use Adobe Photoshop CS4 to try to make the best ones a little better.

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  13. That last dress- from what I can see of it with a cutie head int he way- is stunning! Where did you get it? We've got hand me downs from Lael for Dorothy, but I need to get *some* stuff to celebrate her arrival! :-)

    Happy first Easter with Mommy and Daddy, Hannah!

    Tisra

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  14. OMG Sarah, she is just GORGEOUS!!!! And you take some awesome pics!!!

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