Have you ever seen the movie...

"The Hand"?

I think Ainsley has. Either that, or her hand has.

She could be in a dead sleep, totally sacked out, and it's as if her hand creeps up to her face, feels around for the pacifier handle, and damn if it doesn't pluck that pacifier right out of her mouth, only to send her into a screaming fit.

It's almost as if it's not attached to her body. A hand with a mind of its own? Spoooooooooooky.

I just have to put this out there...

and I mean no disrespect to anyone who likes and/or wears these shoes. I don't get them. I know, I know, they're comfortable. But sorry, sometimes fashion has to override function. If I'm being totally honest, I think they're hideous.


There, I feel better now.

Pretty cool, huh?

On the left is the original and to the right is my photoshopped version...

A Day in the Life

This is a little photo project I did for my online moms' group called "A Day in the Life." I took so many pictures that I decided to make a slideshow and just post it here since it's an easy place to put the code for the Google video player.

Photoshop Effects

Just thought I'd post this before and after of a picture of Avery that I photoshopped. I couldn't even tell you all that I did to get to the final product. It's all a combination of sharpening, darkening the levels, deleting partial layers, and playing with the saturation and hues.

I probably couldn't duplicate it. Anyway, here goes nothing... you can click to enlarge it.

Caption This

A couple of years ago, I took this picture of Avery. I asked some friends to help caption it, and the best one (I thought) that they came up with was "Hey! This thing is out of milk!"


It kind of reminded me of this picture of Ainsley, so I thought I'd try the caption thing again. Anyone want to take a shot at it?

Some good old-fashioned fun

My neighbor has a ten-year-old daughter, so we get a lot of hand-me-downs that no longer get used. We scored big time on a bunch of dress up clothes, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Avery wants to play dress up all day long. I'm not going to lie, I love every minute of it. We're going to slowly incorporate some etiquette into dress up time, too. After we master the proper way to sip tea with your pinky extended outward, we'll work on concentrating with your tongue IN your mouth, and we'll try to encourage Ainsley to eat the crumpets instead of the tutu.

I have only myself to blame

Jumping on the bed has become a household favorite. If Ainsley could figure out the whole supporting her own weight thing, I'm sure she'd get in on the action too. It probably doesn't help that I egged it on by saying "Jump so I can take your picture, again!"

Peace Out

to my homies in Compton...

Tummy Time And Fake Coughing

Ainsley is already starting to do the 'fake cough.' She's also really into laying on her tummy, but I keep just missing getting her on video where she's REALLY trying to move. She does it a little bit here, but not like I'd like to capture.

A Typical Day

A typical day at our house... beware, it's LONG.

I am the God of dollhouseland

Tonight after dinner Avery was absolutely adamant that she wanted Ainsley to play with her. I think she's starting to realize that there's a little person in there that is beginning to come out, and tonight after Ainsley was belly laughing with me for like 15 minutes, Avery had a moment of clarity and realized that having a sister might be kinda fun.

So I set up the dollhouse and got out the accessories and away they went. Avery showed her different pieces of furniture and told her what they were for and Ainsley listened intently to every word and was making mental notes all along the way. Avery couldn't have been happier...


... that is, until Ainsley went all King Kong on the mommy doll and stuffed its entire head into her mouth, completely saturating her hair with like 62 buckets of slimy baby drool. Avery got a pretty disgusted look on her face and decided maybe playtime with Ainsley wasn't a great idea. Not yet.


I gently took away the mommy doll, replaced it with a chewtoy rattle, and restored peace to dollhouseland utopiaville. All in a day's work, people.

Just a few snaps from this afternoon

She's just as animated as Avery was at this age. I just want to smooch her all day long!

"That is some weird wild stuff"

So after it was 80 degrees the other day (Wednesday? Tuesday? -- who knows) it snowed at my house yesterday. It's currently 34 degrees at 9am this morning. Oh, but according to our live weather thing on the Tivo, it 'feels like 35 degrees.' Whew! I'm so glad it doesn't feel like the actual temperature.

It was a weird day for weather in Southern California. Lots of places that never get snow were dusted with it. Lower elevations than we're at got more than we did, even. The mountains look gorgeous though. That's the bonus.

Here are a couple of pictures outside my bedroom window. I had to snap them quickly before the snow melted!

Gee...

is she every bit of two, or what?

The update you've ALL been waiting for...

Ta-da! Her eyelashes match now! What was I so worried about?

Fifteen things that make me high maintenance...

I am copying my friend Alex and listing these. Some of them might be more about what makes me weird. I don't really know.

1. I have to brush my teeth in the shower. I need to be totally clean when I get out.
2. I have to sleep on the side of the bed that's closest to the door. I don't really know why.
3. Similarly, when we sit down at a restaurant, I have to have my back to the wall, not to the rest of the diners. Maybe I have trust issues? Maybe I'm paranoid?
4. When I get off of the freeway, I have to turn the music off for a moment and then I'll turn it back up when I'm going again.
5. I have to wash my face every night. Even times when I've been shit-faced drunk, I've still managed to wash my face.
6. I have to get to know you before I decide if I like you or not. I think maybe it stems from all of the moving around I did as a kid? Seriously, I went to four different schools in three different states in first grade. No, I am not exaggerating.
7. I have to have a body pillow, or as Jed calls it, my "boob pillow." My friends Jill and Anna know all too well about this one. Although they'd be proud of me to know that I didn't take one on my trip to the DC area recently. Only because I forgot it. I probably would have tried to work it in if I could have.
8. I have to have two towels in order to shower. I can get by with one, but I really, really don't like to.
9. I have to have something on my lips -- chapstick, lipgloss, lipstick, whatever.
10. I have to sleep with a glass of water next to me. Sometimes I drink the whole thing during the night, sometimes I don't even take a sip. As long as it's there, I'm good.
11. I can't drink wine unless it's Reisling. If it's not Reisling, what is the point?
12. I have to use a big spoon and a big fork when I eat (my husband has to use a little one of each... so he's weird too). At least our silverware gets used evenly.

For 13-15, Jed is going to provide the answers.

13. I must have my laptop with a wireless internet connection. I debated with him, though, about how 'portable' my laptop really is since my battery dies within 10 minutes when I unplug it. Obviously I need a new battery.
14. I always have to (these are Jed's words) "have something a little bit off on my orders at restaurants." He's right... I always ask for something that makes my dish mine. I ask them to leave things off, usually, or to substitute other items. I guess I'm a regular old Sally Albright.
15. Jed's still thinking. I guess I'm not that high maintenance in his eyes.

Delurk today!

It's National Delurking Week. I get about 100 hits a day, so I know you're out there! Comment and delurk. Everyone is doing it.

Too much going on

Sorry I've been a bad blogger lately -- we've had too much going on and the girls are keeping me busy, even in the late evening when both of them want to fight sleep simultaneously. I'm not having a very fun life, so what's there to blog about, really?

I do have a few pictures to share from the last week, but I've actually been a bad photographer lately too. Hopefully things will slow down and I'll be able to waste hour upon hour typing about nothing interesting again and photographing every little unimportant detail of my (usually) mundane life. It's amazing that I get so many hits to my blog everyday. I thought mommy blogs were boring?

Last weekend we spent a few hours trying to teach Avery to ride her tricycle:



She was more interested in the spikey balls that Jed was picking up that had fallen from our trees, however, and started a campaign to haul them all out of the yard.


She walked back and forth collecting spikey balls one at a time and putting them in the little 'trunk' on her tricycle. It never occured to her to either a) collect more at once, or b) move the tricycle closer. We're working on those problem solving skills. Jed was just grateful that his dream to have children to teach to do yardwork was finally coming to fruition.


Later in the week, Avery wanted to play dress up, and fortunately Ainsley was a willing spectator, but she mostly looked puzzled at the whole ordeal. First we started with just the dress up clothes, which we don't have too many of, and then we added some other silly articles of clothing for an all over "weird" look. Avery was totally content to strut her stuff for her sister.



A few nights ago we actually got to get out of the house to celebrate a friend's birthday at Buca di Beppo. It became apparent to me why I'm having trouble dropping this baby weight after a friend sent me her pictures. I should probably work on that.


That's about all I can share. Oh, and it was 80 degrees at my house yesterday. Yes, January 8th. I guess Al Gore was right. And he created the internet. Whatta guy.

An intense picture

See what you can do with a tripod? A no-flash picture that is clear. I love it.

The parenting learning curve

Since Avery was born, we've pretty much had an audio monitor going in our house at all times. Annoying, yes. It creates so much static and just drives me crazy. When the girls are old enough, rest assured I WILL take that damn thing out into the street and call all the neighbors to come watch me smash it to smithereens with a giant rubber mallet.

In the meantime, I've been working to find a silver lining, and the only thing I'd found thus far was the endless hours full of fun communicating with my spouse while I'm in the room with the baby and he is in the room listening to the monitor. Come on, don't try to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.

My husband gets in on the action too, but he isn't real creative. He usually starts with a heavy breathing noise, and follows that by breaking into a cough, then choking, then gasping for air... you get the picture.

I'll sometimes use my opportunities to be passive agressive and say things like "Yes, I'll change your diaper, AGAIN, Avery," or even "Okay Ainsley, mommy will rock you back to sleep for the 43rd time," because I know my loving husband is listening in the other room and surely THIS time he'll get up and run to where we are and take a turn too.

Unfortunately for me, this method of marital communication doesn't get the desired results very often.

When I'm not busy displaying my resentment and an unassertive way, I try to keep things interesting by throwing in an "I see dead people" here and an "If you build it, he will come" there. I've even done the Darth Vader pant followed by a whispered "Luke, I am your father" from time to time.

When trying to coax my husband to get his ass to bed at a decent hour -- lest I be forced to listen to the freaking alarm for 35 minutes as he repetitively pushes the snooze button each morning -- I've tried a twist on the "Field of Dreams" theme and tossed in an "If I undress, he will come" or an "If I brush and floss, he will come to bed and kiss me." So far, it's not working. I guess maybe those tactics are a little passive-aggressive too.

So here's where the learning curve comes into play.

Today Avery and I tried something new -- something that I will surely pay for. I though I'd found the REAL silver lining to having a shitty, static-y baby monitor. We set up a stage and music and did karaoke with the stupid system. Now I'll either have to concede that the monitor is no longer a monitor but a permanent microphone/speaker set or I'll have to own up to my mistakes and buy a real microphone/speaker set. Either way, I figure I'm probably out 50 bucks. All day she's been saying "I want to do more ka-aokie" and doesn't let up until I give in.

Now I'm wishing I would have just smashed the damn thing to smithereens already! Me and my bright ideas.

I'll bet you can't guess

what Avery's favorite TV show is!

Resolutions

Avery's is to get away from pink. Apparently she takes after me because she had failed miserably too by about 9am when we were painting on her new easel and the only color she wanted was pink. Later she did add brown, and I patted her on the head gently for being such a good little grasshoppa. Brown is the new black, after all.


Ainsley's is apparently to begin to understand more about feet. Right now she's just totally perplexed by what they are and how she can actually make them move. She's seen them with socks for about 99% of her life, so today I took her socks off and WHOA what a party she had. With her feet. Which were sockless.


I decided Jed's was to quit chewing tobacco. I've decided that was going to be his resolution for several years now. Maybe one of these times it'll work? For the record, he did not chew tobacco when we got married, and I keep telling him it's a dealbreaker, but I guess he knows I'm bluffing.

Mine was to be a little less lazy, but I've already failed miserably at that. I had a little tidbit here about my online traffic school course, but Jed convinced me that someone was going to rat me out, so I edited my post. See, I'm not too lazy to login to Blogger and edit...

Playing with my new gizmo

Jed got me an external flash for my camera for Christmas. I feel a little stressed about toting around $1200 worth of equipment just to take a picture, but I love the different results you can get. I played with it just a little this past weekend. What I need to figure out is when to use what. Here is an example.

On the left is the external flash without the diffuser pointed straight at Meredith and Tyler (my sister and brother). On the right is the external flash pointed straight up at the ceiling. I can't remember if I used the diffuser or not, however. These are the things I need to pay attention to.


I took a few shots again today with it pointed up to the ceiling. The effect, to me, is a lot less 'flashy' but it comes in handy in my house because we live in a cave, more or less.