Zoe's New Tricks

Zoe is almost 4 months old now, and we're constantly amazed at all the fun things that she can do.  Not only does she sleep through the night, but she's genuinely happy to see us when she wakes up.

She's also pretty good at rolling around these days-- and she loves to move.  We never know what corner of the crib we'll find her in these days.

And, she's discovered mirrors... who's that good looking gal?

She spends her days eating, sleeping and playing, and she's pretty happy to do all three.

She's also much better at putting herself to sleep-- especially since she's discovered that delicious thumb.

And whenever she has trouble sleeping, Rocco is there to save the day.

Bath time has become quite fun-- she loves to splash around!

On occasion, she'll even lounge around with Mama.

What a life indeed!

Home, Home on the Range

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Table for two?

The wee Zoster is adapting nicely to being based in one city for a while.  There's almost a routine to her days -- sleep, eat, play, poop, sleep, repeat -- and she's now regularly sleeping through the night, which is wonderful. She's even earned herself a seat at (on?) the dinner table!

Hmm... What'll that taste like in an hour or two?

Zoe of course likes to keep a close eye on what MommaCara is eating, since she'll be eating the milk version of it in a few hours.  

Hard at work, as ever.

And the wee one has even taken to helping PapaTommy edit his papers.  Although, admittedly, she has a long way to go as an editor.  Her notes are mostly comprised of the following:

1.  Giggly Gurgles - which I'm guessing means she likes the argument. (Or just doesn't believe a word I'm saying...)
2. Cantankerous Crying - which I believe means to cut that particular word/paragraph/page.
3. Bellowing Burps - she's only given me one of these remarks as an editor, so I'm not sure what to make of it, but I think it means "Awesome job, point well made, now publish it already!"

Editor Zoe also occasionally nods off to sleep on the job, which I generally acknowledge as meaning that I need to simplify and add lightness to my argument.  So far I've been taking her notes to heart and she seems to think the papers are nearly up to her standards.

Needs more exclamation points.

The last great adventure (for now...)

We've been back in the 'burgh for over a week now, and we're long overdue posting pictures from the last leg of our journey. So, here's the short version of our adventure. After relaxing at the River, we packed up again and headed to Neversink to meet up with Grandma and Grandpa before our collective trip to Cape Cod. While in Neversink, Grandma and Zoe decided to wear the same outfit on the same day... what are the odds? Zoe was rather bashful about the incident...

Grandma also had fun introducing Zoe to some of Mama's old toys. As you can see, all that playing was simply exhausting.

After a few fun filled days at Grandma and Grandpa's house we all headed out to Cape Cod.  Zoe was skeptical of the beach at first...

But she quickly decided that the beach was a great place to relax, especially under the cool shade of an umbrella with her Papa...

...or on a blanket with her Mama.

Of course, Zoe was introduced to the Cape Cod crew, and they all amused her immensely.

And what would be a trip to Cape Cod without an adventure?  Here's Zoe wishing her parent's well before they head up in a Biplane.  This time she wasn't quite big enough to come along for the ride... maybe next time.

Zoe was just the right size, however, to enjoy a quiet walk on the beach.

What a great way to finish a trip.

Lifeguard Anyone?

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Okay, okay, we admit it -- we may have been a hair slow to update the blog lately.  That's because we've been really making the most of this whole "maternity leave" thing, but rest assured that we've been taking the requisite photos to prove it!  Here's a brief rundown....

One fantastic outing was over to the annual Rock for the River concert - without a doubt one of the best events of the summer.  Suffice it to say the quality of the music is top notch, and equaled only by the heaps of grassroots river lovin' that hangs in the air throughout the evening.  Kudos to everyone involved - including the babysitters who made it possible for us to sneak across the river to the concert!

 (I'm listening to Joe Purdy, Garrison Starr, and Joey Ryan as I type this, all of whom are veterans of the river.  I bet at least one of them is headed to town near you soon...  We can heartily recommend you check them out if you're looking for some good times and great tunes.  Same goes for Chris Pierce, Chris Seefried, Amber Rubarth, Eliza Moore, Matt DelVecchio, Adam Christgau, and of course the good Jay Nash who organizes the event each year.  Take our word for it, WOW.)

Of course there was plenty of boat time involved.  Actually - the past couple days have been dreadfully hot, so it's been all about the boat and repeated leaps into the river in order to maintain a reasonable body temperature.  This means that Zoe got to wear another life jacket - this time a snazzy red and black ordeal that only coincidentally (I think) matches Cara's suit/dress.  And then it was time to get in the drink:

There goes Cara, fearlessly jumping off the boat in order to save an errant fender.  Do note the similarly fearless puppy watching.  He does not take such aquatic endeavors lightly...

Rut row raggy...  Rocco's on the case!  Believe it or not, Cara cannot walk on water, despite her best efforts here.

Splish splash, she's in the bath!  And Rocco's hurtling through mid-air with apparent reckless abandon! We're well aware that he can jump darn near five feet vertically, but when it comes to horizontal leaps, we may well be talking double digits...  Particularly when there's a Cara to be saved!

Funny thing is, Cara generally doesn't need saving when she's in the water.  In fact, she made a tidy living saving other people from the water for a while...  Regardless, Rocco doesn't leave anything to chance, and insists upon saving us each and every time we get wet.  Interesting then, that his idea of "saving" us is really more like jumping on us and trying to climb on our head while we're treading water.  Not exactly my idea of a good lifeguard.

Zoe kept a keen watch on the helm.  Thankfully she's not quite as quick to leap out of the boat as the rest of us.  Yet.

Rocco, again on lifeguard duty...  This time he didn't even wait until I hit the water before he decided a rescue was necessary.  There's nothing quite like coming to the surface face-to-face with your favorite wet dog.

This amused wee Zoe Mae tremendously.  She tried to explain the whole wait-for-distress thing to Rocco, but he'd have none of it.  Silly dog.  At least one of the little ones in our family knows what's up. Chalk up another point for the humans.

Then again, upon firing up the old outboard, Zoe does tend to pass out straightaway.  I mean who can blame her?  As gorgeous sunny day on the water draws to a close, Zoe knows that she's well protected:  She'd kickin' it in a life jacket rated for thrice her weight, Momma's right next to her, Papa's at the wheel, and there's the most hair-triggered lifeguard in the business keeping watch.  Perfect time for a nap indeed.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and it's always nice when they come to a beautiful end.

A day without a good sunset is like a pub without beer.

fin.

The Camera

The first in a series of "The ..." posts, is our newest baby-essential item: Our new dSLR.  We're both researchers, so we read a fair bit about various SLR rigs, and here's the result:

It's a Pentax K-x. We chose it based on a zillion reviews, but the features that really sold us are:

1. Fantastic low-light shooting capabilities. Because it's not always sunny in paradise.
2. Super-duper fast burst speed (~5fps) coupled with a similarly speedy shutter speed (1/6000 sec.)   Because as the inimitable Ferris Bueller one said: "Life moves pretty fast.  If you son't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it."  
3. Wide ISO range (up to 6400 - again about the low-light shooting.)
4. HDR Capture. (Can shoot three simultaneous shots at different exposures and combine them.) Funky cool feature usually handled in post.
5. AA Batteries.  Lots of stuff runs on AA's, including this camera.  We've got lots of good rechargeable AAs.  The two can play together, so we don't need to lug around another charger and special batteries.
6. It shoots HOT pictures.  It's arguably the best entry-ish level SLR right now, and it puts up some pretty stiff competition to higher-end cameras when it comes to image quality.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, we humbly submit the first three photos shot when we arrived at the a few days ago.  (More will follow, I promise!)

And if you want to check the camera out yourself, they do indeed sell it at Amazon.  And it comes in various colors!  Dig it:

 

Do You Want To Making Photo?

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After a weekend shooting with our old SLR, we remembered just how fun photography can be!  So we took a cue from Cara's parents, and got a new camera to shoot the new baby with.  Voila - mucho incentive to take even more great photos to share with yinz.  Because, you know, we know how much everyone likes pictures!

And look: Zoe's holding her bottle up all on her own!  Such a hard little worker...

I believe this look is called the hairy eyeball.  It's a look that brilliant people don when faced with encroaching crochet giraffe.  A warning to keep your distance Mr. Giraffe, and don't you forget it. 

Headed out through the park.  The new camera has some funkalicious features, such as digital filters that let us pull the color out of certain parts of the photograph.  (Hence the color people and the b&w landscape.)

And here's little Zoe Mae with her favorite hat.  (We think she looks a bit like Grandpa P at the beach...)

And here's the captain hard at work late one night.  We fired up the old sewing machine to make a little big curtain to block some light out so that we can watch the important World Cup games on the big screen.  (And it's been a project that's been on the back burner for a long time, so this was a perfect excuse to get it done!)  After an hour at the well-oiled machine and a couple glasses of wine to oil the old man, the curtain looks absolutely fantastic acceptable.  Even better, it works great. 

We leave you in peace: Budda Baby Zoe in a rare zen moment.

Meet The New Intrepid World Traveller

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Will you look at that?  Wee Zoe Mae has a passport!  And how about that photo?  The US Dept of State is very explicit about how passport photos must be taken...  Right down to the exact mm measurements of head in the frame, white nondescript background in soft focus, no shadows, and eyes open.  Which is all well and good, but damn difficult when shooting a baby that's less than 2-weeks old!

We took over 300 shots, on various backgrounds, and with different light, all trying to get a good straightforward shot of Zoe, with her eyes open, and that meets the criteria.  Finally we nabbed the above photo with Zoe laying on one of Tommy's white t-shirts on the little table on our back porch, in the afternoon sunlight.  After all, passport photos aren't meant to be sexy, right?

Strange Days

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[DISCLAIMER:  The following photos err towards crazy, and your brain and eyes will hurt as they strain to make sense of them.  Just click on any photo for a larger view, which makes it a bit easier on the eyes.]

After that last cliffhanger, we figured that it'd be best to continue the story straightaway.  For those who don't recall the last post, here's the note we'd left off on:  Tommy had found his old film SLR, and it the photo count showed a partially exposed role of god-knows-what from their past.  Always très exciting to be sure.  That's the story, and here's what happened:

Here's an example picture.  You can clearly see us, circa 2002ish, climbing up to Slide Mountain in the Catskills.  However, you may have noticed that Tommy's chest is uncharacteristically, well, rocky.  And fluffy.  Wait a minute - that's Rocco!  Yes friends, the camera tricked us.  The frame-count said that we had about 20 pictures left, but it was sorely mistaken.  Somehow, some way, the film had been partially wound back in the camera.  

Now we have absolutely no idea how this could have happened, as it's not something that can happen accidentally on this camera.  Someone would've had to manually release the film catch, and then wind the film back -- by hand -- but not all the way, only about 15 frames or so, otherwise it would've been in the can.  And Patrick was 12,000 miles away when this happened!  Strange indeed.

 

Another example:  Viewed Cara-side-up, it's Cara eating an apple in the wilderness, Circa 2002.  Viewed tri-colour-up, it's a shot from the interior of our porch at the river, 2010.   If you really look closely, you might even be able to make out Rocco on the wicker chair in the corner - the intended subject of the latter frame.  (Admittedly, Tommy isn't consistent in his portrait SLR-holding: Sometimes it's trigger up, sometimes it's trigger down, as evidenced by the opposite orientation of these exposures.)  As always, the brighter image wins.

Now here's an interesting one for sure.  It's a beautiful vista of the Catskills.  With Rocco bravely leaping off of Giant Ledge Slide Mountain.  Pretty cool how the blue sky blends with the river water, and how the green rocky shallows are revealed in the shadow on Tommy's back, nearly merging with the greens of the pine tree in the background.  Neat.  

 Again with the reverse orientation:  Here's Cara swinging in the playground with Zoe strapped on (2010), and there's a corner of our kitchen in Prague (2003).  We're not ones to cry over spilled milk, so we aren't lamenting the losses of the original photos too much.  That said, these were the only photos that we had taken of our really nice penthouse apartment in Prague, so we are a tiny bit bummed that the photographic evidence of our previous life is now literally tainted by our current one! 

And here's proof positive that little Zoe's got momma on the mind!  More specifically, it's wee Zoe, sound asleep on our porch in Thousand Island Park (2010) dreaming about Cara in a chiffon dress on stage in Arthur Kopit's Chamber Music at Divadlo U Hasičů, Prague (2003.)   We like this one, it looks like Cara's either trying to get out of Zoe's head, or is reminding her of something.  Probably couldn't have gotten it framed that well if we tried.

                   Dear Film:

                            Thanks for keeping it real.  

                              

                                                        Love,

                                                         -Cara & Tommy (2002) 

                                                           and Rocco (2010)

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