Photography Class Homework #1

My friend, Amanda, e-mailed me a few weeks ago about an "Introduction to Digital Photography" class in July. The class meets just 4 times in July, on Tuesday evenings, from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. Since I've been trying to figure out how to use my new camera, I thought it was a great idea! I expected it to be something where the instructor would say, "Okay, if your subject is here, and the sun is here, then you should stand here to take your picture." I don't want to be a professional photographer, and I don't want to replace our photographer. I just want to be sure that I take decent candid shots of the kids.

Our first class was last Tuesday, July 7. For the first 30 minutes of the class, I was thinking that no one should be allowed to use a digital camera without taking a class (please be sure that you are storing your photos well -- I never knew how easy it was to lose digital photographs -- I can't imagine losing the entire pictorial record of our kids' first year). The next 30 minutes of the class I was thinking, "Hmmm. This is really technical. This is hard. I'm ready to move on to the next topic." About 2 hours in, I was thinking that I was in waaaaaaaay over my head. Not long after that my brain had shut down. I seriously think I would have been better off in a calculus class than in that photography class.

I now have a much greater appreciation for the automatic settings on my camera!!! I have decided that I am going to try my best in this class and do my homework, but if I never use the manual settings on my camera after the class, well at least I gave it a shot. My homework for this past week was to use an ISO of 200 and shoot some pictures outside. We were given some guidelines on what to use for our f-stops (I dont't know if that's even the proper terminology, but it makes sense to me), so the main thing I had to do was use the meter and adjust the shutter speed.

I took my homework pictures on Sunday morning at around 9:00 a.m. I was having a hard time using my auto focus (it kept focusing on the wrong thing), so I switched it to manual focus. I think that was my biggest mistake. I was surprised that the exposure in the photos wasn't that bad (on most of them), but once I saw the photos on the computer, I had lots of pictures that would have been good had they been focused properly. I got a mini-lesson on focus this past Tuesday, so hopefully that will help.

Anyway, for my homework I had to turn in 20 pictures, and these are the 20 I picked to turn in:






















Class this past Tuesday was not as hard as the first week. It was really a bit more like what I had expected the class to be. Next week's homework is going to be pretty hard though, I think. I'll post my homework next week. . . .

A Motto for Each Baby. . . .

Lori is one of the babies' NICU nurses. In fact, she had the babies the day after they were born, the first time I got to hold Henry. . . . She was an awesome nurse, and was really good about letting me know that I was the mom and that no one could replace the mom -- which is something I needed to know. As a first time mom, it was unbelievably hard to see my three babies in isolettes being cared for by nurses, and not knowing how to take care of them myself -- the wires, the beeps and noises, everything about a NICU is just not the way that it "should" be for a baby. It was very easy for me to feel as though I was failing my babies because there were strangers who could take better care of them than me at that time, but early on Lori made sure to keep me from feeling that way as much as possible.

We are so thrilled that Lori was able to be at the babies' first birthday party. Last week she made a post on my Facebook wall about the babies:

I have come up with a motto for each of the kids. Piper, "The Queen is not amused" Henry, "Sometimes life is as simple as just showing up" Rosemary, "Come let us adore me" I'm in love with them all. Three kids, same mom and dad, their own unique personalities.

If that doesn't describe my kids, I don't know what does. . . .

Kicked out of Early Intervention!!

Back in February, I was concerned about the babies' development. Upon the advice of another triplet mom in town, I called Early Intervention to come out and assess the babies' development. The babies had enough of a delay to qualify for the program, and we were notified that someone (Beth) would come out once a month to "play" with the babies and show us what we can do to encourage proper development. Beth also taught us some tricks of the trade. When Henry had a hard time starting to crawl, Beth suggested we put him in Hip Helpers (we called them "Super Shorts") for a few hours a day to help him get his knees underneath his body, and in no time he was crawling. When Rosemary refused to drink out of a straw, Beth brought over this contraption made with a Sally Beauty Supply hair color applicator and aquarium tubing, and within a week Rosemary was drinking out of "big girl" sippy cups with straws. Overall, the change that Early Intervention made in the babies was amazing: Piper's personality really came out, Rosemary very quickly caught up to Piper in development, and Henry went from screaming every time he was on his tummy to crawling in no time.

Despite the quick progress, I was a little surprised in June when Beth said that she would re-assess us the next month and that they were done. Beth and Jennifer (who first helped assess the babies back in February) came out this past Friday to re-assess the babies, and the findings are amazing. Our one year olds, who were born 10 weeks early, are developmentally caught up with their age. Caught up! There are still slight delays in communication for all three and in motor skills for Henry and Rosemary, but they are also AHEAD in other categories. We are thrilled with the babies' progress and extremely thankful to Beth and the wonderful state program that helped us out so much.

Here are the babies' scores from this past Friday:

Piper:
Social-Emotional - 13 months
Adaptive - 13 months
Cognitive - 12 months
Communication - 11 months (5% delay)
Motor - 12 months

Henry:
Social-Emotional - 14 months
Adaptive - 12 months
Cognitive - 13 months
Communication - 11 months (5% delay)
Motor - 11 months (5% delay)

Rosemary:
Social-Emotional - 13 months
Adaptive - 12 months
Cognitive - 12 months
Communication - 11 months (7% delay)
Motor - 11 months (3% delay)

This past Friday we also managed to get a graduation picture of the babies with Beth:



We all really hope that Beth will still come visit us when she can!

No More Pacis. . . .

"They" (whoever they are) say that babies should be off pacis by one year. About two weeks ago, we were talking about how we were going to have to break Henry of his paci habit. The girls never really took to a paci, unless they were taking Henry's paci for purely antagonistic purposes. Gary and I spent a while talking about what to do with Henry's paci, then pretty much decided that we would deal with it later (yeah, mature decision). Well, Henry must have overheard us talking because that night we handed him his paci and he threw it out of his crib. We gave it back to him, and again he threw it out. Because we're kind of slow, we gave it to him one more time and he threw it out of the crib again. So, we said, okay you don't get a paci tonight.

Well, he didn't seem to mind. He went right to sleep without fussing and woke up happy and well-rested the next morning. So, we went around the house and rounded up all the pacis we could find (I know we're going to be finding those darn things for years) and put them up. It's amazing. We have had almost no issue with getting rid of the pacis. . . .

I say almost.

I found Henry in the playroom the other day with this:



And what is that you say? Well, it's a puzzle piece, that happens to kind of resemble a paci. . . .



Oh well, what can you do?

Instilling a Strong Work Ethic in Our Children. . . .

Last weekend I had to do some work from home, 4th of July weekend or not. Luckily, Rosemary was around to help me with a lot of the research and writing portion of my project. . . .







Like me, she seems to have a habit of chewing on her pen/highlighter while she's working.

Going for a Walk with Mommy over the Long Weekend

This past week I was off work on Friday for the 4th of July holidays, so I took the babies for a nice, long walk, and we took a picture before we left:



I think the babies look particularly cute in their Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3 t-shirts that Aunt Cindy, Uncle Doug, and cousins Andrew and Tyler gave the babies for their birthday!