My Kid Is More Awesome Than Me, Part #367,421,958

So, basically, I've gone for like ten whole days without busting out the magic camera once. I did take pictures, of course, because the lilacs in our yard look and smell spectacular, and that only lasts for a few days before the Butterfly Bush That Eats Cleveland overtakes it -- but I took those pictures with my iPhone (and Hipstamatic).

Now it is Friday, and I have nothing to write about, so I took picture's off Shae's Christmas Camera, and ... well, she's a better photographer than I am, even with cheap and dinky equipment. Let's review and discuss, shall we? (By the way: these pictures are all completely unedited, not even cropped, because I think they're just that impressive.)

The bookcase in the living room. This picture is old, several months old at least, because now the second shelf of this bookcase is completely full up with animated movies. Lots of them. Pixar films are our favorite, followed by DreamWorks animation, and then the old Disney movies. The traditionally animated Disneys should be higher, I think, because I am a fascist, but they do not look as fancy when upconverted to Blu-Ray, frankly. Disappointing.

And whatever new song they added to the "Beauty and the Beast" special edition DVD is an abomination unto the Lord. Let us never speak of it again.

Next we have a series of pictures that were all taken on the same day from the back seat of the car:

People pay large American dollars for special lenses, filters, and editing tools to get their pictures to do this, and she managed this effect with a Fisher-Price plastic number and a car seat. I really love those rainbow-prism effects. She's got an excellent eye. Soon the student will become the master.

It's very "Kung Fu Panda," if you think about it. There is no secret ingredient. (Oops, spoiler!)

Blair-Witch-style Facebook profile pic. Boogers FTW! And those eyelashes ought to be criminal. They're going to get her into trouble one day, no doubt.

Oh yes, I am a VERY LUCKY WOMAN. Control yourselves, ladies.

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Listen -- I got nothin' right now. I ain't got no mojo no mo'. So we're going to plumb the depths of my Shae Shots photo set and see what's in there, shall we?

 

 

One of the fun parts of downloading the pictures from the "cramera" is playing what I like to call "the WTF? game," where I try to figure out what's going on. (With the pictures, I mean -- I never know what's going on, universally speaking.) Obviously, these are two pictures of dogs that Shae probably took while she was out on a walk with my parents. But from this perspective, I have no idea where they were taken. The fence in the second picture makes me think this is the house across the street from my parents'. I'm sure these dogs have names, but I don't know what they are.

I think Shae looks like a tadpole in this picture, but don't ask me why. I love how she appears to have only one nostril and no nose or chin. Meanwhile my husband looks perfectly normal.

No idea why Shae loves to take pictures of shoes, but she does. Apparently we're going through the phase where we're really into random things, like dinosaurs and snakes and aliens ... and shoes. God help us all when she discovers what Manolos are, although hopefully she'll turn out like me and continue to wear her Crocs for almost every occasion. (I don't even CARE if you judge me on this one -- they're comfortable, and they're staying.)

In Your Eyes

So Shae got her "cramera" for Christmas (and BTW, that video still cracks me up: "A! New! CAMERAAAAH!"), and before yesterday I took pictures off it exactly once. I should do it more often, because it's highly instructive and educational. For example, last night I learned that Shae really likes to take pictures of the TV. Not sure if one particular show is especially fascinating to her, though, because they're not necessarily pictures of what's on the TV -- just, like, corners and strange flashes of light.

She also likes to take pictures of my husband and/or my husband's laptop, I'm not sure which. He sits on the right side of the couch while she watches her shows on TV. I don't know how she did this with her camera -- maybe G was in the middle of something extra-colorful in WoW when she shot this? But this picture is completely untouched by editing software. I think it's fascinating.

Another favorite is shoes -- there are pictures of every single pair of shoes she owns, I think. Which is approximately 150,000 different pairs of Crocs. (No, it's only like 6 of them.) She has also taken pictures of my shoes, and my husband's, and also random people-on-the-street's. I must have let her take her camera with her when she went for a walk with my parents or something, and Shae took pictures of every shoe she saw, I think.

Of all the pictures, though, I think this one is my very favorite, because it's just so "meta." What you're seeing here is a picture of a video call. Exciting, right? So, with her crappy little camera, she took pictures of a computer monitor showing pictures of my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew who were being filmed by a webcam. You can almost see Joey's little teeny pieces of pizza. Like I said: very meta.

Still ... I make fun of these pictures, but more than a month after Christmas she is still entertained by the camera, so I think it was an excellent buy, even if I did pay (GASP!) full retail for it. When we went out after work last Friday to take pictures of the "pink" moon, she grabbed her camera and brought it too. And seriously, her pictures are no better or worse than mine, just taken with a different camera. There may be hope for her yet.

Hey Santa!

I don't know when it happened, or how, or why, but somewhere on the space-time continuum, Christmas Day turned into the longest day of the entire year. I can't blame it all on parenthood, either, because I remember feeling likewise in previous years, before Shae came along. But in any event, I still don't like getting up at the asscrack of dawn, not even for a glimpse of one of Shae's early-morning Eraserhead-style hairdos.

(Although you have to admit, that hair is pretty cracktacular.)

As was previously reported, Santa came through and gave Shae her one and only Christmas wish, a new camera. We saved that gift for last, and it went about as well as I had hoped it would.

(Key Quote: "My batteries!")

It's not a bad little camera, really. I mean, it's not 10 googlepictures or whatever the hell my camera is, but do we really need it to be? At the last minute I had some reservations about this particular model, after reading some online reviews, but then I remembered: Shae is 2½. She still thinks "guess what? chicken butt!" is funny. And the statistical likelihood that she's ever going to actually look at these pictures is pretty low. All I want out of any toy is for my kid to enjoy it, and for it to not break after 10 minutes of use. So far, so good -- and the pictures are at least as good as your average cellphone.

Well, some of them are, anyway. Shae took over 200 pictures today (wonder where she learned that?) and I edited the collection down to 62. A lot of the shots were of walls, random hands, unidentifiable heads, and general nothingness. About half of the pictures left are of guys named Joe: either my Uncle Joe -- Shae calls him Uncle Quack -- or of one or the other of my brothers-in-law. She threatened to take pictures of me, but so far she hasn't been able to catch me in the act of much of anything, although we did get the following cute exchange:

But that was totally serendipitous. She wasn't much interested in taking pictures of me, anyway, because I am a big gigantic bore. Most of the day was spent eating, unwrapping presents, eating some more, laughing, avoiding naptime, eating yet again, and just generally having a silly old good time.

All in all, I have to say, it was a pretty good Christmas. But next year I'm locking her in her room until at least 8:00.