Why Even A Proud Daddy Need Supervision

During the bedtime story telling one evening, Ryan had been playing quietly with a Fisher Price Noah's Ark. I was reading the story to Claire and Charlotte and John was beside us on our bedroom floor helping Ryan to stand. He had just called my attention to the fact that Ryan was almost standing by himself and as he let him go, Ryan reached for the ark. The poor kid hit his head on the Noah's Ark resulting in a scrape and more than a few tears.

I'm always urging John to watch Ryan (or the others when they were defenseless infants) on the couch beside him and he is always laughing at me that there is no danger. Both Claire and Charlotte had their share of falls. Claire told me urgently to "Look at Ryan" one day and his head was over the edge of the futon and the only thing keeping him on it were his shoulders (it looked like one of the trick riders you see on horseback). Again, John likes to make fun of me and my opinion is that a child should not fall until she / he is self propelling. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to reconcile myself to being right again.

Christmas Portraits

We have a friend Muirgen who kindly did a portrait session for us in early December. She was also doing family portraits for her other friends so unfortunately, she arrived rather late in the evening. The session lasted for about an hour and half and concluded shortly before 10:00 p.m. So you can imagine we had some tired, grumpy and uncooperative little people to work with. Thank you Muirgen for your patience and tolerance! It's amazing how good some of the pictures turned out - this is the sort of thing she had to work with.

And this ...



At the end of the session, Muirgen took a series of photos with Ryan in the basket. Ryan, who had been fractious and squirmy the whole time, just loved that basket. Even while Muirgen packed up all her gear, Ryan remained in the basket smiling away quietly for about a half hour. If we had only known earlier!


This wasn't part of the session, but I think it's worthy of consideration.