3 Years, 1 Month, 1 Week, and 2 Days with Two Treehuggers (take 3)

Well, we re-shot the pictures of Del (twice, actually - I didn't like the way the ones I took Monday afternoon came out so we redid it Tuesday afternoon with Liam running around... bet the daycare folks are just LOVING us now). Here's the final image (at least, I think it's the final image... ;) )... formatted for 8x10 printing so don't go trying to print it at 4x6 or it'll crop their heads off.
And for those trying to do a careful facial feature comparison, here's a close-up of their faces (note that Del is 9 days older than Liam was when his part of the picture was taken):

Yes, they look like brothers, but they are far from identical. Liam's mouth isn't nearly as wide as Del's, Del's eyes are also wider-spaced and lighter in color than Liam's, Del's ears stick out a bit more than Liam's (as do mine), their eyebrows are different, Del has a more pronounced chin whereas Liam's jawline is more rounded like his daddy's... both have fairly full lips like both of their parents (but shaped more like mine)... they MAY have the same nose shape when they grow up but that's hard to determine as there is much less nose shape variety among babies than there is among adults (Liz I believe will concede that fact?).

Garvin's baby pictures are all in the house, I'm going to ask my mom to bring mine over so I can scan them in and compare them to the way the boys look as babies. I do think Del resembles me more than Garvin from the few baby pictures of myself that I have. Liam's been "mini-Garvin" in appearance pretty much all along (but he's "mini-Ahmie" in personality). I'm suspecting Del is the reverse - looks more like mama but personality more like daddy, especially anytime we've been someplace where people Del's never met before want to hold him. Liam was always pretty happy with that idea, would happily coo if we were playing "pass the baby" before we even got our coats off. Del takes longer to warm up to people and "come out of his shell" (my sweet little turtle baby), if we try to let others hold him too soon he cries and if we wait a bit so he can warm up to them he will still glance around to reassure himself that mama is within a few feet every 30sec or so.

They're such wonderfully different little people!

Fun with toddler Signing

I've been more intentional in Signing with the kids since Del was born, especially since there is a hard-of-hearing baby at our church. So with lunch I was trying to get Liam to practice his signs for fruit. He had a pear (which he doesn't quite understand the distinction between a pear and an apple so I'm trying to help clarify that for him), so I Signed "PEAR" for him (left hand with the fingertips all touching and pointing upward, pull the fingers of the right hand from the base of the left's fingers and up toward the fingertips, indicating the shape of a pear).

Then he wanted an orange, which he couldn't remember the Sign for (you open and close your right hand in front of your chin). And then he was saying something about an Apple while Signing "candy" instead (Sign for "candy" is the index finger of your right hand poked into your right cheek and twisted, like you're drilling a hole in your tooth. Apple is Signed by making a fist with the thumb up along the side of the closed fingers - forming the ASL letter A - placing the thumb of that handshape near the outer side of your mouth and twisting a little, so it's a similar location and motion). I tried to correct his Sign by Signing and saying "you mean apple not candy, right?" And he said yes then tried to imitate the Sign for apple... by tapping the finger-side of the same handshape against his cheekbone several times.

And then he got very confused as Mama nearly fell over laughing.

That's the Sign for "menstruate".

Pretty sure his comprehension of anatomy isn't quite THAT advanced yet. Nor do I remember him learning that one on the Signing Time videos...

Poorly targeted Gmail marketing

Damn this pissed me off, you'll probably have to click the image to view it full-screen to see exactly why:
In case you still can't read it even on the larger view, the adbar (upper arrow) has an advertisment for HOOTER HIDERS... the email list I was marking messages as read in is a BREASTFEEDING ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION (of which I'm a founding member - this is a large part of what's been distracting me from blogging and most other online activities for the last 2 months - I've been working behind the scenes on FirstRight.org and designing the website... plus we had a serious hard drive crash that I'm still not completely ready to talk about - emotionally - quite yet).

ARG! *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* I really like Google generally *sigh*

Wonder if we can get sponsorship to get advertising for ourselves in Google (especially that specific location) when the word lactivist appears in emails... hmmm.

3 Years 1 Month 1 Week With 2 Treehuggers

Had to share, life's been crazy and as it is I'm typing this with a fussy Del in my arms....



That's Del on the left and Liam on the right (exactly one week younger when the picture was taken). Del's picture's not so good because it was taken with my cellphone camera, the Kodak isn't working for some reason (thought it was that our battery charger went fubar but we went and got "for digital cameras" alkaline batteries just to take the picture and it still won't turn on *sigh* testing a bit more with rechargables from a different charger before contacting Kodak - at least it's still under warranty but CRAP right at the holiday season is NOT when I'm most patient about this!).

People keep telling me how much the boys look alike. Neener neener, no they DON'T!

Oh, and behind Del is the new RE wing of our church (construction was completed just before he was concieved), behind Liam is the old RE wing of our church. I'm not sure if it's the same tree or not, there were two trees in front of the building before construction, one is now gone and I can't remember which one I took Liam's picture in front of 3 years ago.