Niamh has had a number of visitors from abroad, including Grandma Betty visiting from Ireland, and Uncle Leonard (and honorary Aunt Carolyn) from Australia. She's now one month old, and has grown to twenty two inches, and nearly ten and one half pounds. The pediatrician says if her eyes remain their current blue color for three months, they will probably stay that way, which would make daddy very happy. Of course, the real news, is I finally got a selection of photos from Grandma Betty's visit. Click Niamh for the gallery.
Defined tags for this entry:
Family
Betty is visiting and getting some quality time with her new Grandchild Niamh. For interested parties, I have a small Niamh update photo. The latest photo features the amazing two arms raised sleep position. I know this is another sleeping baby photo, but heck, newborns are supposed to sleep a lot. This picture was taken in the Rolston family bassinet, which was purported to have provided a resting place for my father, myself, and now Niamh. Unfortunately I'm not sure it will make it to a 4th generation of Rolstons as the base is crumbling, but one never knows.
All the recent photos have been taken with a
Nikon Coolpix 995 a 3.34 megapixel digital camera. Tracy gave me the camera last Christmas and it took me nearly a year to get it out of the box and start using it, but I must admit it's an amazing techno-gadget. Between learning how to take care of a baby (and documenting this process to a degree with images for the website), I have managed to snap a few landscape photo's, and put a page together with a mixture of the more interesting shots. There's views south and north, all taken the last few days, which in typical LA winter fashion have come after days of sweltering heat, followed by high winds, and now rain. I've found that rain and wind often combines to produce some of the most beautiful atmospheric conditions and sunsets, and I've attempted to capture a few here.
Niamh Elizabeth Rolston was born on November of 2002 at 5:24am, in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Peter Weiss delivered her at the Cedar Sinai medical center after roughly twenty hours of labor by Tracy.
Niamh weighed in at 8lbs, 7oz, and was 20 and 3/4 inches long. As for her name Niamh (pronounced as Neeve) it's Gaelic meaning "luster, shine, radiance, brilliance". Niamh is also the name of a faerie princess from celtic mythology:
One day while out hunting with Finn and the Fena, Oisin (the son of Finn) saw a beautiful maiden on a white steed ride swiftly towards them. As she came slowly to the presence of Finn, he addressed her courteously in these words, "Who art thou, O lovely youthful princess? Tell us thy name and the name of thy country, and relate to us the cause of thy coming". She answered in a sweet and gentle voice, "Noble king of the Fena, I am the daughter of the king of Tir na nog and my name is Niamh of the Golden Hair. I love thy noble son Oisin; and this is what has brought me to Erin." She took Oisin on her white steed to Tir na nog, the land of never ending youth. The steed galloped swiftly and smoothly towards the west, till he reached the strand; and then moved over the face of the sea with the speed of a cloud-shadow on a March day....
In a similar familial vein, I recently scanned a few old (and somewhat damaged) pictures from Tracy's youth, and did some retouching. Those photo's are available
here
It's been a while since I did a mainpage update. Came across a couple of classic old photos taken by my old college roommate Peter Fong, and decided to do a rescan. These were taken when we had an apartment in Redondo Beach across from the ocean, and Giz was still just a puppy. These were pretty badly damaged, but thanks to Adobe Photoshop they're looking pretty good again, at least in the online form. This scan was a lot better than the original one which has been on the site for a long time. Click on either photo for the fullsize version in the gallery.
Time for Fall cleaning. Dogs don't like baths in the sink though.
Tracy has taken a new job as a staff consultant with
Blackbaud Inc, a Charleston South Carolina based software company that sells fundraising and accounting systems designed for non-profits and schools.
We recently took a small vacation while back east for a friend's wedding in Pennsylvania. Gizmo put in a tour of duty as postal delivery monitor. You can click on the photo to see it fullsize.
Our trip took us to Hilton Head, SC and a day trip to Savannah, Georgia. If you've read the book or seen the film "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", you may recognize the Italianate mansion behind Tracy as the Mercer House on 429 Bull Street.
This was the home of the central figure of the book, Jim Williams, the now famous location of his huge Christmas Parties, and where he was alleged to have shot and killed his assistant Danny Hansford. "Historic" Savannah has a number of these courtyards, surrounded by residences.
Continue reading "Paoli to Savannah"
