Bebe Gras

So I've had this image in my head for a while and haven't found time to track down another mom to pose for me and wanted to just do it, so I had Garvin take this picture of me on January 27th to commemorate 7 months of nursing Del:



The beads are actually from New Orlean's Mardi Gras 2005, 2nd hand from one of Garvin's coworkers that year that earned them "the old fashioned way". I made the mask.

If anyone wants to model for a reshoot of this image with their own baby, I'd be happy to oblige - wound up doing a lot of cropping and the lighting wasn't to my liking because I couldn't exactly set it up properly before the picture was taken... as it is I'm sitting on Liam's sidecar bed, that's the bedroom wall behind me, so not too shabby of a picture after some photoshopping ;) I would have liked to have had more of Del's legs in the shot - he's got such lovely chunky thighs, at least you can see one, but his chubby little feet are so sweet! Ah, well, here's a picture with his foot (as well as mine and Liam's), the title of this one is "Our Best Feet Forward"




Speaking of feet, John Edwards, the candidate I was supporting the most whole-heartedly, has stepped off the campaign trail. Obama was always a close second to me, rising more every time I heard him actually speak about issues (instead of just vague ideas like "hope" which, while I appreciate, I need something more concrete from a candidate). I'm now joining Liam in his support of Obama.

I keep wanting to post but not getting to it...

For the last week and a half or so I've been fibro-flaring and the kids extra demanding (probably because I'm not giving them enough positive attention - I've been a bit of a snappish momster for some points). My birthday happened, I've uploaded pictures of it (as well as November - the pictures website is actually up to date through this afternoon right now - the new profile picture here on Blogger was taken today). However I've already been interrupted 5 times in trying to get THIS blog post written so little wonder the long one I wanted to do for my birthday (which was Monday, it is now Friday) hasn't been done. Garvin just interrupted me for the 4th time this paragraph, it's not just the kids. I'd throw a pillow at his head RIGHT NOW if he wasn't carrying the baby. I'm feeling rather grumpy and behind on a lot of stuff including emails.

Anyway, what I HOPE to post about in the next 24-48 hours are my new year resolutions. I've decided it makes more sense to do those on my birthday instead of on some arbitrary date on the calendar (which January 1 is - *I* didn't set that date as important, did you?). I have several, they're not so much resolutions as goals for the year I am 31, and I've started on them even if I haven't been able to commit them to my freaking blog. Seeing as two of them directly relate to writing, this is rather ironic and ominous.

Time for another cup of coffee before I start screaming again. Both kids are pulling the "I'm not napping unless in physical contact with Mama" routine which does NOT work well with fibromyaglia trigger points. Oh, and Garvin just dropped the f-bomb over something in the other room, should probably find out why, but he's holding the baby and I can see the baby and the baby is not crying so I'm not feeling entirely concerned at the moment aside from wanting to wash his mouth out with soap since Liam is conscious and in earshot. *sigh*

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!