New Home

Welcome to my new home!  I was feeling a bit limited with blogger, so I am trying out wordpress.  Bear with me as I figure out the best features of my new site, but I am hoping it will be better.  And it was super easy to transfer over all my old posts.

But don’t worry, there will still be lots of cuteness here!

Merry Christmas!

Why I blog

As anyone who actually still looks at this blog knows, I have barely written anything in the last few months. So I began reflecting on why I blog…

Well, it started as a way to document my pregnancy and then realized it’s also a great way to keep family and friends (who I never have time to call on a regular basis) in the loop on Brody’s development as a baby. He was changing daily, so it was nice to document it.

Now…Brody has gotten a little older and while he is still growing and changing at a rapid pace, it’s not the same as the first year of his life. Some weeks, I don’t have as many things to write as others. Then there are the weeks that I have a ton to write, but don’t have the time to do it. Then when I find time, I forget some of the things I wanted to write about.

The other day I was browsing through older posts on my blog and looked at some pictures of Brody that don’t seem so long ago. Yet, he looks so different today than even a couple of months ago. And I realized that I’m missing out on documenting his first summer as a toddler. And it’s been a busy, adventurous summer!

So on that note, a preview of our 18 month professional photos (taken by McManigal Photography). Once again, she did a wonderful job capturing Brody and our family. These are only the first few that we’ve seen, but I expect the rest to be just as wonderful.

Family Photos

Back when Brody was around 6 weeks old, we did our first set of Family Photos. The 6 week ones were done at your typical portrait studio, 15 minutes of snapshots and then pressure to buy as many pictures as possible. I’m not really complaining because I loved the pictures they got of him and you can do it at a relatively low cost.

However, for his 6 month photos, we decided to go a different route. I came across a photographer via facebook who had done some adorable pictures of a 9 month-old girl who was the daughter of someone I volunteered in college with. I thought she did a really great job and contacted her about doing Brody’s pictures.

Check out her blog & facebook site:

Sarah Jayne Photography

http://sjaynephotography.blogspot.com/p/portfolio.html

I really loved the idea of doing outside pictures and Sarah had a great place to do them. We met her there (about 45 minutes away) on a very warm, mosquito-ey (I know that’s not a word), morning. Brody didn’t sleep as well as we would have hoped on the long car-ride to meet her. So of course these would be red flags for disaster. But our Brody? Nah, he’s so good at this stuff…or so I thought!

We started off on the grass, he didn’t seem to like the feel of that too much, so we moved him onto a blanket. Sarah had this hilarious Cookie Monster toy which honestly made me laugh out loud, yet Brody reacted like this:

Then of course I was a mean mommy and put this adorable hat on him (which Jason hates by the way), and I got looks like this.

So…off went the hat. And I still got a look that said, “Mom, I’m sitting in a bucket, c’mon!”

But Sarah was patient, and spent over an hour photographing him while Jason & I tried to get him to smile as much as possible. When he doesn’t have a camera in his face, he can’t stop giggling. But that morning, he definitely wasn’t in the mood.

All in all, she got a ton of great pictures along with some funny ones. My favorites are definitely the action shots, where not everyone is looking at the camera.

I’m very happy with the pictures and feel like our money was well spent. As part of her packages, we have the copyright release on the photos for printing as many as we want! And who wouldn’t want a million pictures of this adorable little guy?

Brody and his puppies

Before we became Brody’s parents, we were already parents of two adorable chocolate labs:

Cody and Ben

Cody is 5 years old and Ben is 6. We’ve had them for almost 3 years after my Dad raised them for the first few years. He did a great job training them, so we’ve had it easy for the most part. They instantly became part of our family and we weren’t sure how that was going to change with Brody on the way. So far it has been great.

Ben is naturally a protector. He follows me around the house and “stands guard.” He’s a pretty calm natured dog and would rather lay out in the grass than play catch. He’s already begun protecting Brody and will lay next to him while he’s sleeping.

Cody is playful and full of energy. He follows Jason around the house and begs him to play catch. He’s taken a very different approach to Brody than Ben has. Cody now spends a lot of time upstairs away from us and the baby. He has his “safe zone” in a bedroom that we have set aside as the dogs room. He lays on his dog bed most of the day. It may be jealousy but he doesn’t take it out on the baby. He just seems to have no real interest in Brody and is even a little scared of him. When we’re holding Brody or if he’s in a bouncer or car seat, Cody will approach him and smell him. When we put Brody at his level on the floor, he backs away like he’s scared of him. It will be very interesting when he starts crawling.

This picture is great because Cody is on the right and sort of not sure what to do with him. Ben is on the left and just watching him.

Since Ben is a much calmer dog, I think he will handle the toddler years much easier than Cody. Jason has already put Brody on Ben’s back and Ben just laid there. I think both dogs will be great when Brody starts crawling and walking, it will probably just take Cody a little more time. Brody handles the dogs very well. Ben constantly licks Brody and he never even flinches. He sleeps through dog barks and even if they wake him up, he’s rarely scared by the barking. We’ve also exposed him to friend’s dogs as well and he’s not phased at all. He got along great with our friend’s 4 lb Chihuahua and another friend’s German Shepherd. Not that he has much of a choice, but I think he’ll definitely grow to be a dog-lover, just as I am.

How could you not love this face?

Say Cheese!

Over the weekend we had our first professional photos taken as a family of three. Anyone who knows my husband knows he’s a huge Milwaukee Brewers fan, so it was only fitting to dress up in our Brewers gear for our picture. We’re not a very formal family, so the casual look of our Brewers T-shirts and a cute outfit for Brody was perfect.
Then we went on to take a bunch of pictures of Brody by himself. We had no idea how he would act during his modeling session, but he was perfect! I think we have a ham on our hands, he was not camera shy at all. The photographer was great and got the most smiles out of him in a 10 minute period than we ever have. He also showed great neck strength and held his head up well for many of the pictures. He still isn’t holding is head up completely on his own, but he’s getting better!

Of course with any photo session, there those pictures that didn’t quite turn out, but are hilarious!