Schierer Space

As promised I’ve posted the best of the Niagara Falls images. (Technically, they are still uploading to the gallery.)

Overall conclusion, misty air around the falls makes for pretty blah photography in general. My favorites out of this set are definitely the macro shots of the flowers. There are a few interesting angles thrown in from when I was able to snap a quick shot between attempts to quickly remove the water from the lens filters.

Also, I’m noticing that the crud on my imager is finally reaching intolerable levels. I’ve been avoiding buying another bottle of Eclipse because it’s such a ripoff to pay $9 shipping on an $9 2-ounce bottle of methanol (half of which will evaporate between uses). Unfortunately, methanol is considered a controlled substance from a shipping to random civilians point of view. Otherwise I could buy very high purity stuff directly from a chem supply house for a fraction of the unit cost.

No time to comment as I’ve already missed too much sleep tonight trying to get stuff wrapped up before the Dragon*Con trek.

No, I didn’t forget my Grandma’s birthday, this is just another set of pictures that have suffered from a busy summertime. I’ve finally gotten a chance to do some quick touch-ups and post these to the gallery.

There are, as always, a lot more pictures than I’ve posted, but I think these are the highlights. In general, the pictures didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The hall was a typical tile drop ceiling with sparse florescent lighting. This makes for high ISOs, slow shutter speeds and weird color casts.

Anyhow, we did a series of family shots of the various guests, so I’ll close with those.

So Nate unfortunately learned that wasps are ouchy today. We were out on the back porch and Nate was sitting on the chaise lounge. None of us realized that the yellow-jackets had started a nest underneath.

I was talking with my Dad and suddenly Nate started crying loudly and shrilly. I noticed the insects circling around him.

Ouch.

He was stung on his right forearm and the on his left elbow.

Double Ouch.

Grampa D is allergic, so we are monitoring closely, but so far just some local redness.

For the last month or so, Chris and I have been teaching Nate sign language as a way to help him communicate before he can really talk. We used the book Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, which I checked out of our local library to get started.

The sign language has been helping quite a bit, since his only consistent vocal word at this point is vacuum (yes, really, he says vacuum). He’s got a sign vocabulary of about 25 words at this point, and I think it would be higher if his dexterity was a little better.

Nate is very eager to try and learn the signs, and is always looking at my hands to see what I’m doing with them. He even surprised me one day; when he saw a picture of a baby, he started making the sign for baby, which completely confused me because that isn’t a sign I taught him. That sign he only sees on his sign language video.

As of yesterday though, a problem has developed. We figured it was going to happen sooner or later, but I was hoping it was going to be much, much later. Nate has started making up his own signs. I have no idea what they mean. I’ve been trying to figure out the context for the sign (where we are, what we’re doing), but I have yet to notice any patterns.

For the record, here is a list of the signs Nate knows at this point:
more, all done, eat/drink, mom/dad, cat, dog, fish, frog, book, light, hi/bye, baby, ball, swing, hot, cold, milk, nurse, bath, spider, rain, butterfly, hat, help, please, thank-you, and sleep.

Yes, as of this weekend Nate has decided he doesn’t need to hold our hands to walk anymore. We knew it was going to happen any time… check out the video (about 6MB)…

The cats are so in trouble now.

We took Nate to the beach on Friday. This wasn’t his first trip to the beach, but the first time the weather was horrible and he was so small we didn’t get him near the water.

This time he played everywhere:

the dry soft sand…

the wet smooshy sand…

splashing at the thin edges of the waves…

watching the waves come in…

and wading in “deep”.

All of which culminated in some fantastic Daddy assisted body surfing.

More trip pics in the gallery.

At the Davis’ camp near Unity, ME, I found this beautiful moth. It was quite docile as you can see.

I believe it is a female Polyphemus Moth – Antheraea polyphemus (Hodges # 7757). BugGuide Moth Photographers Group The male has much larger (furrier) antenna.

Nate also played in the ocean, but I’ll want to write more on that later.

Additional vacation pictures are on the gallery.

Now that a full year has gone by, it is time to review our photographic growth chart…

We had lots of family and friends at the house to celebrate Nathan’s first birthday yesterday. The house is quiet again now (or at least as quiet as normal) so I have time to put up some pictures.

So just a few minutes ago I stopped Nate from spreading Cheerios all over the dining room. A moment later I realized that I had one stuck to the bottom of my sock. I pulled it off and without thinking… I ate it.

I mentioned this to K and she said: “Welcome to parenthood.”