and then there were four…

My daughter has upgraded her scoot to a crawl. She’s a little monkey, and she is pulling herself up and cruising on the couch. These days, I spend most of my day saying “No baby…Mommy said No…Hey! Take that shoe out of your mouth!”

We’ve also determined that she likes Buddy Cop movies. She has a habit of pulling DVDs off of the shelf. Initially, she was pulling from the bottom shelf, and would always, without fail, pull Rush Hour out. When she progressed to the third shelf, she always pulled the Bad Boys DVD out. We found it amusing.

She’s pinching too. Obviously, she doesn’t understand that it hurts, but she now pinches my arms when she nurses, sits with me, or tries to crawl up my chest (which she does often). Basically anytime I am near her, she wants to grab my arm and pinch. So we are currently attempting to tell her NO with a straight face. Because, let’s face it: it’s pretty amusing that she pinches when she nurses. It hurts like hell, but, at the same time, it’s funny.

On another note:

We’re moving! Physically, this time. :o) We’ve found a nice two-bedroom/two-bathroom place a few blocks from where we are currently living, so we will be moving in July. I am looking forward to having a nursery, hopefully we can sleep train the baby to sleep a bit longer at night. The problem right now is that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can stand up in her crib and see us in bed, so she cries and won’t comfort herself as she normally does when we aren’t in the room. I’m a little sad, too, because I love having my sweet little baby snuggle up to me at night.

The baby and I will be traveling to visit my family again on Tuesday. I’m nervous that she won’t be as agreeable as she was the last two times we have flown, only because she is older and probably won’t be sleeping for the majority of the flight. Also, I worry that she won’t be as content, since she will have to sit on my lap. She likes to wriggle out and explore–so I am going to be taking more things to occupy her this time. However, I won’t be bringing any toys that make noise, which (at this age) are most of them. The last time we flew, there was this little girl who had a toy airplane that made airplane noises. It was the most annoying thing I had ever heard, and I decided then and there that my children would not be bringing noise-making toys on airplanes.

Seriously? How inconsiderate is that? The most moronic part? The airplane toy is sold in the airport gift shop! I mean…COME ON!

I was tagged.

For those of you who don’t know. When you are tagged by another blogger, you are required to state 7 random things about yourself that your readers may not otherwise know about you. Then you tag 7 other bloggers. And repeat. At least, I think that is how it works.
Now I’ll play along, but I don’t know of any bloggers who read my blog, (except for the person who tagged me, obviously) so I am forced to break the chain. BUT: If there are any readers who are bloggers, email me (check the “contact me” section for the info if you don’t have my personal email), let me know and I’ll repost those who I “tag”. No point in “tagging” someone who doesn’t even know they are “tagged”…right?

Okay, here we go:
1. I hate red-eye in photos. It bugs me to NO end. I have Photoshop and I use it to eradicate any and all red-eyes in photos. I’ve even contemplated fixing the red-eyes in some of my friend’s photos they post in various places. I can’t stand it when Photoshop won’t fix the entire red-eyed area. I hurl curses at it, and yes, I’m a freak.

2. When I was little, I used to correct everyone in my family’s grammar. Not because I was a smart-ass, but because I did not want them to make those mistakes in public and have people make fun of them to their face or behind their back.

3. On a related note: Bad grammar & spelling bug me. I strive to be a grammar-perfectionist, but alas, I am not. I am sure there are grammar-holics who would scribble red marks all over my blog with their giant fictitious red pens. And that’s okay. I’m a work in progress.

4. I love reading true crime stories. I visit The Crime Library at least daily. I read about the most gruesome things and find the criminal mind fascinating. However I can’t really stomach horror films anymore. I have the hardest time with those horror movies that are “based on real events”.

5. I hate snakes. They give me the creepy crawlies when I see them, even on T.V. I can handle bugs, but snakes creep me out. HOWEVER, I watched “Snakes on a Plane” and while I cringed a bit, I mostly laughed my ass off because the snakes were so fake looking.

6. I have a bad habit of leaving things open. Cabinets, drawers, doors, etc. I don’t know why. I’ll look straight at them after putting something away, or getting something out, and just become oblivious to the need to shut them again. Drives my husband crazy.

7. I am not a neat-freak. However, I can only stand a mess for so long and I turn into this weird cleaning-machine. I will clean things that haven’t been cleaned in ages simply because “I’m in the mood to clean”. Also, if I find out someone is coming over, I turn into this crazy cleaning lady and everything MUST be spotless and the place MUST smell nice. No one can know our dirty little secret ;o)

Okay, that’s it. If you want to be tagged, let me know. Sure it’s lame of me to not tag you right away, but I’m not even sure you exist.

I am an amateur photographer. My muse? My daughter of course. I take shots of her daily, take her to the park, or try to finagle something interesting at home. I’ve always loved to take photographs (I received my first camera on my seventh birthday) and I only wish I had had the opportunity in college to take actual photography classes. Unfortunately, when you are working your way through college, and a class is only offered at one specific time that interferes with your job schedule, you tend to not take that class. I tried a few different semesters to take it, but it never seemed to work out. However, after this weekend, I’ve decided to become a self-taught photographer and learn exactly what it is you need to know to make it look “professional”.

We finally bit the bullet and went to have our photographs taken by a “professional” photography studio. I shall not name names, but this is a studio that specializes in children’s portraits, usually located in a mall setting, that does show some very cute shots on their website.

We decided on this place because of said “specialization” and the fact that it was reasonably priced. We weren’t very comfortable with taking her to a department/discount store’s photography studio, because they often didn’t look as nice (in my opinion) and always seemed a little unprofessional. Unfortunately, so did this studio. The canvas backdrops were dirty (which ended up showing up in the photographs) and the photographer was barely out of high school, didn’t really know what he was doing, and didn’t end up snapping a lot of shots of my daughter. It seemed that they handed him a really nice, expensive digital SLR and told him to point & shoot. He was just as much a professional as I was.

The crazy thing was, after we had picked our shots and were waiting for our prints (same day service, dontcha know?) some girl comes out of the back with one of our family pictures (which we didn’t pick) that they had printed up in B&W and said “See how nice this one turned out? I really like it, are you sure you don’t want it?” And I said, “Well, if you printed it out and are just going to throw it away, I’ll take it” and she says, “You can have it for $25.” WTF? I never asked for this print to be printed. They basically wasted resources and time to print a picture out they were just going to throw away in the off-chance we decided to buy it. We aren’t cheap, if we had wanted that pose, we would have ordered it and paid for it. I spent almost $250 and that was a little insulting.

I was overall happy with the photographs we ordered, out of the ones taken, they were really sweet. It wasn’t my usual laughing, smiley baby, since she suddenly decided to become shy and just look at everyone like they were crazy, but we had really sweet photographs all the same. Because honestly (and this is totally biased, I’m sure), I don’t think you can take a bad photo of my daughter. She’s very photogenic.

Later that night, my husband and I were talking and he said how I always seem to capture her smiles much better than anyone else, and everyone loves my photos. We discussed maybe upgrading my current digital camera to a really nice Digital SLR (I have a film SLR, but I really want a digital one!) I told him I would read all of the books he had bought me the previous Christmas on photography (that I hadn’t had time to read yet) and learn how to use ALL of my current camera’s functions, learning about f-stops, ISO, and shutter speed, before we decided to put a LOT of money into a digital SLR. I don’t want to have another camera where I only use the automatic function. I know I have a good eye, I just want to develop that and let the lens capture what I envision. When I went to bed last night, I started thinking of how cool it would be to create a home studio, I could purchase those backdrops they use, buy some other “professional” photography studio supplies and just shoot my daughter how I see her, and not try to get her to smile for strangers. We could go once a year to have a family portrait done (or I could get a remote trigger and take them myself), but why spend $250 on photos that I could have taken just as easily? The printed quality was just as good as those I get printed at winkflash (btw: they are EXCELLENT for developing your digital prints–check them out), so why not?

I’m on my way to being a professional amateur photographer. Or something.