Photo shoot

Photo shoot

Today I had a real photo shoot for Baby Turtle. We dressed her up, set up a backdrop, and used a homemade reflector to get the lighting right. I wanted to use ambient light, so I used my fast lens, but we needed a bit more light from the side, so I put aluminum foil on a big piece of cardboard to reflect the light coming in from the sliding door. The backdrop was a blanket hung from a hanger on the back of a chair. Mommy Turtle held our beautiful subject in a sitting position from behind the backdrop. All in all it was pretty effective, and I learned a lot that I can use in future photo shoots, say tomorrow.

Baby turtle

Baby turtle

Baby Turtle is getting huge! She started out at around the 33rd percentile for weight, and now is up to the 75th! At 7 weeks old, she's already getting too big for the 0-3 month clothes. In a week or two she will have gone through two entire wardrobes in only two months.

Needless to say, we're no longer buying the clothes that are the easiest to put on and take off. We're using what we have, even if it's not the most convenient, since we're only going to be using it for a few weeks.

Poop Stains

Poop Stains

For the inevitable poop stains that squirt out the back of the diaper, OxiClean is amazing. I dump the clothes in a bucket with some detergent and OxiClean in hot water, let it soak, then scrub it out. Often I can't even find the stains to scrub them, and I've only had one bad enough to require multiple soakings. I still remember that one. The explosion happened in my lap, and ended up covering almost all of poor Baby Turtle's back. It was gross, but powerful.

Overtired

Overtired

That could be Baby Turtle or me. She gets herself so worked up that she doesn't want to go to sleep. Luckily, we've found some tricks for getting her to calm down and sleep. I swaddle her and hold her sideways in my arms, so her tummy is against my tummy and her head is in the crook of my neck. Then I walk around rocking her while rain sounds play on the iPod. Usually she's sleepy in 5 seconds, but I hold her for a minute or two so she's comfortable, then put her to bed. She's often awake when I put her in her crib, but she's calm enough that she usually goes to sleep pretty quickly.

2 days later...

2 days later...

Two days after we got that fortune, it came true! The small lucky package, Baby Turtle, arrived on November 25th, 2009. She started her journey on the afternoon of November 24th, but finally introduced herself on the morning of the 25th. She's not the smallest package I've ever gotten, but she's definitely the luckiest.