Alexander: Nolan gave me the train!

Me: No he didn't. You took it from him.

Alexander: He gave me.

Me: I watched you take it from him. You reached over and grabbed it.

Alexander: He gave it to me!

A little while ago, I picked up a new digital camera. A year or two ago, when our friend Adrien came to visit, she brought along a camera and took some pictures that were just phenomenal. While having a skilled photographer and good lighting and a cooperative subject all come into play, having the right tool does help to get the job done. So, I eventually picked up a better camera, and the result has been that my occasional good shots are now better than they used to be.

When I get those really good quality shots, though, I hate to dumb them down by saving them in "economy mode" just so that my web page will load faster. So, thanks to my vanity of wanting to share these photos and my belief that increasingly, y'all are getting faster connections to the internet, I've decided to allow myself to post photos that run higher than 40K.

Well, okay. The one above is substantially more than 40K. I hope you'll forgive me.

I was taking care of the kids this past Thursday morning before heading into work, and Alex picked out the clothes he wanted to wear. Alex is into "matching" these days -- pointing out when the color of his socks match the color of his shirt, or of Nolan's shirt. or of my clothing, etc.

We make it easy on him, of course, by sticking pretty much to standard color themes. His shirts tend to be reds or blues, with a couple of outliers available for good measure. His pants and shorts are either blue or khaki. Socks similarly fall within a narrow color band, so it would be hard for him to pick clothes that clash.

But all that said, he does like to point out when things match. There is one shirt -- a blue "fish" hawaiian -- that we have in both his and in Nolan's sizes. On this particular Thursday, since Alex picked the shirt, I went ahead and put Nolan into a matching outfit. And then I felt like taking pictures.

The brothers remain good buddies. Nolan is a little bit crabby lately, as he copes with four molars coming in at once, but otherwise, we remain blessed with two beautiful, happy, healthy boys.

In my next post -- our first family movie outing since "Finding Nemo":

"Cars."

I'm so behind. I still haven't responded to the many e-mails y'all have sent since the birth of baby Andrew. Please forgive me! I'm working on getting caught up! In the meantime, here are some photos that were taken during the first week or two since Andrew's arrival.

Here's Nolan, Alex, and Andrew. Alex loves to hold his baby brother. We've been encouraging him to provide more support for Andrew's neck, but when the camera is rolling, he sometimes forgets.

... in fact, Alex will often spend very long stretches of time holding Andrew, which not only give them bonding time, and makes Alex feel like he's being a good big brother, but also gives their mom a chance to do things other than attending to the baby non-stop.

Here's a shot of Andrew's maternal grandfather holding him at less than one-week-old.

In this one, Andrew looks almost exactly like Alex did in a similar shot almost six years ago. (I may eventually pull up some of those older photos and format them for the web to provide compare-and-contrast opportunities on this page....)

Mostly, the little guy sleeps. But hey, he does it beautifully!