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Ahhh, Pittsburgh.  The city of bridges, inclines, rivers and steel.  The city my father grew up in and the city that I have not yet lived in – even though this makes me the only granddaughter out of four to fail do so.  My nana and pappapp lived in the Swissvale section up through my junior year in high school so we spent quite a bit of time there.  My parents would get us out of bed at insane times in the middle of the night to drive down from Syracuse so as to avoid traffic.  We’d go down on school breaks, summer vacation and stay for about a week.  The house was always filled with the smell of pasta fagioli and pastina, which my nana made special for us (while using every available pot and pan in the kitchen ).  We’d go to Kennywood amusement park and to the museums to see the dinosaurs.   And sometimes, if we timed it correctly, we would also have my aunt and uncle and two cousins down for a visit there.  Most Italian families are big – mine was the exception to the rule.  Only two children and four granddaughters.  So it was pretty special when we got to see them.  We also grew up far from each other.  Though in many families cousins see each other often, it would be maybe once a year that we saw ours.  So while we did see each other it wasn’t too often.

Time passed and we all grew up.  My sister ended up going to Pitt and both of my cousins moved there at various points, as did my aunt and uncle.  My older cousin, Melissa got married to a great guy (lovingly referred to as the Dutchman) and just about a year ago I found out that they were expecting their first child, a boy. Calvin James was born just over six months ago and from what I saw thanks to Facebook, was absolutely adorable.  When Melissa asked me a month or two ago who I would recommend for photos, I suggested that she fly me out instead and I would be glad to do them.  And to my absolute delight, she DID!  I arrived in Pittsburgh last Friday – the first time I had been there in over five years.  And thus began three awesome days with Mr. Calvin.  He was beyond adorable, the happiest baby I have ever seen and one of the cutest, too!  Since I had three days to shoot we did a morning shoot, an evening shoot, indoors, outdoors, clothed, nakey.  Lots of fun!!!  We also discovered this awesome rooftop garden at Carnegie Mellon with this fascinating sculpture of a French Curve that has numbers all over it.  TOO cool.  There are lots of photos in this bunch (a mere, tiny fraction of all of them!), so sit back and enjoy meeting Mr. Calvin.  I sure did