On Jayce: School, Signs, and Scribbles

Our little buddy is just so full of personality and life these days.  There is so much to say about him.

He's had a few rough moments this past week though.  Last week he saw something on tv that shook him up a little bit.  It was nothing, a strangely drawn number character on a little kids' show, but it freaked him out, and I think he had a nightmare about it.  For the past week he's barely let me out of his sight, which was not amazing while Chris was away.  Things like, he wouldn't even go into the bathroom unless I was with him, or wanted me to come upstairs with him if he needed something from his room, and forget about me leaving his room at night before he was asleep.  It's getting a bit better this week though, and we're working on getting back to normal.

School is, as a whole, going very well.  

I was surprised to learn that they would be doing phonics with the kids.  Four just seems like a young age for this.  But even though he's known his letters and sounds for a few years now, I have been amazed at how much he is taking in.  He has learned how to sound out words and spell phonetically, including the "tricky" sounds.  Last week he was explaining to me about ch and sh.

"Mom, the ch and sh sounds are a little tricky.  It's not ck-huh, it's chu, and not ss-huh, it's shu."  

The kids have books that they bring home each week to read, along with a new poem each week, and words to arrange into short sentences.  This kills me.  I just can't believe he is reading, like REALLY reading, even before kindergarden.  He obviously still makes mistakes and certainly doesn't know all of the "rules" just yet.  But the fact that he is constantly trying and often successfully reading and spelling seems pretty incredible.Last week, we were all sick, all on three-doses-per-day antibiotics, and often on ibuprofen/decongestants/inhalers.  That was not the best week of my life.  Each day I wrote out a little schedule so that I could help my cloudy mind keep track of who had which medicine and when.  Each day, Jayce would sneak my pen away and add xo's for me at the bottom of our list of medications.  This day he drew a picture of me as well.  

He also drew multiple spots on the couch for some reason.  After that, there were no pens laying around anywhere.  Even I couldn't find them when I needed them. 

 Jayce REALLY missed Chris, and really wanted to make a big sign for when he got home.  So one night after I put Hannah to bed, we painted, colored, cut and drew up a little display for Chris.  I gave Jayce some white tack and he hung it all up by himself.  (I was pretty pleased with the symmetry and even the little pieces of paper being so orderly.) 
Jayce asked me to take a picture of his signs, and told me "I'm going to make this face mom," and posed in the above photo. 

(Also the picture on the far right of all of the smiling faces are "dad's students.")

Chris loved his signs.

 Jayce also told him, shortly after he arrived, 

"Dad I really wanted you to snuggle me when you were in America.  I drew on the couch and Mom was very angry, and she yelled at me and I cried and I wanted you to snuggle me."  

I'm not really sure why I am the one who got "told on" in this instance?  Chris was like, "Yeah, mom's mean sometimes, huh?"  And I was like, "I'm going on vacation."

The little stinker.

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Photo An Hour

7:00. Snuggle.8:00.  She thinks that if she shows me, we can pretend she's allowed to play with this.

9:00.  A friend stops by with some "get well soon" goodies for me and the kids, including wine and chocolate.

10:00.  Jayce steps away from the tv and I show him his surprise.

Sometimes he shares, sometimes he doesn't.

11:00.  Stickers and activity books.

12:00. Living room chaos.

1:00. Hot lunch.

2:00.  Chapstick attacks: Hannah-2, Chapstick-0.

3:00. Scissors and watching.

4:00. Hats!

5:00.  Running.  Rolling her arms like in "Pat A Cake" while she runs.6:00. Dinner.  Genuinely excited about the salad.

7:00. Hanna finds my hat and the mirror.8:00. I suddenly feel terrible, skip the kids'  baths, let Jayce lay on the couch with me and play Angry Birds, and eventually I put him to bed and fall asleep alongside him for the night.

Chris went home on Thursday to attend the funeral of his sweet sweet Grandma Louise.  The kids were sick and I was super sick, so we had to send him alone.

These photos are from Saturday, home all day, bored but busy, playing, snuggling, resting, and eager for daddy to return. 

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Hannah Soundbite: Making Tea

Hannah is my little tea-making assistant each day.  She rides on my hip while I fix myself a drink, pointing out the essentials with enthusiasm.  

Tea!  Kettle!  Milk!  Sugar! 

I hold out the canister, she grabs a tea bag, and drops it into the empty mug for me.  She then declares, Hot!, when I add the steaming water.

But yesterday after I added my milk and sugar, she softly said, 

Bye bye milk.  Bye bye sugar.

And gosh was it sweet.  It was so sweet.

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So I Took A Class

My Photography class is officially over.  Overall I enjoyed the class, but of course there was good and bad.

The good.

The community.

There were about 30+ people in the class, most of whom were professional photographers looking for refinement.  So the discussions were good.  Someone would post a picture or a question, and there was lots of interesting feedback.  Once we were finished, I realized there were a few questions I had been sitting on thinking that we might get to them in the lessons, and we hadn't, so I posted them to the class.  Each time I got the opinions of 20+ photographers which was awesome.  It was a really open community, which can be rare as some people want to keep their secrets to themselves.  But for the most part everyone was more than willing to share information on their gear, settings, editing, etc.  I don't have anywhere else where I can go for such a wealth of that kind of knowledge and I loved that.

Learning.

 I realized pretty quickly that I have been doing a pretty specific type of photography largely based on my needs when I first learned about my camera.  For example, when I was learning to shoot in manual, I was doing Lemon Tree and Etsy, both of which required bright and detailed product photos.  So I'm pretty good at getting a well lit, brightly colored, fine detailed picture of a pillow I made or something like that.  But I had never really taken the time to learn how to master photos in a lower light situation, where the goal was not to make the image brighter, but to take a beautiful shadowy, darker sort of image.  So it was interesting to hold my camera intending to get a completely different effect than usual, and I was happy to have some guidance with metering and settings because I felt like a fumbling idiot.  

Some feedback.

As I said before the class really got rolling, I was happy to get some feedback, but also a bit nervous.  It turns out that I had no reason to be nervous.  This is not because I did so well, but because it was an encouraging community.  All of the feedback, to and from each individual, was presented in a positive way.  

The bad.

I don't like to be told what to do and when.

  I know, I know, this seems dumb.  But I needed to take photos on certain days when I didn't have time, didn't have a good subject, or I just wasn't feeling it.  Then I attempted to focus on my assignments while Chris tried to keep the kids distracted long enough for me to do so.  Perhaps I just didn't manage my time well in those weeks.  Jayce was sick the first week, Hannah the second, and I struggled through the lesson the second week so it seemed to drag on as I read it slowly, re-read it, and practiced.  I imagine that I am just used to grabbing my camera when I feel inspired and have something I want to catch, or sitting down at the computer when I have time, space to breathe, and a little peace.

I would have liked a little more.

I imagine this could be said of any elected class.  Do you ever feel like you completely got your time and money's worth?  For this in particular, I would have liked some more feedback and critique.  It was only a month long class, so there is only so much that can be covered in that time, I get that.  Also one of the lessons didn't really apply to me, and I was disappointed about that.  And there were a few topics I thought would have been covered that weren't.  (Again, I know that whole limited time thing.)  But still.

Now I have no pictures.

Not really, I have pictures.  But I just glanced through my January folder and realized that I have pretty much only edited stuff for the class, because by the time I was finished with those, I was sick of editing.  

And that's about it.  Not really, there is plenty more to say, but I think that's all I'l say for now, or this might never be published.  More later though.  Maybe.

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Groupie

If Jayce is the family rock star, Hannah is certainly his biggest groupie.And really, where is the best place to practice rocking out other than in front of the mirror?Again, no real story here.  Just photos of my Jayce and his (eventually) sleepy little groupie.

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Rockin'

I think that some posts need little to no explanation.  Like when Jayce is rockin' out.

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Five on Friday

Hello!

1.)  I realized the other day that my last portrait was from 10 months ago, and I should probably take my own picture more than once a year.  Since January was my month of photography, it was the perfect time, and I got one that I'm happy with.  Funnily, (maybe?), I had to do this a few different times: some of the times I was more dolled up, my hair fixed, looking cute (kind of), with makeup, etc.  But when I would look at them later, I would think, "This looks like 'dressed up me'" or something like that.

But I think that this one just looks like me.  This is what I look like most of the time, hair up, glasses, and this thick scarf (because it's cold!).  If it was zoomed out, I would be wearing sweats and holding a cup of tea. (Again, the cold thing).  Perhaps this is my residual self image? 

2.) It's February!!  Which means that as of today I can "officially" move on past my month of photography, and onto my month of knitting.  

I'll write more about the month of photography and my class in another post, but the gist of it is, as expected, it was good and bad.  

The good: Through my class I learned.  That was the goal and I had some success.

The bad: In order to learn, I ended up taking lots of photos of inanimate objects while my kids were sleeping.  And I don't like this.  I needed to do it in order to learn several of the technical things and new methods, and it was impossible to photograph my children when I was spending so much time staring at the back of my camera and switching the settings around.  

This all solidified something that I kind of already knew, I do like photography, but what I really like is family photography.  Particularly my family.  

 When I sat down at the end of the day to edit photos of the snow or our flat or the buildings, even the ones that turned out beautifully, I just wasn't into it.  I wasn't excited to see how the images turned out or eager to play around tweaking them here or there like I usually am.

I remember talking through this with a friend who really enjoys outdoor photography, and I had said, "I almost never see a beautiful building or landscape and think, 'I want to take pictures of that! ' I think, 'I want to take pictures of my kids playing in front of that.'"  

So there's that. 

3.) That said, it has been really beautiful around here these past few weeks as the city was blanketed in snow.  I am glad that I was in this course while the weather was like this, because I was able to capture it in ways that I normally wouldn't have thought to.  I just won't be making a career out of this. :)
4.) This past month we have been able to return to one of our family dinner traditions from when we lived in Lincoln, pancakes for dinner.  We found pancake mix (kind of hard to find) and pancake syrup (harder to find and cost a fortune!) but it was so worth it.  We were all in heaven.  It's strange how much you want something when you know that you can't have it, and how comforting it was to have a meal from our old home in our new home.  

Also, these pictures of Hannah helping Chris cook kill me.5.) I am guest posting this wonderful recipe at KoJo Designs today as a part of the Winter Whites series.  I just love Kirstin.  She's a peach, our kids are roughly the same age so I'm always crushing on something amazing that she has just made for hers that I now need to make for mine, we're both trying to decorate our new (white) homes without going crazy, and she's a total sweetheart.  And she lets me post at her site occasionally when I get the bug to write up a tutorial. :)

As to the puppy chow, I may or may not have made this 3 times in the last month for one reason or another.  It's a problem, really.  However, even my English friends like it despite all of the times that I've heard, "Oh British people don't understand why Americans like peanut butter and chocolate together."  It turns out that some of them understand it perfectly.  

It also inspired Hannah to start saying "puppy," something that she has never said before, preferring to call dogs "ruff ruffs."  But now, if she sees some white squares in a bowl, will yell "Puppy! Puppy!" until we give her some.  Not that she's the boss around here. 

Happy Friday!  These days I'm just as excited as a kid out of school about the weekend. :)

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