Daddy

Some Random Thoughts and a Tea Party

Posted on by Amy
Sleep has been somewhat elusive the past few nights.  I think I’m starting to get a little bit freaked out about how close the arrival of little Sis is.  Example – Two nights ago, I woke up at 12:53 to go to the bathroom.  Then I realized I was hungry, so I came downstairs to get a snack.  I decided to check my email and look around online a bit while I ate my snack.  I wasn’t down here for more than 10 minutes, but when I went back to bed I was wide awake and sleep was nowhere to be found.  I tossed and turned, but I just could not quiet my mind.  My thoughts bounced back and forth between worrying about the fact that Sis is still breech, just like her big sister Lass was at this point in my pregnancy with her, and stressing out about all the things I have to do before Sis arrives.
I am already trying everything I can to get Sis to flip.  Most of it is the same as what I tried with Lass, I’m just starting earlier.  My idea was that maybe Lass didn’t flip until the last minute because she was so big, so I started earlier while Sis is hopefully small enough that something – contortions, music, moxibustion, chiropractor, whatever – will work before I get to the point of needing to try to have my doctor turn her, like she did Lass.   My crazy, middle-of-the-night thoughts consisted of lots and lots of worrying that it would be pretty hard to be so lucky as to have a version work twice.  There’s no real scientific basis for this fear, I guess, but there it is.  And it was magnified almost to the point of insanity at 2am.  Everyone seems so amazed that the version worked so well with Lass, since it’s not really a high percentage procedure (so maybe there is some basis for my fear…), that I can’t help but worry that I won’t have the same luck a second time, if it comes to that point.  Obviously it doesn’t help to worry about it, but I do anyway.
And then there’s the fact that I have a nursery for Sis that is emptied of guest room furniture and freshly painted, and that’s it.  So after ruminating about my fears of having another c-section for a while, I started thinking, “Crap, I have so much to do to get Sis’s furniture out of Miss’s room and put Miss’s new stuff in her room and get all the new decor done in all three girls’ rooms.  And oh geez, I still need to sew Sis’s crib sheets, but I can’t get to my sewing machine because the old guest room mattress is leaning against it, since we couldn’t fit the box spring down the stairs, and what the heck are we going to do with a queen sized mattress and box spring that won’t fit into our guest room, which now has to be in the basement because we have nowhere else to have it?”  And so on and so on, for a half hour or so, then back to the breech-c-section issue, repeat.  The last time I looked at my clock (after getting up again for a second snack at around 3:00) it was about 3:30.  I suspect I finally fell back to sleep at around 4.
Anyway…  I know there’s not much I can do about Sis being breech (other than what I’m already doing obsessively), so I am trying not to worry about that for now.  I’m not very successful in these attempts to not worry, but I’m trying nonetheless.  And to address my other source of stress, well I just need to get off my rear and start getting some things done.  I have started working on some craft projects I have for all the girls’ rooms (I’ll do some posts soon to show what I’m doing).  I’ve made a good list for myself of things to get done and a Honey-do list for my hubby.  He actually requested this after learning that I’m am losing sleep because of stressing out about this stuff.  He’s awesome.  And he has a week off coming up, during which we will not be traveling.  So, we’ll get it done.  That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.
And never fear.  In between all the worrying, the contorting, and the crafting, we’re having lots of fun.  We went to a birthday party this past weekend at Monkey Joe’s.  Miss was scared of the big bouncy things, but she had fun running around and playing with Lass in this small one.  

It was so great to have my hubby along to help.  On the way home I thanked him for coming to the party with us, and he said, “What, you mean that was optional?”

After a bit Miss got a bit braver and was willing to try some of the slightly bigger slides.

And Lass is just fearless.

They loved these glasses they got in their goody bags.

It was a fun party, but I have to say I’m not a fan of Monkey Joe’s.  Not because there’s anything wrong with that place in particular, I just don’t enjoy trying to keep track of my girls at their current ages in a place where line of sight is so limited.  I much prefer taking them to someplace like the YMCA or open gym at the Gymnastics Center where they both take classes to let them run around and burn some energy.  Speaking of gymnastics, I love that I can now take Lass with me when Miss goes to her gymnastics class and don’t have to get a sitter for her anymore.  She loves watching her “Sissy” too.

And finally, I came down from putting Lass to bed last night to find Miss having a tea party with her Daddy.  She was so excited to have her tea set out and to serve us tea, including adding cream and sugar according to our requests.  It was so cute.

 

Time with my girls is the best possible cure for my stress about the above issues.  But I still really want Sis to flip ASAP.

Quickie

Posted on by Amy
Just returned tonight from another week in the blogging black hole (my parents’ house).  We had a great visit, and I’ll post about that soon.  But tonight I’m tired from a long day in the car and little sleep last night, so here’s a quickie with a few photos from last week.
Miss has gotten into wearing dresses to school.  This is because she likes to wear tights, not because she really cares about dresses.  I don’t have a ton of dresses for her, since she’s never really been into them before, and I tend to think they’re a bit impractical for an active girl.  I didn’t want to spend a ton on new dresses for her, but I found this amazing online consignment store, where I got her three dresses for under $25.  Cute, name brand dresses in great condition.  I love a great deal (have I mentioned that before?).

And somebody got her very own ballet shoes to be like big sister.

Now they dance together.

No words needed for these next three photos.  I’ll just say I love them.

And in closing, Miss’s new thing (besides dresses) is to inspect her feet for toe jam.  It makes me chuckle just to type that.  She almost never finds any.  I do wash regularly between her toes.  But she likes to look for it.  Whatever floats her boat, right?

There.  A quickie.  Night.

I Guess I’ll Just Teach Myself

Posted on by Amy
I have been wanting to take a photography class ever since I got my DSLR camera, about 2 years ago.  It’s a wonderful camera, and my photos improved dramatically just by switching to it from my point and shoot.  But I have pretty much been using it on the Auto setting for two years.  I’ve learned a few tips here and there, and purchased some lens upgrades, but I really have wanted to take the next step to using the many settings my camera has to offer.
I grabbed a course book for the local community college a few weeks ago, determined to find a class to take before the baby arrives.  I found one that looked really interesting, but the meeting times weren’t very good.  I found another with a doable meeting time, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for.  So, I have decided to try harder to teach myself.  I have a camera manual, a good book my husband bought me for my birthday (almost two years ago), and lots of helpful online resources.  No excuse not to gain some new knowledge and skills.  
One thing I’ve been wanting to do is learn how to use the settings of the camera so I can get more light into my photos without using my pop-up flash, which I have tended to use a lot even though it gives a weird look to the photos.  Unfortunately, around here this time of year it isn’t uncommon to have a serious lack of good natural light.  Luckily, this morning I did have lots of light to get some good photos of the girls without using the flash. 

But tonight I wanted to experiment a little bit in the relative dark of our family room.  The overhead lights were turned off, so the only light in the room came from one floor lamp next to my chair and the light from surrounding rooms.  My wonderful hubby was tolerant as I snapped his photo over and over.  I had read a tip that, to let more light into a photo, I should set the aperture to the lowest (or highest? biggest? smallest?  I don’t get the lingo yet, but whatever) setting.  I put my camera on the aperture setting and turned it down (the number got smaller) and got this.

Then I went to the lowest number I could with the lens I was using (1.8) and got this.

I couldn’t believe how bright the photos were!

Of course, to get this much light in the photos, the shutter speed was slowed down quite a bit.  To give a little bit of perspective, I then switched to the fully manual setting, kept the aperture on 1.8, and then sped the shutter speed way up.  I got this.

A little slower shutter speed and I got this.

A little slower.

Then I slowed it waaayy down, and couldn’t get it in focus.  Just the slight shake of my hand while the shutter was open for so long made it blurry.
A little faster.

Perfect.

Isn’t he handsome??

I think I’ll do more practicing with the camera on the aperture mode.  I think this will be the easiest way to experiment and still get some good photos of my girls.  That’s really why I take photos anyway.

Cozy

Posted on by Amy
We’re being home bodies this weekend.

I love the weekends when we are all home together.  We did get snow the other day, so we’re feeling extra warm and cozy, mostly just staying in and having fun.

Daddy is making fire and sharing milk-froth-topped tea, dancing and tickling, playing monster and reading books.

Speaking of reading books, I have two book clubs this week and just started reading the first (600+ page) book on Wednesday.  I managed to finish it tonight, and have one more book to get through by Thursday.  So I’m making this a quickie tonight.  Happy weekend!

Membership Has its Privileges

Posted on by Amy
For months now, I have been saying that I want to rejoin the YMCA.  My husband and I were members when we first moved here, because we lived in a rental house and didn’t have a good place to exercise at home.  When we bought our current house, we set up a nice garage gym area and let our Y membership lapse.  Miss was too tiny to do any activities there and we could exercise at home, so we let it go. BUT, now Miss is bigger.  She’s old enough to start getting into some of the little classes they have at the Y and I really need to keep up with swimming lessons for both of the girls. There are so many good activities for families at the Y.  Plus, there isn’t a whole lot else to do indoors in our town during the winter.  So, this week I finally got myself in gear and went to the Y to renew our family membership.  We started taking advantage of it yesterday by going to “Wiggles and Giggles.”  Our Y has an indoor soccer field, and they open it up twice a week in the mornings for little ones to come and play.  They pull out ride-on toys, balls, big mats, and various other things for the kids to enjoy.  Not to mention there’s lots of room to run.  The girls had a blast.
 (Quick snack break)
 
I’m so glad we joined.  The girls ran and danced and got to blow off some steam.  And we met some other moms and kids there, so I got to visit with some grown ups.
And speaking of visiting with grown ups, my husband and I had a great date night last night.  We went to a new sushi place, and it was pretty good.  Of course the best part was just being able to hang out and chat with my hubby.  Before dinner we went to Miss’s school and met with her teachers for our little parent-teacher conference.

It was great to hear all about what she has been doing in school and to see how thorough they are in their assessments of her.  And it was pretty cool to hear someone else describe her spot-on and know how much time and attention she must get there for them to be able to really “get” her so well.  I loved when they told me how much she likes to sing at the top of her lungs and to shake it when they dance.

No one needs to tell me how much my girls love to dance and that they’ve got some moves.

Miss got new ballet shoes yesterday.  The ones I got her for her Halloween costume had cut into her little heels and one shoe had totally split on the side from being worn so much, so I told her she couldn’t wear those anymore.  She was so upset and asked repeatedly for them for several days.  When I pulled out the new shoes yesterday, I was relieved to find that she loves these just as much even though they’re a different style.  She immediately asked, “Momma, can you play some music so I can ballet dance?” So I did. The Cure.

I got a question in a comment about organizing photos, related to my last post about taking at least one photo a day.  Unfortunately, I’m not really great about organizing my photos.  Mostly I just dump them into iPhoto.  I do “flag” my favorites when I’m going through and editing them, which is how I select the pics I’m going to upload to a blog post or use for something else.  Just in the past few days with the start of this new project I have begun putting photos into folders by month, so I will have a little bit better organization of them that way.  I also have set a goal to start deleting photos a little bit more so I won’t have such an overwhelming mass of pictures.  And few years ago I set a goal to make photo books for each of my girls for each year of their lives.  Unfortunately, I’ve only completed Miss’s first year book.  So making the rest of the books needs to become a priority, and I’m hoping to get my photos more organized that way too.  I will make folders for each girl, each year in my iPhoto in addition to making the books.  That’s it.  I don’t have a great system yet.  Anyone else have a good way of organizing digital photos?

My Own Cute Daddy

Posted on by Amy
A few months ago we got family photos taken.  I love how they turned out.

The girls’ personalities just shine through in these.

Props to our photographer Tara.  You can check her out here.

Don’t they look like little porcelain dolls?

Several of these photos were used on our holiday card this year.  The one below was on it.  When we were at my parent’s house I gave my Mom her copy of the card, and Miss was really interested in checking it out.  She was so cute about it.  She pointed to my face and said, “Who’s this pretty girl?” (pronounced “pwetty guhl”).  Then she pointed at my husband’s picture and said, “And who’s this cute guy?”  I of course played along and said, “That’s Daddy!” and she said, “Yep, it’s my own cute Daddy.” I could have melted it was so sweet.

These girls just make me smile.

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y’all.

Posted on by Amy
Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents.  I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn’t post while we were gone.  Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip.  I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven’t had the time to post.  However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for.  So.  Sorry, I haven’t made time for this.  But if it makes up for it, I’m posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower…
Anyway.  Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day.  Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass’s very brief encounter with it?  I typed too soon.  Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for “new jammies,” meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing.  So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn’t make it to Kentucky until Sunday.  But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock.  They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together.  I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week.  And they eat it up.  Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up.  Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents.  I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.
Here’s a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:
We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children’s librarian.  I was so proud of my girls.  Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

Then Santa showed up…

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn’t even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great.  We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents’ house.

The day of the story time was also my husband’s birthday.  This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him.  A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday.  She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level.  It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home.  In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts?  A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite?  Floral foam.

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it.  It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy’s presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon.  We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.

And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit.  Every year my mom and I watch the movie “Heidi” with Shirley Temple.  Some people watch, “Miracle on 34th Street,” maybe even “A Christmas Story” or some other traditional holiday movie.  Our movie is “Heidi.”  We know the dialog by heart.  This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading.  They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes.  But I didn’t expect much more for the first viewing.  This movie takes time to appreciate.  My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don’t quite appreciate it yet.  The girls will get there.  Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of “Snow White.”  I hadn’t seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don’t quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I’m glad to be home, though I miss my family.  I can’t believe Christmas is already almost here.  Tomorrow is Miss’s school party.  I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do.  This weekend we’ll go to the Farm to “do Christmas” with my husband’s family.   It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Wednesdays

Posted on by Amy
I love Wednesdays.  I get to spend a little bit of special time with each of my girls on Wednesdays.  Miss goes to school and Lass and I run errands or just hang out and play in the morning.  Then I take Miss to gymnastics in the afternoon.  She loves gymnastics.
Note: All of these gymnastics pictures were taken at least six months ago, probably more like nine months.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any recent photos of her at gymnastics.

Miss has gotten so much braver and stronger since these photos were taken.  She used to be somewhat fearful about doing certain things by herself, like going down the slide, or jumping from a height she perceived to be too high.

In spite of encouragements to try it herself, she used to insist on holding my hand.

Now she jumps from much greater heights by herself.  Occasionally she still comes up to a jump that makes her nervous, but with encouragement she’ll usually even go for those by herself.

She used to need lots of help doing this “strong arms” move down the beams.  Now she not only does it totally by herself, she’s fast!

Today she even insisted on trying to do a headstand by herself.

One thing that still makes her a bit nervous is walking the balance bean if it is raised up off the floor at all.  But she’s even getting better at that.  Today I was so proud of her, because although she was clearly nervous, she did walk the whole length of the beam herself.  She did it shuffling her feet in tiny, tiny steps, but she did it.  And at the end she jumped off and yelled, “I did it!”  It was awesome.

Gymnastics class with Miss is a blast and I am always so entertained and awed by watching her learn new things so quickly.

In addition to enjoying spending time with her in class, I like to savor the car rides to and fro.  Now that it’s dark out when we go, she often comments on the Christmas lights she sees.  Tonight we sang to Christmas music.  Her favorite is “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Deer” followed closely by the Chipmunks Christmas song.  She half-sings, half hums along with that one until the line “Me, I want a hooooola hoooop,” which she nails every time.

And since gymnastics class runs right up to dinner time, often we treat ourselves to some take out dinner.  Lately we’ve been getting an extra special treat of Culver’s on Wednesday nights, complete with frozen custard sundaes for dessert (mine is still waiting for me in the freezer…)  Of course, Culver’s has very little post-dinner clean up, which leaves plenty of time for my favorite part of the day, between dinner and bedtime when we listen to music and play.  Christmas music and wrestling/chasing/tickling with Daddy were on the agenda tonight.

I love Wednesdays.  Frozen custard is calling me.

I Love a Treasure Hunt

Posted on by Amy
My husband hunts deer.  He is a bowhunter, which means he spends a lot of time sitting up in a tree watching deer.  He loves observing deer and the other animals he sees while sitting in a tree for hours and hours (this year he saw a bobcat twice).  Eventually, he does kill a deer.   This year he killed two.  Our freezer is fully stocked with venison to last for the next year.  This is great, because venison is much healthier to eat than beef. It’s leaner and you never have to worry about hormones or antibiotics or anything else weird and gross like that.  Some people prefer to get their meat at the grocery store, where they never have to think about how it got there.  I prefer venison.  I know where it came from, have a good general idea of what it ate, and know how and by whom (my husband and brother in law) it was butchered and processed and packaged.  
All this is leading up to the point that we got home last night after spending a week and a half at the Farm while my husband hunted.  And also to give the warning that there are photos near the end of this post of some dead deer.  The photos also have my handsome husband and adorable older daughter in them, but if you don’t like photos of dead deer, you may not want to read this entire post.  I’ll give a warning right before those photos come up, so you can feel safe reading through the first part of this lovely post if you like.  
Since we were at the Farm, Miss and Lass got to see their cousins and spend time doing fun things like going on treasure hunts.  We went on an especially fun one yesterday.  Because the water is so low, we went to the beach, where there was lots of room to walk around and find treasures.

Miss got to see the work of some beavers.

 And my husband found the coolest and biggest caterpillar I have ever seen.

The kids also found a partial skeleton of what was probably a raccoon.

It’s so fun to just go outside and turn a walk around the beach or the woods into an adventure.  Anything Miss picked up, from a hickory nut, to a shell, to a pine cone could be called “treasure” and she was all into it.  Treasure hunts are one of my favorite things about being at the Farm.

The girls had lots of other fun times playing with their cousins over the past weekend too.  Dress up was a favorite.

Prior to this weekend when all the aunts and uncles and cousins came down, we were just all hanging out together with my mother and father in law.  As I mentioned, my husband spend a lot of time in a tree, but we had lots of fun with him when he came in.  We indulged in some special treats, like ice cream, since we were on vacation.

My girls like ice cream.

And we spent a lot of time just playing.  Miss had fun with this guitar one afternoon.  She has really been into singing lately, often making up her own songs.  The other day she started strumming the guitar and singing a song that went something like, “Mommy and Lass and Daddy and Miiiiissss. You’re so cuuuute and so adoooorable.”

I would tell her what a beautiful song it was and how wonderful her singing is, and then she would stand up and strike a proud pose next to the guitar, come over to me and tell me, “I love you Mommy,” and then do it all again.  I don’t know how many times she repeated this, but it was a lot and I loved it.  It was cuuute.  And adoooorable.

Okay, here’s your WARNING: Dead deer photos follow.

My husband shot a buck and a doe.  Miss was quite fascinated with them and asked lots of questions.  She was very interested in the fact that “Daddy deer” are called bucks and have antlers and “Mommy deer” are called does and “have ears.”

Lass lost interest much more quickly, but of course had fun being outside anyway.

I’m proud of my husband.  He’s an ethical hunter and doesn’t kill more than what we will eat.  He practices shooting his bow a great deal beforehand so he will make a clean shot when the time comes.  He spends hours and hours observing the deer and learning about them, and passes this information on to his family members, including his nephews who also enjoy hunting.  He spent a morning hunting with one nephew and helping him shoot a deer himself.  And even though it’s a little rough to be away from home with my girls for almost two weeks, I feel fortunate that we are able to go with him when he hunts.  And it is completely worth it to know that he had such a great week outside doing something he really enjoys.  He is an amazing father and husband, and he deserves that.

Of course, it’s fabulous to be home. And you’d better believe I’m going to milk my “sacrifices” of the past week and a half to get myself a nice massage 🙂

During the Commercials…

Posted on by Amy
It’s been a great weekend.

Quality time was plentiful.

Daddy’s girls.

To top it off, tonight is the premier of “The Next Iron Chef.”  I’m typing this during the commercials.  It’s an awesome show. You should watch it.

I managed to finish working on Miss’s ballerina costume just before the show started.  I had to make the best ballerina costume ever to convince her that she wants to wear it instead of her sister’s bear costume.  Hopefully she’ll love it.  A little sneak peek.

A while ago a drew my Chopped ingredients of canned tuna, panko breadcrumbs, and tomato paste.  I made dinner with them tonight.  Panko-crusted tuna cakes with roasted red pepper and corn relish (the tomato paste was in the cakes and in the relish).  It was yummy.  I only have a few minutes during the commercials, so I’ll post the recipe later.  Here’s the dish.

Halloween tomorrow.  Miss’s school party and trick or treating with both girls.  Can’t wait!