angry.

You guys, I'm really, really angry.  I'm also very sad.  My friend Jen birthed her baby at only 16 weeks, 5 days early Sunday morning.  Jen is mom to the wonderful Dibits, and also previously had an early miscarriage some years ago.  I have spent hours over the past few days shaking my fists at God for allowing this.  Now, notice I didn't say God caused this.  That's not His style, you know.  But ever since humanity went from perfectly created sinless beings to creatures in a broken relationship with God, our bodies haven't worked as they were designed to all the time.  Babies die before they're on the outside, sweet-as-pie grandmothers get cancer, healthy kids are born to parents that don't want them.  Life isn't perfect any more, and (even though it sounds bizarre to lots of people) I've accepted that as part of the covenant I became part of when Jesus took up residence in my heart. 

One of my favorite parts about being a follower of Jesus is that it's okay to be angry with God.  It's okay to ask questions of Him.  Believe me, one of the first ones on my lips as I enter Heaven's gates will be, "Why all those babies, Lord?"  And I hope I'll be able to understand His answers.  Currently, my earth-bound humanity prevents me from fully understanding one damn thing about Jen's baby, or Amy's baby, or anyone's loss(es).

(Please click on Jen's name above and leave your support for her on her blog.  She is ALWAYS there to uplift others in their times of need, and most richly deserves as much love as the internet can provide.)

xxvi

Scenes from Thanksgiving:

xxi

The winner for my favorite comment of all time was left by the lovely and talented duo of Emily and Chad on this post, and I hope you’ll all click over and read it. 

saturday morning leftovers.

Yeah, I'm just now getting around to posting what I should have posted last night.

• Turns out that when you stick a potato covered in eye sprouts in a pot of dirt and ignore it, you just might get potatoes.  We ate them in our dinner last night and haven't died yet, so I think we can all consider this a success.  Seeing as how the only things we've consumed from our garden thus far have been parsley and mint, I am thrilled to eat something I grew myself (albeit accidentally).
  
  
• Our zucchini plants have only produced male flowers so far.  Obviously female flowers are the ones that make fruit, so we are still waiting to see them.  Two of eight tomato plants have flowers - I'm hoping the cardinal I keep seeing in the backyard leaves things alone so that they can produce.
  
  
• Monday Maria and I are taking off to go see Jen & Elizabeth before they abandon us move north for a great work opportunity.  We're also hoping Barb & baby E, and Farah with MT & Armadillo can join us, too.  I will be taking custody of Jen's strawberry plants.  What are the chances they'll survive under my care?
  
  
• We almost never go to the movie theatre anymore - the last movie we saw out was Star Trek.  However, I WILL be seeing Iron Man 2 as soon as possible.  LOVE love love RDj, Sherlock Holmes was (surprisingly) pretty dang good and I'm hoping Iron Man 2 does not disappoint.
  
  
• You may remember I have a great love for Rockin' Green soap.  I recently purchased the Hard Rock variety and am even more impressed.  We were having some diaper cream issues (we use wash cloths as a barrier but still usually get some cream on the diapers themselves.  Hard Rock took care of all that residue and they are back to being squeaky clean.

lunch date

We had a lovely lunch date with Miss Elizabeth.  She brought her mother, too, which was nice.  Here is evidence of our good time:

answers

I got this comment on my last post - don't stay anonymous, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Anonymous! (I also changed the settings to allow comments from those that don't blog on the photoblog. You're welcome. Whoever you are.):

LOVE the fish pic! Can't post a comment over THERE as I don't have a blog, so I am HERE!!! Are you using a digital camera? What brand and model? I can't seem to get the effects I got with my SLR and f-stops with the digital I have now. Was getting ready to go back to the SLR and real film until I saw your pics. HELP! SAVE ME!!!!

Well, thanks! Oh, noooooo, don't go back to film. The money you spend on film and developing would pay for a good starter digital SLR in a couple of years. I am using a digital SLR camera, a Nikon D60. If I could go back in time to when I was purchasing this item, I would have bought the D90 - the reason for that is the D60 does NOT have an internal focusing motor, and the D90 does. More auto-focus lenses are available to use when you have an internal motor. For example, the lens that most often is on my camera is the 50mm f/1.8, which only works in manual focus on the D60, but would auto-focus on the D90 (or higher level camera). Now, I have to say that despite the challenges of manually focusing, particularly while taking photos of my constantly moving children, I really, really like the photos that the 50mm f/1.8 produces. The light is so much more accurate and I can take more pictures in low-light situations with that lens. I am totally ANTI-FLASH. I won't use it. I have grown to really dislike photos taken with flash, even if the subject is really cute. Sorry.

Having sung the praises of my 50mm f/1.8, I have to admit that the fish photo on my year in pictures blog was taken with the kit lens, the 18-55mm AF-S lens (OH, if you've got the D60, make sure any additional lenses you buy are AF-S, not just AF, or you'll be manually focusing like me.). I'm not quick enough with the manual focus to take photos of a lively betta.

I hope this was helpful and not too boring for people who don't give two hoots about cameras or photos. Anonymous, you should totally start a blog so we can see your progress! Plus, when you blog, you get to meet awesome people like Barb who is having a BABY RIGHT NOW!!!!! Yippee!

because we’re a touch off in the head…

…Andrea and I took Henry to the Magic Kingdom on Monday. INSANE CROWDS. Don’t do it during this week of the year, if you’re given the choice. Anyhow, we had a lot of fun despite all the other people. The key is to not plan on getting a whole lot in on a day like that. We got there at 11:30ish and left around 3:30ish, and only rode one ride. BUT! Here’s what else we did:

We entered the property through the Grand Floridian Resort parking lot so we could see this amazing giant gingerbread house inside the lobby area. It was really amazing and if you look through the window you can see the cast member inside. Also in the lobby was this gorgeous giant Christmas tree – for size reference Andrea is on the right with Henry, she’s 5’ 1&1/2”.

Andrea, having spent several years of her life that she’ll never get back practically living in the Magic Kingdom as a manager in Tomorrowland, knows her way around pretty speedily. So after catching the monorail from the GF into the park, we took ourselves over to the Buzz Lightyear ride, obtained our Fast Passes to come back just over an hour later, and then took an empty out of the way path so that we could hit up Mickey’s house. We waited for about 20 minutes and then Henry got to meet these lovely characters:

After this we decided to find somewhere to eat lunch – the Harbor House was our choice and after enjoying that lovely experience we headed back around Cinderella’s Castle (A probably too-long aside: where for some reason, parents are okay with spending $50-$190 to give their child a “Princess Makeover” including bizarre hairstyle, glitter spray, tarty makeup, and costume with uncomfortable looking shoes. We saw probably 30 little girls made over in this way and I thought it looked terrible, plus without fail, the girls looked MISERABLE. To be fair, we also saw lots of girls whose parents have retained some rational sense and allowed their daughters to wear a princess dress over a turtleneck and jeans with sneakers so they can walk further than 100 yards. Anyway…) and made it over to Buzz’s ride, where Andrea kicked our butts shooting aliens but Henry beat me. I can’t imagine why Andrea might be an expert at this ride. When we got off, we glanced over and THERE HE WAS. So we got in a short line to meet the Space Ranger.

Following that very exciting rendezvous we headed back towards the center of the park to get good seats and wait for the Christmas parade.

We found wonderful seats without issue and hung out there for about an hour, enjoying ice cream and some other fun activities:

After we had the joy of seeing and hearing two GROWN ADULTS behind us argue over who was going to sit where to watch the parade, it got underway. And it was lovely- lots of sights and smells (!) and music and fun. Andrea had a (probably against policy) shout-out from a former cast member of hers, and we eventually got to see the big guy:

The weather was gorgeous, and it was really a fun day. The night before, Henry and I had left home mid-afternoon to head over across the state. We had dinner with Andrea & Frank and then they took us to Hollywood Studios (apparently that’s what they call MGM now) and saw the dancing Christmas lights and even a little snow. I took some neat pictures. Of course I can’t show them to you, because my memory card, containing over 1000 photos that I had not yet dumped, decided to have a little hissy-fit and refuse to work. I had to reformat it and lost all my photos. Lesson learned. I borrowed a card for the day at the Magic Kingdom and slowly got over the heart attack of losing all those pictures. The important thing is that Henry had a blast!

eighteenth

It's been kind of a DAY around Casa de SICKO, what with Maria getting pink eye, an ear infection, and mild bronchiolitis over the last couple of days. We've had to juggle trading her care off between the two of us as she obviously hasn't been well enough for daycare. She'll have to hang with me again tomorrow and we'll see how that goes while I'm at work.

It's just been a DAY altogether. Some changes are afoot at work (not bad ones, just some new added duties) and are coming sooner than expected, so that's consumed a lot of my thinking today, whenever my mind hasn't been occupied with concern for the four of us and how on earth we're going to keep things from going berserk with all the SICK SICK SICK. I tweeted earlier that I'd really appreciate it if Farah or Amy would go ahead and have their babies so that we could have some good news. The request still stands, for as far as I know neither of them have been NICE ENOUGH TO OBLIGE. How rude. :o)

fifteenth

We just returned from a wonderful evening with friends – we had an early Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie (and great company).  We’re stuffed!  I was hoping to take a picture of something that would help me post tonight, and so I took a couple shots of our gorgeous and quite tasty turkey.  However, on the way home we saw a sight that only a fortunate few will see in person in their lifetime; one that deserves top billing:

 
Oh, and just for giggles, here’s the turkey:

(I’d much prefer seeing photos of TURKEY, if you all know what I mean!!!  Hurry up, little one!)

a girl needs her friends

Maria got to visit with two of her best buds this weekend – her cousin Julia and her pal Abby came to visit and brought their mothers along with them. Poor Timon and Henry were a smidge outnumbered but they survived. We had lots of fun and the babies (ages 13, 9, and 6 months) were hilarious as they interacted.

We hit the beach – Abby ate a lot of sand, Maria wanted to take off down the beach, and Julia did some sand face plants. Henry loved being able to run & splash.

We did a little photo shoot in the backyard which Maria wanted little to do with.

We also went to the zoo and saw all their babies, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. Including them now just might make your head explode with cuteness.

aquarium

Well, like they’ve already posted, Maria and I went to the aquarium with Farah, MT, and Armadillo (currently in-utero); Jen and Elizabeth, and Barb with her yet-to-be-born son last Friday. Of course we were going just to have fun, but we also decided to have a mini-shower (a sprinkle, if you will) for Farah & Armadillo, due Dec. 3. Jen made this hilarious onesie for them:

We saw these gorgeous, deadly jellies:

The kids made some kind of club pact, signified by their hand slaps:

Maria walked all over the place:

We found Nemo:

And we saw some super cool sea dragons (the one on the left is one inch long!):

A lovely, lovely day, with lovely, lovely ladies and our children…

splash

Sunday I took Henry and his good pal G to the brand new splash pad about a mile away.  I didn’t even know we had one!  Farah was my inspiration to find one – although someday we will make the trip north county to play with her adorable little MT at their splash pad.  This place is incredible – the splash pad is next to the biggest playground I have ever seen.  There is SO much to do there, and Henry & G had a blast. 

 

  
And, just because she’s adorable:

an offer I hope you can't refuse...

The other day I was in the Target parking lot and this sweet looking grandmotherly woman whose car was parked next to us was incredibly rude to me as I struggled to get Henry, Maria, and our bags into the car. She clearly thought her needs were vastly more important than being patient for 15 seconds while I finished up getting the kids into the car, and practically shoved me out of the way. It was even more startling because I was there in the first place on an errand of mercy.

There's a girl in our church in her early 20s. N has been coming to our church since she was 13. She became a mother far, far too young, but she does a remarkable job with her 2 daughters, ages 8 and 2 1/2. N recently escaped an abusive relationship, went to school and got a certificate to do medical billing and coding; she has a job and is ready to move out on her own with the girls (they've been staying with a church member for several months). They have lots of needs for a new home - N had to leave nearly everything behind when she moved out of her last place. We have given them new sheets for the girls (that's what I got at Target), and I want to try to do more. Here's the offer for you... can you help us build this young family up? If you're interested, leave a comment, and I'll get back to you about ways we can get together and help N, C, and C. I know times are hard for us all right now... but I have found that when I am giving the most is when I am given the most.

365

One year ago, I found out I was pregnant with Maria. To celebrate, I brought a casserole and muffins over to our friends who had a baby 6 days ago! Little S is so, so, so tiny, a mere 5 1/2 pounds, born a week early. He really is adorable.

Maria is drooling and chomping on her little hands like crazy. She is full of personality, just like her brother. She likes to lay on her side and do 360s on the floor. Henry and Timon spent some time this evening making constellations on the kids' bedroom ceiling with some fun sparkly stars Henry got for Christmas. He declared that he will use his laser pen to do a planetarium show for all his stuffed animals.

On New Years Day we went to, where else? The beach. Henry and Timon flew the kite, Henry got soaking wet and sandy, and Maria just sat there, like usual.

bizzaro

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking in our hall closet for something when I ran across this box of pop-up poinsettia cards I'd bought last January at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. They look like this:

I loved them when I saw them in the store, and bought them without a second thought. When I found them again I took one out of the box and turned it over - there I saw the artist's name on the back, and it was the name of a girl I knew in high school! Mary Beth Cryan is a very, very talented artist and a lovely person who I've been so glad to get back in touch with. Her dad is an AMAZING photographer and has been taking the most gorgeous pictures of children and families for quite some time. Don't believe me?

That's yours truly, photographed by Paul Cryan circa 1983. What happened to THAT stunningly beautiful child? The world may never know.

thirty

To finish out NaBloPoMo, here are some pictures of the boys from the trip to the nature park on my birthday. Tomorrow, I will take a break from posting. Probably.

twenty three

We have been eating some good food lately here in Casa de Knuckleheads (my affectionate term for my children). I've finally gotten a good pumpkin bread recipe under my belt, which I try to make as often as we can stand because, as Henry would say, it's SO YUM. Last weekend I threw together a white bean chicken chili and that was very good. Last night I browsed my soup cookbook [NOTE: Unless I am baking, which really does require precise measurements, or trying something COMPLETELY different than anything I've ever made before (like brining a turkey), I don't use recipes. I will look at cookbooks for ideas, and then once I get the general gist of things, back it goes on the shelf. I sort of just throw things together and it usually turns out just fine. There has only been one time in my life as a cook that a meal has been truly inedible. Also, I think you become a much better cook doing it this way - follow your instincts and your tastebuds, people! Close those cookbooks! Put DOWN that measuring spoon!] and found a good looking spinach soup idea, which I modified since I didn't feel like hunting all over town for uncooked barley. It was just sauteed onion and celery, 2 pkgs frozen creamed spinach, chicken broth, and brown rice. I will save this idea for whenever we can get together with these vegetarians I know, or maybe this other vegetarian I know, and substitute with vegetable broth which I'm sure would be just as good.

I really enjoy cooking for people. When one of those aforementioned vegetarians still lived here in FL, he was subjected to a meal at our house about once a week. I may make a pot of lentils in his honor sometime next week, after all the Thanksgiving/birthday hullabaloo. I guess it's the mothering instinct in me - I want to make sure all the people I love are fed well. Plus, I'd rather hear a complement on my homemade pizza than one on my appearance any day. Well, almost any day.

six

Here's our birth announcement. Our
lovely and talented friend made it for us.

(that might be my most favorite photo, ever.)

one (or, halloween, part two)

Thanks for all the compliments on the pumpkin - for several years now I've discovered the awesomeness of using stencils, so I really can't take creative or technical credit for our smiling jack. But thanks, all the same! Last night Henry's best bud Gregory and his parents came over to go trick-or-treating with us, and we had a blast. Here they are at their first stop:

And it didn't take long before they were off to the next block, holding hands and looking both ways, searching for houses with lights on and signs of Halloween friendliness.

Yoda and Spiderman filled their buckets full of loot and once Henry said that his bucket was heavy, we decided that was it. Maria rode in the stroller in her pumpkin outfit and mostly slept. We got back home and the boys decided to be in charge of handing out candy to those coming to our door. Yoda was light-saber equipped just in case of bad guys. After I took this picture, Henry told me that he was making a scary face and asked to see it on the screen. He was a little disappointed that you couldn't see it.

(And hey, welcome to NaBloPoMo, which I inadvertently did last year during my 30 until 30 posts. See you tomorrow!)