No, we’re not from Boston, but we did treat ourselves to a little bit of lobster this week. Wegmans has a huge sale this week on lobsters. $6.99 per pound for the little 1-1.5 pounders. We picked up two 1.25 pound lobsters and cooked them up. Now, I’m not really for murdering live animals in my house, but they are quite tasty with butter. We enjoyed them with a nicely chilled Cooper Vineyards Chardonney and boiled potatoes. I had too much Chardonney of course, so I think I made it about 30 minutes into the movie we were watching.

Unfortunately, Olivia has been having a terrible time with teething. She was home sick all day yesterday with a little fever and had a very low grade fever this morning of about 99 degrees. I’m hoping that these teeth cut through sooner rather than later. The poor kid is in agony and quite clingy. We can’t put her down or move more than a couple of feet away from her without her getting upset. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and cuddle her for comfort while she watches Sesame Street or god forbid Barney. I hate Barney. Stupid purple dinosaur.

In other news, we had a very generous friend let me borrow his Canon 5D Mark II. It’s a professional grade camera, whereas mine is a notch below it (not a bad thing!). I’m thinking of purchasing it after I’ve booked a couple of paying sessions, especially in preparation for more studio work as we approach the Winter months and cold weather. I snapped a few shots last night with it while Olivia was practicing walking while holding Maurice’s hand in the kitchen. I could tell a difference right away in the image quality, though I don’t suspect anyone else would as I Photoshop the mess out of everything anyway

Sometimes it’s just too hard to get a crockpot meal started during the week that won’t leave us with mounds of leftovers and an extreme fear of consuming chicken for the rest of the month. As such, a friend suggested we look into chicken nuggets. I was not into that at first, but I looked at the frozen section carefully for nuggets low in sodium, no preservatives, etc etc. I found them by Tyson’s and Liv LOVES them. Actually, we put them down and the exact look we got was “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY LIFE?” (which, consequently, is so far quite short). These are baked/microwaved, not fried. I press them with a papertowel to get any excess juice and/or grease off them prior to giving them to her.

Things have been really busy here. Ever since our sad return from the beach we’ve been traveling a lot on the weekends and doing a lot more than anticipated. I’ve been personally booked solid with photo sessions as you may have noticed from the Flickrstream to the right. I’m really enjoying honing my skills. The business cards are in and the website is up and active in case anyone is curious to see it. I have a friend helping me out with business advice. She’s awesome and has been a gorgeous model for my studio shots. Soon enough I’ll have paid sessions booked………. I hope. Otherwise, I can’t be Maurice’s sugarmomma

Olivia is trying very hard to walk. The daycare teachers are working with her every day and she has been somewhat brave enough to walk while holding onto one adult hand, but she needs to gain her balance and confidence. The two front teeth are also making their debut. They’ve cut through the gums, so the bulk of the problem has been taken care of. Now we’re just waiting for them to come through. It looks like she’s going to get my big two front teeth. Joy. Poor kid is going to be able to eat an apple through a picket fence.

Here are some pictures to tide you over, since I know we’ve been bad and haven’t posted a thing in a couple of weeks. Look at how gorgeous her eyes are getting! Love it!

One night last week Olivia was eating dinner. I sat next to her watching her eat and play as always when she decided to reach out toward the table and babble a bit. She kept saying “BO” “BO” “BO” and gesturing toward the table. I turned around and sure enough, there was one of her favorite play books (the kind she can gnaw on) on the table. I said “Book?” back to her and she lit up. I handed her the book after she successfully devoured her dinner.

babyWords++;

We went up to Gettysburg on Saturday as a day trip excursion with our friend Gary and his daughter M. We went up there primarily to get portraits of Gary smoking his pipe in a real pipe shop as opposed to the nasty bars in our immediate area that would only allow pipe smoking after a certain hour or not at all due to county laws. The battlefield was amazing, but it’s one of those things you need to do when the kid is either much younger and sleeping nonstop or much older and doesn’t mind the stop and go along the auto trail. You drive through the battlefield, but if you want to see anything in particular, such as a state monument, then you have to stop the car along the side of the road and get out. It was pissing Liv off royally, so we had to limit our stops, which meant we saw a lot less of the battleground than we would have liked.

I got quite a few shots of the area in case anyone’s interested. Here’s a few, but the rest are in the Flickr photostream (see to your right):