I heart faces – faces and flowers

This weeks theme at i heart faces is faces and flowers. As usual, I went in search of my favorite subjects. After many failed attempts, I got this one!

After about the 100th picture, he said “All done with pictures.”

For more i heart faces fun, head on over and check out all the other entries this week!

Not Me! Monday – The evolution of John

Ever since John has been going to this babysitter Nana, at 11 months old, we’ve had a routine. I lay him Nana’s arms, I kiss him on the cheek/forehead/temple and we converse. Our conversation has evolved over the years but the gist of it is pretty consistent.

At 11 months

Me: I love you, John

John: …

Me: Have a good day

John: …

Me: Be a good boy

John: …

At 18 months, when he was conscious it sounded more like this:

Me: I love you, John

John: Blub Bloo

Me: Have a good day.

John: K

Me: Be a good boy.

John: K

Around 2 years old, he started forming real words.

Me: I love you, John

John: Love you

Me: Have a good day.

John: K

Me: Be a good boy.

John: K

The love you broke my heart a little because it meant he’s growing up and getting smarter. He’s one day
closer to not being my baby boy.

At 3 years old, he started to converse back a little more.

Me: I love you, John.

John: Love you too.

Me: Have a good day.

John: Have a good day.

Me: Be a good boy.

John: Be a good boy.

This conversation went on almost every morning for nearly a year. It was so cute and just another example of how John was still my little boy and had a lot to learn. I love it when he’s dependant on me for his (almost) every need.

So this morning, when I dropped John off with Nana and laid him in her arms, it was not me who was, once again, heart broken over my sweet boys choice of words. I do not dread the day my boys don’t need me anymore and step out on their own, and I do not see this conversation as one step closer to that day.

Me: I love you, John.

John: Love you too.

Me: Have a good day.

John: Have a good day.

Me: Be a good boy.

John: Be a good girl. *Wicked smile*

{hold me}

This post is linked up with MckMama and Not Me! Monday.

 

True Story Tuesday – Update on the camera

It really is still Tuesday as I write this. Actually, it’s 9:36pm to be exact. I say that because I may not be able to post this on Tuesday for True Story Tuesday due to Cox’s power outage in the area. I suppose if I had written this earlier in the day, I could have had it posted before the outage, but then the story wouldn’t be quite as funny. Since this story didn’t happen until late this evening.

Remember this?

How Papa broke John’s Camera and then I ordered the battery cover from VTech and they sent me the wrong side. So I emailed them and didn’t get a response.

To give you an update on the battery cover, I was able to get in touch with VTech on Monday of last week and was told they were doing inventory and wouldn’t be able to process the order for the correct battery cover until Thursday. On Thursday, I got a confirmation email that the order had been processed and another confirmation email that the part had been shipped. Yay! It would be just a matter of days now before the darn thing would be fixed permanently. You know, instead of the temporary fix that is packing tape.

Fast forward to today. James is telling me that when he got home, he found a little brown box on the front door step. He said it looked awfully familiar, almost as if he’d seen one like it before. He opened the box and discovered the reason for the familiarity. It was from VTech with the brand new part! He’s laughing all the while telling me this story and just as he’s finishing up, he holds out his hand for me to take what’s in it. He drops the part in my hand and…

I bust out laughing too!

I can just see the disgruntled employee laughing as he/she packs the pink battery cover knowing full well that what we ordered was the blue one.

Oh well! At least it fits and John will finally leave me alone about it being broken. Now I just have to worry about emptying the memory every 5.2 seconds.

Head on over to Rachel and Mr. Daddy’s place for more True Stories! You’ll be happy you did.

I heart faces – Angles

This week at i heart faces, they are focusing on angles.

For my entry, I grabbed my camera and went in search for my boys. I found them in the backyard jumping on the trampoline. Perfect! I laid down and snapped pictures while they jumped. I made them sit next to eachother while I jumped. PS – jumping with a camera in your face is not a smart idea. Just saying. The results weren’t what I was looking for for this weeks challenge, but I did get a very cute picture of them together! I looked around the backyard in search of something. I didn’t know what, but I needed something to help me get a good ‘angle’ shot. Thankfully, my father in law was painting the back of the house and brought home a giant ladder from work. I set it up next to the trampoline and climbed up to the top. I snapped a bunch of photo’s while they jumped, sat, laughed, threw their shirts over the net… snapped photo’s of James threatening to shake the ladder. As I was finishing up my photoshoot, the boys had gotten bored and were off doing something else. I climbed down from the ladder and found John playing on the backporch table. The table has a hole in the middle of it where an umbrella would go, and he was shoving his cars through the whole. I climbed underneath the table, prayed the glass wouldn’t break and told John to look through the hole. And now, here’s my entry!

I’ll post the other photo’s that I took for this weeks challenge in my next post. If you want to check them out, just click on the ‘home’ button above!

I heart faces – jump for joy

 

This week it’s Jump for Joy over at i heart faces. I didn’t have any jumping photo’s to enter as of Sunday night and was determined to get a photo for this weeks contest. I figured it would be super easy since I have little boys and a trampoline. I was sorely mistaken. The cold and the rain had dashed my hopes of getting the photo I wanted. When I talked to James about my disappointment, he rolled his eyes and jokingly responded “Just let them jump on the bed!” Great idea!

I knew I kept him around for a reason!

Locked In

I’m linking up today with Rachel and Mr. Daddy for True Story Tuesday. This story is just too funny not to share!

This story happened about a year ago.

We had just moved into our new house, and with that, we decided some changes needed to be made in regards to our brand spanking new 3 year old. As in, his 3rd birthday had just past. One of these changes, and probably the biggest one, was to transition him from his crib to a big boy bed. And when I say ‘transition’, it was more like ‘kid, you’re 3 years old and still sleep in a crib and suck on a binky; time to sell the crib, lose the binky and sleep like a big boy.’ So when we moved, the crib didn’t come with.

I’m fairly certain that John was psychologically damaged in the process by not getting a transition period and returned the favor in kind. His new idea of sleeping was to not sleep at all. Now, John had never been a good sleeper. He’s always fought sleep and rarely stayed asleep for long. But this was new. He had freedom without constraints and used it to the best (and worst) of his ability. He’d get up and sneak into the playroom to get his trucks. He’d sneak into the kitchen to grab a snack. Oh, he was a crafty one. When he thought nobody was watching, he’d climb the shelves in the pantry to reach the cookies on the almost top shelf, and place them on the bottom shelf for easy access later.

The constant getting up was getting on our nerves. One day, James had an idea. He turned the knob on the bedroom door around so the lock was on the outside. It worked fabulously! We’d put John to bed, read him his story, tucked him in and left. The door was closed and locked, followed by a short period of screaming, kicking and tears but it quickly subsided. When all was quiet, the door was unlocked and opened. As long as he was asleep, the door remained opened.

Soon after the knob was switched, John had found a new game using the backwards lock. He thought it was rather hysterical to lock his brother in the bedroom. Then it was his brother and his brother’s friends. He even locked himself in the bedroom along with his brother and his brother’s friends. We’d hear John laugh and laugh from across the house and James and I just knew that he had locked that door again. We’d shake our heads and release his prisoners, then secretly laugh about it later.

One fateful day, John was sick and I stayed home from work with him. Gary was at school and James was at work. It was just the two of us. I had called Gary’s school to let them know I would be there to pick him up when school let out. Usually he would go to the afterschool program until I got off work, but since I was at home there was no need to pay for a day that we didn’t have to. John and I hung out in our pj’s all day playing games and watching tv. When it started nearing the time for us to leave to pick up Gary from school, I decided it was time to get dressed. I walked into the bedroom with John on my heels, very aware of John’s attraction to taking prisoners, but apparently not smart enough to place John in front of me. As I approached the dresser, I turned around to find John turning the lock. As I started to scream for him to stop, the door was quickly slammed shut.

I looked at the door in disbelief, then at John. He was grinning from ear to ear. The look of mischief in his eyes was unmistakable. He had his payback. He had taken mommy prisoner. Like an idiot, I turned the knob. Sure enough, it was still locked. I banged on the door, knowing full well that nobody was going to hear me except my captor, who was enjoying my agony a little too much. I’m not in the habit of carrying my cell phone on me while I’m at home, nor do I carry the home phone around. Calling someone was out. I knew that a skinny flat head screwdriver worked great to pick the lock, but I never had a reason to keep such a tool in the boy’s bedroom. I looked around to see if there was anything I could use to shove into the little key hole. I found a belt and used the metal thing that goes into the belt hole, but it wasn’t long enough to reach the locking mechanism. Searching again, I found some wood lining stashed in the bottom drawer of their dresser (don’t ask me how it got there). I broke it in half, hoping it would break so that the broken edge was slightly pointy. My efforts were rewarded with a nice point on one end. I shoved it in the key hole, but it was too thick. I shaved it down a bit on the sides and managed to get a splinter in the process. Excited, I shoved the now skinny piece of wood into the key hole, but to my dismay, the wood was too soft. The point buckled as soon as it hit the locking mechanism.

It was closer and closer to the end of the school day. If I didn’t escape soon, I was going to be late picking Gary up. John had all ready gotten bored of this game and was distracting himself with a toy he found under the bed. I started to panic. Sweat was starting to trickle from my forehead and armpits. I started imagining James’ reaction to finding me locked in the boy’s room when he got home. The laughter and humiliation would be fierce. It would be a story told for years to come. I could imagine James telling our grandkids about the day their daddy locked their grandma in the bedroom for hours and grandpa had to rescue her. “She was bald from pulling out all her hair and your daddy was hiding in fear.” Yes, this is how the story would go.

I couldn’t allow that to happen. Desperate, I walked over to the window to examine the lock. It looked fairly simple. Press the button thing on the bottom, remove the window lock, slide window open. Luckily, this was as simple as it looked. I was ever so grateful that we lived in a one story house, but was quickly deflated when I looked down and realized I would be walking barefoot through rocks. I hopped out the window, hobbled through the rocks and breathed a big sigh of relief when I finally reached the front porch. I prayed the front door wasn’t locked as I reached for the handle. The handle wasn’t locked, so I pushed. The door gave way. I was victorious. I had escaped John’s prison and my lack of security had finally paid off. As I pushed the door the rest of the way open, the door stopped abruptly. Crap. I had the chain lock in place; so much for lack of security. I reached my hand in and tried to undo the chain lock. With a bit of finagling, grunting and cursing I managed to undo the chain lock and get inside. I released John from his own prison, got him and I dressed in record time and made it to the school before they escorted all the remaining kids who’s parents hadn’t come yet to the office.

The locks have lost their appeal since that day. I suppose John was waiting for the perfect opportunity to pay us back for all the damage we had caused him. The locks still remain backwards, but they are very rarely used. Perhaps we all learned a very valuable lesson from that day.

 

Wanna see in a random sort of way

I’m warning you now. You are about to be inundated with pictures. Pictures of John. Why John and not Gary you ask? Because Gary was being a butt. Am I allowed to say that publicly? I don’t care – he was being a butt. He refused to have his picture taken, so John and I spent quite a bit of time on an early Monday morning playing and taking pictures!

We started the morning by getting our shoes on. I think I’ve mentioned before that John is very independant and wants to do everything himself. So this process took a while. As you can see, I needed to work on my shutter speed.

We headed outside and after just a few tries, got this stunning photo. Please pay no attention to the greenish yellow bruise healing on his on forhead. He had a run in with a door.

Then John told me “Wait right here, I’ll be right back.”

and came back with a Capri-Sun. The boy loves his Capri-Suns.

John played on the porch swing. I was actually sitting behind the swing and John was laying with his stomach on the seat part. The piece above his head is the back of the swing. As he swung forward I snapped his picture. This took a while to capture as I had to adjust the shutter speed and ISO in order to reduce blue and still get light in the photo. Still, there was some post processing done to lighten it up some more!

John decided to head over to the side of the house where I practiced my multi-photo button thingy. (At the moment, everything will be described as ‘thingy’) I’m not posting most of those pictures because… well… let’s just say I need to work on adjusting the focus a little quicker.

When he was bored running, he decided to jump from the electrical box. Yes, we have a trompoline but leave it to John to have more fun jumping from something that says ‘High Voltage’. In my defense, there was no warning that said ‘No jumping from this box!’

I decided to get creative and sat down while John stood on top of the box. This is the same Capri-Sun from previous pictures, by the way.

John reminding everyone that ‘Only you can prevent forest fires’

Oh how I love this boy! You see those black lines coming from his eyes? Those are his eyelashes. No kidding.

Another pensive look. I think this one is my favorite of them all. He’s just so darn cute!

Can you see me?

Seeing as how there was no trouble to be found on the electrical box, John was off to see what else he could get into.

This was about the point in the morning when John started getting bored having his picture taken. He even told me “ok mom, I’m done with pictures now.”

So we came in for a bite of lunch. He is as weird as he is funny.

I really need to work on lighting in doors. I have decided I really don’t want to use the flash unless I really really really have to. So I need as much help as I can get to figure out how to take great pictures indoors.

Nom nom nom. Love that mac & cheese.

See, I really do take pictures of Gary. But this was after Gary’s total fit and telling me that I could take a picture of his butt. (see, told you he was being a butt). The smile came after I told him to bend over and pull down his pants. His smile quickly turned to a frown though when I told him he was going to take nap right after lunch. He told me he was going to hit his head so hard on the bed rail that he was going to forget this day ever happened. I told him to line his bed with towels to reduce the amount of mess he would have to clean up in the morning. He assured me there would be no blood.

*Please don’t be alarmed by the above conversation. Gary is quite melodramatic and did not follow through with his threat. Although, I would have made him clean up the mess if he had.

And that my friends, is my first experience with my DSLR. Also, I apparently have to start naming all my electronics. Any idea’s on what the DSLR should be named? I’m fairly certain it’s a girl and being that it’s a Nikon it should probably start with ‘N’. What do you think?

Other items needing names:

Brother sewing maching

Apple iPod

LG phone

HP Laptop

Sony desktop

Bowl in the sink

Due to some babysitter issues yesterday a backup babysitter was called in but didn’t start until 6am. This meant I got to spend the morning with my boys. The mornings I get to spend with my boys have got to be some of my favorites. I think because they are so few and far between. The weekend mornings don’t count for some reason, though I don’t know why. It’s just different when it’s during the week I guess.

This is a conversation I had with John as we were finishing up with breakfast:

John: “I’m done with my cereal.”

Me: “Ok, put your bowl in the sink.”

John: “Why?”

Me: “Because I said so.”

John: “Oh. But my stomach hurts.”

Me: “Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t put your bowl in the sink.”

John: “I need you to do it.”

Me: “No, I don’t think so. Please put the bowl in the sink.”

John: “But mom, my stomach hurts. It’s gonna rip and rip my shirt.”

Me: “Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear that. I need you to put the bowl in the sink before that happens though, ok?”

John: “Ok” {grabs the bowl and heads towards the sink} “Mom, my feet hurt.”

Me: “Well, they’re not going to fall off before you get to the sink.”

***

Last night I was left alone with the boys, and if you remember what happened last time when mom is left in charge of dinner, you can imagine what I did this time.

Actually, it wasn’t that bad. I made grilled cheese sandwiches. Gary and John each had a sandwich with American cheese, I made mine with Baby Swiss. Yum! But I digress. Gary must have been super hungry because he had scarffed his sandwich down in record time. Once finished, he asked if he could have a snack. I told him yes and he headed straight for the homemade chocolates sitting on the counter. He grabbed 2 pieces of fudge, but before he could get too far I told him he could only have 1. He placed the second piece on the table in front of John intending for John to have it when he finished with his dinner. At this point into dinner, John hadn’t eaten even half of his sandwich. He reached for the piece of chocolate in front of him, but wasn’t fast enough. I grabbed it with lightening speed and told him he had to finish his dinner before he could have it.

He stuffed what was left of the first half of the sandwich into his mouth and washed it down with his Capri-Sun and tried to convince me he was finished. I told him he had to finish the other half before he could have the fudge. He proceeded to slowly eat the other half, in between playing silly games with me and laughing hysterically. The chocolate remained in front of me as we ate and played. John got down to the corner of the crust and decided it was time to use the bathroom. While he was gone, I decided he had eaten enough and picked up the sandwich and placed the fudge on his plate, throwing the last bit of dinner in the garbage. When he came back to the table and noticed his sandwich was missing, he threw a huge fit! The tears were pouring, the snot was flowing, he threw himself on the fireplace and had himself a tantrum! He cried at me saying he was going to finish his sandwich. So like any good mom would do, I fished the sandwich out of the garbage and placed it back on his plate. I moved the fudge to the counter and watched as he stuffed the remains of the sandwich in his mouth. (For those who are completely grossed out, the garbage had just been emptied and the only thing in the trash can was the plastic liner and my paper plate.) After he had finished the sandwich he looked up at me and said, “I’m done with my sandwich, can I have the fudge now?”

I’ve got to wonder – Did he really want the last bit of sandwich or did he just think he needed to finish it to get the fudge? The world may never know…

She’ll be comin’ round the mountain…

Me + John + New VTech Camera/hand held game system + grocery store = She’ll be comin’ round the mountain song stuck in mama’s head. That song was playing over and over again all through the grocery store, and the weird part is that I never even realized it until we were in the car getting ready to leave and I started to hum the song. Of course, the song on the VTech didn’t have any words, just the tune. So it it took me a few try’s to figure out what the words were. Now, I can’t get it out of my head.

She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes.
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes.
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes.

I can just see you there singing the tune. There, if I have to be stuck with it so should you! You’re welcome!

I decided to take pictures of our outing today and as I sat down to edit some of the photo’s, John decided he wanted to sit on my lap. He and I sat at the computer messing around with photo’s when my cell phone rang. I got up to answer the phone and when I got back a few minutes later, John had taken over my photoshop. He was messing with a photo I had almost finished up. Somehow, he manged to place photo’s on top of it. Now, it took me a good week to figure how I needed to go to ‘File’ and ‘Place’ to put photo’s on top of one another, so I was a little baffled that John had figured it out so quickly. I sat back down and placed John on my lap again, opened up a photo he had taken of our trip with his camera and let play around with it. I eventually learned how he placed photo’s on top one another. Did you know you could take open photo’s from your project bin and by drag and dropping them onto your photo, you have successfully ‘Placed’ your photo? Yeah, me neither. Until John showed me how.

Here is John’s collage of our outing today.

And this is John’s story as told by mommy. But I’m pretty sure it would sound just like this if he were actually telling it.

We met daddy for lunch at Culvers. Mommy was weird and took a picture of the lady who brought out our food.

When we left Culvers, I saw daddy in his truck on his way back to work.

Then we went grocery shopping where I took lots and lots of pictures of mommy.

Now she knows how I feel when she tells me to ‘Smile’. No, mommy doesn’t really look like those two pictures on the bottom. I just used my camera to make her look weird.

Mommy took pictures of my new shoes and my runny nose. Then I refused to open my eyes, so mommy started tickling me. When we got home with the groceries, I helped put the water away. I always bring in the water; but today, I decided to show mommy how strong I am by bringing in two at a time. They were really heavy, but I did it. Mommy was so impressed.

Then, I had to show mommy how to use her Photoshop because she is so inept at these things. After that, I watched tv until mommy said it was time to pick up bubba.

That John, he’s such a story teller! 🙂

Smile