Day 11: The Night They Lost

Here's Jacob looking all cool heading into the stadium. Zach took this because Sabine and I didn't go to the game. I told Zach I'd be much happier in the hotel room and would rather just have the cash that he wasn't spending on a ticket for me. Sabine and I headed to the Inner Harbor and walked around for a while before heading back to the hotel to read and have some quiet time. Of course I never saw the cash.

Anyway, this was the first game that the Yankees lost to the Orioles this season. For a long time the boys were really bummed that the game they'd been at was the one where their team lost. But now I'm told that the Yankees have lost to them again, so I guess all is well?

Day 10: Family Portrait

I'm utilizing the exception to my rule about posting and setting up a bunch of photos post-dated to appear one at a time. Since I'll be traveling soon, I'll do a series of photos from the last time we were out of town. We went to Maryland in April to visit Zach's brother at college, and then went on to the inner harbor in Baltimore to stay a night and see the Yankees play the Orioles.

I took this photo while we were on campus at Salisbury University. It's infrequent (relatively speaking) that we get a photo taken with all four of us, so I took the opportunity to snap this picture when we came upon the mirror. I embarrass Zach when I do stuff like that.

Day 9: Try that on for size

This picture is another one from the day we went strawberry picking. We were getting ready to wrap things up and head home. Sabine grabbed my mom's hat and put it on. I caught this photo just as she was making a perfect la-dee-dah face. That and the "2" painted on her face, as well as the strawberry juice stain on her chin make this my favorite photo of that day. Click on the image to see the runner-up.

Day 8: Birthday Cake

This year I made Sabine's cake. I sort of had a 'woodland' theme in mind, but as you can see, it more or less turned out to be a bunch of stuff that I'd collected, put on exhibit atop some sprinkles (pond), green fruit roll-up (grass) and crushed up Teddy Grahams (dirt). By the time decorating time came around I was just out of brain energy and it was all I could do to skip the decorating altogether. Anyway, I didn't get much feedback from those who partook of the cake, so I'm thinking it was nothing special.

I don't know how easy the details are to see in this photo because of the decoration behind the cake. That's a tree from Jacob's barn and a teensy watering can, Annie's Bunnies (munching on little bits of fresh kale), Teddy Grahams. An aside: I try not to buy the conventional brands with trans fat, high fructose corn syrup and artificial coloring, so there's a good chance that Jacob's never had Teddy Grahams (at least not recent enough that he would remember). So when he was asking for them today, he asked, "Where are the Teddy Diagrams?" It was so cute I didn't bother correcting him.

Another aside: The decoration in the back is a big #2 that had been circulating around our moms' group for more than a few years now. A lot of the kids in our club have had the honor of having that 2 present for their birthdays. I don't know what other families have done with it, other than have it in their possession for a while, but I put it on display as a decoration and make sure to take the birthday kids picture with it. And if I had a nickle for everytime someone asked, "Is that a pinata?"

Day 7: In the Strawberry Patch

OK, so I'm a day late with this picture. I couldn't go one week without screwing up. It may have looked like I was late with Saturdays' photo though, but I wasn't really. I posted it late, late on Saturday night after I finished making Sabine's cake. When I went to check things out the next day something was screwed up and it wasn't there. But then when I went back later it was magically there again...oh well.

So today I am (retroactively) posting this picture of the kids in the strawberry patch to remind myself that they can be sweet and normal kids because the last few days I've been wanting to throw them out the window. Especially the little one. She no longer sleeps without screaming for two hours before hand. It's like some fairy visited on her second birthday and activated the 'terrible' switch.

Day 6: In His Hands

This is a photo of Jacob holding a ladybug he caught. I like taking photos of ladybugs, so this picture is nice and all, but what's startling to me about this photo is that when I uploaded and saw the shape of the hand in the photo, I thought it was my hand. It's definitely Jacob's hand, I know that, but even so, right now I am still doubting myself. Everything is the same; the overall shape of the hand, the lines, the individual fingers. What strikes me most is his pinky, ring finger, and that top line of his hand. That area is what caught my eye initially.

I'd never paid any attention to the genetic similarities of peoples' hands, but I'm going to have to start taking better looks at that part of people. I like that he has my hands, he doesn't resemble me in many other ways.

Day 5: Slimy Little Thing

This little guy showed up last month when I was cleaning out the pond one day. He left a slimy mark all across the rocks and took his sweet time getting to his destination, allowing me to snap several pictures. I love that he's got stuff stuck all over him, and the goldish lines all under the skin (if that's what you all it) on his back are fascinating.

Day 4: Set in her ways

This photo is from a couple weeks ago, but I had to post it because it's hilarious. I know some people might not find it funny to post a picture of their kids crying, but when my kids are grown I not only want to look back and see their smiling faces, I want to see the full range of their emotions. I'm an advocate of taking pictures of your kids in every kind of mood and from every different angle. I can't stand it when people take photos and aren't happy unless their kid is smiling angelically.

This was after a long romp in the mud, though I can't remember what exactly she was so worked up about. I just love the smudge under eye and Reggie in the background wondering what the heck was going on. Sabine's been doing a lot of this lately - that is to say, tantruming. I had been telling people, "She's practicing for when she turns two." Since she turned two this week, what better way to represent that by posting a picture that shows what will likely be the way she spends most of her time the next several months?

Day 3: Lens or Pupil

I took this photo the same time I was taking the photos of the freaky spider in the back yard. Sabine was at my mom's, so Jacob and I were having an alone day. I'm already starting to miss him because he's going to school in the fall. I'm not happy about that. I tell myself if I can just get one more year of homeschooling out of him after 1st grade, then I will settle for that. Maybe he won't even like school...

I love this photo because you can't tell where the reflection of the lens ends and the pupil takes over. Also, Jacob's iris appears to be blue, green and brown all at once. What you're seeing is the baby pool, grass and tree line reflected. And there I am reflected in his eye too. Oh the possibilities for metaphors in this picture!!

Day 2: Sabine's Birthday

Today Sabine turns two! I had a really hard time picking what picture to use for today. I took a couple today while we were strawberry picking, but neither of them were exactly what I was looking for. I had wanted to use this one where you can see the '2' I painted on her cheek but you can't see her face very well, and there's another one that's perfect except it is both Jacob and Sabine, and since this is her day, I wanted it to be of just her.

I've gone back and added a rule, plus I edited another, because I had such a hard time picking today - one photo only, and no more.

Anyway, this picture took the cake (haha, birthday joke) because it so accurately represents Sabine these days; she's all quirky with her little arm bands she insists on wearing and her hair is all over the place and beautiful, and she's always watching what's going on. I took this picture at Jacob's last baseball game on Saturday. I said that day she looked like she stepped out of a Molly Ringwald movie, that or an old school Madonna video...and you can't even see what she had on her feet.

You can see the runners up here and here and here (oops, last link to be added later, flickr is being extremely slow right now).

Day 1: A picture a day

I snapped this picture last week and that's when I came up with the idea of posting a picture a day all summer. It's my challenge to myself in order to keep me coming back to this blog regularly. I can't seem to keep up with it for more than a week. So, if a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then if I never get to post anything else, the photos themselves should suffice.

I actually took the photo of the spider so that I could post it on facebook and have someone tell me what the heck kind of spider it is. I'm very curious because it is the biggest spider I have ever seen in my backyard. Click on the photo for a picture showing it's true size.

Here are my rules:

1) Obviously it has to be one I've of my own photos, but if someone else takes a photo on my camera and it's blog-worthy, then that counts as being in my possession.

2) It doesn't have to be a photo taken on that day, but it should represent something happening in our lives at that time.

3) I reserve the right to 'cheat' by post-dating some photos to appear at a later date, as we will be out of town and away from internet access at least a few times this summer.

4) I am beginning on the start of summer. I will continue through the official end of summer of September.

5) No matter how hard the decision may be, I can only choose one photo for each day.

Come back daily to check in! And please leave comments!!!

Let me count the ways...

Sometimes I post on here and the time stamp says something crazy like 4:20am because I'll change the date or time so things show up in chronological order, and they're not all bunched up in one day in reverse order. I don't know how to explain that without writing entire paragraphs so you'll just have to believe me that I have a good reason, and it has to do with being extremely anal.

My point is, right now I am live blogging at 4:20am because what just happened next to me is the best thing in the world, and it's happened before; enough times that it was infinitely worth it to go get the computer, and with bright light hitting my eyeballs (risking the chance of me ever being able to fall back asleep), attempt to tell the world about the best kind of love that exists - at least in my world.

My kids, especially the older one, find numerous ways to aggravate me. There are so many different methods; each coming with its own particular course of action for inflicting irritation. However, I'm coming to realize that for each of these annoyances, there are at least as many different ways to love them.

Anyway, here I am in the family bed, also known as the Big Bed. But it is definitely not as big as some beds other people have for half the amount of bodies. I like to think of ours as the all-the-better-to-snuggle-you size. Sabine woke up, I got up, carried her downstairs because even though it's pre-dawn, it just felt like it was time to make the coffee. With the little one slung over my shoulder, I put together the necessary ingredients and hit 'on'.

I returned upstairs to await the liquid gold and Sabine appeared to be back asleep. So I laid her back down, but then she got all squirmy. The way we appease her when we want her to settle down and go back to sleep is that we gently and rhythmically pat her. I really wanted that coffee so I told her to sit tight and I'd be right back. Of course she was not going to sit tight but I left anyway and heard her pining for me get louder and louder. Then things appeared to get quite, and when I returned I could tell there was no noise coming from Sabine. I thought she had fallen back asleep, but then I heard Jacob doing the instinctual shushing that us parents do, then he whispered, "Mommy's coming right back." When I got closer I saw that he was also patting her. The best part about it is that his eyes were closed.

I can't exactly put words to why this detail made the moment, but it was like this action was just instinctual, like that of an exhausted mother of a newborn just trying to catch any shut eye she can. He just did it because that's what he's been doing her whole life. She's his little sister and he loves her, that is just how he shows it. And the fact that Sabine responded to that action; the idea that she could be just as soothed by Jacob in that moment as either of her parents drives home the meaningfulness of the whole thing.

To see my kids, the two little people I created, functioning in the world like that, independent of me, that's when I love them the best, in the most pure way I can.

I told Jacob how sweet that was and how awesome he is, and scooped Sabine back up. When she eventually went back to sleep (or so I thought), I laid her down again only to have her get right back up, all angry like this time. She was calling out for Jeje (Jakie). I showed her that he was right next to her, said that he was the one patting her. She got all calm, said, "Uhn," and settled in next to him.

So here they are now at the end of this writing, all nestled against one another in matching positions and Jacob's arm is around Sabine. I swear, there is nothing better in the world. If we got to pick our own version of Heaven, you know what mine would look like.

And my biggest argument in favor of co-sleeping is the fact that my heart is so full and big right now that it might actually explode. Seriously, before you put your kids in their own beds and their own rooms, ask yourself why you're doing it. Is it because that's what you've always 'known' it's the way it's done according to our culture, or because that's what is actually best for your family? For us, this is clearly the best.

Update on the corn

The trash goes out tonight. I am so excited to get rid of that rancking (I just made that word up) tub of nastiness . The garbage went out last week, which left the can empty for me to shove that bin in there. It just fit when I squeezed it in on its end, but to get anything else in the can, we have to lift the tub that held the corn out slightly above the lip of the garbage and shove whatever it is into the tub.

Even though it's out of sight now, it's still not out of mind. It was a real scorcher last week, we had one day that topped off at 99 degrees. The tub of rot was just sitting in there, turning into more rot. Remember, this is after the stuff has been dumped, it's just the empty tote bin now. When the Verizon tech came last Tuesday to fix our internet, she was in the vicinity of the garbage can so that when I went outside at one point to ask her if she needed me to do anything, I could smell it ten feet away and rushed over to move it. She said, "Oh, that's where the smell is coming from..I kept smelling myself hoping it wasn't me who stunk."

Also, one night when Zach was taking out a small bag of garbage, the kids and I were near the window that is closest to the big garbage can. We couldn't see him because it was dark, but we could hear him and for a minute I thought he was making spooky sounds to scare the kids, but then I realized he was gagging trying to get the bag into the garbage! I laughed my butt of for a good five minutes after that.

The only thing that could have been worse than puking from the smell of the that (which we have decided smells like actual puke) it if the mess of corn and mold and unidentified liquid had actually come in contact with our skin. I had a real close call on the day that I took the photos of it. Notice below that the lid is askew on top of the container. Well that's because I took the close-up photos first and then when I went to put the lid back on, not wanting to even touch the outside, I used my foot to try to slam the lid back in place. I was a little too forceful and as the corner of the lid went into the container, my foot slid and almost followed right into the corn! Before I realized that I'd made it away safely, I was envisioning pulling my bare, maggot-covered foot out with the accompanying pain of having your flesh eaten away at. I'm not sure how that little pail got on top of the lid. I may have thrown it as a knee-jerk reaction while I was screaming and running away; the kind of reaction you have when a monster is coming after you and you grab whatever meager implement you're holding in an effort to fend it off.