Josh's First Haircut

Josh has been growing quite a head of hair for a while. For some reason the top is growing way longer than the sides and the back, meaning that about the only hairstyle that works on the kid is a mohawk. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the top of his head was the only part spared from his helmet, or maybe its just his anatomy. Either way, I've been begging Jill to let me trim his hair with the clippers for a few weeks now to at least even his hair out. She was insistent that his hair be cut by a professional, but tonight while our friends Jen, Derek, and kids were over, she was somehow convinced to let me do it with Jen supervising. Here is the before picture so you can get an idea of how long his hair was. Some of the strands actually made it almost to his eyes:
The beginning of the haircut:

He really handled it well despite the horrible faces:

And the final result:

Needless to say, I'm considering a career change to barber. Thanks to Derek for reluctantly taking the pictures so we could document this great event.

Jill and Josh

Here is a picture I took on Christmas Eve of Josh and Jill. I love this picture and the smiles on both of their faces. Maybe they're just happy that Emma is napping...

Christmas 2009

My wife beat me to the punch on posting about our Christmas festivities, so instead of repeating everything that she posted, I will just link to it for anyone who didn't get a chance to read it. Click Here

Long Time

Its been quite a while since I've posted anything on here. In fact, the other night Jill asked me, "Have you given up on your blog?" The simple fact is that life has been a little hectic these last few months. Work keeps me busy and when I'm not there, the kids need attending to. The camera hasn't been making its way out very much either lately, so there haven't been tons of pictures to post.

So let's wrap the last couple of months into one blog post. There are a few pictures below to show some of the highlights...

Halloween came and went quickly. We spent the evening at my boss's house for a party and were back home in time for the kids to go around the block for a little trick-or-treating. The whole time that Halloween was approaching, I was secretly planning (and stressing about) Jill's surprise 30th birthday party. It was quite a surprise for her and I ended up running around doing so much that I didn't even take my camera out of the bag. Next up was Thanksgiving, which included an early one with my family and a Black Friday Thanksgiving with Jill's family. The first week in December included Josh's surgery and me throwing out my back as a result of holding him for several days straight. Fast forward two weeks, Josh is doing great and we're in the present. More than two months since my last post on here and less than a week from Christmas. Where does time go???

And now for the pictures. As a disclaimer-these may look a little off in color and that's due to the fact that I haven't posted pictures on here that I literally forgot the format that I normally used. It's 10:30 PM and I'm not in the mood to go re-format them, so these will do for now:

The first two are from when Josh was first starting to sit up independently. At least I was mindful enough to get out the camera and capture some pictures of the time. I swear he cries from time to time, but the kid honestly is as happy as can be most of the time.



And then there's Emma... I took this picture right after she got her trampoline for her birthday. I wanted to get some pictures of her on it and she obviously didn't feel like posing.


This one is from a couple of weeks ago right after Josh had his surgery. We had the Natzke kids over and someone was coming to buy our couches (0verturned in the top left). For some reason I felt the need to capture the chaos of the moment. This is what five kids in one space looks like.


This is from Black Friday at the Wiemann's. I took a bunch of family pictures which I'm not taking the time to post here. This is our family pic and I'm about 95% sure that this is the same one that went out with the Christmas cards this year. There were three that were almost identical.


So there you have it, the last 2.5 months in one post. I don't expect to go another span of that length before posting again, especially with Christmas next week. And now it's time for bed...

Costumes

Here's a sneak peek of Emma and Josh as Mickey and Minnie. It was our trial run to make sure the outfits were the right size. Hopefully we'll have a chance to get an official shoot before Halloween.

Josh's Week

Here are a few images of Josh from this last week. He has discovered his jumper and goes to town every time we put him in it. I think he would go for an hour if we let him. He's such a lovable kid. Even his bad days are full of smiles.

3rd Birthday

These are are a few images from Emma's third birthday party. We had a small get together for our families and Emma's godparents. Emma had a great time and she loved her gifts. It's so hard to believe that she's three already!

Teeth (Or Should I Say Tooth)

This morning Jill pointed out that Josh finally had a lower tooth starting to break through. I'll post some pictures once there's actually something to see. Josh is pretty shy about even letting us feel the darn thing at this point. He's pretty cute though as he sits around running his tongue over it. You can almost see him thinking "HEY, this is something new!!!"

Finally Off

It's official! We finally got to take the helmet off of Josh on Monday. He's been a trooper the whole time and it seems like he is happy to have it off. In addition to this achievement, he is getting pretty proficient at sitting up on his own. He's getting to be such a big boy (well, he's a VERY big boy...)

California in Film

Here are a few images I took with my film camera from our California trip last weekend. Jill posted a bunch of the digital images on Her Blog, so I figured I would post something different here. I've been trying to get the film camera out a little more and really challenge myself to take better pictures and make it count the first time. All of these images were from a single 36 exposure roll of film. We had a great time in Anza and loved spending time with Eric and Karen (as well as all of the family at the party).

Birthday Parties

Yesterday we had two birthday parties to go to. I didn't feel like carting around all of my camera gear, so I grabbed my film camera and a 50mm lens before we left. It's been quite a while since I've shot film, so I figured it would be a fun little experiment.

The first party we went to was Luca's first birthday party. Emma had some of her good friends there so she was well entertained. She was able to take a few swipes at the pinata before we had to take off for home to nap.

In the afternoon, we went to a party that started at a gymnastics studio. This was Emma's first outing to a place like this, so she was a little taken aback at first. She really dug the bouncy floors and had a great time on the trampoline. There was a huge pit full of foam blocks for the gymnasts to practice their flips into and I finally convinced Emma to get in there so I could get a picture. The light was very low in there so I wasn't really able to shoot all that much.

It was fun to shoot film again. It made me think a lot more about the shots I was taking as I only had 36 tries versus the basically unlimited capacity of digital. I was pretty happy with myself that the majority of the images were sharp and usable. I guess I will have to do this more often...

Rainy Morning

We've had a pretty disappointing monsoon season here this month. It only rained twice in the month of August here at our house and both of those times weren't too impressive. This morning we have gotten a little catch-up. It has been raining for most of the morning and I honestly can't remember the last time that it has rained this hard in the valley.

Despite the fact that the rain was coming down sideways, Emma was still determined to go play on her swing. That is, of course, until she stepped out into the rain and realized that she would be soaked in no time. She was content to sit on the patio looking longingly at her swingset for a few minutes before she decided it was too cold (80 degrees is apparently freezing in Arizona) and went back inside.

Iyla Rose Poetter

Here are a few pictures of Iyla from the day after she was born. Jill and I were only able to make it over to Lin and Dave's house for a little while since Emma was at home sick with her cousin watching her. Iyla is a tiny little thing, especially when you compare her to the size of Josh. I'm sure there will be many more pictures to come, but I wanted to get these ones up quick so that everyone had a chance to see my new niece.

Pedicure

As I've posted in the past, Emma is fascinated by makeup. She sits in the bathroom every morning while Jill is getting ready pretending that she's putting makeup on too. For some reason I've been designated as Emma's nail polisher and she's always proud to tell everyone that her daddy painted her toes and fingers. That backfired on me when Emma was showing them off to her doctor at Josh's 6 month checkup and he asked "when are you going to paint your daddy's toes?" So of course since Emma remembers everything, when I came home that night she begged me to paint my toes. I was able to hold her off for a day, but I finally had to give in. I'm still walking around with it on and needless to say I haven't stepped out of the house in flip flops in a few days...