girl needs to work a bit on her enunciation...

want to help out an amazing organization without lifting a finger? well, technically you'll have to lift your pointer finger...but only high enough to click your mouse.

go to facebook today and vote for teen living programs! my lovely friend nia is rallying the votes and if they win the moohlah from chase bank i know they will do GREAT things!

VOTE HERE

well its been a week with no update and five minutes to midnight here i sit wanting to be a good blogger but also wanting to be in bed.

this month promises to be nothing short of absolutely insane. work is off the charts nuts right now and on top of that i hold my breath a little every time my phone rings and its my sister on the other end of the line. those baby girls are sure to make their debut at any moment.

i am off to mexico (ole!) on friday and truly hope they stay put in their mommy's fishbowl until sunday at the soonest. here's hoping!! :)

she's a girl on a mission, she'll be crawling in no time!

eve is just a babblin' fool these days!

i had such an amazing birthday. i have such a sweet husband, wonderful friends, fantastic sister, and beautiful children. i couldn't ask for anything more.

here are a few pics of my baker and her cupcake from tonight...

RIP MAM pacifiers
07.2007-10.2009

beloved friend and faithful comforter.
you were many in number and never let us down.
you will not be forgotten.

seriously though, a little tiny piece of my heart hurts that my sweet girl is sleeping without pacifiers now. i'm so proud of her and amazed at how quickly and easily she made the transition, but gosh if she does one more thing to prove to me she's not a baby anymore it might break my heart in two.

that is the last picture i have of her with a paci in her mouth. her decision to trade her pacis for a bike was so unexpected and quick that the photographer in me didn't have time to take a whole bunch of pictures of her with her pacis before she sent them off to the 'paci fairy'. i can't believe this is the last shot i have with one in her mouth- she only used them for bed and i tended to pop it out of her mouth before taking a picture if she did have one. now i wish i had left it in.

a small part of my baby girl has changed forever. i'm so proud of her. she amazes me daily.

where do i begin? i'm so behind on an update! we've had a few crazy weeks around here, but we're all still in one piece. well, after surgery we're all in one piece.

kevin had a freak accident with a drinking glass. he fought the glass and the glass won. one surgery later, his foot seems to be on the road to recovery and i actually witnessed a toe-wiggle yesterday, so it seems that movement has been restored. seriously, who has to have surgery to repair the damage done by a water glass?! we do!

so if you're using your imagination, you'll realize this means the baby-daddy has been on crutches for two weeks. let's just say we're both ready for him to be able to...say... hold a child while walking? :)

this happened right as i launched head first into the holiday season with work. from now till the end of the year i am busy busy and at some point in the next 7 weeks my sister is going to birth those babies, so life is FULL.

some days full means good and some days full means i want to cry by 7am and hide until christmas. in the meantime, lily continues to cultivate her hilarious personality. the latest developments include talking in full sentences (me: 'lily do you want to go to the park?' lily: 'yes mommy, i do want to go to the park)

i also caught my first glance of lily-as-instigator when i spied on her class during naptime the other day. hopefully i'll have time to recount the story for you this weekend. right now its 7am, i just finished nursing, i can hear lily already singing to herself in the next room, and i think i'm going to throw on some shoes and take the girls to get donuts while kevin sleeps in.

here's hoping full means good today :)

sometimes i can't believe how lucky i am.

i took my camera with me to get ice cream with the family yesterday. its something we do fairly often- there is a GREAT local place near us called austin scoops that we love. i just wanted to capture an every day outing for us to remember.

i wish i had recorded lily's response when we asked her if she wanted to go. she LOVES loves ice cream :)

you can see the whole album HERE. a few of the images:

after a loooooong day (thanks, terrible twos!) i was sitting here reminiscing about a simpler time in life and remembered my first non-polariod camera... my le clic! i found this picture online and it brought a smile to my face. anyone else have a shared love of the le clic? its even the right color! hah :)

we attempted a fun morning at the pumpkin patch today with a few friends, not realizing it was going to be 90 degrees and crazy humid. i think we were all pretty grumpy by the time we got home, but we had fun while the good moods lasted :)

eve is very much loved by her sweet cousins on both sides of the family. she had better live it up now before the twins come and steal all of her attention!! charlie LOVES babies...

(we will try to teach charlie to be gentle before the twins show up- ha)

lucy loves her some eve too!

love squared

such a big girl :)

sweet eve is sitting up!!! can you believe it? this year is just flying by at warp speed. as adorable as she is in this picture, it hurts my heart a little bit that this is my baby!! she's getting so big!

an open apology:

to anyone who gave lily a birthday present, i would like to apologize that the written thank you notes are still sitting on my desk unsent. the delimma, better late than never or trash em?

to anyone who has emailed my personal address with no response, i realized i had 919 emails in my inbox and in my moment of being overwhelmed i selected 'all' and hit 'archive'

bigger is better. i am not usually one for super sizing, but i went out on a limb and ordered my biggest print to-date to go on our mantle and surprisingly, a 20x34 inch print actually fills the space nicely without feeling too big!

i get lots of comments and emails about my camera equipment, so i've added a list on the right of what is currently in my camera bag! i'll add to it as it grows and changes, but hopefully the list is pretty complete for now.

i've toyed with the idea of getting into some off-camera flash and i'd really like to add an 85mm to the list at some point. for now i'm very comfortable with the equipment i have and get consistent, wonderful results from them! i'm definitely a canon girl and that won't be changing anytime soon!

i will still try to answer individual questions as time and life allow, but for now hopefully this will be helpful to a few of you :)

here's a little fun in eve's bed. lily loves climbing in with a pi-tow (pillow) and blanket and cozying up with her sister!

yet another rain dance. we sure are loving this weather.

(she made a 'bed' out of a porch chair pillow and a washcloth)

this morning lily, eve, and i went to visit erin for a while. we took her lunch and just hung out. the nurses brought us a wheelchair to get her out of her room for a bit and just have a change of scenery.

they always bring us bariatric wheelchairs, which are understandably quite large. they actually come in handy because we use the double wide so that erin and lily can sit side by side while erin typically holds eve.

we were cruising down the hallways around the labor & delivery unit and lily decided she wanted to get off the chair and help mommy. she does this a lot with eve's stroller- but the wheelchair is so wide she can't reach both handles and was putting her hands on the back pushing hard and then running to catch up to it.

erin and i were encouraging her and clapping saying 'good job lily... PUSH! yay!!!!! PUSH! way to go!!' and before we knew it several nurses popped around the corner to see what the commotion was all about.

it was at that moment that i realized we were in the hallway of the hospital with a pregnant lady yelling 'PUUUSH!!!'

once erin and i recognized the false alarm we had caused, we laughed pretty hard. sometimes we are such goofballs- i mean really, who yells 'push!!!' repeatedly on the floor full of pregnant people?!

i think the nurses were just glad there weren't babies being birthed in the hallway ;)

there are moments as a parent that you are so proud of your children that your heart swells.

when dropping lily off at school i noticed a new note had been added to her folder on the wall. every child has a folder where you can leave notes for the teacher or vice versa.

curious as to what they had to say about my sweet girl, i went over to read it and her folder now reads:

"watch to be sure she does not eat dirt on playground"

so like i said about those moments your heart bursts with pride, this wasn't one of them. classic.

a ray of hope. one tiny twinge of it.

lily has been grumptastic all afternoon. lots of whining, crying about the silliest things, and falling apart when a fly landed on her dinner. i find this ironic because her note from her teacher at school said "lily is just such a happy girl". ummm... whatever you say!

through all this grumpfest, she managed to cheer up a bit after her bath when we realized she had learned the hokey pokey at school and started singing along with her. she was pumped to show me how to 'shake it all about'.

the last thing we do before taking her to her crib is lay on the guest bed and read a chapter or two from her children's bible. its a stretch most days to get miss 'always-in-motion' to calm down and sit for a book sans pictures but i do what i can. today i was reading about abraham's children and how his descendants are countless, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the beach and as i read on, lily started saying 'one, two, three, four, five'. she counted because i said 'countless'!!

AHA! so she IS listening! this is the very first confirmation i have EVER gotten when reading her bible that she hears a word of what i am saying. i thought it was just a good habit to have started early but based on her body language when i am reading the bible i assumed i sounded much like charlie brown's teacher (WAH WAH WAAAH WAAAAH).

it was just so nice to end an afternoon full of so much mind numbing whining with a eensy weensy glimmer of confirmation that something positive is happening.

if this doesn't make you smile, check your pulse!

talk about a rain dance! lily was thrilled that it was raining today (heck, who wasn't thrilled?!) she stripped down and had a blast and i captured some of her fun.

haven't you heard? 2nd day of school pics are ALL the rage! no one takes them on the first day anymore- its very passe ;)

here lily is, suiting up for her second day of school. she LOVES her new class. she talked about her teacher 'miss shelby' several times in the past few days and was super excited to get to class this morning.

all ready to go!

showing off her bag

runs back for one last thing...

wants to read just one more book before school

checking to be sure everything is in her bag

offering me her sack lunch

big smiles

she jumps right into the action in class

then heads to the books :)

and just for a fun comparison, last year heading into school for the first time, she was still such a baby!

well i was sadly (and ironically) the only parent dropping her child for the first day of 'school' yesterday without a camera. i managed to take it with me to pick her up, so this is more of a 'look how messy a day at school makes me' post :)

think its bad to take pictures tomorrow? maybe i'll make 2nd day of school pics all the rage...

her locker is right next to her friend jet!

my wild animal

on our way home

lily 'praying'

i wouldn't even know it was college football season without facebook updates. i was driving to my sister's house today and saw planes with trailing marquee signs circling around and it didn't even dawn on me that there was a UT home game today!

my only other sign was the faint sound of drums from the high school band practice that has resumed every morning. thankfully it has been nice enough outside to actually enjoy breakfast in the fresh air while listening to the drumming.

i have hope that the cooler temperatures (and by cooler, i mean just the nineties, not triple digits!) and football season mean that its almost time for holiday fun, crazy work season, and sweet twin baby girls.

and of course i have just about a million pictures from our week :)

some things never change... like how boring it is to have mom taking your picture on the playmat.

11.08.07

09.03.09

the girls and i spent the morning at e's house yesterday. nothing like a little g-love to cheer a girl up...




and lily shared some love and grapes with her e

(feeding the babies... through e's belly button)

my prayer for eve today.

i pray that i will be able to teach you everything i know about love and that you will teach me the rest. i pray one day you will have a baby and finally know how much i love you and who will teach you everything i can't.

i'm so waiving the white flag of surrender as a mom today. cranky kids. crappy milk supply. i had the hopes that taking the kids to the gym would give me a break and someone else could deal with them.. um... i mean cherish them for an hour or two.

twenty minutes into a half-hearted sweat on the elliptical and they politely called me back to the childcare center to collect the two cranksters. i can't say that i blame them. here's hoping there is a full moon coming or perhaps this is all a big practical joke that lily and eve are in on together...

in other news, erin is doing well at home. i like to think of her bed rest as an extended 'fob' rest period from summer camp. every once in a while during rest period if it had been a particularly active or hot day they would require an 'fob' rest period where we had to be Flat On Back (laying down quietly, no talking, no walking around).

she will be at home for the next week and a half, then she'll take residence at the hospital. i'm looking forward to lily learning to play quietly in a hospital room and not pull on any cords or tubes while mommy and e visit :) something tells me not to count on it.

oh how my friday nights have changed. here's me beat boxing.... aka. spitting on my child.

the slightly hilarious and often embarrassing things lily has said this week:


me: what two 'friends' (referring to her giant stuffed animal collection) would you like to take with us to visit GaGa and Moon?

lily: ummm..... baby eve and.....

me: yes lily, we will be bringing baby eve.



(lily heads for the door upon waking and realizing her last dora band-aid from GaGa has fallen off)

me: where are you going, lil?

lily: to the grocery store to buy bandaids.



(pointing at a girl drinking a fruit smoothie at the gym)

lily: is that a beer??



(eating tacos for dinner, lily picks up shredded cheese)

lily: what's that mommy? (pause) Cheese!!!

repeat 100x



(seeing me touching up the shave on my bikini line before donning my bathing suit)

lily: mommy's shaving her BOTTOM!



(reading a book before bedtime, seeing a picture of a family saying a blessing before dinner)

me: look lily! they are praying before dinner like mommy, daddy, and lily do every night!

lily: shhhh! they're sleeping (pointing to their closed eyes)

me: no, lil, their eyes are closed because they are praying

lily: shhhhh!!!

well sportsfans, we had a minor setback today. erin found out she is heading for bedrest. the twins (and their mama & daddy) could use your prayers.

more info to come...

i'm trying out a new post style on the business blog... whaddya think?

when we were at gaga & moon's house, lily loved playing with their dogs, patsy and artie. they were very sweet to humor her :)

and a few of miss eve of course

i'd also like to add the disclaimer that despite the number of band-aids on my child, she is not injured. she developed a strong liking to dora band-aids when we were at their house due to the fact that

a) she can get the box out of gaga's cabinet herself
and
b) she liked the idea of dora sleeping with her in an unfamiliar place

the band-aids in question have of course lost their stickyness and fallen off, which was very distressing to miss lily. she acted like she was leaving the house yesterday and when i asked her where she was going she answered 'to the grocery store to buy band-aids'.

i was going to write an ode to bonnie and her ability to make every day seem unforgettable in her images and words escaped me. i briefly considered a haiku but then eve started crying, so i'll just post the most recent images she has shared with me to prove her genius :)

love.

i get so many great questions from moms wanting to take better snapshots of their kids, so i thought i'd post a list of tips that i wrote for the fabulous baby rabies site a while back. i hope its helpful :)

rule #1 - get down on their level!!

babies and kids photograph best when you get down to their level! not only will you get better eye contact, but when you get down with them, older kids will immediately see you as their play pal and give you a big genuine smile!!

rule #2 - find great natural light!

natural light is best when possible to get those great skin tones and colors. when indoors, be sure to face your subject towards the source of light to get even lighting and avoid harsh shadows on faces. when outside, seek shade! direct sunlight will make kids squint like crazy and shade offers a great even soft light. if you can't get a ton of sunlight for your pics, don't worry! break out your flash and capture cute candid moments whenever you can. fun everyday moments can often highlight your child's personality better than any lighting can.

rule #3- keep it clean!

before you snap the shot, take a quick look at the background in your viewfinder. are there distracting patterns? a floral couch pulling attention from your sweet baby or perhaps a tree in the background that looks like it could be growing out of your husband's head? be sure to take pictures with a non distracting and neutral background. soft neutral colored blankets make a great backdrop for tiny babies and birth announcements!

rule #4- you look great!

angles are key to flattering pictures. girls, we all know the old 'hold your arm slightly away from our body' trick to keep our upper arms from looking like ham hocks, but when taking a full body shot, try crossing your feet slightly in front of each other (think ballet class!). it gives your legs great angles and curves and takes away from that no so flattering thigh on thigh action.

other than those basics, i always recommend people read their camera's manual! it sounds simple (and it is!) but knowing the capabilities and features of your camera can teach you a lot and help you use your camera to its potential.

its been far too long since i posted pictures of this adorableness. can you believe how much personality she has already?? :)

check out this gigant-o drool!!

and her friar tuck hairdo (and bald spot!)

you know when you see something and you think 'YES! i should have thought of THAT!'

i came across this image today from design sponge and i totally want to do this wall/headboard treatment in my office/guest room!

so clever...

peer pressure!! lily hasn't been a big fan of having her picture taken lately, that is until you start taking pictures of miss eve...

it starts off innocently enough with a naked baby at 7am...

then the two tell-tale legs in the back announce lily's arrival...

and she insists on stealing the show :)

if you ask lily what a kitty cat says she responds 'eeeoowwmm!! eeoowwmm!!' i LOVE it. not only because its totally lily, but because she is right! it sounds much more like a cat than 'meow' :)

everyone seems intent on teaching her 'meow' much to my chagrin, so i decided to get her on record this morning with my trusty iphone in case the days of 'eowm' are numbered.

you'll also note she wanted to put a skirt on with her pajamas this morning and got a haircut yesterday! :)

eve has decided that unlike her sister, pacifiers are for the birds. she doesn't even go for the thumb like cousin charlie.

this is how our sweet girl falls asleep every day:

today i am...

thanking my lucky stars
enjoying my adorable babies
proud of my husband
taking another step towards losing the baby weight
entertaining friends for dinner
so happy my sister lives in Austin
happy it won't reach 100'
hoping my eve takes good naps
laughing at the hilarious things that come out of lily's mouth

sometimes i think lily may be too smart for her own good- or for my own good... i asked her to not touch the computer earlier (a common request on my part) and she nodded and repeated 'lily's no touching 'puter'.

a few moments later, she used her teddy bear's arm to click the mouse and when i looked at her with an 'excuse me??' expression on my face she replied 'teddy did it!'

yikes! she's already doing this at barely 2 years old?! i am so in for it...

lily and i took her 2-year pictures this morning. head over to the photo blog for more- here is just a teaser :)

my heart is squeezed in these moments. lily had just woken up and eve was getting ready to go down for a nap and lil decided she wanted to read eve a book. i had to help her get in the chair with eve, but she just sat there turning the pages, pointing things out quietly to eve. i could barely hear what she was saying, i guess it was a moment between sisters...