Protest

13 Months, 27 Days

Light and Dark

This picture was a happy accident. I have a simple external flash that I set up sometimes to fill in the light in indoor pictures. I had set it off to the side, but Aletheia saw it and walked over to pick it up. I snapped the picture anyway, and really love how it turned out.

13 Months, 27 Days

Learning to Feed Herself

13 Months, 27 Days

Smiles at Lunchtime

13 Months, 19 Days

Emotional Range

Aletheia seems to have become a lot more expressive in recent weeks. Her smiles are broader, her laughs are louder, and her frowns--well, they're pretty intense. Sometimes we think she does it as a joke. She'll get a really concerned look on her face, and then when we react to it, she'll burst out laughing. I didn't expect that she would be emotionally gaming me while she was still in diapers, but she could just be a prodigy.

13 Months, 19 Days

Touching the Rail

For that extra feeling of security in the night.

13 Months, 19 Days

Baby Einstein

Post-breakfast, strawberry-sticky hair.

13 Months, 19 Days

Portrait in Black and White

Okay, a lot of portrait photos this week. I can't help it. She's very pretty.

13 Months, 16 Days

Turducken

I think the thing that covers the bathtub faucet is supposed to be a duck, but I don't think ducks have that weird crown thing on their heads. So it looks more like a chicken to me--a chicken in the last stages of death from the Ebola virus, spewing liquids out its beak with incredible force.

But I just tell Aletheia it's a sweet little duckie. She doesn't need to know everything that goes on in her daddy's head.

13 Months, 16 Days

Mind the Gap

Here's another one where Aletheia lunged for the camera. It's off-center and out-of-focus, but we captured a great smile--one so big you can see all of her front teeth, and the sizeable gap between her incisors. We use it for extra storage.

13 Months, 15 Days

Closeup in the Bath

13 Months, 11 Days

In Bath, With Belly

Aletheia lunged toward the camera, so the top of her head got cut off (in the picture, not as a punishment), but the look on her face made me laugh so much I had to post it.

We had a great trip to Durham--it was a really nice change from the high desert environment we're used to--and we met a lot of great people, as well as getting better acquainted with some folks we already knew. And we didn't worry about Aletheia too much, although during a layover I realized that we hadn't made a will yet, and almost no one knew who we wanted custody to go to if the next plane went down, so I called Nana Freda and Papa Doug to be sure they had the names and numbers of the next people to raise the world's smartest, strongest, prettiest baby girl if we didn't get back safely. As you can tell, that information wasn't needed (yet).

13 Months, 11 Days

A Weekend Without Aletheia

Aletheia's mommy and I are taking a weekend trip to Durham, North Carolina, which is approximately 1841.342 miles away from here. We have to leave at 7:15 to catch our flight, so last night we left Aletheia with her adopted grandparents, Nana Freda and Papa Doug, who are keeping her for the weekend. Nothing about that is making me irrationally nervous, and it is just a coincidence that I happened to wake up at 3:45 a.m., unable to fall back asleep, here on the first night that Aletheia has stayed away from home without us. I am not having to fight any impulses to call and check on her, and I certainly haven't dreamed up forty-three different things that could go horribly wrong while we are away from her. Nor have I looked up any childhood disease information online to see what things she could possibly be diagnosed with before Sunday night. I'm just saying this for the record.

No, the purpose of this early early early morning post is simply to say that with our travels this weekend, there'll be no new Aletheia pictures until Sunday night or Monday--possibly later if she's all covered with scabs and pustules when we get back. We should probably wait for those to clear up some.

During and After

I know there has been a lot of suspense out there among Aletheia Update fans about how the haircut went, so I will give you not one, not two, but three pictures in just one post so you can see the final result.

Sharon did a nice job with Aletheia, and she was about as cooperative as a 13 month old can be during the procedure. She got to hold her own hairbrush, and that made everything better.



Mommy had just gotten a fresh haircut, too, and she held Aletheia through the process. She did not, no matter what it looks like here, choke Aletheia and pull off her left ear. It wasn't even a consideration.



Afterward, another daddy-daughter pose. If anything, she nudged even higher up on the cuteness scale, achieving a near-record 9 3/4 Gerbers.

Her daddy, unfortunately, remained unimproved.



13 Months, 4 Days

Before the Haircut

Aletheia's hair was starting to get into her eyes, so her mommy took her to get a haircut today. I came along to document the event, but mommy insisted on taking a daddy-daughter shot before the snipping began.

13 Months, 4 Days

Watching Sea Lions

Yep, another trip to the zoo. This one didn't have rhinoceroses or storks, which were her apparent favorites at the San Antonio Zoo, but she did enjoy watching the sea lions swim by her.

13 Months, 1 Day

Tiger Ride

13 Months, 1 Day

Story-telling

A Kiss From Grammy

12 Months, 4 Days