Abe at THREE months + Gus pics

It's a little bit incredible how big this baby is getting. He's chubby and delicious. He goes to bed by 7:30 every night, and doesn't wake up until at least 4 or 5 most mornings (and then goes back to sleep after nursing). He almost never takes naps longer than half an hour or so. He loves books, and kicks his legs and squeals in delight when I read to him. He's just starting to grab toys and shake them around. He studies people he doesn't know well intently for a few seconds, then gives them giant grins. We're all pretty into him.

I'm having a harder and harder time picking out pictures as he gets old enough to cooperate with photo shoots a bit more. No crying pictures this month! It was cloudy, so I had a bit of trouble getting a really sharp focus on some of these.

This month's seal picture. He's almost as long as the seal now!

More tummy time pics: cross eyed and drooling--very attractive, no?

I waited until later in the day (when the sun is on the nursery side of the room) and switched to my 50mm fixed lens for these next ones. I've tried using that lens before, but haven't had any luck until today (I think every other picture of Abe posted here has been with the kit lens, oddly). But these I'm pretty pleased with, particularly the last one:

Someday I'll get him to smile for the camera. He's very serious about portraiture, apparently.

And it was Gus' month for pictures. He's kind of at that all teeth stage right now--with his grown-up front teeth in, but still little. I love his one side of his face freckles:

August's Very Late Birthday Party

Gus turned seven back in December. But he was also being Tiny Tim three times every weekend for most of December, and then there was Christmas, and then I was having a baby....and, what, with one thing and another, we didn't get around to having his party until today.

He decided he wanted to have his party at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. This worked out well because I didn't have to do much of anything except show up (with a gluten free cookie cake, since the one they provide is, of course, gluteny). We wound up with fairly warm weather, and the predicted rain held off until just after the party.

We went with the "Wildlife Wonders" plan because it sounded more inside than the "Outdoor Explorer" plan, and we had no idea, when we booked it, how the weather would be. Gus got to pick two animals for the animal encounter part of the party, and he chose the opossum and a snake.

The opossum came out first. We were told that she likes doing birthday parties. It was sort of hard to tell. We learned that an opossum can have older babies hanging out on her back, another litter of babies in her pouch, AND be pregnant all at the same time. And then we were all glad not to be opossums.

Next up was the snake--an albino corn snake. We have no idea if the corn snake likes doing parties or not. They don't even know if it's male or female.

Then we all went on a hike by the river and learned even more about nature:

Here they're learning about watersheds. Their fingers are mountains:

The younger boys kept doing this, which was very cute, so I tried to get a good picture. But they were moving and so was I, and there wasn't a lot of light, so this was the best I could do:

Looks like I shrunk it down enough that it's not so super blurry.

The cookie cake that Gus couldn't eat was very cute:

And he says he had a great party, so I guess it was worth the wait. And now he only has to wait 10 months until his NEXT birthday party (I can't get behind again next year, now that I also have a kid with a January birthday!)