This was by far my most challenging shoot yet..   In preparation, I finally bought a real  backdrop stand, and (just to prove that they are the ultimate pack rats and really DO have everything) my parents actually had a roll of savage white background paper which saved me from having to order any!

I went to three different grocery stores to find a cake I deemed acceptable, most were too white, too pink, too cutesy – this one is far from perfect but I thought it came pretty close to a prototypical birthday cake.  And finally, in a moment of completely unrealistic optimism, I got him the “I’m one” birthday hat at party city thinking that maybe – JUST MAYBE he’d let me put it on his head and keep it there long enough to snap a picture. But you know Jasper..  after a few scary bouts of him pulling on the chin string so hard I was afraid when he let go it would snap back and really hurt him we ditched the hat!

mommy, did you actually think I'd WEAR this hat?

But the most challenging thing about the shoot was that Jasper wanted NOTHING to do with the cake!

Apparently his disdain for food extends even to the dessert variety. (If I can’t get him to eat sugar what hope can I have for real food??) We tried to entice him by letting him taste just the icing, but still no dice.  As a result, these pictures are a bit less cake smash than cake in the foreground Jasper in the background but hey -  I’ll take what I can get!

I’d like to get an 8×10 printed (like today) and display it at his party on Saturday but I can’t decide on my favorite.. can you take a look at the set on flickr and let me know which one you think I should order?  (They are numbered sequentially 1-11). Initially I thought between #2 and #3, but then I realized my true favorite is #6 but I had rejected it because my inner editor was upset at having chopped his foot out of the frame (I had no where to back up or move to the left!):

Thanks!

Oh, and one more thing I need your help with.. I am going to be a guest on the New Moms New Babies podcast!

I’m going to be talking about parenting in the age of facebook, twitter, blogging etc.  I’m set to talk with them tonight and in preparation I made a list of the things that I NEVER would have learned about parenting if it weren’t for the internet.  But I thought it would be fun to include some things from you guys!

What is the most useful piece of parenting information you ever learned on the internet and where did you learn it?? (I’ts ok, I don’t expect you to say here ;)  Or if you can’t think of any one thing, just let me know what your favorite internet source for parenting advice/information/tips is.

I’d be much obliged :)

Have a great start to your week..

Oh my, so much to post I don’t even know where to begin… First there are these Easter pictures of Jasper. There are so many that they need their own post.

Then, there is how much I am LOVING my new Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens and the story of why I got it (a will be a separate post).

And how I am also becoming an Adobe Lightroom 2.0 convert! All of these images were edited SOLELY in Lightroom (no photoshop) except one or two where I edited in Lightroom and then did a quick cloning out of the tag on the bunny ears in Photoshop and then brought it back into Lightroom.

For those of you that don’t know what the heck Lightroom is, don’t worry, neither did I until about 2 weeks ago. And even after I got the program I still didn’t really understand it until I watched all of the excellent tutorials on Adobe’s website. This also deserves it’s own post which I’ll do later.

Lastly, Jasper is REALLY military crawling now. It took him about two more days after the last video to kick it into high gear and get where he wants to go in half the time. That new video will also be a separate post.

I predict you’re going to be sick of hearing from me this week!
;)

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In a HIGHLY disturbing new development, my stretchmarks finally arrived.. and promptly took residence just around my belly button. They waited until 38.5 weeks, JUST when I thought I had evaded them altogether. SO not cool.

In other news, this afternoon I have my 39 week appointment. Stay tuned for the 39 week state of the uterus address tomorrow morning!