From the category archives:

honest blogging

bring in da funk … take out the noise

February 1, 2012

Feeling kind of blah lately. I think I’m just in a funk with schedules. I use the term “schedules” lightly because we don’t really have a schedule at all, but I just feel like we do the same thing every day, day in and day out. I know this is a common issue, but it’s been weighing on me lately.

Wash laundry, feed kids, wipe table, dry laundry, load/unload dishes, wipe counters, fold laundry, feed kids, vacuum, clean toilets, feed kids, put away laundry, pick up toys, feed kids, pay bills, change diapers, feed kids.

And we’re also working through some napping issues … Lucy takes too many, and believe it or not, this is an issue. I KNOW! But it is creating some problems for all of us, and we’re gradually trying to transition her down to one long nap a day. We are also dealing with some typical 4-year old stuff with Emma, but it’s very very normal behavior that doesn’t need to be discussed.

I don’t want to complain, because I realize how very fortunate I am to be able to spend the entire day with my girls, but … I don’t know. I feel like we need to mix things up a bit. Do something different. Get out and explore other areas of interest. It’s really too bad I’m such a homebody.

Anyway, I finished one month of daily photos, and here are just a few of my favorites from January …

I noticed a common theme … eating. We do that a LOT around here, apparently.

Now, this is not a project 365. I didn’t even make it a month taking one photo a day, but I have been trying to post one photo a day, because many of the photos I take never make the front page of the blog if it doesn’t tie in with the current blog post. And clearly, I think I am ALL THAT and that you should see ALL of the pictures I take. Ha.

Also, if you’ve noticed my editing this year, I’ve tried to keep it a lot cleaner and less “vintage” or “cloudy” as it has been called before. Mostly because I printed out a lot of my photos from last year and wasn’t pleased with how they looked once I held them in my hands.

Yet another reason I’m glad I’m not a real photographer … I’ve changed my editing process a LOT just in the past couple of years, and I’d hate to see people paying for my experimentations. [Another reason to keep your edits clean and timeless.]

You might also notice that I’m having some soft/missed focus issues with my camera, and it’s driving me insane. I sent it in for repair last year after I dropped it in our driveway, but I don’t think it’ll ever be as clear as it once was. I don’t HAVE to have a new camera, so I’m just pushing this poor 50D as far as I can right now.

Okay, so this just turned into a post full of whining, but that wasn’t my intention. Things have just been a little meh around here lately, and that’s the honest truth. I am sure we will snap out of this funk very soon.

{ 19 comments }

apologizing

December 16, 2011

in emma,honest blogging,life with two,lucy,phone pics

I really try not to blame any crazy mood swings on pregnancy hormones, because, let’s face it – I am an adult. I should be able to stop myself from being a total nutcase. But some days, I just lose it, and I say things to Emma or Ken that I shouldn’t say. And then I have to apologize. Luckily, they are both very forgiving people, and we just keep on loving each other.

But yesterday morning got particularly bad when Emma wiped her runny nose on her shirt, and I got upset and yelled. It was a ridiculously silly thing to get upset over, but the wiping mouth/nose/hands on clothes thing has been an issue lately. I immediately scooped her into my lap and apologized and tickled and giggled, and all was right in the world.

I guess it’s the repeating of things over and over and repeating and over and repeating and over and over that gets to me. I don’t know. I just know that on days like this, we need to get out of the house for a while.

And yes … Lucy climbed to the top of the slide, crawled around inside the super high playground, and then crawled out to the little plastic viewing globe. And then I had a heart attack and died. The end.

Some days, we just need to hunt mushrooms – all found by Emma, all photographed by me, 3 almost eaten by Lucy.

all pictures taken with my phone and edited with RadLab

Today is the LAST DAY to enter the giveaway for Kellie Hatcher’s amazing color and b&w presets – BOTH SETS!!!

Have a great weekend!! xoxo

{ 18 comments }

lessons from my daughter

September 27, 2011

in emma,honest blogging

Whenever anyone compliments Emma, she doesn’t say, “Thank you.” She says, “I know.”

Sometimes, it kind of makes me cringe a little bit, because I don’t want people to think that I’m raising my kid to be totally full of herself. But, really, she just agrees with what people tell her.

She totally thinks she’s beautiful and athletic and funny and a good communicator and smart and awesome.

And she is.

I wish I could answer people like that when they compliment me.

I mean, it would be nice to actually believe it when people tell me that I’m a good mom. Or a good photographer. Or a good wife. Or a good friend.

Instead, I make a joke … or blush and shrug and say something to offset the compliment … or I just ignore it.

Maybe one day, I’ll be confident enough to just say, “Thank you,” while thinking to myself, “I know.”

Not to say that we should all be over-confident and full of self-love … but I think there’s a happy medium between loving yourself and being confident in yourself while still maintaining humility. I’m obviously not saying that we should all walk around saying, “I know!” when people compliment us. But I think we should all quit beating ourselves up as moms and wives and [insert whatever you do here].

{ 26 comments }

she has allergies

September 22, 2011

in dairy free,food allergies,honest blogging,lucy

this one.

the one with eyes so dark, they sometimes look like black holes.

the one with toes that stay curled constantly.

the one that waves her arms around and bounces up and down the minute she hears the door open when daddy comes home.

the one who says “mama” approximately 742 times a day.

the one who gets SO excited when I take her in to wake emma up, she can’t touch her. seriously, she gets so overwhelmed with excitement, she just holds her hands out and gasps. that is some serious sister love, folks.

yeah, that one.

she has allergies.

let me start at the beginning … we headed over to acadia pediatric allergy & immunology this morning after dropping emma off at preschool.

part of me was nervous, part of me was sad [that she had to do this at all], part of me was happy [that we would finally know what she was allergic to!] and part of me was relieved. if you’ve followed me on twitter or facebook, you’ll know our ordeal with lucy and her issues with eating. clearly, these issues are NOT slowing her down [hello, 21lbs and 29” long!] but she is just … not happy. she fights with food … I can just tell.

for the sake of anyone out there who may be wondering if they should take their child to be tested, here is what we have dealt with [in a nutshell] …

diagnosed with reflux at around 2 months old [silent reflux - so not much puking, but a LOT of screaming]
diagnosed with dairy allergy at 3 months old
I went dairy-free for the duration of our breastfeeding relationship [still going, btw]
she was on prevacid and buffer babies for about 6 months until I weaned her off of that
noticed VAST improvement once she started eating solids
continues to have a dairy-free diet, yet continues to have reflux’y episodes and eczema on her face [red, raised and sandpaper’y]
recently started coughing [coughs more when her face is broken out, so thought it could be tied into allergies / itchy throat?]

after I told her pediatrician about an episode with scrambled eggs where she broke out immediately all around her mouth, she referred us to a pediatric allergist.

we were both in good spirits when we got there, even though it was a rainy and yucky day. I was just looking forward to getting answers!! and lucy was pretty much all about the waiting room toys!

and steps! FOR CLIMBING!

after filling out more paperwork than it takes to buy a house, we went back for the consult. and more waiting.

clearly, I was all, “WHEE!! I’M WEARING MAKEUP!! LET’S TAKE MORE PICTURES!!” lucy was … not.

and then this happened.

FOUR TIMES.

looks fun, doesn’t it?

yeah, it’s not. I KNOW it’s not supposed to hurt and that it’s just a quick press and jiggle, but … well … she’s 12 MONTHS OLD. I can’t exactly explain to her why she is getting poked, so it wasn’t fun. and there was blood. and oh goodness … my poor muffin. [sad face]

I don’t remember the map of the hives, but it was determined that she is allergic to dairy, egg and peanuts. that mean old peanut created a pretty big reaction. apparently, the size of the hive or wheal is not necessarily conducive to the severity of the allergy … but dang. that’s a big bump. [they actually wiped that one away about 5 minutes early because it was obviously not going away]

she also had a reaction to cats and dogs, which is not surprising since I break out in itchy hives every time my dog rubs up against me. did you know that you can develop allergies later in life? uhh, yeah.

so.

that’s where we’re at. she has food allergies.

I’ll be completely honest with you. it’s a leetle overwhelming right now. I’m just trying to take it all in and deal with it in my own way. which apparently involves a little crying in the car, a little emailing and texting and messaging with my besties. and a little extra snuggling with the love muffin.

in a day or so when I’ve come out from under this cloud of “holy cow, there are three pretty significant foods here,” then I’ll be able to figure out what to do next. dairy-free has been kind of rough at times, so this is kind of making my head spin.

the GOOD NEWS is that it doesn’t appear that she is allergic to soy or wheat, so I can cook stuff!! but eating out will now be a luxury, unless we take our own food for lucy. [we’re going to be rich!!]

and to answer a few questions that were asked on FB that I wanted to cover here, as well …

1. why didn’t they do the blood test first? skin tests are cheaper, faster and easier. not necessarily funner, but they are very wham bam thank you, ma’am. whereas blood tests require labs and stuff. and since we pay for all of this, it made more sense to do the cheaper and easier route first to make sure she even had allergies. yes … she will have blood work done in november to determine the severity of the allergies that showed up today and also to make sure there aren’t any other sneaky buggers hidden in there.

2. I’ve heard that you can’t even tell about allergies in babies? well, I’m here to tell you … you can. if you have been told that you can’t tell about allergies until babies are older, then your doctor probably still thinks that all fussy babies have colic and need cereal put in their bottle. [hello, pet peeve … nice of you to show your face up in here.] lucy will not be tested just this one time to determine her allergies for the rest of her life. she will have tests every year. but until we find out differently, you better believe I’m going to keep her away from dairy, eggs and peanuts.

3. don’t most babies grow out of food allergies? while it’s true that lot of babies grow out of food allergies, we still have to feed them while they’re growing out of them! lucy may very well be totally fine in a year or two or five, but for now, I need to make sure I’m not making my baby sick by giving her scrambled eggs or french toast or meatballs or omelets or dairy-free pancakes or bakery bread or the million other things I’ve been feeding her that contain eggs.

4. will you go dairy/egg/peanut free in your house? will emma be allowed to eat peanut butter sandwiches? the honest answer to that question is, “I don’t know.” I mean, I have been cooking dairy-free for almost a year, so that’s really not an issue for us. but emma and ken still drink cow’s milk, so we’ll probably just continue with that right now. lucy is still at an age where I can keep her and emma’s food separate, but I’m sure this will change over the next few months. having said that, cooking without eggs is going to take an adjustment. in the end, I think it will ultimately depend on her blood test to see how severe her allergies are. obviously, we will do whatever it takes to keep lucy safe.

okay? okay.

I could go on and on about how horrible this is and how she’s going to live her life in fear and how school is going to be awful for her. BUT I refuse to let myself go there. for one thing, we have no idea how long these allergies will stay with her. we still don’t even know the severity of her allergies. and we have NO idea what will be happening by the time she goes to school. [and Emma’s preschool, where we will more than likely send Lucy, has shown nothing but compassion and understanding for kids with allergies, so there’s that]

I’m not going to turn this into our platform or issue or anything like that … this is just going to be our life now. it is what it is. there’s really no point moaning and groaning about how she can’t eat this or that or the other. it’s our daily life.

I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but it is manageable. I mean, it’s food allergies. it could be so much worse. this doesn’t require hospitals or therapists or chemo or surgeries or any of the totally unfair things other kids deal with on a daily basis. this requires forethought and planning and food substitutes and a brain. THAT’S IT!

and thanks to the growing awareness of food allergies, there are websites GALORE with information and recipes and assistance and tips and substitutes and all kinds of good stuff at my fingertips. if I was dealing with this 20 years ago, I might be a little bit panicked. but just tonight, I’ve pinned about 6 recipes that I found within minutes of visiting one blog. this is going to take a lot more planning on my part, but that’s good for me!

I mean, seriously. YUM!

Source: veganbaking.net via keli on Pinterest

now THAT’S what I’m talking about!

we got this. no problem.

{ 46 comments }

oh, hi.

July 25, 2011

in emma,honest blogging,lucy

Things have been … hard around here lately. I don’t know if it’s because we’re mostly stuck inside due to the heat or the fact that the girls are sick AGAIN or the fact that I’m going through a low time or the fact that my Lightroom 3 has an issue that makes it use more memory than any program I’ve ever seen, so editing pictures takes about a year and a half.

Other Lightroom users … is this normal? I think I need to email Adobe. All I can figure is that I downloaded it straight from the Adobe website, so maybe it has a bug in it? I don’t know … it’s impossible to run any other programs while I’m editing photos.

I’m also trying to de-edit my photo workflow. That sounds weird. But I had a recent canvas order that turned out HORRIBLE because of the way that I edit photos. [I guess] It was atrocious. It was NOT AT ALL what I saw on the screen, but I guess maybe my editing just doesn’t translate well in print?

So I’m trying to be more natural. Not overly edited. This is hard for me, but I’m going to give it a shot.

This picture is over a week old, because Lucy is dealing with a double ear infection right now. The last time she had an ear infection was 4 weeks ago, and they gave her amoxicillin, but she was allergic to it. Her ears looked better, so they decided to just leave her be. But I don’t think she ever truly kicked it, because this one is so. much. worse. in terms of how she’s reacting to it. Now, she’s on a penicillin-free abx, and we are going to finish the 10 days and then hopefully, we will be DONE with these. This one is kicking her butt, though … which, in turn, kicks my butt. I just want to be able to lay her down in her crib without having the awful screaming.

Yeah … I feel the same way, Lu.

Emma has a summer cold. Luckily, she doesn’t get ear infections [knock on wood], so it’s just oodles of snot and nighttime coughing that we’re dealing with, thank goodness.

This was edited with the preset that printed horribly on canvas, even though I made sure that the auto-correct was turned off in my printing options. I love this preset. [sigh]

She still has bundles of energy, yet it’s too hot to play outside. We try to do nighttime walks before bed, but my day is mostly filled with saying things like, “Jumping on the couch is going to end badly. Please stop standing on the windowsill. Emma, put the matches back in the drawer.” Okay, I’m kidding about that last one, but seriously. We are running out of things to do.

She’s got summer camp for three days this week, so that will help.

On a different note, I noticed the other day that her computer skills are not very good – she struggles with using a mouse and doesn’t really know how to navigate a simple website. I know, I know … first world problems. But it seems like kids these days are using computers in preschool, so I want to get her used to them. I’ll admit, I am a little OCD about kids taking 97 years to click one thing [over there. no … there. just click THERE. RIGHT THERE!!!] … so I usually do all of that for her, but I have an old Acer Netbook that is now hers, so I need to let go of my crazies and just let her take 97 years to click on things.

What are some of your favorite 4-year old friendly websites for playing and learning and also practicing how to use a computer? She knows her letters and numbers and colors and shapes, and she can sound out small words and add small numbers, so it needs to be more advanced than that or it won’t keep her attention. We are working on reading right now, so maybe something along those lines?

Other than that, I don’t have much to talk about. See? This is why I haven’t posted in forever. I am word’less.

I guess I could talk about how I struggled to even get out of bed last week. Or eat meals. Or talk to people. Or clean. But that’s so depressing. [ha. see what I did there? depression … depressing? yeah.]

Or I could talk about how I am wondering what I’m doing wrong to end up with sick kids once a month.

Or about how I had to take Emma to the pediatrician first thing Monday morning to have her chin glued together because she runs 200mph and tripped and hit her chin on a plastic mail truck. And how annoying it is to take your kids to the pediatrician perfectly healthy and have them come home sick.

Or about how my baby is going to be 11 MONTHS OLD tomorrow, and I am freaking out about that. And how she is the sweetest, happiest, chill-est baby one second and the whiniest, clingiest, boob-addicted baby the next. She keeps me on my toes, that Lucy.

Or I could talk about how Emma is reverting to a baby stage with a lot of whining and finger sucking and crying over every little thing. I am TRYING, y’all. We had a long talk at breakfast about how it’s OKAY to have emotions and it’s OKAY to tell me that you are upset and it’s OKAY to be sad … but that it is NOT OKAY to scream at me and pitch a royal hissy fit complete with alligator tears and hands slamming down on the table when I say “No” to having a brownie for breakfast. Sigh.

Or I could talk about how my husband is the most generous person in the world and never says, “No” to anyone, but how even though it’s one of those things I love about him, it’s also one of those things that kind of drives me crazy, because I am left at home with 2 sick kids while he goes and plays tennis. [And yes … he reads my blog and will see this and knows how I feel and knows that I need to type it out sometimes. And he also knows that I love him enough to be okay with this. Most of the time. Heh.]

Or about how our dogs are both getting really old, and they are both peeing in their sleep, and I am tired of a house that smells like a zoo. And the thought of having one or both of them in diapers makes me cry.

But see? This is all so annoying.

And I know that I have oh so much to be thankful for. And I am. I really am. I know that ALL of this is so ridiculous in comparison to current world issues.

But these last few weeks have been really tough, and I’m just rambling because my head is still kind of mushy. I may delete this later, because it is the whiniest post I’ve ever done. But I’ve always said I’d post honestly, so … this is as honest as it gets, folks.

I want to come back with something funny and sweet and full of good pictures. Maybe tomorrow.