A photo shoot for Sofie

Wanting to capture Sofia while she was tiny, I got in touch with Kelly. She is a local photographer who will travel to your home for the photo opportunities. She photographs in natural light and I have to say, I wasn't sure how well a photo shoot in our tiny home would be, it was very comfortable and she was able to create the environment she needed despite our new baby chaos. It was very comfortable having her in our home to take the photos of Sofia and even Hugo relaxed after a bit.

Originally Akis thought I was crazy to want to spend money on photos when we have a camera. His approach was that we can take these photos ourselves! However after seeing what Kelly was able to do, he was very pleased that I had insisted that we get the photographs done.

Kelly was very patient, and despite Sofie not being sleepy, she managed to get some fantastic shots of her. She even offered to come back for a second round of photos when Sofie just had enough on the first day.

Big thanks to Kelly for her efforts and patience ~ the feedback from folks who have seen the photos has been very positive, in fact it seems everyone loves the photos!

Here is a link to her site: http://www.ellephotographyvancouver.blogspot.com/
She is also on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/#!/ellephotography.vancouver
Here are some of the shots she got the first day. There were shots of Sofia on her own:




Some shots of the family:




We even tried to get Hugo in there ~ with some moderate success:


With Mom:




With Dad:


And here are some sneak peaks from the second round. She is pretty cute!

What we get up to...

Some days it would seem like we get up to a whole lot of nothing. I have the best of intentions and have the list of things to do, but some days I'm lucky if I get Hugo and Sofie out for a walk. Our days often involve some nap time which has the 3 of us curled up on the bed in some fashion.

And if we aren't on the bed, we are then hanging out in our next favourite spot ~ the couch. I think there are some serious dents in the cushions from my recent couch sitting. I can honestly say, I think I have spent more time on this couch in the past 6 weeks than I did during my whole pregnancy and that is a lot as this was my favourite napping place.

Sofia ~ she spends a lot of time hanging out in her pillow. It seems to be a good spot for her to check things out and also helps when she is gassy.

And our buddy Hugo ~ who keeps us company. He has been really great and is still very loyal to me. He gets up with me, regardless of the time, when I feed Sofie and will sit with me in the livingroom until I put her back to bed. He then comes back into the bedroom and puts himself to bed in his crate. He does sometimes get a bit jealous and will put his toy bone on my lap while I'm feeding as if to say, 'pay attention to me too'.

Akis has been taking videos of Sofia ~ most of them are her in a resting state. Although he does like to poke her to see what she will do when she wakes up.

Auntie Krista comes to visit

Krista graciously took a weekend after getting back to work to come out to visit us all and make sure that things were going well. She arrived very late on Friday evening ~ 11:30 our time ~ which means it was crazy late for her given she is usually in bed by 9pm!

With her arrival she did bring out some more goodies for Sofia ~ even though she had already sent a box of clothes, blankets and goodies out for us. Akis was most impressed with the arrival of the Baby Bjorn and has been enjoying walking with Sofia. I think he still finds it a bit surreal that he is walking and carrying his daughter.

As we got up on Saturday, Krista offered to take Hugo out for his morning duties. While he wasn't quite sure what to make of this person who sounds a lot like mom, he did go with her and by the end of the visit was pretty OK with her being around. Krista and I also managed to get into the garden for a bit ~ while Krista did most of the cleaning up, we did end up with a bucket load of tomatoes, some potatoes and onions. Akis was surprised to hear that all of this came from our garden! Shockingly enough, the only photo I have of her during the whole weekend was while she was digging in the garden. You can tell I'm a bit off my game as I am usually the photo capturer.

I also had a bit of a reprieve as Krista and I headed to Trout Lake to the market on Saturday morning. We were without Sofia and Hugo and it was the first time being out without 'responsibilities'. Akis did well on his own and didn't have to call the cell phone he made me carry.

Krista kept looking for things to help out with and was great at finding the small niggly things to get done. Cleaning up the garden, helping to run errands like getting a rain cover for the stroller ~ an essential in Vancouver, getting screws for the crib and making sure it was set up before she left. The most impressive to Akis as the purchase and installation of the dimmer switches ~ gosh, the Lavery gals can be handy sometimes. She even cleaned our bathroom! Now you can't beat that!

It was great to see her and it makes you realize just how far family is when they travel out to see you. It would be nice to be closer, so that we can see each other more frequently, but for now, we are where we are. We do look forward though to the visit from Grandpapa Jim. He is booked to come and visit in November for 5 days. It will be great to see him! For now, we have Skype and are making use of that Video Conference feature.

So a big shout out to Auntie Krista for taking time off to come and visit with us. We love you and are really glad you came!

More Sofia

Well week 2 wasn't a whole lot different than week 1, although you do get into a bit of a routine and you also understand a bit more about your new one. I have started to figure out the sounds when Sofia is gassy, when she is hungry. Dad has figured out how best to clean her bum, although he still insists on trying to change her on the couch without the change pad. I'm waiting for disaster to strike. We have been trying to take lots of photos knowing she won't stay tiny for long ~ we keep thinking back to Hugo and how quickly he grew ~ and realized that we need to capture the moments while we can.

New things for the week ~ had our first bath, went out to Steve and Aislynn's for dinner, met up with Vanessa the doula and had coffee out, received a great basket from Janice and John, and got ready for our first visitor ~ Auntie Krista.