Bailey's Photos So Far (aka: Practice, Practice, Practice)

 Here are some of the shots Bailey and I have come up with during our fun, "Oh! Let's try this!" photo sessions. She's so nice to patiently "sit" for me as I practice and practice.

Beautiful Clover, Etc

 As a favor to me, Bailey (the kids' babysitter/surrogate big sister) is letting me practice taking photos by posing for senior pictures throughout the year. I am just a hobby photographer, and I am well aware of it. That's why I like to practice and try to improve. I shoot and shoot and shoot and then analyze what I got and go try again. I've been quietly doing that since I was in junior high school, because it's fun. My kids get very, very tired of constantly being my "models" though, so it's nice when other people agree to let me experiment on them (hehe). In this case, I get to work on my photo fundamentals, and Bailey will end up with some (theoretically) decent photos. Win-win. It's Springtime 'round these parts, and everything is coming up lovely, so we went out again this week. Because they are my children, and I can still make them, I dressed the kids in something nice and had them run around and smile once I had finished shooting pictures of Bailey in each location. We had a blast trying to catch the sun in between clouds and little bursts of Spring rain. It made getting the correct camera settings an interesting challenge, but I suppose that's the point. :)


(click the photos to view them larger)

Every Day

Better writers than I am will publish eloquent tomes on motherhood today, and of course there's a lot to be said from every angle. I love being a mother. It is challenging and rewarding and wonderful and sometimes terrifying. I wouldn't choose to do anything else with my life right now. I ached to be a mother when I was struggling to become one, and now that I have two children, I know how lucky I am. Even on my most difficult day, I don't want to complain. This is my life. I'm breathing it in, and I'm grateful for it. I'm also very thankful to my own mother for all the snotty noses she wiped, all the diapers she washed, laundry she folded, jeans she patched, sass she corrected, rolled eyes she tolerated, and hopes she held in her heart.

None of us is perfect, but I like to hope we all do our best. These children show up so fragile and amazing, and we are just allowed to keep them, as if the people in charge have no idea who we are and how that one time, in college, we tried co-owning a dog with a roommate, and it totally did not work out, so how could anyone possibly think we could handle a child?!?!

I digress.

We do our best every day to teach manners and kindness and loving attitudes. We do that while attempting to have all those things ourselves, while also wiping said snotty noses and digging out from under mountains of ever accumulating laundry as small people holler from the bathroom that they need other things to be wiped right now (and then run laughing down the hallway half naked) and then unstopping inexplicably filled bathroom sinks before driving small people to all their many activities and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning the schmutz that covers everything at a waist high level and packing lunches and finding overdue library books and taking 14 photos of alphabet block towers and re-reading "Where The Wild Things Are" and trying to take that advice about treasuring-every-second-because-they-go-by-so-fast, even when some of them are crawling by like snails.

And I love it. I do. Even the schmutz and the snotty noses and having to stay up late to catch a moment to myself, but most especially all the book reading and alphabet block towers. And I don't really need a whole day to honor me for it, even though I appreciate the thought. Because, to me, the experience of it IS the reward. I'm getting what I wanted when I signed on.

So...I guess what I meant to say is thank you, Mom, for everything.

Thank you, Sharrel, for raising my James.

Thank you, James, for giving me the J-bird and Miss V.

And thank you, J-bird and Miss V, for every day.

Girls' Night

On Wednesday evenings, the J-bird and James have "boys' night" at home - concentrated time for the J-bird to spend with his Daddy. They build something with LEGO blocks, or they play a video game for an hour. Miss V and I bust out of the house and go to a local coffee shop for GIRLS' night. I get the best drip coffee in town, and she gets a little tea cup that contains about a quarter cup of tepid hot chocolate and about half a cup of whipped cream with a little pink and white wafer cookie on the side. Sometimes other friends meet us there, and sometimes it's just the two of us. The coffee shop has a play area in the back, so Miss V rummages through the toy dinosaurs and trucks when she gets bored with my company, but we have a nice time together. I get one-on-one time with the J-bird as well during the week, and vice-versa for James and Miss V, and I think it's really important to do that. Obviously, we spend tons of time as a family, but the kids are so different when it's just them, and doing something special, even something as small as getting a cup of hot chocolate, makes those little eyes light up. Details about their day start to spill out, and their thoughts that might normally get lost in the tumble start to find words. I love it.

By the way, that bruise you see under her right-most sparkly eye is the SECOND ONE she has given herself in the SAME spot in under three weeks. Time to break out the cotton wool and start winding her in it. If only she'd hold still.

So Happy Together

They have a world of their own now, these two. Oh, they fuss with each other - of course they do - and they get cranky and need us. They aren't babies though. They can go off together and play. They love one another, and they mostly like one another, and they have this world that is just theirs. They take care of each other there. When Miss V tries to run into the street and I'm not quite quick enough, the J-bird automatically stops her. When one of them gets a minor boo boo as they are playing, the other one springs into caretaker action. They have grand adventures in their private world - space voyages, cowboy exploits, tea parties. I spy from the edges, but I can only catch little glimpses, and I don't want to spoil it with my grown-up presence, because it is so sweet and so precious. It's like a soap bubble. Childhood magic. I remember when I had that with my brother, and I smile and hold those memories in my heart. That special world that seems to last forever and only for a moment at the same time.