General Update and Blabbery

I haven't been able to blog as much as I'd like to lately. Having 3 kids keeps me pretty busy! But we are making fun memories and enjoying our "party of five". This post will be a general update on our family, and if I start to ramble on, well just forgive me, okay?

Let me start off with this: I have a new camera. It's a Canon Powershot S2 IS. I haven't learned all its tricks so some of my pictures are coming out dark or blurry. But I'm trying to figure it out! I'm taking lots and lots of pictures so I can learn all about the camera.

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Now on to the fun stuff!

Sunday was a significant day as both of my boys celebrated their "birthdays". Caleb turned 2 1/2 and Stellan turned 2 months! Stellan weighs half of what Caleb weighs! Crazy! Caleb is hovering around 29 to 30 pounds and Stellan weighed 14 1/2 pounds at his appointment this morning.

Stellan's latest accomplishment is drinking one ounce from a bottle! My ultimate goal is for him to be able to drink a full feeding from a bottle so I will be able to leave him for a few hours at a time. I have an opportunity to do something I've wanted to do so badly (more on that later) and I will need to be able to leave Stellan with Daddy for a few hours. So anyway. We are making progress towards that and that makes me happy!

Stellan is a really good sleeper and has been from the beginning of his short little life. He has slept up to 6 hours straight during the night on several occasions. He did have a cold a few weeks ago that messed up his sleeping some. He would wake up several times a night coughing and gagging. But I'm glad to say that he's almost completely past that and has started sleeping well again.

He is the smiliest baby I have ever known. He has been smiling since he was born almost, and now he's started cooing. It's just precious.

He recently found his hands. Quite often now I see him like this, happily trying to suck on his knuckles:

Just his sweet little face:

My original plan was to give a full update on our family in one post. But I've been working on this post for 3 days now and I'm ready to publish it. So I will continue the updates in another post or two. Toodles!

Before & After

I dug into my old folders for this week's photo. This is a picture of my (older) son in the backyard of the house we lived in last year. I'm getting into texturing photos and I really like how nice and subtle this one is.

Before:After:I used my Kodak EasyShare Z740 and edited in Photoshop CS3.

Yay!

Daddy Turns 31!

So to celebrate, the boys all took a nap together! :)

We had a family picnic in the living room for dinner:
The two little boys that have stolen my heart:
Time for presents!

And then ice cream cake! Laura Anne was excited.

Helping Daddy blow out the candles:

Mmmm, yummy cake!

Don't you just love this photo? He's just so darn cute!

Three of the cutest firemen this world has ever known:

Hooray for birthdays!

Before & After

A friend sent me this awesome photo of a waterfall in (West?) Virginia. I couldn't resist playing with it in Photoshop. I did several different edits, but this one was my favorite, I think.

Before:

After:

I edited using Photoshop CS3. I cropped it, boosted the colors and added burned edges.

Visit Pixel Perfect to see more before and afters!