Seeing as we were there for the Brick-or-Treat event, we brought Jason's Halloween costume with us to Legoland. We got there in the morning, though, and the event didn't start until the late afternoon, so for most of the day he just wore his street clothes. When it was time to change into his costume, Jason was pretty excited, and as we headed back into the park to find the event, he proudly displayed his boots and vest as he marched along.

That lasted all of five minutes before he started kicking the boots off and pulling at his collar. Hopefully he'll make it a little longer when it's time for some actual trick-or-treating.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/500 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Curve to set black point and add contrast and color pop; cropped a bit off the top and left side.

Thoughts for improvement: There's a bit of lens distortion I probably should have cleaned up, and it also may need a little straightening. Other than that I'm pretty happy with it.

Me: "Do you like Ms. Manijeh? Is she your friend?" [Ms. Manijeh is one of the teachers at his day care.]

Jason: "Um yeah." [This is his new thing, putting "um" in front of his answers. I don't know what's up with that.]

Me: "That's good. What about Eva, is she your friend?"

Jason: "Um yeah."

Me: "And is Tescia your friend?"

Jason: "Um yeah."

Me: "Is Kayleigh your friend?"

Jason: "Um no."

Me: "No?"

Jason: "Ale my friend."

Me: "Ale's your friend? Well that's nice."

Jason: "And Kayleigh."

Me: "Wait, Kayleigh is your friend?"

Jason: "Everybody my friend, daddy!"

Me: "That's true. Everybody is your friend, Jason."

Jason: "And Jason my friend, and Mommy my friend, and Daddy my friend. And Cooper my friend."

Me: [smiling] "That's right, we are all your friends."

Jason: "I love you!"

Me: "Awww, thank you! I love you too!"

Jason: "I love you, daddy!"

Me: "Awww... That is so sweet. I'm going to kiss you now!"

Jason: "No, don't kiss me!"

We put Jason in a toddlers' soccer class over the summer and he hated it. He didn't want to run or even get out of our arms, and when it was his turn to kick the ball he'd almost invariably burst into tears. I don't know what's changed between now and then, though, because when he saw some of the other kids at Sunday's birthday party chasing the ball around, he couldn't get enough.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in aperture priority exposure mode, center-weighted average metering. Focal length 200mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Auto WB adjustment, picked from a white part of the design on his shirt; curve to reduce exposure, bring up blacks, and add contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: I like the way the grass looks with the narrow depth of field, but this would probably have been better at f/8 or maybe even f/11. I was shooting wide open mainly to keep a fast shutter speed and avoid motion blur, but here I managed to miss the focus just a bit--you can see that the front of the ball is soft, and due to his stance, his right leg is a bit further away from the camera than his left, and is therefore also slightly out of focus. Stopping down to f/8 would have given me a lot more leeway with focus depth and probably still would have had shallow enough depth of field to separate him from the background.

Jason likes to run but he has a tendency to trip over his own feet, so we've tried to get him to run only when he's on a soft surface, like grass. He forgets a lot, though, so we still have a fair number of scrapes and bruises to kiss. Fortunately, the only times he fell down at his friend's birthday party on Sunday, he was on some nice, springy grass. He was up chasing after a soccer ball just a few seconds after this photo.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode, center-weighted average metering. Aperture f/4, shutter 1/125 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: straightened horizon; auto WB, picked from the white of his eye, strong curve to bring down the exposure, bring up black point, and add contrast, mild dodge over his eyes.

Thoughts for improvement: A lot of the shots I got in the later part of the party were overexposed, which I did on purpose to try to get some more pop. Unfortunately, I overdid it a bit, which did some weird things to the color when I brought the exposure back down in post-processing. You can see a red tint to his hair that isn't really there, and the grass is a bit electric. I do like the texture of the grass, though, both the in-focus and bokeh, and I like the look on his face. Compositionally, the only thing I'd change is to not have the gazebo right behind his head.

"I want that diaper."

I've just put him down onto his changing table after his bath. As every night, we flossed and brushed his teeth, then he washed his hands. Immediately after drying them, he ran--still naked--into his room and behind the rocking chair, to sing to himself and play with the strings that tie the seat cushion to the frame. I followed behind, pausing to move his stepstool back against the wall and turn off the bathroom light, then fished him out from behind the chair and set him on the table.

He's pointing at the picture of Elmo on the front of the diaper that's hanging over the edge of the shelf above him. "I want to wear it."

"You want that one?" I ask, and he nods. "But Jason," I say, "that's not a night-time diaper. We only wear those ones during the day." I don't know why I say "we," but he doesn't notice.

"I want it," he insists.

"I know, buddy, but we don't always get what we want." I pull out an overnight diaper and put it on him, then slide on his pajama pants. "Jason, I'm going to tell you something," I say. "Sometimes we want things, but we don't get them." I pull his pajama top over his head and hold the bottom open for him to put his arms in. "And sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do. It's frustrating, I know, but that's just how it is sometimes."

I pick him up. "But, I'll tell you what: it's worth it to wait because then when you do get..."

He throws his arms around me and puts his head on my shoulder. "Awww," I say, smiling. "Are you giving me a hug? That's so nice. I love hugs from Jason. Those are my favorite kind of hug." He leans back and looks at me, in that way that he does that seems like he's searching my face.

I continue. "Jason, when you wait to get the things you want..."

He cuts me off with a kiss. I take the hint. "OK. Night night, buddy," I say.

"Night night!" he replies as I hand him to his mother. She and I both chuckle--turns out, sometimes you don't have to wait to get what you want.

She lifts him into the carseat and begins to fasten the buckles over his little chest. Just as she pushes the clasps into place, he notices a bottle of water she had left in the cupholder. He immediately wants it, of course, but she's an old hand at distracting him.

"Look what I found!" she exclaims, producing a pair of toy cars as if by magic and placing them into his hands.

He studies them intently. "Those Nana's cars," he says at last.

She nods. "Yeah," she says, "you got those at Nana's house."

A funny look crosses his face. "I want to touch Nana's house," he declares, extending his arms out in front of him. He strains, stretching through his fingertips and grunting with the effort. Finally, he has to admit defeat, though. "I can't reach it," he says, not sad but perhaps a little surprised. After all, Nana's house is in Big Sur and he is in San Diego--it's only four hundred miles from that parking lot to her door. Why shouldn't he be able to reach?

We had planned to have a big end-of-summer playdate with a bunch of Jason's friends, but it turns out that when everybody involved a.) has toddlers, and b.) are busy people, it's hard to get everyone's calendar lined up. Thus, our end-of-summer playdate ended up happening in mid-September. Anyway, it was a rousing success and everyone had a good time. Or at least was polite enough to pretend.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 18-55mm DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 18mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/60 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Daylight WB preset, cropped to square, curve for contrast and highlight recovery, burned background.

Thoughts for improvement: Well, the booger in his nose is a little unsightly, but I was unfortunately not skillful enough to clone it out. It would also be nice if that bush weren't right behind his head on the left.

About midway through Sunday's trip to Mission Beach, Jason decided that he wanted to get out of the stroller and go look at the water. Can't say I blame him.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 100mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/2000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: Daylight WB and Yellow Filter BW presets. Dodged over the subjects and burned the backgrounds. Applied a medium-ish vignette.

Thoughts for improvement: I'm not totally pleased with the post-processing in this one; the burning and dodging feels kind of sloppy to me. I think I'd also like if I were able to get more of the reflection in the sand.

Aside from the whole "seeing family" thing, I was excited to take a trip home last weekend because it would give me the opportunity to take pictures of stuff outside my normal routine. So, of course, I had to go and forget to bring the charger for my camera, which meant that by Sunday I had to use my iPhone if I wanted to take any pictures at all.

As usual for our trips to Big Sur, we ate at the River Inn several times. Jason was entranced by the umbrellas on the lower deck, and kept wanting to see them. Monday morning, his cousin--"Other Jason"--showed him how to throw pebbles into the river, which was hugely exciting for him. Seeing him delight in such a simple little game made me nostalgic for my own small-town youth. We don't have any rivers near our house, but the bright side is that I think Big Sur and the Monterey Peninsula will probably become a very special place for Jason as he grows up.

Technical info: Shot with an iPhone 3G. The EXIF data says the aperture was f/2.8, with nothing about shutter speed. Post-processing in Aperture 3: applied the Cloudy WB preset first. Then added edge sharpening and bumped vibrancy (0.2). I added a strong mid-tone curve, then a medium (0.4) burn to the river and background. Desaturated reds a little (-15). Finally, I added some vignetting (intensity 0.6, radius 0.9).

Thoughts for improvement: Tough to get a great technical shot out of an iPhone, but for what it is, I like this one. The main thing when using a cameraphone like this is to try to avoid high-contrast scenes and moving subjects.

One of the belated birthday presents Jason got this past weekend was a whole Potato Head family: a mom, a dad, and two kids. My aunt's friend Linda had a lot of fun showing him the ropes. Jason actually already knows all about Mr. Potato Head, but he was polite enough not to mention it.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/125, ISO 400. Post processing in Aperture 3 was relatively light: auto WB adjustment, a little bit of curves, and a light vignette.

Thoughts for improvement: I don't know, I'm pretty happy with it. I like the way Jason is framed by Linda's arm and body, and I think it's a decent capture. What do you think?