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okay, i know that's not an original title. whoever's blog i read it on and remembered the word and forgot the blog name, credit to you!!
anyway. not much to blog about. well, i keep thinking about blogging about musa's expanding communication abilities, so here are a few examples: he says pictures (pichuz), vaseline (yaah-yeen), table (bay-buh), chairs (chuz, often mistaken for shoes (shuz) and cereal (also shuz)), button (also baybuh), and one of my favorites, "open it", rendered "ah-pu-tih-tih-tih!" always with three "tih"'s. sooo funny! he says "lulu" for both yogurt and lotion, and i don't know if it's because the words sound the same or the things in question look and smell similar? he finally, just in the past couple of days, said "nani" and "dadi" for his grandmothers, although he still refers to them as we do - "ammi" and "ma". he says "lala" for khala, but usually will use it to any picture of a youngish-looking woman with longish dark hair, too. he says a few names - kamran (kami) and akram (akwwm), and tonight he finally called one of usman's friend's "uncle" (with great glee!) after having been afraid of the poor guy for months.
he will grab at his butt and say "pee pee" when he has done either that or the other one. yesterday i was looking for something under a table and i turned to him and asked him repeatedly, "where is it?" and he started going, "wehzah? wehzah?" and looking under the table, then at me. big help huh :)
his experience having cousin raihana stay with him for several days in december was a huge blessing mashallah! random things remind him of her - he says her name, too, "ah-na-na" - and randomly he will bring up her name or her dad's, akram's. (he says lala, too, cousin, but i never know which lala he is referring to!) i think raihana taught him how to dance, because after her visit he really starts to bust a move when the music comes on.

other than that. i've had some work to do recently for my wedding photography stuff, which really got me into exploring photoshop in-depth, and i am having SO much fun with it. my latest obsession (by which i mean i will actually stay up into the wee hours trying different things with random pictures) is with the infrared effect you can implement by converting a color photograph into black and white. then there are filters, and i'm just learning to use layers, too. i've known the very basic stuff - the photojournalism stuff, like adjusting levels and clone-stamping out scratches and dust - for years, but i never really let myself play with it as much as i am now. i'll throw out some recent examples here - actually this first one, of musa, it all started with this one - i just did it randomly one day, and was surprised how much i loved it - i haven't been inspired by something artistically creative in so long.

this was a picture of musa out on the deck of one of our B&B's in nova scotia. just a standard "torn edges" sketch filter.

















i took this shot of raihana in december at our dinner table, watching musa. it was a dark shot - i wanted to use the lamplight, not flash, but i had to set the shutter speed too fast, to avoid blur. so i adjusted the levels, color curves and removed the color cast, and then applied the "dry brush" artistic filter.
















this one is from shenandoah valley, one of our favorite haunts, this past october. the brightest trees in this shot were the yellow ones. this is just converted to B&W with the infrared effect, diffuse glow filter applied, lighting adjusted.












also shenandoah, and same photoshop effects applied, but this was taken back in summer 2007.