The Prettiest Teacup

Ooooh, that sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Fifteen days until my thirtieth birthday. I know my life isn’t going to stop when I wake up thirty instead of twenty-nine (Or will it? dun dun duuuun! Tune in November 18th to find out!) So about that list I have. There are certainly some things I will not be crossing off, and that’s okay. There is the whole rest of my life to get things done (Or not. Does it really matter at the end?) and I think it is kind of fun to make a yearly goal list.

30 by Thirty

1. Paint our bedroom
2. Sew a pair of slippers for myself
3. Take a family trip to Chicago in the summer (Next summer!)
4. Clean the basement (Check!)
5. Get a tattoo (Still contemplating this one)
6. Frame artwork
7. Have family photos taken(Check!)
   
8. Read at least five books (that aren’t board books)(Check!)
   
9. Put a fence around the back yard (We chose a swing set over a fence this year, and a new computer)
10. Start savings accounts for the kids
11. Cook a new dish once a month (Check!)
12. Get a pedicure (Check!)
    
13. Make at least three quilts (actually finish them, binding and all)
14. Baby books
15. Get bangs
16. Build a swingset
17. Go to a waterpark (Check!)
18. Learn to shoot completely manual (Check!)
19. Figure out timer on camera to take self portraits (Check!)
20. Update my blog
21. Find the perfect pair of boots
22. Take a water aerobics class (I don’t think this will ever fit into our schedules until the kids can babysit themselves)
23. Finish knitting peach baby blanket
24. Make storage shelves for the attic and cellar (Check!)
25. Finish the basement bathroom (Funding issue, not this year)
26. Wear lipstick
27. Create an organized crafting space (Check!)
28. Swim in a lake or river(Check!)
    
29. Not be pregnant
30. Climb Gibraltar Rock

But for now I have pictures to finish editing, a quilt and potholders to make for my quilt guild, and an epic birthday wish list that needs compiling. Have a great Wednesday!

At the pumpkin patch a few weekends ago.

It was bright and hot. A fun place, though.

Pumpkin carving.

I hope everyone had an awesome  Halloween. We sure did.

It seems that no matter what I do there is never , ever a day when I am truly on top of things. I may have gotten three posts up one week but then there is a mountain of laundry. My floors may be mopped but that quilt still isn’t finished. I took a little extended weekend break and now I feel like my head isn’t even bobbing on the surface. It’s being slammed by waves of “should do’s” and “have to’s” and I’m sinking under, every once and a while rising with a sputtering breath.

Here is one of those breaths before I’m submerged again.

Evelyn has been painting. Then she painted the white chair purple and it isn’t coming off. Now they are put away for awhile.

It got really warm here. Gus, Olive, and I went out while sister was napping for a splash with the hose.

It’s very strange playing outside, warm breezes blowing the wispy hair around your neck and the leaves off the trees.

Now things are getting cold and rainy and I am so happy for these pictures. I look at them and can remember exactly what these days felt like.

I want to talk to you some more. I want to write. I want to get things out. But not now. Now it is almost 3pm and I am still in my pajamas and I have to leave for work soon.

I just have to keep at it and hope that with every rise for a breath I get stronger and better at treading these waters.

And soon I’ll be swimming.

Gosh, things are busy around here! Thanks to everyone who voted for my picture in the photöberfest contest last week. I didn’t win but my photo was one of Katie’s favorites! So cool!

Fall is such a bustling time for taking family pictures. Throw in a session for a beautiful newborn baby boy and that means I haven’t really left my computer in awhile. And speaking of computers, I bit the bullet and got a new one just for my photography. The monitor came yesterday and the computer comes today. Here is what my invoice reads: Mac Pro 2x 2.8Ghz Quad-Core Xeon 4.0/320 GB Super-Drive-DL (HD 2600 Pro 256MB). I honestly only know what some of that means but my husband talks excitedly about it. I have been editing and storing (backing up to a separate external hard drive, though) all of my pictures on a my 13″ macbook. I have almost 20,000 pictures on my computer, on top of all the other random junk taking up space. If I run my editing programs while I have the internet going it can take me five minutes just to open a photo. Very tedious and frustrating. The new computer will have lots of space and is very fast (that would be the Quad-Core part- see, Scott- I do retain some of the information you barrage me with), and the screen is an awesome 23″.

Getting a big computer means I have to have someplace to put it. Luckily we have and office. Not so lucky- we only used it to store stuff we didn’t want the kids to get at. Last week Scott and I cleaned out the adjoining attic while the kids were with Grandma Betty and Papa. Some new shelving and storage tubs left lots of space for all of the accumulation in the office. It will be so nice to have a quiet place to do my work.

The plan is to have all my sessions edited and sent off by November. Then I have a little mini session planned for that first weekend and then the month is mine. I want to do some sewing projects I have had on my list the whole summer. And my fingers are itching for needles and yarn.

Well, to work I get. I’ll be back with some pictures of the kiddos and our Indian summer. Just what I need for a day when the high is 47°.

Katie Evans, a photographer whose blog I love and whose book has taught me so much, is having a little photo contest this month, week by week. This week’s theme is kids. Here is my submission:

The contest is taking place on pinterest, right here. The photo with the most ‘likes’ wins for that week. So in order for you to vote for my picture you have to be a pinterest member. Not a member? Send me an email or leave a comment and I will send you an invite. Then you can click on that link above (the one that says ‘right here’), find my picture, and click the like button!

Thanks!

Andria

*ETA- Katie has to pin the picture to her board so it may take some time for it to show up. Please keep checking back! (thanks for pointing that out, Lindsey)

Well September just rolled on by, didn’t it? October is here now and that means I have just over a month to finish my 30 by Thirty. Here is the list as it stands right now:

30 by Thirty

1. Paint our bedroom
2. Sew a pair of slippers for myself
3. Take a family trip to Chicago in the summer
4. Clean the basement
5. Get a tattoo
6. Frame artwork
7. Have family photos taken(Check!)
   
8. Read at least five books (that aren’t board books)(Check!)
   
9. Put a fence around the back yard
10. Start savings accounts for the kids
11. Cook a new dish once a month
12. Get a pedicure (Check!)
    
13. Make at least three quilts (actually finish them, binding and all)
14. Baby books
15. Get bangs
16. Build a swingset
17. Go to a waterpark (Check!)
18. Learn to shoot completely manual
19. Figure out timer on camera to take self portraits
20. Update my blog
21. Find the perfect pair of boots
22. Take a water aerobics class
23. Finish knitting peach baby blanket
24. Make storage shelves for the attic and cellar
25. Finish the basement bathroom
26. Wear lipstick
27. Create an organized crafting space
28. Swim in a lake or river(Check!)
    
29. Not be pregnant
30. Climb Gibraltar Rock

So clearly some (okay, quite a few) of these things aren’t going to get ticked off the list. But I am making progress and I hope to share that with you this next week.

Now on to the good stuff: What we did in September. Let us start at the top of the month with Gus’s birthday.

It was a great time! Unfortunately I was so busy I really didn’t have time to take pictures. These are the few I got.

I wanted a bunch of ties- enough for decoration and for everyone to wear one. I wanted them to be vintage and I wanted them to be cheap. Cheap vintage ties don’t really exist in bulk, I found. At thrift stores they would in the $1.50-$5.00 range. That would start to get expensive for the amount I was looking for. I got a bag of some ties from a co-worker and we already had some good ones to wear, as Scott likes a fine vintage tie (preferably fat and wide), but I still needed more. Ebay was my friend here. There were some not so good deals, especially if the seller thought the lot of ties had designer ones that needed to fetch a higher price, and a lot were just ugly ties from the 80′s and 90′s. Then I found a box of 100 ties specifically labeled as wide polyester vintage ties from the 60′s and 70′s for $80.00. I think this may be my best ebay score of all time. When the box was delivered I dumped them out on the floor and sorted through them. There were only two ties that didn’t quite fit in and ended up in the donation bag. The rest got tied up and hung up outside to air out the smell of thirty years of old Old Spice use.

Then we strung them up inside and everyone got to choose their tie. After the party Scott and his brother chose the ones they wanted to keep and the other went up to storage in the attic. You never know when you might need a garbage bag full of ties.

We had a milk and cookie bar. Those ball jars with the spigots are gallon size and I love them. I’m excited about having them around for next summer and can already picture them filled with blackberry sage lemonade and iced tea.

The Birthday Boy:

It was such a fun time. Really hard to believe that he is a one year old already. The day after the party was beautiful and warm so we went out to Grandma Betty and Papa’s for one last day of chasing chickens around the yard in the birthday suit.

By the end of day you could feel the slightest bit of chill and smell the autumn in the air as it blew down from the north. The next day was cold and I scrambled to find warm things for my littles to wear. I scrounged up some jackets and hats and long sleeved shirts just in time for Stacie to take us out to Devil’s Lake for a hike (walking on the flat, paved path). Evelyn loved climbing on all the boulders that line the path and putting acorns in her pockets. Gus just wanted to be down on his own.

Then we headed over to Milwaukee for Yo Gabba Gabba Live! It was seriously so much fun. The lights! The music! The confetti! DJ Lance Rock! We had a blast. I didn’t lug in my camera so these are some poor phone camera shots.

The day after we tried to get over to the children’s museum but there was a marathon right on the road we needed to get across and there was no other way out. After much driving around and threats of divorce if the car wasn’t stopped and directions gotten from one of the numerous police officers who were directing traffic, we finally made it.

They had a whole little town area with a post office, tv station, car repair center, construction site, pizza shop, bank, and a factory. All of the “businesses” had phones that actually called the other shops. It was so cool and I could have played all day there.

Unfortunately there isn’t much to tell for the rest of the month. It rained. I got through a mountain of laundry. I made this for Papa’s birthday, so decadant. I made this for Gigi’s birthday and forgot to take a picture of it. I think I’ll make another one for myself. We are working on finishing our play structure. What? I haven’t told you about that? Well stay tuned and I will show you! Have a great weekend!

I really wanted to tell you about what we have been up to for the last month (eeek!). I wanted to show you lots of pictures. But today just wasn’t my day. It started with having to unexpectedly get my eyes dilated at my eye appointment this morning. Not being able to focus on anything in the 12-14 inch distance range makes for especially difficult diaper changes. Then we made a trip down to Jo-Ann for some fusible interfacing. I wasn’t sure which weight I wanted so I was standing by the rack of the various interfacings running my fingers over them and reading those impossible to understand labels on the end of the bolts when Captain Cutting Counter told me I could not stand there and touch them and that I needed to go around to the front of the counter and they would bring them to me. I said I wanted to be sure of what I needed before I stood in line for twenty minutes with two kids. He reiterated that that is what the front of the counter is for. I walked away to cool down a bit. Big mistake.

I meandered over to the quilting cottons and I was parked in the narrow aisle looking over the fabrics. Gus was strapped in the seat and Evelyn was riding in the main part of the cart. She stood up to give her brother a cracker and I hear a woman at the end of the aisle say hello with a sort of half question sound. I didn’t think she was talking to me until she blocked my cart. Oh, crap what is she going to try to sell me? Mary Kay? Jesus? No just unsolicited parenting advice.

“Um, as a concerned parent I just wanted to say how appalled I am that your daughter is standing in that cart. With her height and weight, their body mass is so off balance, she could easily fall over the edge and get really hurt. As one of those kids who fell out of a cart, you need to know that she shouldn’t be in there. Just a concerned parent to another.”

I pushed past her and muttered “Good thing I’m not a concerned parent.” What I wanted to say was “Well with your height and weight, especially with that barrel belly, you could easily get diabetes or heart disease, you probably already have it and could drop dread of a heart attack, and maybe you should lay of the goddamn cheese danishes and mind your own business. But I didn’t. Because I am a nice person. And because I don’t care what you look like or what you do with your life. Pick your own poison because it’s none of my concern.

Unless someone is in imminent danger- licking a light socket, running with a knife pointed at their face, bolting out in traffic, playing with an open bottle of pills- please keep your advice to your self. The thing about children (and everyone for that matter) is that there is always the potential of getting hurt. With the physics involved to get us walking upright we literally teeter on the verge of disaster with every step we take. I wasn’t whipping figure eights in the aisles with Evelyn balanced on the edge of the cart. I wasn’t even moving. Did she see that a few rows over I stopped Evelyn from poking Gus’s eyes out with a sprig of fake leaves? Did she see me stop that same little girl from jumping off of the kitchen table onto a bean bag she had pushed six feet away across the tile floor, while same baby brother was on that bean bag? Does she know that the number one killer of children is motor vehicle accidents? I think this woman would pass out if she saw how high we push Evelyn on the swing (can you say under duck?!). And for being a concerned parent I didn’t see her with a cart full or unruly toddlers who both need snacks and naps and absolutely hate Jo-Ann. They were probably at home in there bubbles.

Look, I want to keep my children safe but I know that they will get hurt. They might need to get stitches or they’ll break some bones. They might get sick or need to have surgery. If I wasn’t aware of this beforehand or if I try to wrap them in bubble wrap now I shouldn’t have had kids. I just weigh out the risks and act accordingly. I once read an ‘it happened to me” article in a parenting magazine where the woman’s daughter was getting out of her chair with a fork in her hand and sort of fell on to it, scratching her cheek by her eye. A close call for sure but the mother didn’t let her use forks or knives again just to be safe. I’m not that mom and I don’t want my kids to live that kind of life. Because just eating soup with a dull spoon for the rest of your life is ridiculous.

Needless to say, I had to then wait- fuming- to get my interfacing, hoping that the number Captain Cutting Counter called didn’t match my ticket. Then it was off to Target, where the kids cried the entire time and I realized I forgot my wallet in the car after all my stuff was rung up. I ran out with a bawling boy in my arms, tugging on a dawdling, whining girl, apologizing profusely as I left the cart. I came back with tears on my cheeks and apologized to the women who were behind me, mumbling about having a bad day. Thankfully, they were all nice and understood, they even tried to get Gus smiling again.

Back home and things are better. I hope you still come back after reading all this junk. I promise pictures of cute kids.

One year of his big little life has quietly slipped through my fingers. I hold him tonight as I did on that first night, soft, warm, and damp from a bath. I bury my face into his neck and inhale to find that glorious sweet and sour smell of new skin. But its not there. This is not the skin of a new baby but a seasoned toddler. Instead tonight I get a giggle and a little palm pressed to my face. My heart is leaping for all that he will be but breaking for all that he was. All that I won’t remember. All that I missed. Those nights that I sat up nursing him, trying to commit to memory the gentle rhythm of his suck swallow breathe and countless other minutia that made up this tiny being. But I know I won’t remember. I have already forgotten so much about Evelyn’s infancy that I know this to be true.

Really big sigh with a catch in my throat. Fat tears sliding around on the rims of my eyes make it difficult to type. This is probably the hardest thing about being a parent. Not the incessant lack of sleep or the tantrums or the house being taken over by noisy plastic toys. The toughest part is watching them grow, knowing that you are the witness of their childhood and your memory is faulty due to that lack of sleep.

So my sweet boy, I will try to be a better memory keeper. I will take more pictures. Write more things down. I want to remember that you love to eat peas and are fascinated by shoes and the way you snuggle into your blanket. I want you to know that you love to climb anything with a foothold and I find you on counters and coffee tables and dangling out of your highchair. You love to read books and play hide and seek and that you now help yourself to graham crackers from the cupboard. You have beautiful grey-blue-green eyes and you try so hard make us understand by pointing and grunting with all your little might. You are most ticklish at that spot just below your ears. And that when I hold my hand out for you, you take it. And I look down and see your snow white cowlicks and your bubble belly, your finger pointing forward and your feet quickly following.

I will keep up.

I rock him in the same chair I did on that first night home and my mind jumps from the baby he was to the man he will be some day. His first car, job, date. Graduations. Straightening his lapels just before he escorts me to my seat so I can watch him marry the love of his life. Handing me his baby so I can smell that sweet skin and hold those tiny hands once more. Watching him play with those children and know how he feels at those moments. But I don’t know if these dreams I have will materialize.

What I do know is that I have right now. So happy birthday to my sweet August Grey. Always my baby.

My sweet Gus will soon be one. Soon as in this Thursday. So I will give you his eleven month rundown.

He is everywhere. He is now a proficient walker and tries to run. He also likes to spin in circles but his favorite thing is climbing. He climbs everything and I expect that the light fixture over the dining table will one day come crashing down from him swinging from it. All this mobility makes taking these monthly photos much more difficult.

He loves talking on the phone, even if it is just the back of his hand pressed to his ear. He says “Hey there” and dog and ball and is usually chattering all the time. He will give you a kiss if you ask for it and likes to show you his tongue.

He got three molars in the span of two rough weeks but that fourth bottom front tooth is still a hold out, giving him a goofy uneven grin.

He is also big on scaring people, saying “BA!” his version of boo. So many little things every day that are starting to make for a big boy.

But not too big. He’s still a baby for a few more days.

Slowly things are starting to move into place. Wheels keep turning in a good direction.

Yesterday both of the kids were being awful and whiny so I loaded them into the bike trailer and headed down to the park to let them run the junk out. This particular park got some new, small-sized equipment and they played so well. Gus loved going up the stairs and then down the slide by himself and digging in the sand. He only fell twice, backwards off the step onto his head and then forward onto the same step, cutting his lip. I think some people must think I’m the worst mother because I try not to rush to them when they get hurt. I may be gasping and my heart starts racing but I hold steady to see if they need me. In this case, Gus came to me with blood and sand in his mouth but as soon as I picked him up he started crying to be put back down. Most times I think they just want to be sure I’m there If they need me, and I’m okay with that.

Evelyn loved bossing around the older boy who was playing there. A little too much sass in that one.

Then the clouds started threatening rain so we packed it up, with much fuss and tears running down sandy faces. It was my first time pulling the trailer and I am sorry to say I didn’t quite make it up the hill to our house. I had to get off and walk them until I got to the crest. I sure do love the cuteness of a cruiser style bike but I think having some gears would be beneficial.

But we made it home before it started raining. We washed the grit off and both of my darlings laid down for a nap. Simultaneously. It was quiet and beautiful and I made a few pies- peach with a pecan crumble top and a pecan one for Scott. Apparently his favorite kind of pie is pecan, which I had no idea of until we were buying pecans in Georgia this spring. The things you learn about someone after being together for thirteen years. Something new all the time.

I got the kitchen cleaned up just in time for my momma and sister to come down and take over while I went to my first Modern Quilt Guild meeting down in Madison. I was so nervous to go, to meet new people, but I am so glad I did. I think this will be a fun group! If you are from the area and would like to join, here is the facebook page for the group. I am so inspired and I hope to get some more projects done.

I’ve lots of things in the works for the rest of the week and beyond: I am working out the details for Gus’s first birthday party- invitations, games, food, decorations. All I’m sayin’ is that there will be a keg of root beer hopefully; Finalizing my brother and sister-in-law’s family pictures I have had since June. Eekkk! Sorry guys and thanks for being so patient; Working on another family’s pictures and hopefully another session on Friday; And then- big goings on- building a swing set! Not just any swing set- one with platforms and levels and a playhouse and ladders and a catwalk and trap doors. It’ll be so awesome!

So we keep pressing forward, looking on to crisp golden days. Days of playing in jeans and sweaters. Days of little boys turning one. Days of family photo sessions in orchards and meadows. Days of my years clicking over to thirty. Okay, so maybe not that one entirely but I’ll keep moving on to good days, nonetheless.