Having fun

With my camera and photoshop. I've definitely learned that the flash on my camera isn't as powerful as the flash on my Canon G2. I've been pretty disappointed by some pictures I've taken in low light. I am probably doing something wrong... I need to change a setting or something. That means I'd actually take out the booklet and read it...

Laundry Basket Head

My friend Jill might be the only one to get that title, and that's okay.

She's coming all the way from NEW Mexico (what happened to the old one?) to be my Supernanny for the weekend. My husband is going to Vegas and leaving me here with two children under two for the weekend, so he's paying to fly her here to help me.

I can only use that shocking "two under two" thing for a couple more weeks, so I'm milking it for all it's worth.

Anyway, Jill (who reads my blog but is too damn lazy to ever create a Blogger account so she can comment) get your New Mexican butt here safely, and we can enjoy some laundry basket headedness together.

Here's a really old and crappy picture of me showing how sad I was that Jill was moving to New Mexico to hang out with those New Mexicans. She left me 11 years ago, hard to believe. Jerk. I'm still bitter, in case you can't tell.

Da Girls

A title inspired by my husband's profound desire to move to Chicago.

I guess you resort to taking pictures of yourself when it's such a chore to leave the house. Hours of entertainment, people. Hours.

Baby Shower Gifts

My after-the-fact baby shower was on Saturday. It was a nice little get-together and Ainsley got some really great gifts. Avery was very excited about two of them -- first, the fairy that Grammy Gigi got for Ainsley that matches Avery's fairy:


Here is Avery's fairy that is in her big girl room, which she doesn't sleep in. Ainsley's fairy is in the nursery, which Avery does still sleep in, so I think she thinks both fairies are hers. Makes sense, I guess.


Those are both about 12 inches tall, though it's tough to tell by the pictures. They're so sweet :)

Then Ainsley got these socks that I wanted to get for Avery SO badly, but never did. They're by a company called Trumpette, and when they're on, it looks like the baby is wearing mary jane shoes. Love them!


Next are a couple of several outfits that Ainsley got -- the one on the left is so sweet, we'll have to save it for a special occasion. On the right is a DKNY track suit that Ainsley will be able to wear around Januaryish. I love it! My friend Christy is always the guru when it comes to girly fashion.


Last are a ton of books that the women brought in lieu of a card. It'll be a while before Ainsley can read them, but Avery is perfectly happy to make use of them in the meantime (this was the second thing Avery was very excited about...). And next to those is a TON of scrapbook stuff to start Ainsley's first year book. I am so excited to get that going!

My fancy bag

finally came. I love it!

A gift to myself

I ordered this bracelet with both Avery's and Ainsley's names on it for myself. It finally came today. I love it :)

My little songstress...

She just loves to sing!

This is awesome...

Arg, mateys

In honor of National Talk Like a Pirate Day, Avery wanted to dress up like a pirate. Only, once we started to put some pirate-like garb on her, she decided against the whole idea...

The sentiment was there, anyway...

Does it get much sweeter than this?

A childhood rite of passage

bubble wrap stomping...


Some mid-stomp shots with flair (or blur, whatever)


Later we realized that it makes a MUCH louder noise on hard flooring... Avery was thrilled.

Please...

in the name of all that is good and decent...

If you have a friend whose husband golfs, and they have a daughter, please, please, PLEASE don't buy their daughter a 'golf' outfit. I have two, I'll sell you mine.

Photos to share

in no particular order...

My favorite picture

of Anna and I. She had it on her blog, so I stole it. The color version has been hanging in my office for years.



Incidentally, Anna -- in case you don't remember, that pic was taken in Laughlin when we decided to go on a no-husband trip and act like single women again... well, sort of. We let guys buy us drinks and even danced with a few. Hell, I think we even met a couple of them at a bar or something. Our husbands were going to do something without us, so we tried to make them pay for it.

I have a choice one from that trip too... it's you with a lampshade on your head. Ahh, good times, good times.

Some time-wasters...

The other day on an LA radio station, they were talking about this site... the name really says it all. CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com.
A definite time-waster. No need to thank me. Really.

Anna clued me in to this site as well. BabyToupee.com. Pure silliness.

Nat!

Where did you go? Your blog is gone and I don't know what happened to you!

Little Sillies

I want someone

to carry ME around like this all day!

Thank you!

... to my friend Leslie for this awesome shadowbox! What a surprise!

This one goes to eleven

I could go on and on about how I was feeling so confident about today, my first day with both girls on my own, but I will spare you.

Suffice it to say that stupid me thought we could ALL take a nap at the same time. Then I remembered that Ainsley doesn't start out with small cries that build up to big cries. She goes right for the gusto right out of the gate.

What should have been a two-hour nap for Avery was cut short at about 40 minutes. I'm sure you can figure out what my afternoon has been like for the last couple of hours.

I would take pictures, but I think this one sums it up just fine.

What is she doing?

I took this picture of Avery last week. When I saw the instant results on my camera screen, I thought we had a winner for her invitation picture that I was trying so diligently to capture. After uploading them, however, I enlarged this one and instantly was drawn to her smile. What in God's name did she do? It looks fake... like I photoshopped a smile onto her face somehow. I still haven't figured out what she did, but man, this smile is C-R-E-E-P-Y.

A cool feature of my camera

If you tap the button to take a picture, the camera will autofocus. Today I played with it when taking a picture of some of the cactus flowers that have been blooming all summer long. We've had one bloom prior to this summer -- this summer we've gotten dozens.

Anyway, here is the picture I intended to take, and next to it, the picture with the focus on the background instead. Maybe the ability to do that will be handy some day... who knows.

Sisterly Love

Avery's love of Ainsley continues. The only thing we're combatting thus far is when she screams "NO MORE CRYING!" when Ainsley cries.

Outfit of the Day

Here's what happens when you ask a toddler what she wants to wear... pajama bottoms, long-sleeved shirt, socks pulled up to the knees, and water shoes. Yeah.

She's been "Oprahtized"

-- a word coined by my husband, who thinks Oprah is brainwashing the women of America, slowly but deliberately.

Brainwashing them to do what, you ask? Who the hell knows. To wear the correct bra size and give money to the poor, maybe.

Here's my point --

Three or four times in the past few months, Avery and I have been out and about at the store or the library or wherever. Avery has seen an African American woman, and said, usually only loudly enough for me to hear, "Oprah, mama!" The first time it happened, she was young enough that I chalked it up to coincidence.

The other handful of times I've known it was on purpose, but since it was only me that heard, I sort of chuckled and moved on. I certainly didn't want anyone to think that Oprah was my child's only exposure to people of other races, because it hasn't been and obviously it won't be. We're trying to raise a well-rounded individual here...

Today, I had to go to Office Depot to get card stock to make invitations for Avery's birthday and Birth Announcements for Ainsley. My mom had come over, so I left Ainsley with her and took Avery with me to run this quick errand.

We walked into Office Depot and were standing in the very first section you come to where they sell all the paper. She pointed out a woman who was working at the first checkstand and said "Oprah, mama!" and I said, "No, honey, that's not Oprah." She repeated back to me "Not Oprah," so I naively thought she 'got it.'

We found the paper we were looking for, went to check out with this same woman, and I didn't really think much of what Avery had said a few minutes before. After all, I've thought it was sort of cute all this time.

As we stood in line, another woman, who happened to be African American as well got into line behind us. I didn't notice she was there until Avery said "Oprah, mama!" and was pointing at her. I turned around, the embarrassment clearly visible on my face, and sort of half-smiled at the woman. I didn't say anything.

Then I moved forward in line, and Avery then turned to the Office Depot employee that she originally had called "Oprah" and did it again. "Oprah, mama!" pointing now at the employee.

So here I was, an African American woman helping me to check out, and another behind me in line, with my daughter pointing at both of them and shouting "Oprah!" I am sure they both thought that I was raising such a sheltered child -- her only exposure to African Americans being Oprah. I felt so stupid, but hey, who is able to control what toddlers say... honestly?

Neither of them thought it was very funny, or at least neither of them laughed or had any reaction at all. I quietly told Avery again, "No, honey, that's not Oprah," and she again repeated "Not Oprah."

I feel like such a total schmuck.

WOW!

A huge thank you for this aweseome, creative gift that some of my friends sent me... It is so pretty, I almost don't want to disassemble it! Thanks to Alex, Misty, Erin, Jeanne, DJ, Kristie, Heather, and Shawnie for their thoughtfulness! Avery kept saying "Wow, Mama!" :) Ainsley didn't say much, but she would've if she could've!

So here's a serious question --

Is Ainsley the love child of Popeye or Eddie Munster?

My passion for tennis

has been rediscovered.

I played tennis every season, every weekend and on several weekdays for almost ten years. No, I am not exaggerating. I played on a city league starting when I was in 3rd grade and when I got into high school I did both the school team and the city league. By the time I graduated high school, I was so burned out on tennis I didn't pick up a racket for ten more years. When I did, I played my husband in a few games and he whooped my ass. I felt stupid for talking up my game for all those years. I had been seated #1 in my city for a season, afterall. I felt kind of like Al Bundy talking up his football quarterback days, only to get old and fat and stick his hand down his pants a lot.

I digress.

My husband has been off of work for two weeks, and unfortunately for me, not only did he find "Knight Rider" reruns (thanks for correcting me Alex, I'm a dummy) he also watched every damn tennis match that aired over that span of time. I have no idea why -- I'm sure it had a lot to do with Agassi retiring.

I digress again.

My point here is that my passion for tennis is back. His name is Mikhail Youzhny. I know nothing about him, and I don't really care to. He's just eye candy and that's all I want him to be.



I'm sure Jed wonders why I sat and watched tennis all day yesterday. Let's just keep this between you and me.

THE picture

Well, after a long day of taking pictures of Avery and bribing her with candy and brownies (neither of which worked, incidentally) I finally got the picture that I'm going to send with Avery's birthday party invitation. Now I just have to figure out the invitation part.

Here is the final result:


Here are some of the others I captured -- I am pretty sure I'm going with the one above, however. My true favorite is the bottom right corner one -- but I think it might be too blurry to print. I'm going to print a copy just to see what it comes out looking like and then make my final decision.

Can you tell I LOVE my new camera or what???

Such the copy-cat...

Several weeks back, I followed a link from Kelly's blog to elisalou.com. I instantly fell in love with her bags, and decided I had to have one. The fabric I liked best, however, was marked "out of stock" the day I decided to bite the bullet and order the bag. Fortunately, she's been nice enough to correspond with me and let me know that she does have enough of the fabric I like to make one last bag. Yay!

Here is an example of the bag I ordered, although the fabric I chose isn't one of these. It's kind of lame how excited I get about silly things these days.

Finally...

Avery is healthy and I got some pictures of her with Ainsley. She is in love with her little sister. She wants to kiss and hug and bonk her on the head all day.

Today she took my blush brush and pretended to put some blush on Ainsley's cheeks very softly. I tried to explain that blush goes on the apple of the cheek, but Avery was more about quantity and surface area. Good thing the blush brush was actually blush-free at the time.

Labor Day fun

Avery got to go to the petting zoo today. It's a close, cheap, fun getaway for her. Sheep and pigs and goats, oh my.



We made several friends while we were there.



Unfortunately, Avery is already sick of the new camera. She won't smile for me anymore. We're going to have to bring it out less so that we can keep the "Camera Cheese" trend going on.


I did get this one, despite the general and immediate dislike of the camera.


Lastly, here's the proof that Ainsley came too. She didn't see much.

Attack of the No-Nap Grouch

I don't know where the monicker came from, but on occasions like this...


Avery gets called "Crankerton Jones." No clue why, but trust me, it fits well.

Luckily, Dada comes to the rescue just before Mama pulls out her hair.

More photo experiments...

I can't figure out how people get those one-of-a-kind pictures of newborns all snuggly and perfect laying on their tummies. Ainsley was so squirmy and unsettled -- maybe it was just bad timing. I think I got some good ones, anyway.

New Camera

Jed and I had a field day today with the new camera that we bought. It's for our anniversary, my birthday, and his birthday next week. We had gift certificates, rewards points, and a coupon to Best Buy, AND they were having a sale. We figured we needed to move and get it this weekend. We spent the better part of today taking pictures of anything and everything. At about picture #243, Avery had a meltdown and could take being the subject of 99% of the photos no longer. We had fun though.

Here are just a few of the pictures we took. I love, love, love the fact that I can take a picture without flash AND it comes out clear. Yay for way-too-expensive technological products. Yay.

Sleeping shots only go so far...

but she only wakes up to eat, and I'm not posting those pictures.

My cheeseball

Even though Avery's long-distance friend Emma has been posing and smiling for the camera since birth, Avery has just recently discovered how magical the playback setting on my camera can be, and now she'll ham it up for the camera if I let her look at the instant replay. It works for me. Here are a few pics from yesterday as evidence of what technology can do to a child and her photographability. Photogenicness? Who knows.

I think I'll use the first picture on her 2nd birthday invitations, so those of you who will have already seen it when it comes in the mail, pretend to be surprised.

I guess as you get older

birthdays matter less. I didn't really want to turn 33 anyway.