Baby Belly Photo Shoots

Here are weeks 24, 25 and 26!

So, some exciting (and not so exciting) events from the past couple of weeks ... Firstly, I failed my one-hour glucose tolerance test. Yes, not so exciting. But, I passed the three-hour test, which means no gestational diabetes for me! Yay!

Also, I just discovered this week that I can hear the baby's heartbeat with my stethoscope - so cool! And he likes to kick the stethoscope when I have it on my belly.

24 weeks - proud Hawkeye parents

25 weeks

26 weeks (Mike made me do "jazz hands" for the picture ... yeah)

Getting Bigger!

Or as Mike likes to say, I am a pregosaurus. Yes, he's a dear. So, technically I am 24 weeks today, but I needed to catch up on the last couple of weeks - so here is the baby belly at 22 and 23 weeks!

22 weeks

23 weeks

Daddy with his favorite baby outfit so far

So there you have it! It's pretty exciting to be at 24 weeks - only 16 weeks to go!! Yay!! Baby boy is also now "viable," as everyone in the NICU loved to tell me last month ... I prefer to not think of him that way. The NICU is not a fun place for a pregnant lady to be. So glad I'm out of there! He is definitely getting stronger ... he can pack a pretty good punch! Little stinker. :)

Baby Belly

Here are weeks 20 and 21! I also included some pictures of our first baby clothes purchases - soooo cute!
The baby has been moving around a lot the last couple of days - I LOVE IT!! It is the coolest thing. And Mike got to feel him kick for the first time a couple days ago.

20 weeks

21 weeks

HDR Photography

I have been playing around with my new camera and reading about high dynamic range photography on a few sites. If done right you can get very surreal looking photos or just extend the range you are able to display in a more normal looking photo (imagine showing the inside of a cave and the bright outside of the cave both exposed well). So I decided to give it a try. Basically you take a couple of bracketed exposures (changing the exposure compensation 1-2 steps above and below the "right" exposure) and then combine them in Photoshop or other programs (I am thinking about getting Photomatix as it does a great job), then tweak the "curves" to make it look more artistic or normal and voila!... HDR pictures.

Here is a example: (remember this is my first attempt and I am admitdly not that skilled at the "curve adjustment part of things")Here is Lianne taking a nap in HDR...


It has been fun exploring new photography techniques and I will have to try some more soon but I guess I should study for the BCPS exam as it is looming (Oct. 3rd!).

We're having a baby _______!

Today was the big day! We are 20 weeks pregnant and ready to find out if we will be welcoming baby boy Farley or baby girl Farley in January.
And the baby is ...

















A BOY!!!
And he's quite the, um, exhibitionist. (Mike just said "he's not an exhibitionist, he's naked." Very true, very true.)
We're excited about playing basketball with the little guy, raising him as a proper Hawkeye, and Mike is rejoicing that we won't be paying for a wedding (yet).

So ... we're going out to dinner to celebrate and then we're going to do some baby shopping!! Yay!!