Rookie Moms

Whitney and I had a great time the other week lugging our boys out to Marin County to visit the professional photographer for our free 8×10. Luckily, we turned the afternoon into a huge adventure and didn’t get too upset that the photos were not worth paying for. We learned what we already suspected: that sometimes Mommy is the best photographer because real photographers can be scary.

Hilary offers us some photo tips to take gorgeous, professional-looking pictures at home:

1. Know what you like. Look for baby photographers online. You can look at their sites and pick out photos that you like. We did this a bunch before we began photographing Kai as it helped us decide on what style of photos we liked best.
2. Take lots of photos. I easily take 100 photos a week of Kai doing most anything–sometimes in action, sometime just sleeping. It’s helped me narrow down which types of photos I like best.
3. Seize good lighting. Bright, cloudy days seem to have the best lighting. I try to avoid using a flash and just get good natural light.
4. Find a neutral background. Backgrounds that I have found to work great are nature (flowers, grass, bamboo) and blankets.
5. Get close. I enjoy close up photos of Kai’s face best. I try to take lots of these to capture his different expressions.
6. Support the baby. Kai is sitting infront of the bamboo. I am sitting in front of him holding him steady with my feet–the ground is concrete and I didn’t want to risk him falling down–and I’m leaning back a bit so I got more distance between us. You can actually see my reflection in his eyes in a few of the shots I took.
7. Crop. It’s amazing how much a photo can improve by cropping. Remove a parents hand or go for an interesting shape.

The photo of Kai with the bamboo worked out so well because Hilary knew exactly what photo she wanted before she went out to take it–a close-up of Kai’s face with bamboo in the background set up (to be cropped in a horizontal shape for her site’s banner). Also, the lighting was great that day.

Whitney has some other good ideas for artfully photographing a sleeping baby.

If you are inviting others to celebrate the big ONE with you, make some plans for it. Make it easy on yourself by delegating food and decorations to anyone who volunteers to help.

Since your baby won’t understand the event, traditional birthday party activities are completely optional. We let our guests know that the birthday boy would not be opening gifts in front of them and that his nap began promptly at 3:30 (whether or not guests were present).

My friend Christine honored this milestone by having dinner with her husband and hiring a babysitter.

This Cookie Magazine article gives more tips on planning a party to suit you (and hopefully junior too!).

I’m gonna file this under preschooler, because Julian and I had a good time making this adorable paper flag banner for his room, but I’ll also tag it with prenatal, because I made a similar flag banner for Scarlett’s room before she was born. I made the one for Scarlett out of fabric, though.

The picture here is of the results you get if you use the kit sold by the Paper Source. The ingredients for the kit are so basic, you can really just do it on your own. Then end result is a colorful string of flags that can be tacked up on a wall for a quick, festive decoration.

What you need:

1) enough scrapbooking paper, wrapping paper, or magazine pages from which to cut 15 flags.

2) enough string to accommodate 15 hanging flags.

3) a glue stick

Cut this shape out of your selected paper.

Bend over the top portion so that the sides line up with the sides of the bottom triangle. And please excuse my Photoshopping.

Apply glue to the touching parts of the paper.

Place the flap over your string and press together so that your flag is glued in place.

Repeat.

Last month, we were very lucky to get Courtney from Babyccino to write up a week in London. Now, I’m excited to tell you that we have another fun European city to explore: Amsterdam! Esther has two little ones almost the exact ages as my two… now if we could just schedule a playdate. She’s a busy Dutch stay-at-home mom with a ton of good ideas for rainy days and sunny days in her home city.

Monday
Go out for breakfast in the Bakkerswinkel. A basket of different sorts of bread, muffins, scones and croissants makes way to your table accompanied by a much needed coffee and orange juice. Fancy jams can be found on the table. Open from 7AM - what a wonderful way to start the week!

After, take your children to the Amstelpark, where there is a lovely playground and a little city farm. A ‘real train’ can take you around the park – a sure hit with your little ones.

Had enough of the park? Go to the Scheldestraat where you can find the great kids’ shoe store Meys & Co (open from 1PM onwards), with across the street Koter & Co where they sell a big selection of the cool Dutch kiddie brand Imps&Elfs (and more).

Before going back home, don’t forget to visit Italian delicatessen Feduzzi for a cappuccino and one of their mouth watering Panini. And don’t forget the babyccino for your little angel! You can pick up something for dinner here too – I promise you, the food is great, and prices are reasonable.

Tuesday
TunFun is an indoor playground that your children will LOVE. There are different soft play areas for different age groups, and there are also benches and a lounge area for the grown ups. A good place to start the day with a cup of coffee! (And a great place to go if it’s raining)!

Artis, the Zoo of Amsterdam, is not far from here. Because of the mix of historic, listed buildings, huge amounts of green and great variety of animals, this is truly a magnificent place to spend half a day.

In the unfortunate but not unthinkable case of bad weather, Artis provides many indoor activities for your children and yourself to enjoy: the aquarium, the greenhouses, reptile house, Planetarium and the new butterfly-garden.
The playgrounds and restaurants are very good, but if you feel like having lunch in a different environment, you can go to restaurant Plancius, across the street from Artis. It’s a good place to go with children (high chairs are available).
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