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How to make a plain, even bad, picture yummy? Extreme makeover with a few clicks? Photoshop! I have to admit, I was not into messin' with my pics. I found it boring and slow as I have an attention span below that of my toddler. BUT, I am taking a fun little class and she showed us a few things. Still learning (oh, how I'm still learning), but here are a few pics with their nips and tucks. (Don't you wish they had Photoshop for people?!?! I would definitely buy the upgrade.)
Digging in Mommy's drawer. Isn't she sweet?
Bee at the pond. This one is a little bright (is it 'blown out'?). Still liked it.
Annoyed at mommy, but smiling anyway.
Can you canoe?
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Also, I have forgotten my promise of 'little person gem of the week'. I'm sure you have been unable to function wondering what my children have said this week. Well, despair no more. Here are a couple off the top of my tired head (Bee woke up at 5:30am . . . hello! Summer vacation! Get with the program, girl!)
Little person gem of the week is a tie.
- Bee (the toddler), after eating half of her steak one evening, pointed to it and said, "Eww . . . poop." Toddler observation. Said without malice. Made me giggle. She was excused from the table.
- Watching Planet Earth with my mom-in-law one afternoon, my oldest sitting at the computer, they introduced some donkey looking creatures, but we could not understand what Sigorney Weaver was calling them. Having Tivo, we hit rewind about ten times.
Sigorney, "Wild _ _ _ _ _"
Me, "Wild what!?"
Sigorney, "Wild _ _ _ _ _"
Me, "Wild what!?"
Sigorney, "Wild _ _ _ _ _"
Me, "Wild what!?"
Sigorney, "Wild _ _ _ _ _"
Me, "Wild what!?"
5-year-old, "WILD ASS!!!"
She was so proud to have helped out the grown ups. I excused myself, and laughed until I cried.
I'm going down, down, down, down.
I'm going down, down, down, down.
~Bruce Springsteen
SPLAT!! My mommy antennae perked, this was not the usual 'splat' sound, and upon gathering my toddler up, saw it was not the usual bleeding. When I got a good look at the cut on her bottom lip, I called for my husband. He looked at it, then with a stony expression said the dreaded word, "Stitches."
We've 'been there done that' with older sis, so with a feeling of deep dread that manifested as a splitting headache for me, we drove to the ER. The awful part is you know what is coming. They do not. As she bounced, giggling on the gurney (trying, apparently, to fall and split open something else), I felt like I was leading the little lamb to the lion's den. BUT, nobody wants a scar faced kid, so stitch it up we did. As I watched her pinball her way through our living room the next day, I wondered when (not if) we would be making the trip again.
Here she is after the trauma watching a video.
Elmo helps the world make sense again.
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Moving on, as we must, we returned to our everyday routine, minus any swimming for the next five days.
Here we are eating our spaghetti dinner last night like a pack of wolves. I must do something about our table manners. Spaghetti. The dinner that says, "Welcome home from your hard day. I boiled water for you." I guess we need to do some meal planning, too.
This week is our "stop living like decadent slobs" week since our out-of-town company is gone. Good bye Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla every evening, and hello YMCA. This is also our first actual week of Summer vacation -- Woo hoo!! Let's hope it's the best one ever!!
Best Shot Monday sprang from recreating a typical scene from our day, dog devouring food from the floor. It was a fun pic to take, but my dog, Daisy, loved it most as evidenced by her gaze of passionate devotion when she was finished with the cupcake. Tracy, I think I saw the grace of the universe in her little loving doggie eyes :)
Check out more bsm's at Picture This. Theme Grace. Very fun.
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The rest of our week was consumed by bee's birthday -- the big 2! Here we are blowing out the candles on her beloved Elmo cake.
The highlight of the party was a rousing "Happy Birthday" sung by sixteen family members and eight close friends. I honestly had an out-of-body experience soaking up the love fest during the song, the good stuff of life.
Sadly, not captured on film, was my husband, in a mannish attempt to please the kiddies, standing over them and violently shaking the Sesame Street pinata, thereby sandblasting their little heads with Dum Dums and Smarties. He was making some triumphant animal noise while the children held their heads, cried, and stood frozen in their dilemma between death-by-candy-pelting, or 'eat sugar now'. We try. to be. good parents. Really.
Grandma came to visit, too. She stayed over a week, surely rethinking that itinerary halfway through as my five-year-old became her little question asking barnacle. She actually sat two feet outside Grandma's door in the mornings, criss-cross-applesauce style, and waited for her to come out. Turbo bonding, take-no-prisoners style for which only little girls have the stamina.
Evenings were spent in pleasant conversation. One of which began when Grandma noticed Daisy dog laying underneath the coffee table and reminisced fondly about herself doing the same thing when my husband and his brother were young toddlers (she had four total). She said she did this so they could play near her, but couldn't hurt her because the table protected her from their . . . body slams. Ahhhh, motherhood. Sentimental memories of hiding under the furniture from your children.
Here's us on a beautiful day at the beach. We had a blast.
Well, company is gone, birthdays are celebrated, and my ass in gigantic as a result. So, back to the routine for us.
Technical difficulties, remedied by my re-booting the whole house, kept my bsm from being posted on it's namesake.
Oh! Cruel fate for the two people who read my blog!
OK, here it is.
Now. You may be looking at this picture thinking, "Pretty cool." Nothing that's going to change the world of photography, but interesting all the same. I, however, look and get stomach butterflies. Why, you ask? Because every time I have taken a picture that contained an interesting feature, like a blur, it was completely by accident. Kind of like when my kids do something impressive, or a giant flowering bush grows in our front yard. These are things that occur near me, so I get the credit, but actually had nothing to do with. In this particular picture, I meant to do this. Pretty cool, huh?
The rest of my excruciating interesting life will have to be documented next week as we have out of town company, my mom-in-law, who is currently with my oldest at the library. Also pretty cool.
Before you met me I was a fairy princess,
I caught frogs and called them prince,
And made myself a queen.
~faith hill, fireflies
We'll get to the 'blew it' part later.
I love being a mom. Besides the on-call 24/7, 'living in a straight jacket' feel it can sometimes have, watching another human being blossom like an exotic, never-before-seen flower trumps all that. My oldest daughter is in a 'turbo blossoming' phase, changing from pre-schooler to little girl right before our eyes. I think you can see your child's personality the moment you first hold them in your arms. How they feed, sleep, cuddle, rest, react is so telling right off the bat. But the story has just begun. Colors are added to the canvas as they grow and show you how they play, relate, rebound, act out, deal. Just when you think you know them inside and out, they surprise you with another dimension to their little spirits.
I watched a new color added to my daughter's palate the other night. With younger sis sleeping, the three of us headed across the street to the pond for a pre-bedtime 'frog hunt' (read, catch the buggers, play with them - some might say torture- release them dazed and confused back into the wilderness). I watched my daughter prepare with flashlight and net, and move with relaxed confidence through the darkness. Now keep in mind, this is slightly scary stuff, a Where the Wild Things Are backdrop. Darkness, bugs, very loud, hidden prey lurking in the reeds. But she moved with a fluidity that comes only from experience, circling around the trees all alone, lost in her own curiosity and imagination. So simple a moment, but simply stunning.
Now behind us, Daddy was grunting and poking with testosterone fueled intensity, determined to catch one of these large, spotted croakers. Lunging, missing, lurking, he moved down the bank. Little one and I headed the other way alone, her up ahead with her little flashlight quietly looking for frogs, me quietly looking at her. Then, bingo. She shined her light on a very large and confused frog, and both of them froze staring at the other. I asked my daughter later what she was thinking at that moment. She replied she was checking him out to see if she recognized him from a prior hunt. No, her thoughts didn't go to fear, as we learn to assume the worst with age ("Is he smeared with some exotic poison slime that will kill us all??" my thoughts). Nor did they go to a catching strategy ("We can catch them all and put them in a box in our house!" my husband's thoughts). No, a simple "Hello. Do I know you??" is all that coursed through her mind. I love kids.
I flagged down Daddy, we netted the poor lad, and then a small, but very loud tree frog that was unlucky enough to be nearby. A frog frenzy followed as father and daughter held their frogs and bonded in that father-daughter way. A good time was had by all -- except the frogs.
I will say this about the experience that night. My oldest is the child that does well in school, is good with her friends, gives her all at soccer/swimming/music lessons, and is basically well behaved. She came that way. But watching her catch that frog that night with such pastoral intuition, such 'one-with-the-universe' enjoyment, made me the most proud of her I think I have ever been. A little bucolic babe!
Now moving on to the 'blew it' part. That's where I come in. Given my recent photography obsession, I obsessively wanted to capture the moment in all it's glory. With no light at the pond, we headed back to the house with our loot to document our prize catch. Did I get some great shots of this magical, everyday moment?? Did the hours upon hours I have read about and played with my camera pay off in our time of glory?? Hell no! What did I do, you ask? I panicked. I bonked. Without going into boring camera terminology, I put the car in reverse instead of drive. The pictures I captured turned out to be monstrosity paying homage to failure.
I began to think I didn't have 'it'. I was a moron among the capable. Inferior. Loser. You know the drill. Then I thought of the words coming out of my mouth all the time to my kids. In my best Glenda the Good Witch posture and tone, I heard myself saying gooey things like (read with very high pitched, syrupy tone),
"That's OK, honey. You only lose if you don't try."
"People aren't born knowing how to do things, they learn by practice."
"You learn the most when you fail, sweetie."
Sickening, I know. But you know? It worked. I got back in the saddle, adjusted my shutter speed, and kept clicking.
Maybe I'm not such a bad mom after all. I better run, though, my youngest is on her third video of the morning . . .
Well, here is my first actual post. I have thought about this quite a lot over the past busy week. What will my blog be? What is my goal here? I must have a 'blog mission'!! I began to see my life in little categories, some we will share with the entire earth population, some we will not . . . Restraint has never been a strength of mine, but I must exercise that muscle here. If not, I will surely wake up one morning, after having posted something weird, and think "Holy crap!! what was I thinking!! Now the whole earth knows about my . . ." Oops, almost said it already.
So, we will start with day to day. Events. Thoughts. Happenings in my home. Totally boring stuff that must be shared immediately. Like a girls night out.
OK,the first little nugget of excitement is . . . an alligator snapping turtle came into our backyard, tried to take over the place with a rocket launcher, failed ('damn those missing thumbs!'), then retreated into the bushes, still lurking in the bushes as we speak. Pillow talk last night, uttered into the darkness, with my husband actually consisted of sentences such as this, "He had to, like, you know, CROSS STREETS to get here. Why here?? What does it all mean??"
Ah yes, this is but a tantalizing taste of the splendid and deep material that will spring from my blog. Your life will be the better for it.
Also, I think I will do a "best shot Monday." No, this is not referring to the best verbal put down of the week. But the best picture I took for the week. I am stumbling into the vast and addictive world of photography, which means I take gazillions of pictures of my children each day while they beg me to please feed them, already. The turtle with the rocket launcher pic wins for this week.
Also, in a twist of cruel and almost unbearable fate, the universe gave the two most lovely, interesting, bright, deep, imaginative, empathic, sweet, gifted children to the likes of my husband and I. Great for us, so sad for them. But, my oldest comes up with little gems each week, which will, of course, also be posted. The little person gem of the week is this, spoken as we spooned into a nap today.
"Mommy, will you save a house in your neighborhood for me when I grow up?"
My sweet girl. I will save you the universe.
Why am I doing this? A leap into the abyss that is the information super hi-way? Things could go terribly wrong -- maybe. What if I share myself, and everybody points and laughs?? Ok, I'm pushing 40 -- it's time to shed those silly teenage insecurities. Here I am, likey or no likey.
Mostly, I love to write. (I have written endless amounts of boring journals, why not make them public?!) Also, I love the examination of the human condition. I was an English major and a social worker. A story junkie, perhaps. And, I love my family. A deep love so scary, it exhilarates. So, it's a natural fit. In between grilling cheese sandwiches and settling sibling squabbles, I can express myself, if just a bit.
Now on the title. My original title was beautiful mess. I heard these words together for the first time in Gillian Welch's song Barroom Girls.
Well the night came undone like a party dress,
And fell at her feet in a beautiful mess.
"Ah-ha" I thought, "THAT is my life!" (not the barroom girl part, that was another life ago . . .). A 'beautiful mess'. But, my oldest daughter has come up with some great descriptive words herself, and one of them trumped Gillian. One day out of the silence of our busy work I heard a little voice say, "Mommy, I love you 'big as the sky'." As I listened to these words float from my 4-yr-old, I knew I had lived my life and never heard anything so beautiful. The phrase then morphed into the more everyday. "Mommy, I'm 'big as the sky' hungry." "C'mon girls, we're 'big as the sky' late!" Anyway, I lifted her creative art and trademarked it as my own for my new journal tossed into space.
One of my favorite tv segments was on CBS a while back called Everyone has a Story. This guy would go to a random city, pull open the phone book, close his eyes, and point to a person. He would then go to that person, and gather from them "their story" (after going through a few who slammed the door in his face screaming "pervert!!"). He ALWAYS got a story, from every person willing to share. It was amazing what was behind the walls of ordinary homes encasing seemingly ordinary lives. Stories of love, loss, guilt, shame, new beginnings, lonliness, hope, hope lost, strength, courage, kindness, you name it. Well, here is our ordinary story, bit by bit.
Hopefully it will be fun . . .
