by Claire on February 4, 2010
**Apologies to my Facebook friends who have already seen these photos ad-nauseum**
My oldest daughter, Cindy, is an amazing photographer. The word “amazing” is often overused these days, in my opinion, as the go-to adjective to describe anyone or anything with slightly more-than-mediocre or impressive skills, talent, or results. In fact, I heard it in abundance the other night to describe the average Joe bachelor, Jake, on this season’s “The Bachelor” reality TV show… but I digress…
Back to my daughter. She really is a talented photographer. It’s in her genes. Her great-uncle (my uncle – my father, Jim Conant’s oldest brother) was Howell Conant, renowned photographer of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier Grimaldi of Monaco. So, it’s not surprising that she picked up the talent. I have been encouraging her for years to start her own business, but it’s hard when you have little ones at home and no seed money to get started. (Benefactors, anyone? hint, hint…)
This last Sunday, my younger daughter Stacy, the preggy one, and I packed up a bunch of my fabrics and together with Cindy and her hubby, Cody, (primarily them) we set up making a makeshift studio and played around with lighting and backdrops so she could take Stacy’s pregnancy photos before baby gets here. Cindy caught some lovely photos, even if we didn’t have the best lighting or professional backdrops. We had a BLAST and laughed a LOT. I’ll do a separate shout-out to Cody once Cindy sends me the fun pictures she took of him.
Here are the pregnancy photos she took of Stacy. We’re really happy with how they turned out, and I think this weekend, if the weather holds, we’re going to try some outdoor shots.
This one is our all-time favorite:
The scar on her belly is from her gastric-bypass surgery she had several years ago.
I love this one. These are the hands of her two nephews and niece. Left to right, clockwise: Cayden, Elise, Evan.
Evan’s hands.
How precious is this? Evan adores his Auntie Stacy.
And the photos wouldn’t be complete without Stacy’s doggie, Trixie in them. She even had on her finest dress in honor of the occasion.
Tagged as:
conant photography,
family,
genealogy,
howell conant,
life,
life events,
Photography,
pregnancy photography,
princess grace
by Claire on February 3, 2010
Phew… there’s been so much going on lately that I’ve been a neglectful blogger. Sometimes I don’t blog because the hugely disparate thoughts that go through my mind are hard to congeal into any sort of substance that might make sense to my peeps. So I stay quiet. That, and I’ve been swamped with work and family. I haven’t done any sewing in a couple weeks, haven’t done any activity in over a week, but I’ve stuck to my Weight Watchers program and have maintained my weight. So that area of my life is stable.
(The picture below is of Laila from last week – how adorable is she with that sweet button nose and chubby cheeks? I can’t wait to meet her in person.)
On the baby front – the major focus in my life lately – my daughter’s pregnancy is progressing quickly. Yesterday, the doctors finally verbalized what I suspected for a long time – that she is at high-risk for having a preterm delivery. She’s at 35 weeks as of yesterday, so we really just hope to have her make it a couple more weeks. Right now, she has too much amniotic fluid. This increases her risk of complications such as placenta abruption (where the placenta pulls away from the uterine wall) and her water breaking early. All along they’ve had subtle questions about her placenta so now I am guessing that they’ve been worried about this from the start. I could be reading more into it than is there, but usually my intuition is pretty accurate. She’s had contractions that have been stronger than your typical Braxton Hicks contractions and has been on modified bed rest (not strict, but take it easy and no excessive walking) for a couple weeks or so now. She goes twice a week now to the fetal medicine doctors for a biophysical profile ultrasound and fetal non-stress test where they check the baby’s breathing, swallowing, heart beat, and her contractions. At this point, if she were to start labor, they’d probably just deliver her. I’m very grateful that my daughter chose the hospital and doctors that she chose because they’ve watched her very closely from the beginning due to the extensive medications she’s on and has had to stay on during her pregnancy.
That means, then, that I’ve been a busy bee. Not only am I taking my daughter to her appointments, but my job is extremely busy right now. My team has a deadline of February 12th, so I’m hoping baby waits until after that to arrive. I have a LOT of work to do until then.
On the sewing front, my daughter wants me to make her some maternity delivery gowns, so we have purchased some pretty 100% cotton fabric for that, and I should be sewing those up this Sunday. I’ll do a separate blog post around all that.
Last Sunday, we went up to my oldest daughter’s house (the amazing photographer, Cindy) and she took Stacy’s pregnancy photos. Separate post coming up about that as well.
And finally, there’s all the normal stuff of taking care of a home and our three little Chihuahuas and two cats. Somewhere in all this, I’m trying to sleep as well. But that’s not happening much and the lack of sleep was evidenced Monday when I fell down the stairs! I slipped off the last three stairs and ended up on the hardwoods on my knees, complete with my doggie Lily in my arms. I laughed at first cuz I’m weird like that, but within a few hours my back had stiffened up considerably, and now a trip to the chiropractor is warranted. At least it was me who slipped, and not my daughter. My oldest fell down those stairs when she was pregnant though but the stairs were carpeted then, so it’s not a carpet vs. hardwood issue.
I’ll leave you now with a sneak peek of the pregnancy photos:
More in the next blog post!
Tagged as:
baby,
family,
Photography,
pregnancy,
pregnancy complications,
pregnancy photography,
preterm delivery,
work/life balance
