This Is How We Do It

After spending this weekend with the family, many people have told us how much they love to see the pictures we post on here every… so often. But they all say that they want to print them. Don’t print them on your inkjet printers! It’s just a waste of money and a way to line HP’s pockets. Instead, use a local grocery or drug store with a digital photo lab or an online picture provider like Kodak Picture Gallery (aka Ofoto), Snapfish, Shutterfly or WalMart. Actually, don’t use Wal-Mart… they print on Fuji paper.

Here’s how to save pictures from our blog and print them at the online.

1. Post a comment in the blog about which picture you’d like printed, so I can re-post it at a higher resolution. In order to save space, I post pictures at 1024 pixels by 768 pixels. That’s not enough resolution to print a nice 4x6. At a minimum, a 4x6 should be printed from a digital image no less than 1200 x 1800 – and the more, the better
   
2. Click the picture you like from the thumbnails to view it large on your screen
   
3. Right click on the picture. Choose “Save Image As…” (Firefox) or “Save Target As” (Internet Explorer).
   
4. Save the picture someplace on your computer, preferably in the My Pictures folder. Make a new folder within My Pictures to facilitate sorting later.
   
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you’ve got all the pictures you’d like.
   

Now you have all of these digital pictures saved on your computer. What to do with them?

1. Download and install Picasa to manage your photos. Do it now. It’s free and offers very basic, easy to use photo editing and cropping.
   
2. Picasa will automatically find your pictures and display them from your My Pictures folder. You did save them there, right?
   
3. Browse the pictures in Picasa, and click the “Hold” button at the bottom of the screen when you find a picture you’d like printed. Repeat until you’ve located all the picture you want.
   
4. Online or Store?
   
1. Online: Click the Order Prints button. Picasa will give you a choice of Online print providers. Chose anyone that makes you happy. Snapfish, Shutterfly and Kodak Picture Gallery often have coupons for free prints or enlargements.
   
2. Store: Click the Export button, and then click Browse to save them in a convenient location. If you have a removable USB drive or a camera card inserted directly into your computer, that would be a good choice. If not, put them somewhere you’ll remember and then burn the images to a CD-R and take that to your local store to use the Kodak Picture Station. Find one here and try the demo.
   

While you’re at it, if you’re still using Internet Explorer to view this page, consider switching to the Firefox web browser.

That’s all for now. More on Great-Grandpa’s 80^th birthday later this week. I leave you with a cute picture…

Song link

Double Vision

Well hello everyone. I just have a few little notes about the past week or so. First off, we’re trying to monitor Jeffrey’s vision and tracking progress. The last time the physical therapist came we mentioned that he doesn’t seem very interested in toys or tracking objects. She agreed that he’s a little behind in that arena and that it’s possible he may be having trouble focusing on objects. It is fairly common for preemies to be near or farsighted so we’re just watching him. We know that he can see because he does focus occasionally and Monica (his physical therapist) says that babies that are blind will not coo, laugh or smile until later. So we’re not too worried because he is a little cooing machine now. Everyone morning he wakes up and just babbles at the ceiling for ten or fifteen minutes. We made an appt with his eye doctor and after the exam they said his left eye has some atrophy of the optic nerve but that children’s eyes don’t fully mature until their about two, so he could just be a little late developing it. We have another appointment in September and a vision therapist is coming to the house at the end of the month. Monica said she should be able to help us figure out where his vision is best and work from there.

He is now rolling over consistently from his back to his tummy. It’s pretty humorous to watch because he still hates tummy time and once he realizes that he’s on his belly he gets pretty mad.

He’s going like gangbusters in the eating department. The boy is a pig. Brian is routinely giving him a ¼ cup of oatmeal at a time and he is wolfing it down. This is especially good because (as I mentioned earlier) I’m running low on the milk supply, even with the reglan. However, the cool part is we still haven’t run out of frozen milk yet. (See I was a good cow!)

Also, something I’ve been wanting to do. I wanted to recommend a few other parenting blogs that I’ve been visiting when I have time. First check out metrodad. He’s the father in NYC. Very funny. I really enjoy his posts about peanut and boss lady. I also really enjoy It’s not all Mary Poppins. She is a childcare provider in Canada. She has good advice and her descriptions of her kids are hysterical. Check them out if you have time.

Two other notes for the week. In case you haven’t noticed Brian forces me to name the posts as titles to songs. So if your ever interested google the post title and check out our song choices. (They all come from the depths of Brian’s brain, so be careful!)

Lastly, just a quick hi to anyone reading from Wilson! I saw we made the spring quarterly and wanted to encourage everyone to post a comment and tell me how you’re doing. I’m always excited to hear how everyone from Wilson is.

Love you everyone! We’ll post more soon!

Obey the Cow God

Breastfeeding is so awesome and yet the most aggravating part of my life now. I swear I spend more time and energy concerned about my milk supply that it’s sickening.  My OB gave me a reglan prescription the last time I was in and it has helped so much.  Unfortunately, the script is running out and I’m going to have to call and beg for more.  I feel like a breast milk junkie.  I’ve been complaining for months that I feel like a cow, and now I’m upset because I’m not a good enough cow.  Who knew this is what my life would revolve around post baby?  I really will be upset when we have to quit nursing.  It’s so sweet in the mornings to cuddle him in my arms.  I usually wrap grandma’s afghan around us and his little hands play with the fringe while he eats… He really is the sweetest little boy.  I am so screwed.  I’m already planning on making him into a momma’s boy.  He’s only six months old and already I’m wrapped around his little finger.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Bicycle Races

Quite a bit of catching up to do! Let’s jump into our (not-so) way-back machine. Some mini posts:

Just The Two Of Us

Jeffrey enjoyed a play date with his birthday buddy, Morgan. She entered the world just a few hours after our son, but with a full-term head start, the size difference gave all of us a chuckle. Morgan is also a big fan of the Fisher-Price Nature’s Sounds papasan cradle swing, and her Mom even taught us a new trick with it. That evening, our friends Kurt & Steph got their first taste of babysitting.

Solid As A Rock development for our little star. Even though he’s below the

Solid food has also been a new

recommended weight for starting solid foods, our pediatrician recommended starting him on rice cereal because if we don’t start soon, it may be more difficult down the road. For those of our

readers without children, let me clarify a bit. When I first heard “rice cereal”, I thought of this. It’s actually more like this. But unfortunately, rice cereal didn’t digest so well with Jeffrey, so our pediatrician switched him to oatmeal cereal… mmm, more fiber! He’s doing pretty well with that.

License To Ill

We dealt with our son’s first illness this past week. He began coughing and sounding generally pretty raspy over the weekend, so I took him to the pediatrician. Dr. Tomek told me that his lungs sound fine, and that he probably has an upper airway infection. Since it’s viral, there really aren’t any medications you can take to fight it, but that it would probably go away after about 7-10 days. He was right. But those were some very cranky 7-10 days. Oh, and did I mention that we think he may be starting to get a tooth?

Jeffrey and I spent this week watching the Tour De France on our MythTV system. He’s rooting for Floyd Landis on Team Phonak. I’d like to see George Hincapie or maybe Iban Mayo make it to Paris in Yellow. Neither one of us is rooting for Robbie McEwen, that cocky little Aussie, to win the green jersey, but it looks pretty well locked in at this point.

Oh, and there's new pictures (lots) on the right!