Turning 5 and getting smiles

Many wonderful things have happened this week. Of these, three are worth noting in this post. First, Xander turned 5 months today. It’s amazing to think that 5 months ago I was being clenched by a very focused wife waiting for Xander to come into the world. I will never forget how I felt when Michal pulled him out of the water; it still brings a tear to my eye.

The other thing that happened is we got our tax return, which is to say, the government paid me back the money I was lending out to them throughout last year. This in turn brings us to good thing number three; we were able to buy a nice D-SLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. A Nikon D-90 to be exact. For those of you who don’t know what a D-SLR is, it’s a really nice camera that takes fantastic digital pictures. I could go on and on about what makes D-SLR’s so great, but what will be important to most of the readers of this blog is that it can take pictures faster than any other kind of camera. Why is this important to you? Because Xander stops smiling the moment he realizes there is a camera pointed at him, so if you want to catch him smiling you have to take the picture really really fast.

It’s not that he doesn’t like cameras. Just the opposite, he finds them fascinating and stares at it with this very intense look that doesn’t have anything resembling a smile in it. Our point and shoot was just too distracting for a tech-enthralled child. But this D-SLR is able to capture all those cute smiles before he has time to know it’s even there, and for his 5 month birthday we got some great ones! (as a reminder, you can click on the picture to see a bigger version of it)

This is how I'm greeted when I get Xander every morning.



Dancing with Mommy



All smiles



Xander eating the strap to my Nikon D-90 while I take his picture (Nikons are yummy!)



The Nikon also allows really close up pictures, like this one of Xander's hand around my index finger.



Or take just in time photos like this one of Osher inspecting the world to make sure it's safe for Xander.



Because of the really nice lenses the Nikon uses, you can pick up subtle lighting effects that make things artistic like the way the light is illuminating Osher here.



Or do artsy photos like this one.


For the full set of smiles and such from our first set of pictures taken with our new Nikon D-90, click HERE.