Tell Me Thursday: I'm on to you Mr. Flower

This one is pretty straight-forward. Baby X (about 4 months old here, taken a few weeks ago) is fascinated by happy faces, and this flower immediately attracted him when he first tried out his ExerSaucer. I was trying to get a photo of him smiling at the flower, and instead caught this wary expression.

If you're a blogger and you participated in Wordless Wednesday, go check out Tell Me Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday: I'm on to you Mr. Flower. Don't try anything funny.

Find more Wordless Wednesday participants here.

Tell Me Thursday: Tails!

What are you looking at? Let's see, it's the tail end of a lion, giraffe, bear, kangaroo, dog woobie, tiger, bunny, and bear woobie. It's perfectly obvious, isn't it?

Those imaginative people amongst us may envision some horrible death scene when viewing this image of animals stung up by their necks. I hope you're not one of those people. I personally see a bunch of cute animals peeking in on my little boy in the crib. All perfectly innocent.

Perhaps this is a case of a mother trying to desperately entertain herself while also entertaining a 4-month-old baby. Take most of baby's stuffed animals, put their heads through the crib slats, then be so amused that you must hunt down the camera. That's pretty much all the explanation this one takes.



Disclaimer: No babies or stuffies were injured in the staging of these photos. All play was supervised, and any potential choke/suffocation hazards were removed from baby's crib at the end of the play session. Thank you.

Wordless Wednesday: Tails!

In the context of 2009, it's noteworthy for me

I just wanted to point out that I have gone more than a week with new posts on this blog every day. At one point in the life of this blog, that wouldn't have been noteworthy. But if you look at my history for 2009, you'll see that it's monumental.

Now am I cheating by making a post today that only talks about this milestone? Is it a cheap ploy to keep my streak going?

Perhaps...

This should fix that: I'm doing Christmas cards right now. It's a little late to be doing them, but better than other years, when they didn't get done at all. If you'd like a card, send me your address.

Santa!

We took Baby X to meet Santa last weekend. Is it wrong that his first Santa visit was at Petsmart? I don't think so. Minimal wait and cost, plus Santa was excited to hold someone who didn't have four legs.

Unfortunately, I didn't get so great a photo of just Xander with Santa, but we did get a decent family shot, which is our Christmas card, so I'm not posting it here yet.

In this photo of the dogs, the third dog is our friends' dog Benton (on left), who is about 9 months old and is starting to dwarf both Loki and Thor. He's over 90 pounds already, and has more growing to do.

My Calendar Boy

Isn't Mr. September handsome? That's my boy! (And my photo, too!)

My copies of the 2010 BARC (Bernese Auction Rescue Coalition) calendar showed up in the mail this week. Very excited!

Thor is my BARC rescue. I took this photo back in 2007, and submitted it to the BARC calendar in September, when they were putting it together. It's BARC's first calendar, with all funds over expenses going to rescue Bernese Mountain Dogs from exploitative situations. (Click here to make the back of the calendar large enough to read the explanation about BARC.)

This photo of Thor is my all-time favorite of him. It's my second-most "interesting" photo on Flickr, with over 1,000 views.

To learn more about Thor, browse my posts about him, about how he came into our lives, and about some of his misadventures in running away.

Note: When I wrote the first post about Thor being selected for the calendar, I thought he would be Mr. November. Obviously, I was incorrect. The Beacon regrets the error. :)

A sudden infusion of new old posts

Over a year ago, I experimented with creating a separate photo blog called Moments Caught in Flight where I featured a lot of favorite photos I've taken.

The blog did pretty well, but I've found it difficult to keep two blogs going. So, I'm putting that blog on indefinite hiatus and concentrating on this blog. I've used Blogger's import feature to pull all the Moments Caught in Flight posts into this blog, comments and all.

I'm keeping the Moments Caught in Flight blog up. Maybe someday I'll have time and energy to revive it.

It's all I can do to keep fresh content on this blog, even with its multiple personality disorder.

If  you want to browse the posts that I imported, I've given them a special tag:  Import from Moments Caught in Flight. Meanwhile, I'll continue to post photos here on this site and probably use more of the style I developed on that blog.

Tell Me Thursday: She's totally bluffing

So what was my Wordless Wednesday photo about yesterday?

Clue 1: Baby X is wearing a turkey bib, so it's probably Thanksgiving.

Clue 2: I'm holding three cards, not two, so I'm probably not playing Texas Holdum.

Clue 3: I'm out of clues, but it felt like there needed to be a third clue.

Answer: We were playing a friendly game of Sequence with friends after Thanksgiving dinner. Baby X was being so cute and cooperative while he sat on my lap and watched the play. I'm not really bluffing anything, since there's nothing to bluff in Sequence, but it seemed like a good photo caption, especially with the expression on Baby X's face.

As an aside, I just learned about Tell Me Thursday. The idea is that on the day after a Wordless Wednesday post, you follow it up with a post explaining your wordless photo. If you're a blogger and you participated in Wordless Wednesday, go check out Tell Me Thursday.

What are you doing?

Just the Loki dog checking in on Xander and his Gloworm.

Wordless Wednesday: She's totally bluffing

The Tale of the Dancing Girl

Before you think I've gone totally babies and dogs on this blog, I thought I'd return to a little writing news. Not any writing news of my own, but of my two "writing sisters", Grace d'Otare and Destiny d'Otare. (By the way, in this writing sisterhood, I'll someday be known as Hope d'Otare.)

Anyway, Grace has a new short story out called The Tale of the Dancing Girl. It's erotica and very adult - not that all of you would mind - I'm just trying to warn you. It's published by Harlequin Spice Briefs and has a gorgeous cover. Of Grace's three stories so far, it is my favorite cover.

It received a great review on a review site called The Good, The Bad and the Unread.

Here's part of Wendy the Super Librarian's review:

"I hit the jackpot with this latest by Grace D’Otare which is apparently part of a series. Needless to say, I’m going back and buying the first two stories. ... It’s sensual, erotic, and a romance. Very well done indeed."

The Tale of the Dancing Girl is the third short story in a series told by our narrators Maeve and Devlin.

A fourth short story in the series is due out in March 2010. This is sister Destiny d'Otare's debut short story with Spice Briefs. This one is titled Knightley's Tale and is inspired by a Jane Austen story.

Rumor has it that fifth story in the series may be announced soon.

Xander's gift guide

Xander is only 4 months old and has tried out a very limited number of toys, but he does have some favorites. If Xander were to write a Christmas gift guide, there are four things in these photos that he would definitely include.



First, his absolute most favorite toy, the Playskool Lullaby Gloworm. The first time the glow worm's face lit up, Xander was fascinated. It's our go-to toy in times of stress. Press its belly and its face lights up as it plays a song, such as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. If I knew anyone having a baby right now, I would definitely be giving the baby a Gloworm.



Second, the Lamaze Octotunes. Each one of its eight legs is a horn. But it's the face that fascinates Xander the most. I've heard him babble to the Octotunes from across the room. He just really loves the face. The horns are nice to give the adults something to do while playing with Xander.

Third, the Bumbo Baby Sitter. It was a gift from our good friends who have a baby just two months older. Xander was instant smiles when he first sat in it. The chair supports him so that he can sit upright, which he's eager to do, but not ready to do without support.



Fourth, the Barnyard Dance! book by Sandra Boynton. "With a neigh and a moo and a cockadoodle do, everyone promenade two by two." Dave loves to read this to Xander, and Xander seems to really enjoy the rhythms of the language. A fun book.

Disclaimer: These are genuine, unsolicited endorsements. No freebies here, unless you count the fact that they were all gifts to Xander from his various aunties and uncles. Also, the links do have my Amazon Associates ID in them, so if you follow them and then buy something on Amazon, I might earn a few pennies for referring you, not that I've ever made any money yet being an Associate.

Hey, this is kind of comfy

I have all sorts of (what I think are) cute photos to share, and I'm way behind. So, fair warning, there are a lot of kid (and some dog) photos coming in the next week.

First up:



Loki is our social dog. She loves people. Everyone thinks she is the one that should be most attentive to the baby. In reality, Loki isn't all that intrigued yet. It's our shy dog Thor who is the nurse maid. He likes to follow us around, and will often be found sleeping near Xander. Perhaps he knows it's the safest place to be because we'd never let anything happen to Xander. Perhaps.

Here's Thor and Xander having some totally staged lounge time together. It looks like Xander is enjoying Thor's soft fur, but he didn't seem to really care at the time. He was all eyes for Dad, whose hand you can see at the bottom right.

I can't wait for the baby and the dogs to start to truly interact. Xander is paying more attention to them all the time. Soon, I hope.

Putting World of Warcraft on hiatus

I canceled my World of Warcraft account this week. I'm very sad, but with Xander's arrival we haven't had time to play. We haven't really played since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out a year ago. So busy.

The cancellation is more symbolic than anything, since my account is paid up through April, and even when April comes around, it's not like they'll delete everything. My toons will still be there if I reactivate my account. The cancellation kicks in really quickly for my husband, though. He has about 10 days paid up. That's it.

Lasaire, I miss playing you.

In honor of canceling my WoW account, here's a video by an in-game band, the Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain. Maybe they're Level 80 now, I'm not sure. Anyway, I find the song, I am Murloc, highly entertaining.

'Ball and Cup' and lots of giggles

We're finally getting around to organizing some videos we've taken since Xander arrived. Here's a new one we made tonight of Dave and Xander goofing around with Xander's pacifier.