Let’s see… what’s been going on…

Well, we successfully drug the girls across country to Pittsburgh PA. That was a serious accomplishment, if I do say so myself. Full post on that trip is forthcoming, I promise.

After a few more teething rounds, which were not fun at all, we now have 5 teeth each. Nothing can stop these pip-squeaks from growing. I remain completely blown away how 2 kids can both start teething within 12 hours of each other. Amazing.

We took the girls to the Western Idaho Fair a couple weeks ago. It was hotter than hell the day we went, but they were total troopers. Nary a cry was heard. They are almost always good in public, though. They didn’t get much out of the fair, I don’t think. They just kinda rolled around in the stroller with the same bewildered look on their face. Next year will undoubtedly be more fun. One side note to taking twins to the fair… for once WE were not the biggest freak show/attraction for people to stare at and comment about. Between carnival rides, food booths, farm animals, and hot tub sales, there was plenty else to keep peoples’ attention off of me any my kids. I can’t adequately describe how nice that was. I wish I could go to the fair every week for that reason alone.

However, the biggest news has come from changes to our bedtime/sleep routine. We had settled into a routine of rocking them to sleep every night. Some nights, it would take 45 minutes… sometimes 90 minutes. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t that bad of a gig. Jess and I would each get a beer, have our phones, sit in their dark room and relax ourselves. The problems came in keeping the girls asleep. If they woke up, we could be stuck rocking them back to sleep because we didn’t know what else to do.

Well, Jess had ordered a DVD called The SleepEasy Solution and we chose to try their method. It basically consists of performing your regular “wind down” bedtime activities as usual… pajamas, stories, bottles, etc. But not letting them fall asleep. Then, you put them down awake and leave the room. Of course, they cried. You set a timer for 5 minutes, then you go into the room and let them see you, but don’t touch them, and reassure them that you’re there and they can do it. Less than 30 seconds. Then, you set a timer for 10 minutes. Repeat. If they’re still crying, set a timer for 15 minutes and repeat. Basically, you’re teaching them they can fall asleep without a crutch (our rocking). The first night they cried for about 35 minutes. The second night, we didn’t make it to the 15 minute check, they fell asleep at about 28 minutes. Eventually, in 5 or 6 days they are asleep in less than 5 minutes after we put them down. Seldom do they cry as we leave the room. We will listen to them on the monitor and they will jabber to each other in the room, but not cry. Then they just fall asleep. Damn, this shit almost works like magic. Amazing. Plus, it gives Jess and me 30 to 90 minutes of our days back. Not to mention that when the girls wake up in the middle of the night, they seldom cry. If they do, we still don’t go in and they just fall back asleep.

Now, we’re still rolling out of bed at 6:30am, but there isn’t much we can do about that…

Anyway, without further ado, on with the pictures. As always, there are more pictures on Flickr than posted here. Click on the picture itself, or the link to go there.

Haberwtins at 8-Months

Twins (and mom and dad) made it to 9 months!

One of the girls at daycare french-braided our hair!

So, there ya go. More to come!

A short Habertwin update. They are growing quickly. They are grabby as all hell, especially with things they aren’t supposed to have. They are eating a ton of baby food and still sucking down bottles of formula. Their dexterity is amazing. They are now able to grab a binky and put it correctly into their mouths. Of course, they are also just as apt to chew on some other part of the binky… can’t tell if that’s intentional or not. Meri is now combination army crawling/rolling across the floor to get to where she wants to go. Alex isn’t quite as mobile, but can still roll and scoot backwards a little bit. They’ve both got “monkey feet” which they curl their toes to grab things.

They are sleeping in their own room, each in their own cribs for about the past month. Which is a good thing, since they were rolling and knocking heads sleeping together. They generally only wake once per night. Unfortunately, that is only a generality. Last night they both were crabby and awake from 1:30am until about 4. Not good times. Meri has slept through the night a handful of times already. Alex is not there yet. That’s the thing with twins… Even if one perchance sleeps through the night, the chances of the other one doing the same thing are not great. So, we’re still getting out of bed anyway. The frustrating thing is we know they know how to do it now… they just choose not to.

We’re still crying on the commute home every day. That’s not fun. Nothing we attempt to do appeases them. So, they cry the entire 45 minute trip home. As soon as we get there, they stop. Go figure. Good thing that’s not stressful.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pics. As always, more pictures reside on Flickr.com to view. Click the link or the individual picture to view them.

5 Months Old on Flickr

This is what it is like attempting to hold 2 babies who’d rather be doing something else:

6 Months Old on Flickr

You’ll notice that only Meri is wearing the sticker on her shirt with the “6 months” on it. That’s because we misplaced the other set. Still haven’t found ‘em, nor really had much time to look. Oh well.

They aren’t getting any easier for mom to position…

7 Months Old – 4th of July on Flickr

So, there ya go. Hope you enjoyed.

Perhaps next month’s will be published before November, but I make no guarantees.

Instead, enjoy these pics I’ve take over the past month, May 2011.

As always, there are more pics on Flickr than are posted here. Go view them all.

Enjoy.

Is it just me, or can you practically see what Alex will look like when she’s an adult in this picture?

More to come.

Just as I suppose that someday there will be a time that Jess and I are well rested and able to accomplish more than tending to these girls every beck and call. When that day will be? Anyone’s guess.

For the record, in the past week we’ve been dealing with both teething as well as dueling ear infections. I’m sure you parents out there know the joy of which I speak on both of those subjects… now, just combine the two and multiply that by 2 and you’ve got what we’ve been dealing with. I’d come up with a joke about it, but I’m too damn tired.

So, without further ado, some pictures of what we’ve done lately.

As always, there are more pictures on Flickr, so click on an image or a header to go there and view ‘em.

4 Months Old!

First Solid Food!

As always, click the image to view it on Flickr.  There are more pictures there than I am posting here.

3 Months Old on Flickr

Winter/Valentines/St. Pats on Flickr

Fooling Around on Flickr

But, today was a bit different. I scrubbed the shower. I walked the dog. We shot more pictures of the girls (on top of all the regular feeding, burping and changing)… So I figured I might as well get some pictures out to all of you.

The first set was taken the day after Christmas. Although we had done nothing to celebrate the holiday, we did dress up the girls in their Christmas best if for no other reason to remember it happened.

As always, click on the image to view it on Flickr. There are more pictures there than I am posting into this blog. So be sure you go visit and view those!

Christmas Twins on Flickr

This one just cracks me up.

Set 2 is the occasion of the girls’ first bath. Meri went first, and didn’t really enjoy the experience. Alex, however, seemed to really like the warm water and just hung out in the tub and enjoyed the attention.

One Month Old on Flickr

I took a few pictures during the wedding itself, a couple more of the reception and a bunch when the wedding party all hit the Hofbrauhaus for the after-party.  These are a few of my favorite pictures.  You can view the entire set here as well.  There are a bunch more photos there that I haven’t posted here.  Go view them.  They’re good.

A note about these photos.  I didn’t take my big SLR camera since I didn’t want to have to lug it around (and be responsible for it while drinking), so these were all shot on my little Canon point and shoot.  During the actual ceremony, we were too far away from the aisle for my flash to work and the church was pretty dim.  So, I chose to switch to ‘sepia’ mode for the evening.  I liked the way it looked, so I just kept it there.  Some of these photos are ‘happy accidents’ where because of the dimness, lack of flash, and longer shutter times, they got blurry but I like to think that was my desire all along.

Plus, there were plenty of other people there taking regular old snapshots… I wanted mine to stand out a bit.  As always, click on each image to go to Flickr to view the image larger if you so desire.

Without further ado…

I like this one a lot… wish the faces were a bit more in focus, but still, it’s very impressionist.  Their first walk as husband and wife.

This is another one where the ‘blur’ really worked out in my favor. Their first dance. Love this shot.

The Hofbrauhaus photos really turned out good with the flash and the sepia.  Definitely give an ‘old school’ feel.  I love catching candids at parties.  Try to capture how the night really went down.  I think I did that in these.

Really dig this one too.  Gabe in rare form… Liter of beer, cigar, and his new bride all tearing up the dance floor!

So, we rounded up the parents (both sets wanted to go) and headed down there Saturday morning.  I’m no expert on what all they did during the construction, but I do know that they added two wings that are underground with skylights which were pretty cool.  They did an amazing job matching up all of the marble as well.  Go to the idahostatesman.com for more on that front.

I mainly just wanted to take photos, so that’s what I did.  Here are my favorites.  You can also go to the entire Flickr.com set to view more than what is here.  Also, I would like to add that you really should click on each image to view it larger.  Some of them really benefit from being viewed bigger.  Thanks and enjoy!

This is the first picture I took that day.  Might be my favorite…

Two cheapo flags, held by me. Just playing around.

The National Anthem… I wish I could have gotten a little closer to the 2 servicemen, with everything in the background.  But I still like this shot.

Straight up through the dome.  This almost looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey or something.

Zoomed on the dome a bit more… removing the lights gave a much “cooler” blue feel.

Visitors gazing up to the dome.

There you go, hope you enjoyed.  Like I said, there are more images in the Flickr set.  Go there now.

As a side photography note, I have a bunch of really good photos from the Christmas holiday that I have yet to share.  I know Christmas feels like a couple months ago at this point, but hopefully I’ll post them soon.

Ok, some back story.

A couple months ago I saw a tweet from @TheBlueMag that they were soliciting fan photos for their winter edition.  I also got a Facebook message from one of their editors who had seen my Boise State photos on Flickr.com asking if they could possibly use some of my photos.  Of course, I replied right away and said I would be pleased as punch if they did.

Then came the waiting for the issue to come out.

It finally did last week.   By the way, all Bronco Athletic Association members get this with their membership, but you can also order subscriptions.  If you are a Boise State fan at all, you gotta get this thing.  End of pitch.

Anyway, in their fan photos section on page 92, they selected 4 of my pics!  All of which were taken from my seats, in row Z of the upper deck.  5 rows from the back of the stadium.  Needless to say, I find this whole thing completely awesome.  I’ve never had a photograph in a magazine before.  And even though I was not compensated monetarily, I figure I will still be able to refer to myself as a published photographer.  That’s got a nice ring to it, don’t it?

Below you will see the page, with my photos circled in red.  Click on the image to go bigger.  You can also go here to view the entire page.  On that site, if you flip to the next page, you will see my name in the photo credits.  Yes, I get geeked about this stuff.

Here are the 4 photos they chose, on Flickr.

Merry Christmas everyone!

This year, we seemed to be in attendance with a lot of really naughty little kids. Jess surmised that it had to do with the “perfect storm” of kid-dom.  Christmas, night time, and snow.   Anyways, there were kids throwing snowballs.  Kids running around off trail.  Kids having uber-meltdowns. One boy, “Austin”, about 3 or 4 years old was with his mom and grandma.  He was running around like a dog off leash.  They were imploring him to come back and drink his cocoa but to that kid, they may as well have been speaking Chinese.  Never slowed down. Never looked back. Never acknowledged they even existed.  The only reason they caught him (as he was running off the trail) was that he got boxed in by plant/Christmas light displays.  He was like a wild animal.  Unreal.

Anyways, I did bring the camera to shoot some shots.  I got a couple traditional shots of the lights.  But, since I don’t have a mono-pod or anything to help stabilize night shooting, I decided to go another direction as well.  Deliberately moving the camera with a slow shutter speed in order to “streak” the lights and create funky effects.  I really like how some of these turned out.  Notice that the LED lights actually flash really quickly, so they look like dotted lines when the camera is moved. Interesting. I present to you a selection of my Abstract Christmas.  The whole album is available on Flickr.com as well.

As always, click each image to go to it’s Flickr page.  Some of these images look much better when viewed full size, which you can do there…

And, a few of the more traditional shots I took…

Merry Christmas everyone!