No Pictures...

I have been pretty spectacularly horrible at taking pictures of my kids. I even bought a second camera thinking maybe I would use it more. Well.....that has not happened. It's been a busy February work-wise so I'm using that as my excuse! So much seems constantly changing on the work front I am just trying to keep up and roll with it.

In the meantime, I will share a few stories.

I posted on facebook about how we paid Simon to put Cecilia to bed. The number thrown out there was $30. We didn't really expect him to do anything, but apparently he understands the value of $30 because he was off and running with her.

He got her upstairs, got her to go potty, got a diaper on her, helped her brush her teeth, got her into pajamas and then came the hard part....keeping her in her bed. I was in the hall listening to all this go down and was downright shocked he made it as far as he did. But she kept running into the hall by me and then he would encourage her back to her room offered her waffles SEVERAL times if she stayed in her bed. So in his most big brother convincing encouraging soft voice he was saying, "Cecie if you stay in bed you can have waffles in the morning....waffles Cecie! Cecie waffles, do you want waffles in the morning? Waffles?" She 100% ignored the waffle thing but he was trying sooooo hard. It was the sweetest most hilarious thing! So then I intervened and helped get her in bed. When we were walking out he said in the most serious voice, "Can I have my $30 now?"

He asked for it again tonight. I don't think we are getting out of that promise.

Cecilia continues to be her crazy self and now has this added layer of pure sass that surprises me allllllll the time. She enjoys tattling, threatening to tattle, talking back and making her opinions known. I suppose this is typical for a 3 year old?! She is also sweet as pie sometimes. We've been saying FOREVER that is a child of extremes and she continues to prove that theory true. Extremely sweet, extremely snuggly, extremely sassy.

Wonder what the next one will be like....sometimes I wonder IF there will be a next one. Too early to tell I guess being only 3 months into the wait, but I still can't quite wrap my head around the idea that it could actually happen. This thought keeps me from getting clothing, a crib, carseat, or anything that you might need to care for a new baby. I think it is stressing my mother out that we have nothing. Haha :) I figure we'll manage!

Funny (to us)

I was showing Cecilia a video and after it was over she said "don't turn it off!" which I did because it was over. She said "What did I JUST said?" Made me laugh :)

Simon got some information sent home about the fundraiser Jump Rope for Heart. This is my best memory of how that went....not even sure he took a breath:

"Mom we need to give money for this because it saves lives. Mom see it says that for every duck I earn I can save a life! We need to give money for this because it saves lives! Mom do we have any money? Do you have a thousand dollars? Dad has some hundreds. I saw Dad's hundred dollar bills." 

And more of this for the next hour.

That is all for today!

Blogging

I don't know how to get myself to do this again. I think I need to set up a new goal of writing a short story once a day about each kid and posting it. And eventually add more photos. Because ohmygosh am I going to be pissed at myself for not doing this.

So here goes.

Today I had a mommy temper tantrum. You know where your kids are just doing their usual thing but for whatever reason you just CAN. NOT. TAKE. IT?! Today it was breakfast and the extreme amount of time they required to eat a piece of toast. Mostly Cecie, who wound up going to day care hungry since she couldn't manage more than 2 bites in 15 minutes.

So I had a hissy fit and yelled and slammed the bathroom door and stayed in there for a few minutes to try to pull myself together. Of course I regained composure and everyone got where they needed to be on time and all was well in the world.

Later on I was talking to Simon about the high and low points in his day and he didn't mention our morning. I asked him about it directly and he said "I just didn't know why it was so LOUD when I didn't even DO anything!" HA! He was just indignant. As usual.

Cecie on the other hand cried on the stairs while I was near tears in the bathroom. She is a gentler soul who cannot tolerate yelling of any kind. I moved her hand out of the way the other day and she cried about it holding her hand as if I slapped it because apparently her feelings were hurt that I moved her hand? So anyway, I had to go apologize for yelling and explain to her how important it is to eat breakfast and yadda yadda. We hugged it out.

I thought quite a lot about Baby Number 3 during this little episode. Not sure how this is going to go...but it will go.

Things.

So I have been the world's biggest slacker with blogging. And I will probably regret it, unfortunately. I have failed to document Cecie's 2nd year in words. I do still take photos and I am up to date with my photo books (hooray), but I don't have any way of remembering all the little things. I am cutting myself some slack, though. Starting and running a business is all consuming. I thought I was going to take some pictures a few times a month (if I was lucky) and not much was going to change. I rolled with it, however, and somehow this turned into a real thing with real clients and real work and a real studio and real equipment and real props, etc, etc, etc. So something HAD to give. And it was blogging. 

I would love to say that is about to change, but let's face it. I am probably not going to be blogging like I once did. It is what it is. I DO, however, have some very important blog posts coming up and I WILL take the time to write because there are some experiences that I have to be able to go back and read about. 

So here is the first of a few very important posts coming up.

We are having a baby.

A baby. A third child. Another person will be in our family.

No, I don't have a due date. No, I don't have morning sickness (woot!). No, I am not getting round in the middle (unless I keep at the Halloween candy with the same urgency as I have been for the past week). 

So obviously I am not pregnant. But close enough! Our home study is in 2 days. Deep breath. 2 days. In 2 days, as long as everything goes well, we will start "the wait." From that point on our life is in limbo. It could be a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years before we have that third baby in our arms. Bryan seems to think it is going to happen really quickly. I love that he thinks we are so marketable. I am preparing myself for a long wait, though. I am okay with there being more space between Cecie and Baby 3, but the unknowns with this kind of adoption makes me want it to just happen right away so I don't have to think about it. 

I don't know how this is all going to shake out. How will this affect my business? Our family? Our finances? Who knows. All I know is that we are going for it. We are giving our kids another sibling and I cannot freaking wait to see what she looks like, to name her, to know her birthday, to know where she was born, etc. I know things will be hard, but we will get through it.

I'll keep you posted ;)

Today

It's too complicated to really explain why, but Cecie went to day care today and Simon stayed home with me. I took the opportunity to do something with Simon that we wouldn't normally do with a 2 year old. 

So our day started with breakfast at our local bakery and then off to mini golfing. He was pretty good. I didn't take a single picture as my phone was sitting happily in my car...somewhere it should be much more often than it is...out of reach. But even without a picture to document our time there, I assure you we were there. And I enjoyed listening to him go on about the game. He was focused. He didn't think or talk about one single thing outside of mini golf the entire 18 holes. I had to stop just to hug him somewhere in the middle because he was just so cute.

Cecie got into Bryan's pomade (fancy name for hair gel) and caked it on her braids soooo thick. So we had to wash it and fro it out because there was just no time for anything else, and then the next day she had an "incident with the sand" at day care. I left carrying her upside down trying to bat the sand out of her curls. Not easy to do!

Cecie is saying so much, so clearly and so completely these days. Wah-wee became water this week. I told her today that she breaks my heart every time she says water and she gave me an annoyed look and went to fill her cup with water. She gets her cup out of the drawer, fills it up at the fridge and is on her way...the girl loves to be independent. Soooo much more so than Simon was (or maybe is).

Simon has expressed his disinterest in going back to school. I don't blame him really. We've been living foot loose and fancy free (is that the right saying??!) for awhile now and I'm not really ready to have to make lunches every day again. But, alas, I will have to.

Anyway, I should go to bed.

Updates

So here's the truth. I have tons of photos of my kids sitting on my computer and/or memory cards. So many that it overwhelms me to think about deciding which ones to share, so I just don't do it. Stupid, I know. So today I am just going to write a few things and not worry about the pictures. My goal this week is to share photos on here, though. I want to do this....for my future self and my kids and anyone who still checks in here! So there. It's out there that I am going to do it :)

So here are a few things that I want to share....

Summer vacation has started and my kids are busy. They both go to day care 2x a week. Simon was going to go to the same place as Cecie but the teacher smelled of smoke so strong that I figured he'd get some second hand smoke action so I pulled him out and put him in the day care through the rec department. It means an extra trip every day, but both locations are close and the rec department is actually cheaper. Plus he has his best buddies from school there and gets to go swimming every Thursday. And apparently gets 2 juice boxes a day. No comment on that one.

He's also in a handful of day camps at the zoo. His first one was yesterday and he LOVED it. Simon is not super into sports, but tell him he can spend the day talking about animals and he's all in. Kind of funny to see his interests really start to emerge.

I am doing my best to manage my job and have some fun with the kids this summer. Every day is a balancing act....and some days go better than others. I have a job that I absolutely love and means a lot to me and is always on my mind, so sometimes I get absorbed in it and time just passes. I'm trying harder to not do that. Because I love my kids MORE of course ;)

Cecilia is staaaaaarting to get potty trained sort of. She went at day care (maybe she's gone more than once there, I don't know, I just happened to walk in when she was finishing up). She tries to go all the time and sometimes will poop in her diaper right next to the potty. So it's on her mind. With Simon we did potty boot camp but our life just doesn't work for that again right now. So we are taking it slow and letting her take the lead for the most part. I don't think her personality would allow any other way.

She is talking up a storm. Full sentences. Like "because I want juice too" or "i wanna go get ice cream" or "no fair I don't wanna get out." It catches me by surprise every single day. LOVE. THIS. STAGE. She is like a totally different kid than she was 6 months ago. Age one was so hard for me. She thew tantrums CONSTANTLY and was just crabby all day from what I can remember. Now she is funny and happy and significantly less emotional. 2 is a million times easier than 1 was. No comparison. And who knows what 3 will bring, but I am going to soak up our good days for now. (And don't get me wrong, she is not perfectly behaved all the time but her naughty crabby bs is just fewer and farther between).

Okay, I am going to make these kids breakfast. They are on the couch watching The Croods for the 500th time right now....

Who read this whole thing?! Haha.

Studio Fun Part 2

I am in a constant state of learning and trying to improve my photography skills. Constant. There's an endless river of crap to learn. Haha. Really it's fun, though. It's fun to have something that interests and challenges me every day. My latest challenge is learning studio lights. I invested in a real live studio light so that I could manage better on cloudy days and it's SO tricky to get it right. I am taking a class this month to help, but in the meant time I just have to practice.

It's never super fun to practice with my kids, but on this day we managed. It's kind of hilarious to me to see Cecie just being herself, not listening to me AT. ALL. I'm sure I was sweating by the end of this.

And I sort of wish I would have actually cleaned up the background a little....that damn step stool photobombed again!