Website mini-makeover

“We made lots of great changes on our website this weekend!” I reported excitedly.

“Fabulous! I’ve visited it twice already today and didn’t see them, when will they show up?”

Actually, they’d been up all day, but I guess the improvements weren’t quite as dramatic as I’d thought. Nevertheless, we’d love for you to visit our website homepage to see its sleeker look and try out the new links in the header. We also added a navigation bar to our photo galleries page. It allows you to easily access some of our favorite photos and to view photo galleries by topic. On the blog, we updated aesthetics, labeled posts with keywords, and added a sidebar that sorts posts by topic.

As I write out these changes, I can see how my sister missed them. And I wonder if the time it took to make the tiny font, color, or alignment customizations was a little inordinate. Perhaps, but Erik and I enjoyed working on it together, and it’s satisfying to see many of those pesky imperfections resolved. Luke looks pretty impressed with his new publicity platform, doesn’t he?!

PS: Here’s a ‘before’ pic of the blog for comparison…

Website revamp!

For some time Erik and I have wanted to combine our blog and photo site and give them a new look. After getting some tips and inspiration from Erik’s brother, a very talented professional web designer, my husband unleashed his own technical handyness on the job. I stuck to my strengths – the fun parts! – and created the webpage header and shared suggestions. Luke kept us on our toes by always reaching for his favorite computer button, the power switch, which is conveniently located for him on the exterior hinge of the laptop and is ringed with  a glowing light to further entice him to push it. Dell certainly didn’t have toddlers in mind when they designed this machine!

Now you can check one homepage (http://nielsen.smugmug.com/) to see the two newest blog entries and the four most recently updated/added photo galleries. You can still access our photo galleries and our blog separately, and those links can be found on our homepage as well. We hope you enjoy the changes and would love to hear any suggestions you might have!

I’ll leave you with a family photo taken about a month ago by a friend during a stroll along the Sandia Crest. The air was enchantingly misty as clouds swirled up and over the mountain range. While we enjoyed the ambiance, Luke delighted in climbing over rocks and collecting sticks, staying still for a photo wasn’t his idea!

leaping into cyberspace!

This past week has been filled with so many 'firsts' for Luke that I just can't put off setting up a way to formally chronicle them any longer! His baby book is already filled with fun memories from his first few months, so this recent spurt of development requires a new method of documentation. We decided to leap aboard the blogging bandwagon and journal Luke's stories this way.

To get caught up on all the recent Luke news without making this entry too long, I'll just give you a list...

- His widow's peak, a signature feature for a month or so, is becoming less distinct.
- He's been rolling both ways (front to back & back to front) for some time, but he just started rolling multiple times in a row a few days ago. We're not sure if he consciously does this for transportation, or if he just enjoys rolling and likes to do it successively!
- He can sit up for a few seconds at a time unsupported. But you have to keep in mind that this isn't prim and proper upright sitting but rather a slouched over toward his feet position. Being near his feet, he soon decides to reach for them in an effort to place them in his mouth, thus undermining his ability to sit!
- He's begun baby-talking to himself. For example, when he's awake and in a nice mood in the car, he'll babble away in the backseat trying out different sounds.
- Solid foods! We think he's quite an impressive eater, polishing off one jar of baby food over the course of 2 feedings in a day. At first solid food frustrated him because he didn't like the time between mouthfuls (in contrast to liquid food which offers continuous eating) but now he seems to be gaining patience and skill in eating from a spoon. In fact when he's in his high chair and he sees one of us coming toward him with his spoon and baby food, he gets excited!
- More snuggles. He more consistently plays a sweet game that he came up with a few weeks ago. When you look at him with a silly smile, he'll flash a big grin and then hide by tucking his head down. He soon looks back up at you and repeats the game.
- First camping trip! Last Friday we enjoyed a fun campout with Princeton friends, Erik & Andrea. We went to Montosa campground near the Magdalena mountains, about 2 hours SW of ABQ. We brought a travel baby bed but we were without the faithful 'shushing machine' which lulls the little boy off to dreamland each night. To our delight, Luke slept fine and didn't seem at all fazed by tent accommodations.
- Which brings us to another exciting change, sleeping through the night (sometimes)! The doctor told us he should be able to sleep from 10 pm to 6 am, and while we haven't had him go that far, we have begun putting him back to sleep without feeding him when he wakes up around 3 or 4 am. We always wake him up to feed him around midnight when we go to bed, and a few times he's slept through until 6 or 7 am. It's a wonderful feeling to get so many hours of zzz's in a row!

A blog also gives us a way to alert you when when we upload new pics to our photosite. Visit our recent pics tab to see many new photos and four videos all uploaded last night! Next post, I'll work on adding links to the photopages in the blog entry. I also thought it would be fun to try to include a favorite recent photo in each blog entry, so here you go... Luke enjoying carrots!