Liam surely isn’t waisting any time and took his first steps on April 30th. My birthday. Way to steal my thunder! The good news, it was as exciting as it was with Leila. It is still incredibly strange to see him walk across the room like he’s been doing this for 32 years (and a couple of drinks…) Walking is always such a big milestone and even a bigger deal… It is the first real sign to parents (and THE JUDGING WORLD OF JUDGERS)  that the baby is developing ok, one less thing to stress about… the sooner the better… Parenting is so fucking stressful. But let’s not dwell on walking ok, because HELLO? Is he TALKING yet? No? Must be all that deli-meat I ate while I was pregnant, dammit.

No really, it’s exciting. And… and… of course I have a video for you! Thanks for asking!

“I think I am in labor” I read and my heart almost flew out of my chest and into the space! A few weeks ago I posted on my FB fan page that I would love to photograph the arrival of the baby and luckily found a mom that agreed to let me photograph her home birth. I was in heaven. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent daydreaming about it. And here I was finally packing my camera bag and rushing through the house like a mad woman only everything seemed soooo slow… as if I was moving through the water against the stream. But the worst part was I still had to wait for Dennis to get home so I could go. I knew he would be home in an hour and I knew there was a good chance that the birth will last all night so I wasn’t too worried, just really anxious.

Well… what do you know – the baby girl waits for no one! She arrived just a few minutes before I got to the house. I was a bit disappointed I missed it, but mostly just overwhelmed with joy to witness the first hour of a brand new life. The baby was born incredibly fast and even a midwife barely made it. Still the most amazing thing was that even with all the rush the little princess caused with her express arrival the house seemed to be incredibly quiet and calm. Nobody was rushing, the baby was quietly nursing with her umbilical cord still attached. Nobody was pulling her away for measurements or check-ups. It was such a dramatic difference from my two hospital births. I lack words to describe it, but it was amazing on so many levels.

The rest of the story is hers to tell and I just  feel privileged I got to meet her so early in her life.

(Have I told you that most of my blog traffic is Monday through Friday from about 9am to 5pm? No? Well now you know, but not to worry because your boss is reading this too.)

The kids are still driving me crazy, but that’s their job and we all love it. Liam is rolling around and army crawling… backwards. Which means I spend most of my days pulling him from under the couch. I am starting to think that this is one of his self-defense moves – his sister is too big to fit under the couch.

Leila is heading full speed into her wonderful twos and taking herself very seriously. Her vocabulary if booming and the last time I have played Pink’s Funhouse was the day she sang “I’ll burn this fucker down!” at Target. Let’s just file this under the not-so-proud-moments-of parenting and never talk about this again, mKay?

Holidays were great, but as always I am very relieved they are over. My best memory by far was the making of this slightly ridiculous family portrait:

Welcome to my bedroom. I think I just took my lack of privacy online to a whole new level. You are welcome.

I highly recommend taking a two month long break from blogging. I missed it so much I created another website. No… YOU are crazy. I mean what else am I supposed to do with all that free time and money? (Don’t answer that… I’m practicing my rhetorical questions, that is all)

I always felt that there is just not enough of Daiva on the Internet… so I fixed that -> http://www.dnatochyphotography.com/