Five Months

At five months, you are starting to become very playful and interactive.

Gung Gung and Po Po were leaving the morning of your 5-month birthday, after a short visit.  They love to take cell phone pictures of you!

Your UltraSaucer is your favorite place to pass the time.

Ashley at two weeks

In continuing to go through the photos on our hard drive, I came across a little photo shoot that Nancy did of Ashley right at two weeks of age.

Her eyes hadn't really turned brown yet.

Taking off her clothes for this shoot really woke her up, but 18 minutes later she was sound asleep.

Grandma knit this hat for her.  A little too big at the time!

Taking apart a Medela Pump in Style

There is a link on your right to a great post from the user "Robb" on Democratic Underground, showing how to disassemble and sterilize a Medela Pump in Style.  Well, as I was going through old photos tonight I came across a few of Nancy following the instructions in that post!  This was back on April 26th-- yes, Nancy was taking apart and re-assembling this thing despite having a week-and-a-half-old baby at home-- and I'm happy to report that the used pump we bought is still functioning well.

Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens

Most of the photos of Ashley that we post are taken with a Nikon D5000 and a Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens.  (An exception is our trip to Maine-- those photos were taken with a little Canon point & shoot.)  We are beginner photographers, and a lot of our photos show this.  In particular, some of our posted photos are a little blurry as they were handheld shots at pretty slow shutter speeds (sometimes 1/10 or slower).  The Nikon 35mm is Nikon's cheapest fast lens that has a built-in autofocus motor, and does give us pretty sharp results if we are willing to let our ISO creep up a little in low light.

I've been going through some old photos tonight, and I found a bunch that I took the day before Ashley was born.  I had been playing with the camera, trying to learn how to use it properly, in preparation for the big day.  A series of photos at different f-stops shows that the lens is pretty soft, though certainly usable, at f/1.8, but sharpens up nicely at f/2.8 and beyond.  More interestingly (for a beginner photographer) they illustrate the depth of field at 35mm from a few feet away at different f-stops.

f/1.8, 1/1000s (these are all handheld so please don't mistake these for a scientific test)

f/2.8, 1/500s

f/5.6, 1/125s

f/11, 1/40s

f/22, 1/13s

A couple of newborn photos

It's been a busy 21(!) weeks since Ashley was born.  I started going back through our photos of her tonight.  It is so hard to believe how small, and well, newborn she looked.

These two photos were taken on April 23rd, when Ashley was 8 days old:

She doesn't even fill up the whole breastfeeding pillow.

She would always wiggle at least one arm out of her swaddle, even as a little one.

Easily Entertained

Babies are fun!

Ashley likes...

Visiting other babies:

and looking out the window: