Funkbelly

I finally sorted through the entire catalog of photos from 2011 and got them uploaded to the Gallery. I wanted to put proper titles and descriptions on them, but I think just getting them up at all is sufficient at this point. Let’s just say it was pretty much all about August with a few pictures of assorted friends and family.

They’re organized by quarter for ease of navigation:

January-March, 2011 – Crawling, standing, eating, and genetically funny faces.

April-June, 2011 – Swimming lessons, first birthday, Charlie the Cat, Phil Liggett and hockey riots.

July-September, 2011 – Trips to Idaho, swimming pools, and meeting Gogo the puppy.

October-December, 2011 – Bob’s Pumpkin Patch, trick-or-treating, first haircut, and Christmas with the Hodgins cousins.

August loves the zoo. His current favorites are the meerkats, tigers, primates, hippos, and kangaroos. But he also enjoys pointing out the crows, squirrels, and other native and non-resident animals that hang out there.

There’s something about the ducks hanging out in the flamingo pool that he finds particularly interesting. Maybe it’s the relative proximity of the animals compared to the zoo’s proper residents. Maybe it’s because it’s usually our last stop on the way to the car so he’s tired and just likes the rest. Either way, we usually have to work a little harder to coax him away from the viewing platform much more so than any other exhibit.

Week one of Project 52, taken the same night as the Bubboh video:

He’s not at all shy about getting his head and face wet, and he’ll show us how he “swims” in the bathtub by flipping over on his tummy and kicking his legs. He’s also recently started sticking his face in the tub and blowing bubbles, then asking dad to do the same. He’ll be good and ready for his next round of swimming lessons, and Joanne is thinking about enrolling him in an ISR class since he spends a fair amount of time around the pool in the summer when the weather cooperates.

August’s vocabulary is really starting to take off, and he recently dubbed bath time “bubble,” or “bubboh” as he says it. Whenever he wanders into the bathroom he tries to climb into the tub while chanting “bubboh, bubboh, bubboh…”

Here he is expressing his enthusiasm for a recent tub time:

Alternately, watch it at YouTube for larger/full screen options.

You’d never guess August was completely freaked out only about 10 seconds before this was taken. But once he warmed up to Santa he was fine, and ever since then he loves pointing out Santa in his Christmas books, although it sounds suspiciously like “Dada.” There’s not THAT much grey in dad’s beard, little man…

I was a bit dismayed when I realized that we haven’t updated the website in nearly a year. And the last post was a pretty good one, too. I’m not generally very good about letting folks know what’s going on; I don’t even update Facebook very often unless it’s to share an Instagram photo or I get around to posting things at my Flickr account, and those both happen automatically.

My mom recently made a comment about how she hadn’t seen any photos of August in a while and I wondered what she was talking about because I’m always taking pictures of him. Then I realized that I’m much better at taking photos than actually doing anything with them. And every photo taken is potentially accompanied by a story that someone might enjoy hearing, so these are also lost.

So I made a few resolutions to try and rectify this situation:

Resolution #1: More Funkbelly
The first one is a bit of a no-brainer. I want to be better about updating the website with photos, stories, and videos that seem at all relevant or interesting. This way family and friends who are cool enough to not have a Facebook account can stay on top of things, and everything will also get automatically shared to Facebook. Feel free to comment, share, or disregard as you see fit.

Resolution #2: Keep the Photos Up to Speed
Another no-brainer, really, and there’s two components: First, getting all of the photos from 2011 updated to the gallery, which is in progress. Second is making sure the photos worth sharing find their way to the gallery in a timely manner. Instagram is fine and all, but it’s really useless for anyone who doesn’t have the mobile app or isn’t on Facebook, and it’s a pretty poor means for distributing more than one or two photos at a time. Additionally, it’s an extra step to share photos from Facebook with non-Facebook users, and half the time the link doesn’t work anyway, so using the Funkbelly gallery ensures everyone who wants to see them can access the photos.

Resolution #3: Undertake a 52 Project
I’ve occasionally entertained the notion of attempting a 365 project, and try to take and publish one photograph per day over the course of a year. It seems like a good idea in theory, until I start factoring in the time required for my job and house projects and work travel and, of course, August.

Given my propensity to take far more photos than I ever get around to doing anything with (see resolution #2), my third 2012 resolution is to do a 52 project to take and publish one new picture of August every week over the course of the year. I have snapped thousands of photos of the little dude over the last 20 months, so the goal will be to get one really good one that highlights some event or milestone over the course of the preceding week. This will (hopefully) force me to be more conscientious about using the camera while directly supporting resolution number one of being better about updating the website and dovetail nicely with the general photo upkeep associated with resolution number two.

Look for the first installment of Project 52: August vs. 2012 in the next few days…