The obvious photo for this would be of me and my husband I suppose, but instead I’m focusing on my daughter (I’m still not completely used to saying that – my daughter!) and her deep love for her squeaky giraffe.

Who knew a toy could inspire such devotion? Happily for us, it’s small enough that it generally lives in the diaper bag and only comes out when we’re at a restaurant or somewhere we need to keep H content and semi-quiet. She is so thrilled to see the giraffe that she virtually attacks it and proceeds to gnaw on it for ages. I had to pull it out of the diaper bag in order to photograph it, and then I had to make sure I got it back into the diaper bag so that we’d have it the next time we’re out-and-about.

Why it kind of makes me laugh is that this toy, like so many of them, is a hand-me-down from her brother. And he was pretty indifferent towards the giraffe. He gave it a few nibbles now and then, but he had none of the eyes-light-up-with-joy love for it that she does.

True love. Between a girl and her giraffe.

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

After the challenges I had with the self-portrait for week 4, and shadows for week 5, I was expecting week 6 & Drink Up! to be easier.

Except I underestimated the creativity-draining nature of exhaustion. I am really looking forward to seeing all the other participant’s shots, because I felt like my success in composing an interesting picture was at zero.

Maybe that’s an advantage to the deadline – it forced me to finally admit that, as sad as it is, this is the best I’ve got this week and I’ll try again next week. Otherwise I might beat my head against this brick wall forever trying to force something interesting to come to mind. And I doubt that would be super effective anyway.

But, the deeper meaning behind this photo is that, in just a couple of hours (after I hit the “publish” button), we are supposed to close on our old house. As in, it will be sold and no longer our responsibility. As in no more extra mortgage payment. No more utility bills on a vacant house.

If that’s not worth celebrating with a beverage I’m not sure what is.

So, cheers to us for being a one-house family again. What a relief!

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

In honor of Groundhog’s Day, this week’s p52 theme is “Shadows.”

This is probably not news to anyone, but it’s awfully hard to photograph shadows when it’s cloudy and grey all day long. Indiana winters are kicking my tail, photographically speaking.

I don’t even have any cool lights in the house that cast interesting shadows.

But if I tackled a self-portrait (well, I attempted one at least), I can certain take a photograph of some sort of shadow.

I was surprised how difficult it was to take a photograph of shadows. With the flash, it destroyed any shadows. Without the flash, I struggled to get a focused shot. And of course it was all done with my favorite baby trying to help.

This ended up being my favorite shot – a view of my upstairs hallway with the baby looking down the hall at the shadows and light spilling from the open doorways.

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

This is the week I’ve been dreading as I looked ahead at the planned themes.

Take a picture of myself? And share it? Um, maybe I can skip this week?

But I don’t want to skip a week just because of my own fears and hangups.

So, hello world. Hi, my name is Sheila, and I’m camera-phobic.

Except I don’t know how to get a good picture of myself. If I take a picture in a mirror the flash is all that’s visible. It’s been too gloomy here all week with lots of rain and even snow, so there hasn’t been enough natural light + overhead light to get a focused & visible picture without a flash.

For the first time ever I tried using my camera’s timer. I just never could manage to get it to focus on where I’d be once I was in front of it. I took dozens of shots, and none of them worked.

This is the best of the bunch:

Yeah, unfocused, missing the top of my head, and weird claw-hands to boot.

As I played with the camera I did get a picture of baby girl’s hand in mine:

And despite the 50+ disappointing shots, I’m still happy that I worked at it. Because in the midst of the trial-and-mostly-error, I got this shot:

And if I want to stretch the concept of a self-portrait, she does look extraordinarily like I did as a baby. She just has more hair than I did.

Anyone have any advice on how to accomplish a good self-portrait?

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

In case you can’t guess how the picture ties to the theme “I Dreamed a Dream,” it took us a long time to get pregnant. As in years and years. As in long enough to wonder if it would ever happen, or if that was a dream of ours that would never come true.

And then we were overjoyed when we were blessed with our son. And then we were overjoyed and astonished when we were blessed with our daughter. Astonished because after the struggles to get pregnant with our first, the second happened so easily and quickly.

We’d still like more, so it’s still a dream for me to have another newborn to dress in the duckie onesie and swaddle in the blankets.

What’s your dream?

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

Homemade eclairs might not be an obvious choice for a “Made with Love” theme, but they absolutely say made with love to me.

You see, I don’t generally like cake. I’ll eat it if the alternative is to seem rude (try turning down birthday cake for anything less than an allergy or super strict diet; you look like a jerk), but almost never choose to make it or eat it. Well, I do make exceptions for carrot cakes that are promised to be loaded with coconut and cream cheese frosting, but that is very much the exception.

What does this have to do with eclairs? My mother allowed me to pick my birthday dessert, and I would choose her eclairs over any cake. They’re not difficult to make, but they are somewhat time consuming, but my mom would make them for me because that’s what I wanted.

If that’s not made with love, I don’t know what is.

I made them myself this past weekend for the first time, so I could photograph them. Later that day I called my mom to tell her I was thinking of her when I made them.

Thanks mom.

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

Darcy at my3boybarians is hosting a weekly photography assignment for 2012 and I’m going to participate,* despite my very very amateur photography skills.

I’ve been struggling with this assignment in every way imaginable. I had several ideas of what to photograph, but when it came to actually taking one I had to work with what I had easily available during what was supposed to be naptime.

One of my biggest reasons for taking part in the p52 project is because of my struggles with lighting. My house has pretty terrible natural light in most of the rooms, at least for picture taking purposes. I end up using my camera’s flash almost all the time, because I don’t have a tripod and the kids don’t hold still enough for me to manage a make-shift tripod.

The books however did allow me to steady my camera on a box while shooting so no flash was needed. I am sure there are some other adjustments I can make with my camera that might help me get better pictures. I got a light scoop for Christmas, but haven’t figured out how to boost my flash to have it work properly.

I also had issues with somehow I deleted every one of the shots I took, and was left only with one I’d cropped slightly and added a watermark. I have *never* before deleted my pictures accidentally, and still have no idea what I did to empty the entire folder of originals. I’m just glad I didn’t do that with pictures of my kids or anything! If I had to delete a folder of originals, pictures of a stack of books that I could recreate fairly easily is a good choice. It’s just somewhat terrifying to me that I don’t know what I did, so I’m not sure how to avoid it in the future. I’ll just chalk it up to working too late at night when I was tired and try not to do that again!

My other struggles with this assignment have been getting the picture to show up in the post! I have no idea why, because I’ve added other pictures plenty of times, but this one would.not.cooperate. I finally had to go to my long-neglected Flickr account and use it to get the picture to show.

For more p52 pictures, visit my3boybarians.

*I’m going to participate for the first 4 or 5 weeks, and then reevaluate. So far the project has not been even the slightest bit of fun, and while I do want to improve, I also don’t want to spend my limited available time on it unless I’m getting at least some enjoyment from it.