motherhood | Jenna's Everything Blog

So I’ve been saving the best for last.

This is a policy I have enacted since childhood, when I would eat the least agreeable items off my plate first, saving my favorite item for the grand finale.

That’s why, until I went to college, I ate the toppings and sauce off my pizza first, and finished by eating the slice of crust plain (i.e., unadulterated and perfect).

Of course, sometimes my policy resulted in never getting to ‘the best.’ A prime example of this was my languishing candy collection, which I saved for that perfect moment for so long that it went stale and was ultimately tossed in the garbage bin.

The only people who enjoyed the candy were two small thieves, a certain small Erica and small Heidi.

But let’s let bygones be bygones.

What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s time for the cream of the Baby James crop of pictures.

These are they. These are them. Them are these. Whatever.

After pictures of Baby James and every conceivable person except for his own mother, it’s time to share all these lovely pictures from the informal photo shoot we did on the futon.

So this is part 1 . . . part 2 on Friday.

I love these two.

If only Alaska weren’t so dang far away.

I hope you all are in a baby-type mood. Because during my sister Heidi’s visit with her new little son, I took about 500 pictures.

I’ll only share a select few on my blog, I told myself. I’ll pick the cutest ones, give them a quick run through Photoshop, and that will be that.

Sunday evening I settled in on the couch with the Mac and started looking through the pictures, picking ones that I liked and tossing them into Photoshop. The problem is, I liked all of them.

This means that you will be seeing a whole heck of a lot of baby James ’round these parts.

What do you think I am, some kind of male baby model or something? Because I got a brain inside this gorgeous bod, alright! It’s not all about my good looks, capeesh?

Despite baby James’ reservations, his modeling abilities are not to be denied. I mean, his own father won a ‘cutest baby contest‘ in his infancy, lest you forget. So you will be seeing the following in the weeks to come: baby James and grandma, baby James and grandpa, baby James with his gorgeous mama, baby James sleeping, awake, laughing, and crying.

But not baby James pooping. I still haven’t reconciled myself to the fact that something so gross could come out of something so cute.

I will choose to live in denial . . . for now.

You mean you don’t think my poop is cute??

But I don’t understand!

Multitudes of hilarious expressions parade across his tiny face. Most of them flicker in and out in rapid succession, but he held that surprised look above for about 10 solid seconds.

I always look suspiciously at those who pounce on babies and immediately start talking in a high-pitched, squealy version of themselves, gurgling baby talk and shooting exaggerated facial expressions baby-wards.

And then I became one of them. See, it turns out that when I open my mouth really wide, bug out my eyes and stick out my tongue, baby James laughs.

And once you hear a baby laugh, it’s like an immediately addiction. I will go into withdrawal if I don’t hear that baby laugh again. So you make that goofy face over and over and over again.

I became a ridiculous person because of this baby. In fact, I made a baby-gawking spectacle of myself. I tickled him, contorted my face and made squealy noises repeatedly.