I’m not feeling very wordy today, so I thought I’d share these photos from Saturday afternoon. It was absolutely beautiful outside so I bribed the kids to let me take photos while they played. They are mostly of Evie, as Zach refuses to let me take a decent picture of him these days. They were so happy to be playing outside that I couldn’t get them to come in for dinner!
Seeing as it has been nearly a month since I wrote anything here, I suppose it is time to get my fingers back to the keyboard and share some earth-shattering news. Except, I don’t have any. Well, nothing earth-shattering anyway. I’ve been busy and just generally overwhelmed with life these last few weeks, which seems to happen often. One of these days I swear I’m going to get my act together.
First off, I am a bad, bad, mommy blogger. I let my beautiful baby girl’s 3rd birthday go by without so much as a mention on my blog. I’ve wanted to post something about it, but just haven’t had the time or the words to do so. She had an excellent birthday, with a super fun Dora Fairytale Adventure birthday party. This was the first year she got to invite friends to her party (we’ve done family only parties before). A friend of mine who is starting up a party planning business helped plan it, and it was much better than my standard at-home birthday parties. The birthday girl certainly enjoyed it!
Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on getting my photography business set up. I’m definitely not a pro yet, but I’m taking some little steps to make things legal. I filed my d.b.a. a few months ago, and just last week set up a separate business checking account so that I can track my income/expenses. I’m also working on some marketing/branding stuff so that when I’m ready it will just be a matter of sending it off to the printer. I still have a few more things to do to feel like I’m official, but I am legal enough to be in business at this point. I’m just nervous about making that jump. I absolutely love photography, but I know I still have a lot to learn. I’m hoping to get a few more (non-family member) sessions in over the next couple of months. I’ve pretty much exhausted my kids and my niece/nephews with all of the photo taking. Here’s one of my favorites that I took of my niece a few weeks ago.
I still see imperfections in every photo I take, so I know I need more practice. However, I also know I love nearly every portrait ever taken of my kids – perfect or not – so maybe I can make it fly. I’m a little stuck in the “I need more practice to take better photographs, but I need better photographs to get people to want to hire me so I can get more practice” conundrum. Or maybe I just need more friends willing to loan me their kids.
On top of all that, I’m still stressing out about summer day care for Zach. I pretty much just stopped looking because I needed to just stop and breathe for a while. Sadly, ignoring it is not making it go away. The end of May is coming up very quickly.
Oh, and then there’s the really fun thing that happened on Friday – my car blew up! Well, it may have actually been easier if it did blow up, but it is broken (again) and undriveable until we get it fixed. I’m ready to trade it in, which we most likely will do, but not so ready to have to make car payments again. In the meantime, I’m driving hubby’s car, which we just had to put new tires on and he thinks needs a new starter. It works most of the time, but every once in a while just decides it doesn’t want to go. Kind of makes me wish we lived in a city where cars were not a necessity.
There are so many other things, but not enough time in the world to write it all out. My lunch hour just does not last long enough.
Comments closedI couldn’t decide which one I wanted to post, so I’m posting two songs that I’ve been digging this week.
First up is my beloved Pearl Jam doing “Johnny Guitar.” I got to hear it live when they were here in KC last May and it’s been in my head lately for some reason.
Next in line is G. Love singing “Just Fine.” I’m really enjoying his recent collaboration with The Avett Brothers, Fixin’ To Die, and you can find this song on there as well.
Comments closedNever in my 33 years of life have I dreaded summer. I have always looked forward to it. I love the sunshine. I love the heat (as long as I have air conditioning available when I want it). I love splashing in the water with my kids, taking trips to the lake, BBQ’s, and all of the other fun stuff that comes with summer.
This summer, however, there’s a new component – trying to figure out what to do with Zach while school’s out. This is filling me with so much anxiety right now that I can’t even think about the joys of summer yet. It’s complicated this year. If Evie was on school break too, I would hire a sitter to come to our house and call it good. I seriously doubt I could find a sitter to come to the house for what I can pay for only one child. If both kids were home it would be much more feasible, but I’m not ready to take her out of the day care that we love (it already makes me sad to think about putting her in preschool).
I’m not really sure where else to look at this point. I’ve checked with the YMCA day camps and they are a bit more pricey than what I can pay. His old preschool has a school-age program in the summer, but he wasn’t very happy there towards the end and says he doesn’t want to go back there. I’m sure there have to be more day camp programs around, but I haven’t found them yet, at least not ones that we can afford.
It seems odd that we can’t afford day camp costs, considering that we paid for full-time day care for the first five years of his life. Those years were a big struggle financially, especially after his sister came along. Now that we finally have a little bit of breathing room (thank you public school system!), adding on another $140-160 a week seems like a lot of money.
Then there’s the other issue that’s staring me in the face. Now that we know he has some definite sensory issues, I worry about introducing him to a new situation. What if we put him in a summer camp and he just can’t handle it? It took us several months of school before I felt like things were under control and I feel like we’ll be starting all over again. I don’t want the poor kid to be miserable all summer because he’s put in a situation that makes him uncomfortable. For my own comfort, I need to know that he’s somewhere that can handle his quirks and can manage a meltdown if/when it happens. I would hate to think that all the work we’ve done with him over the last few months would be blown because he isn’t in a place where he can get the support he needs.
So I’m stuck. I know I still have two and a half months or so to figure it all out, but I’m a little stressed out about it right now. Parenting brings so many challenges, but deciding who is going to care for my child when I can’t is the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to do. I never feel like I’m making the right decision, although I have been super lucky a couple of times. I guess I just have to keep looking until I find something that feels right.
In the meantime, I’m sending him back to Evie’s day care for spring break next week (even though he thinks he’s too old for it). He’s not at all happy about it, but I tried to buffer the disappointment a little by signing him up for another session of swimming lessons. I can’t wait to see him in the water again. Not only does he love swimming, but he’s getting pretty darn good at it too!
Comments closed…just ask Daddy!
I was trimming Evie’s nails after her bath when she asked me if she could have paint on them too. Since it was already bed time, I said no and told her she would have to wait until tomorrow night. Her response? “Daddy will. Daddy’s always nice.”
Apparently she was right.
Comments closedThis weekend was a bit of a bust when it comes to the long to-do list I had carefully crafted on Friday. I think my lists are a little more ambitious that my body. I did get a few things checked off, but those were mostly the fun things. The not so fun things, like mail state tax returns and update budget spreadsheet, somehow were forgotten.
Friday night we stayed in, and after everyone went to bed, I stayed up and finished sewing Evie another skirt. My sewing is far from perfect, but I’m having fun experimenting and the skirts are turning out really cute. I added a ribbon trim to the bottom of this one and love how it turned out. Sadly, my sewing machine decided to quit working just after I finished this one so I didn’t get to do any more this weekend. I will have to remedy that soon as I have a stack of fabric already cut for several more skirts.
Saturday morning we had promised the kids each a surprise. Evie got to go to Grandma’s and play with her cousin, Caitlin. Zach got a trip to the movies with Mom and Dad to see Rango. It was a pretty cute movie, and included enough adult humor to keep it entertaining.
After the movie, we stopped at the pet store to invest a bit of our tax refund in the Tidy Cat Breeze cat litter system. We searched and searched and couldn’t find it in the store, so we were letting Zach look around at the animals. He was really into the fish and started asking the inevitable question, “Mommy, can we just get a goldfish?”
We stood firm for maybe a whole ten minutes. We already have enough pets to take care of. We don’t need any more. Then we started wavering a little bit. Maybe one fish wouldn’t be so bad. We started looking at the Betta fish. Before long I had a new fish tank in my arms, along with the necessary supplies. We decided on a Betta and went back to pick one out. That’s when we realized that the Breeze boxes we had been looking for were sitting just under the Betta fish display. We got the litter boxes (both with $10 off coupons on them!). Zach picked out his fish and proudly carried it up to the checkout counter.
After the required 24 hour tank set up time, Mario Oscar Perrin, the red Betta fish, is now happily swimming around in his new home. So far Zach has been very responsible in feeding him and he goes in to check on him often. The cats have also discovered this little moving thing and are quite interested in figuring out how to get their paw into the small opening on the top of the tank.
I’m just hoping we can keep him alive for a while.
Comments closed