A Fairly Fun Time
I love the fair. I love the little county fairs and the huge state fair. The fair offers people watching opportunities you won’t get anywhere else.
We took Abby to the State Fair in 2008 and she didn’t much like it. Everything scared her and she didn’t like the food. We were prepared for a similar experience this time. But just when you think you’ve got her figured out, she goes and does something new. She actually liked the fair. She rode the ferris wheel, the kiddie roller coaster and a bungee-jumping-trampoline-kinda deal – twice. I was pretty floored that she agreed to do any of those things. She also scarfed down a giant corn dog.
I’ve struggled with shooting good pictures at fairs even though they are full of bright lights and colorful stuff and great weirdo people. This time I was so enthralled with Abby having such a good time, I didn’t try very hard on the photo deal.
Good Old Golden Rule Days
Abby started prekindergarten today. Miss Selma’s doesn’t allow parents to get out of their cars, so I couldn’t get any first-day action shots. I had to settle for a session in the ghetto studio after I picked her up. (That mark on her arm is the remnants of a temporary pirate tattoo she got in Branson 10 days ago.) She was pretty shook up by having to change buildings and teachers and the fact that many of her classmates for the last 1.5 years were defecting for public pre-K. She didn’t go to sleep until about 12:30 a.m. the night before. But most of the kids in her class were also in her 2- and 3-year-old classes so she felt good about the whole thing. “I’m not anxious about pre-K anymore,” she said when I picked her up.
Strobist: SB-600 in shoot-through umbrella directly above and another SB-600 in a shoot-through umbrella propped up on the floor at her feet. SB-26 hair light in homemade snoot at camera left behind subject. I was going for the clam shell effect.
The Picture Of Health
Abby went in for 4-year check-up and service on Wednesday. She’s 42 inches tall and 37 pounds. Right where she should be. Blood pressure is good and reflexes work properly. The doctor wasn’t worried about her nosebleeds and gray tooth that resulted from crashing into a wall head-first about a month ago.
Happy Fathers Day
Classic Fathers Day. Abby made me the traditional breakfast in bed and then we went out to pick wild red plums to make some Uncle Slappy’s Plum Delicious Red Plum Jelly. It was hot. By the time we were through Abby and I were pouring water over our heads to cool us off enough to walk back to the car.
She’ll Never Be Three Again
We finally got around to having a proper birthday celebration for Abby. We had a little thing at the Jump Zone for her friends from school and then we had another little thing at home for all her grandparents and aunts. It looked like a birthday bomb went off in the living room.
What Just Happened?
Wasn’t it just yesterday that Abby was sleeping in this thing as a baby crib? When we moved into the new place we converted her bed from the toddler configuration to the full-on regular bed configuration. She’s going to be sleeping in her own place before we know it. She picked out the hideous bed clothes ensemble, by the way.
You Say It’s Your Birthday
Abby’s fourth birthday was Wednesday. We went to Buffalo Grill (Abby’s pick) with Aunts Jodie and Laney for a little birthday dinner.
Acting Debut
Abby’s school put on its end-of-the-year program last week. They practiced for about three months for thing and it went off with just a few hitches. It was Abby’s debut performance in front of an audience. All the rags gave her a good review.
Falling Water
It was pretty stormy in the state last weekend, so Abby, Gina and I took a trip on Sunday to check out Falling Water Falls in the Ozark National Forest between Ben Hur and Witts Springs. We also stopped by Six Finger Falls a few miles downstream. I wasn’t feeling very photographically inspired so I don’t have much to show. We had a good time, though. Abby caught a huge terrapin turtle and we saw a little snake, so she got her Bindi the Jungle Girl on a little bit.
Living On Branson Time
We stormed Branson a couple of weekends ago to spend time with Mimi and Pawpaw. Mimi got us another sweet suite at the resort where she works.
Soccer Is Kick
Abby had her first soccer practice on Saturday. It was like somebody dropped a cute bomb on that field.
It Snowed!
Little Rock’s first snow of any significance in 7 years (according to the news) happened this week. Abby was so excited she got dressed in record time, and all by herself to boot. She never does that on a school day.
Her first snowman.
“The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year”
After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas game plan) in anticipation of capturing the surprise and wonder on Abby’s face when she saw Santa’s bounty laid before her. But instead of letting her awaken to her own circadian rhythm, we woke her up, which resulted in her being groggy, confused and in a kinda cranky mood. She did show a little classic Christmas emotion when her jaw dropped upon seeing the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glass left from Santa’s late-night snack.
Santa Claus Is Watching You
Abby met Santa for the first time on Sunday. This is the first Christmas where she really knows what’s going on, Santa and presents and being good and the whole bit. She’s literally been bouncing off the walls. She’s hurt her knee and cracked her head and skinned her elbows.
She is notorious for not enjoying things normal kids really like. So keeping in mind that Santa as a concept is really weird and dudes dressed all in red from head to foot are scary, we coached her extensively before going to the mall. We told her there would be a long line and the whole thing was going to move fast. She’d have to get right up there and talk to Santa and smile when told to for the picture.
She went right up to him and got on his lap and told him what she wanted. And she at least looked toward the camera when we told her the picture was coming.
Christmas Trees And Pigs And Goats, Oh My!
What’s the one thing you don’t want to do when acquiring a Christmas tree? Drink the goat water. We figured we couldn’t put off getting a tree any longer, so we went to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Pig Racing Stadium on Sunday. Motley’s is chock full of holiday fun. There’s the petting zoo, the racing pigs, the shop full of Christmas-themed junk, the hayride and, of course, a field full of Christmas trees.
Yee-Haw!
Abby has come a long way since she first rode the springy horse two years ago. In the beginning, we had to put her up on the thing and tell her to hold on. The other day she just grabbed her cowboy hat, jumped up on there and started yelling “yee-haw!” Strobist info for the top pic: SB-600 in silver reflective umbrella at 1/2 power camera left and SB-26 fired into the ceiling for fill at probably 1/2 power. The bottom photo was lit with an SB-400 on the camera probably fired into the ceiling on auto an sunlight through a window on camera right.
For you photographers, the Today Show profiled the little town where my parents live. It’s home to the last lab processing the iconic Kodachrome slide film.
Straight A’s
Abby got her very first report card last week and, as you can see, she’s probably a genius – gifted and talented at the least. (If you’re having trouble reading the report card, click on it and you can see a bigger version.) She’s off the charts in everything, including eating lunch and going to the bathroom. Gina and I are ecstatic, as you might imagine. Of course, for all we know, every kid gets an A on everything, but we’ve decided to believe that Abby is in the top 1 percent of 3-year-olds in the city. We did have a conference with her teacher, and she said Abby is ahead of normal 3-year-olds in many areas. She can identify numbers 1 through 6, which most of the kids in the class can’t do, according to her teacher. And she knows all the main colors, which most of the kids in the class can’t do, either. Plus, (although her teacher didn’t say it) she’s clearly the cutest kid in the class, too. Brains and looks, she’s got the big two. One thing we don’t really know about is her athletic ability. I wonder if she can outrun all the kids in her class.
Sprung
About a month ago, we took the front off of Abby’s baby bed so she could finally be free to effect her own ingress and egress. We got tired of her laying in bed in the morning and yelling, “Mommy, Daddy! I’m ready!” It was especially bothersome on the weekends when we really didn’t feel like getting up to lift her out of bed. The sides of her bed are so high that she has never been able to climb over them. Abby has never been what you’d call a good sleeper. (For a long time she wasn’t what you’d call a sleeper at all.) We put off converting her bed because we just knew there’d be many long nights of putting her back into bed over and over. Of course, the opposite happened. She’s like one of those career prisoners who can’t function once they get out, so they commit more crimes so they can go back to jail. She hasn’t once gotten out of bed unless we’ve told her to. She still lays in there after she wakes up and yells “I’m reeeaaaaaady!”
Backtalk