August - Day 30. Card

I wanted a silhouette when I initially saw this one but realized it just wasn't going to work with a card.  Oh well, I still got the practice of getting one (which I did) and finally figured it out.  But here is today's:

August - Day 29. Down

Wordless Wednesday

August - Day 28. Clock

I couldn't decide between the two...so you got both.

August - Day 27. Tap

Proud of myself for this one!  Focus is a bit off but thanks to some direction from a friend I was able to finally successfully use some of the manual settings!  Yay!

August - Day 26. Dream

More like dream come true.

See, almost three years ago I was holed up in a hospital bed in Arizona, googling 26 week preemies and scared to death.  No where did I find a success story, where the baby grew up to be "normal" on the internet.  Everything was a horror story that didn't end once the baby left the hospital.

Since then I've met some amazing preemies who have shown just how much these little ones can overcome and just how "normal" they can and DO turn out.

And I was blessed in so many ways with my 29 weeker.  Never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine I'd give birth to my first born 11 weeks early.  But having done so, never did I dare to dream she would be as NORMAL or as HEALTHY as she is.

So she is my dream.  My dream came true.  Three years later, my dream did completely come true.

August - Day 25. Fresh

Ever notice my subject always seems to be Aidan?  Let's just say little miss has to be in the right mood to get her on camera and, well, that's not very often. 

August - Day 24. Path

I kept thinking of how to visualize today's photo.  And lack of energy along with illness kept me from venturing from the house.  Add to that, I kept thinking more of "the path less traveled" and didn't see anything near by that really visualized that.

And then I saw this quote on Facebook and it just seemed right.

I didn't choose a lot of the paths I've traveled.  But I am who I am because of them.  I'm not perfect, but that's ok.  Because I'm me.

August - Day 23. Pair

August - Day 22. Home

Home is where the heart is.  No matter where I lay my head at night, where I say "home" is, it will always be with these three.

Always.

August - Day 21. Cool

Take THAT prematurity! I win!

For the moment at least.  At this point in time we have kicked prematurity's butt.  It may rear it's ugly head a little later in life, but right now, I'm reveling in victory.

You see, we were tested today for assessment for a special needs preschool.  Which we knew she didn't need but as a part of her transition out of the early intervention she's been in since she came home, the school district assesses them to see if they need to continue services with them.

And we floored the therapist.  Her verbal skills were beyond what even the 6 year olds in the program were doing.  She could not believe this little bugger was once a 2lb 13oz baby in an incubator just learning how to BREATHE. 

When shown a picture of a window and asked what it was, she smartly answered "a picture of a window!"

Yeah, I think my child may have gotten my sarcastic sense of humor.

So needless to say, we passed with flying colors.  It seems that the therapist even felt like she had to come up with some sort of "issue" to present us with and could only mention she doesn't properly pronounce her c's, g's and f's but even those were 3-5 year old skills so she would just be BEGINNING to pronounce those.  Anyway, it doesn't have enough of a bearing on her development to be a concern and still wouldn't qualify her.

So we will bask in this moment of sticking it to prematurity.  Sometimes, we do win.  And when we do, it's oh so glorious.

August - Day 20. Today

So, this isn't a photo I took, but I never got around to it yesterday.  Just too much going on.   But this did describe my feelings about yesterday so it was fitting.

August - Day 19. Hole

August - Day 18. Inside.

August - Day 17. Faces

August - Day 16. Food

Best.Food.Ever.

August - Day 15. Ready

For Fall.  And the weather perfect for outdoor play.  And the piles of leaves and the chill in the air.  That prepares you for winter and another year down.

I'm ready.

August - Day 14. Arrow

August - Day 13. Simple

Some times, it's the simple things in life, as a friend reminded me.  My son deciding that there was nothing he wanted more than to snooze in his mama's arms.

It won't be long and he will be too old to want his mama at all.

August - Day 12. Spoons

I'll be honest.  This is recycled and hardly thought about.

Spoons?  Honestly?  How do you make spoons look nice lol.  It was a crazy weekend, yesterday was exhausting and today isn't looking much better.  So you get what you get...

I guess what better way to show a spoon than showing my 8 month old using it?

Elisa meets the dinosaurs

Elisa is her mother's child, and already at the ripe old age of 2.5 years old has developed definite opinions about what she likes and dislikes.  Some, I can get behind.  Others...she's lucky she's cute.

One of those loves is dinosaurs.

So when we saw a dinosaur exhibit had come to town, we didn't even have to give it a moments thought before we hopped in the car.

Elisa was in heaven.

Aidan?  Well.  He wasn't impressed.

Neither was he impressed by his nifty difty stroller car yesterday.

But I digress.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.

Dinosaurs.

So there was this child size table with all of these different types of dinosaurs on them and once she saw this table, there was no getting her away from it.  She, again, showed me just how much of me she has in her when everything on the table had to be "just so."

And for some reason, we insisted on standing IN this box...

Eventually we talked her into digging for some fossils.

But it wasn't long until Aidan decided enough was enough.

I do love how he crawls over to us and latches onto one of our legs once he's decided he wants to tell us something.

Anyway, it was a busy morning and led to some exhausted kids, but meant...good afternoon naps!  Take one for the team, eh?  :)

August - Day 11. Purple

August - Day 10. Rings

August - Day 9. Messy

'nuff said?

8 months old

And cranky.  He's got me stumped at the moment.  Not eating well, not sleeping, pulling at his ear and yet no cold symptoms and no fever.  Teething as always but just generally unhappy.

These are all I got for his 8 month photo shoot.  We don't have another official weigh in until next month but I'm estimating his weight to be about 21 lbs.  Yes, 21 lbs.  He was 20.5 lbs the last time we sat him on a scale.  It makes me do a double take every time I look at him and realize, this was the size Elisa was and she was walking.  No wonder people looked at her strangely.

Some observations I'm noticing about him.

1.  He's not quite as adventurous as Elisa was, and prefers to take his time with picking up new skills.  He is, however, more curious so I have a feeling we will actually be needing to baby proof more than we did with her.  He is army crawling very well and now we are finding him in the kitchen or at the gate to the rest of the house.  He wants to crawl and is trying hard to get from that sitting to crawling position and then yells because he can't figure it out.

2.  He is much more of a solids baby, but he is PICKY.  If the solids have too much chunk in them, he grimaces and gags.  He does not like his bottle.  Period.  Even more so these last few days.

3.  He is very laid back and has to get pushed pretty far before he gets angry.  But when he gets angry, oh boy.  You better know what it is he wants because if he doesn't have it right away you are in trouble.  But the laid back part is good, since his sister likes to make his life interesting.

4.  He seems much more aware of us than Elisa was.  He notices when we leave the room and gets mad.  Depends on the day who it is he wants.  Today, it was daddy and every time daddy left the room, he cried.  The other day, I was the one he wanted.  So he crawled over to me and pulled on my arm and then wouldn't let go.  I'll admit, I smiled.

I'm sure I'll add more as I think of them.  Right now, it's dinner time.

August - Day 8. Glasses

I'm starting to realize that my house is dark...with very little natural light. 

August - Day 7. 8 o'clock

Andrew is lucky he has short hair, else he was my original idea.  The frazzled stay at home parent after a day with a 2 year old and an infant.  :) 

8 o'clock...in other words bedtime.  And time for adult conversation, resting and relaxing.  Love my kids to pieces but some days, I can't wait for bedtime.

August - Day 6. Writing

Elisa often gets herself down stairs and over to my desk.  She crawls up into my desk chair and finds whatever writing instrument is nearest, takes out my notebook and starts drawing, claiming she is "working."  I call them (to myself) love notes to mommy.

I love these notes.  Even if they do mess up my reminders and notes for work.  They always make me smile.  I sure do love this kid, even in all of her raging toddler glory.

August - Day 5. Logo

August - Day 4. Somewhere you sat

I had an idea with my desk chair and the tree in our front yard, but the sky was cloudy all day.  And without a drop of rain.   I keep telling it if it is going to just be grey and depressing all day, at least do the decency to rain.  But since I spend the majority of my week in my desk chair, I thought it was the perfect subject.  Oh well.

So I went for sentimentality instead.  This chair was my grandmother's and when she died in 2005, all of her children chose the items from her house that he/she wanted.  I think every piece of furniture ended up in one of her children's or grandchildren's home.  This chair, though, I believe was one that was just shoved on a truck hoping someone would take it.  And I ended up with it lol.  It's not my style but fits perfectly in the eclectic style of my main living space.  And somehow just works with the curtains lol.  But it's something I will never get rid of or ever reupholster.  Even in it's 1970's glory, it sat in my grandmother's home for years and while I have no real fond memories of it (it sat in one of her guest rooms) it is in some way a piece of her.  It will always be my grandmother's chair.  And yes, I have sat in it!

Oh and just a disclaimer...as it does sit in my main living space it never is this put together.  Elisa loves to pile all of her stuffed toys on it and pull the arm rest covers off of it and the seat cushion off.  I made sure to do this during their naps lol!  Life with young children.  :)

August - Day 3. Coin

August - Day 2. One

I initially took a whole bunch of pictures of tomorrow's word.  Whoops.  Oh well, now I don't have to do it tomorrow! :)

August - Day 1. Outside

You are probably wondering why I chose a dead flower as my picture of outside.  It's because it is indicative of the kind of summer we've had this year.  If I wanted to have temperatures in the 100's on a regular basis and for long periods of time as well as no rain, I would have stayed in Arizona.  At least that's expected there.  I also was envisioning a bright sun but it chose to be hot and CLOUDY today.  Of course.  Oh well.  This is all about me learning how to use the manual settings any way and for that...it served it's purpose.

And go me!  I finally found a place that told me HOW to change the aperture on my camera...not just tell me what changing it means...which meant my first set of pictures came out completely black.  Since I entirely overexposed it lol.