Easter Preview

Today turned out to be a (relatively) pretty day here in Seattle so we took the opportunity to do a photo shoot in Michael's Easter outfit. Actually, there were two photo shoots, the first at a children's consignment shop in downtown Winslow, whose owner is also a photographer. She set up a little studio outside the shop and had real bunnies for kids to hold during their shoot. Michael sat for about five minutes with a bunny in his lap, and he was loving it! He would pet the bunny gently and then look at me and Emily with a huge smile on his face. We won't know how the pictures came out till we see the proofs, but he had a lot of smiles, so hopefully we'll have some keepers. Riding the wave of photographic mirth, we had our own photo shoot back at the cottage. Who knows what the weather will be like next weekend, so we thought we'd get some shots of him today in his special Easter shirt. Our plan was to get him with the tulips that are just blooming in the yard, but every time we set him down, he would start crawling into the flowers. This is one of the only shots I got before he took off. Plan B was to have him walk along this little wall. He stopped walking every now and then, and I'd try to get him to look at me.

I love the next picture; too bad it is a little blurry.

I don't know what he's holding in this next one, but I like to think he's giving of the Italian "what-do-you-want?" gesture.

Che vuoi?

This next one struck me as similar to the famous "Loneliest Job" picture of JFK, except Michael's job is not quite as lonely or stressful as the President.

Last is our favorite from the photo shoot: What a handsome little boy!

Mornings with Michael

Back to back posts! I'm a roll here; the end of the college basketball season has significantly cut down the time I waste on UNC message boards. But don't get used to this level of output. It will not be sustainable in the long term. This post is just to show what I encounter when I go in to get Michael first thing in the morning. He's usually standing up, but this morning I caught on him just before he stood up. He still wears his sleep sack which makes it a little tricky. Just seconds before this video, he went head first into the bars.
He usually wakes up in a good mood as he did this morning.

Another very cute thing that he does and which we're just getting around to documenting is to nod yes to questions. Here is a video I took with my camera this morning, which unfortunately doesn't have any sound. If it did, you would hear me asking Michael, "Do you love Dada?" (nod), "Do you love Mama?" (nod). We went through the entire family like this and he nodded for everyone!

Near the end of the video (at 1:05), when you see him smile widely, it's because I asked him if he loved his cousin Chandler! As soon as I said her name, he got so happy! Later in the morning we did the same routine with the video camera, so as soon as we learn how to download videos from the camera to the computer, we'll post it with the sound. In the meantime we are enjoying that fact that he has not yet learned to say no, but we know the day (...the year?...the years?) is coming when that's about all he'll be saying!