Dinner with Calvin

Mealtimes with the twins have become a lot more exciting since Addie decided that eating is a predatory affair. Karen and I took them to The Restaurant the other day and installed them in their highchairs, each with their handy-dandy roll-up placemat in front of them. Gabe contentedly ate his pea-crisps and gazed around at the other customers, grinning and flirting with the women passing behind his chair. Addie, on the other hand, was all business. As soon as the Cheerios were dropped on her placemat, she furrowed her brow, hunched over, and grabbed them one after another in rapid-fire succession, stuffing each in her mouth with a little bark of triumph.

After Cheerios came fruit pieces in a little black plastic cup that came with the twins' meal. Karen began by putting a few pieces at a time on the kids' placemats, but this was not sufficient for Addie; she wanted to take them out of the cup herself. "Meh, fine," Karen thought. Addie's eyes got bigger and gleamed mischievously as she began grabbing the fruit from the cup in Karen's hand. Furrowed brow, wicked grin, and barks of triumph as the fruit rapidly disappeared.

This became a bit messy after a while, though, as the juice dripped everywhere. Finally, Karen decided just to give Addie the whole cup and be done with it. As she held the cup out to Addie, that beautiful, sweet, utterly feminine little girl stared wide-eyed at the unexpected gift for one fraction of a second, then -- faster than eye could see -- grabbed the cup, hugged it to her chest, and did this:

I honestly don't know what's going to become of this child...

...and presenting...

The best photo of all. (Yeah, not from the Fairgrounds. From the previous roll.)

Why I love the Raleigh flea market, and my camera in general

It's a gorgeous day today -- a few white fluffy clouds and the thermometer hovering around 77 degrees. It's one of those days we get periodically towards the end of summer that hints that autumn is on its way: the air is just a bit cooler, a bit crisper. Without the usual overwhelming mugginess, I notice the light from the sun much more than the heat. A perfect day to use up a remaining roll of film! Accordingly, I grabbed my camera and headed to the flea market at the State Fairgrounds at 9:00 this morning.

These days I've pretty much defaulted to using my (mediocre) digital camera. It's quick, it's cheap, and -- with a few adjustments to color and contrast on my Photoshop program -- it produces fairly decent pictures. But I'd forgotten just what a difference a good speed film in my other camera makes. The following photos are from this morning, all of them completely untouched except for some cropping. (This tells me I either need to get a better quality digital camera, or suck up the cost of printing and go back to "old school.") I'd forgotten just how much I love photography, especially when I get results like this!


Okay, those last two are from our rose garden; I didn't quite finish the roll at the market. But -- look at these photos! I can't believe how much light and color the film picked up, even when the sun was behind the clouds. ...now if I can just figure out how to take shots of people without the camera picking up and magnifying every minute variation of skin tone. My portraits are pretty darn unflattering. Any suggestions, Father Barry?