Day 31 - January 31

Oh no! It's the last day of January... I'm going to have to start paying attention to what day I'm on since it'll no longer be the same as the actual date. Dangit!

Anyway, my blog, my rules... so three pictures today. All of them are from my phone.

We went to the park for playgroup today and, surprise, surprise, all she wanted to do was swing.

Taking pictures of a swinging kid with a phone is not easy. So two of these are pretty funny. The last one was taken when she wasn't moving... because she asked if I was taking pictures and then asked me to take one of her (even though I already was). So I told her I had to stop her so I could get a good one. She then proceeded to stare into space with a half-smile on her face.

Never a dull moment.

Day 30 - January 30

I had no idea that my shoes would be so attractive so early in Michaela's life. She has been clomping around in them almost as long as she's been able to walk. Usually she sticks to flats, but apparently these heels looked way too enticing today.

So good she had to check herself out in the mirror.

(And I'm ashamed to say she totally had an easier time of walking around in them than I do. In my defense, they are a HUGE heel with the world's smallest platform... not an easy walking shoe.)

Day 29 - January 29

I should've just put this up last night. For the small amount of editing I did, I could've just put it up straight out of the camera.

Anyway... Jason spent Michaela's naptime yesterday on a very critical household repair, bringing this piece of gear back into everyday service.

That's right, the fairy wings are finally fixed (and reinforced). Michaela was pretty excited.

And who says that engineering degree doesn't come in handy - fixing fairy wings is almost exactly the same as designing a ship.

Day 28 - January 28

Michaela made Daddy draw hands on the Magna Doodle this morning. Usually it's just her hand. Or his hand. But today they went with both at once.

So stinkin' cute!!!

Day 27 - January 27

Ooohhhh, she's crazy.

Not me. Though, after our experience in the 5 minutes we were at a restaurant tonight, I was feeling a little crazy. I need to be reminded hourly that you can't reason with a 2-yr-old, nor can you expect any logical explanation for a weird, whiny outburst.

But I digress. Because I'm not the crazy one. Michaela is the crazy one.

I can't remember where I was and why I wasn't around to see her do this to herself, but at some point in time while I was running around getting us ready for gymnastics this morning, she dressed herself up to ride her Dora car around the house.

We've made strides in that she can get the headphones on herself now (or, microphones as she calls them), she just doesn't necessarily put them in the right place... thus, the squishy cheeks and droopy eye.

I seriously have no idea what goes through her head. No idea.

Day 26 - January 26

Back to the phone for today's picture. But I have a good reason.

Michaela decided not to wake up until 10:30 this morning (seems like the visit with Grandpa Joe followed by two days in a row at school took their toll), so when she did finally get up, she was not feeling her best. Extreme hunger and slight dehydration will do that to you, and you get that way if it's been 17 hours since your last meal and you didn't really eat it. So she clung to me like velcro and we did a lot of laying on the couch.

Amazingly, she still took a nap, but I used that time to rest a little myself (meanwhile, I'm officially in the 2nd trimester now, so this fatigue can go away anytime), and then it was back to velcro kid when she woke up again. There were definitely few opportunities for picture-taking in that mix.

Thankfully, we've made a commitment to reinstitute family walk time after Jason gets home from work and before dinner, so I had some picture-taking opportunity while we were out in the neighborhood. Of course, the only camera I had was my phone. So you get a picture that's not Michaela, or Fred, or a PetSmart receipt, but it was taken with my phone. It's all a trade-off.

Doesn't a pretty yellow flower (a whole bush of them actually) just scream "Winter!!!"?? Yeah, I don't really think so either.

Day 25 - January 25

Do you know how you can tell your dog is spoiled? Between 9 and 9:15am, you manage to spend $150 on him.

In his defense, we had to buy food along with the treats, so $54 of it was a bag of food. But the rest was treats. Hopefully, if my calculations are right, the big dinner-time treats (he gets one every night while we eat) will last two months. That's still a lot of money to spend on a dog!

Here's the proof that the dog is spoiled. Rotten.

Day 24 - January 24

As promised, I went to the roses again today. Again, I missed the best, sunniest light of the day. This time, I was out of the house in the morning and then I chose to eat lunch instead of taking pictures right away after I put the kid down for her nap.

But I still got some good (overcast) light in through the kitchen windows, and it's fun to see the difference in the warmth of the pictures with the different light. Even with using the tungsten white balance setting yesterday, there was a lot of yellow to my pictures. Today, in the natural light, with the daylight white balance setting, the colors are much more true to what my eye sees, and with an overall cooler look. Lesson learned here: Natural light is awesome.

Onto the picture....

Day 23 - January 23

The other day, Jason very nicely took Michaela and his dad to the store to pick up a few things, giving me some quiet time alone. It wasn't long, but it was appreciated!

While at the store, Michaela decided to buy me some flowers. If only she had money.

Two days later, the roses have opened beautifully, so they gave me something non-Michaela to take pictures of today.

I just wish I'd remembered to take the pictures in our brief moments of sunshine today instead of under our kitchen light right before sunset. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow and see how the two types of light give different pictures.

For tonight, though, a nice close-up of a beautiful rose.

Day 22 - January 22

I don't think I'm very good at using Photoshop yet. That's my complaint for today. Or maybe I just like my photos straight out of the camera. Either way, I'm having a hard time getting a look I like. It could be that I've been doing a lot of inside shooting in yucky light, too. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the picture for today, except that I played with it in PSE and I don't love what I ended up with.

Meanwhile, apparently, Michaela is not just going to be a drummer. She seems to enjoy playing the piano as well. And she put this little set-up together all by herself because, of course, a piano must be elevated and you need a bench to sit on to play it.

Day 21 - January 21

It's another 3-picture day. This time it's all Hipstamatic pics, though, since we were out and about and I wasn't dragging the big camera to Bass Pro.

I like to think that these pictures show Michaela's ability to adapt to her Coast Guard-provided surroundings. Or, she just likes to pretend to drive stuff. And she likes cupholders.

So we have the Alabama Michaela - driving the pontoon/party-barge style fishing boat.

Then we have Alaska Michaela - giving the 4-wheeler (a staple of many Kodiakans "toy" supplies) a try.

Finally we have the sippy cup in the cupholder. As soon as I told her that it was a cupholder, she had to have her cup to put in it. Such a goof!

Day 20 - January 20

I tried to take a picture with the big girl camera today. I really did. But a toddler driving a Power Wheels car does not make for an easy subject and the few pictures I took were terrible.

So I'm thankful for the quick Hipstamatic shot I took this morning.

Michaela was trying to put on Daddy's boots, and tie them. She did not succeed. But she was cute trying!

Day 19 - January 19

I'm totally making up for lost time today. You get three pictures.

It was beautiful and warm (in the sun) outside this afternoon. And although I REALLY didn't want to go outside, Michaela did, so out to the backyard we went. I figured if I was going to be out there, I might as well grab the real camera and see if there was anything good to take a picture of.

I think I took somewhere around 30 pictures. About 5 of them are worth keeping. Digital is awesome.

I'll just get to the pictures since I don't really have any stories to go with these. Well, that's not entirely true....

For the first one, this was the most cooperative I could get the kid to be when I was trying to take pictures of her sweetly sitting in the Adirondack chair in the sun. I told her to just look away or down or something. And voila! Profile picture!

The second one is, of course, my little Fresh Beat again. She cracks me up. And blowing raspberries cracks her up. Score one for Photographer Becca getting a real smile. Oh, and I broke my own rule and used the "shade" white balance setting on this one, so I'm grateful for Pioneer Woman's "Cooler" action at about 30% opacity so I could dial down the warmth a bit in editing. Yay for learning how to use PSE!!!

And the last one is just because her expression kills me. She did NOT want me taking pictures of her in that chair. At all.

Day 18 - January 18

Today was almost as awesome a day as yesterday (anyone catch the dripping sarcasm there?). There were two highlights... Wednesday are Mom's Day Out day AND I got to get a glimpse of Yellow (have I mentioned that's what we're calling baby #2?) at my doctor's appointment. My current OB's office uses hand-held sonograms at each appointment instead of the trusty doppler that most OB's use for pre-natal visits. The upside is getting to see the baby every time. The downside is no beautiful heartbeat sound. It's not the same to just see the heart beating. It's way cooler to hear it.

I digress, though.

So it was another not-so-great day here so you get a desperation picture. I don't even have energy to go through the archives and do some new edits. Instead, you get a cheesy taken-at-9:30pm-Instagram picture.

After the day (week) I've had, nothing would've made me happier than to use this cup (I'd say glass, but it's plastic) for its intended purpose. Jason bought this - along with beer to fill it - when we were in Florida this fall. It was for the resort's souvenir/refillable beer deal.

Tonight, I filled it with milk. To go with my late-night peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pregnant much?

Day 17- January 17

I am so cheating today.

It was a BAD day. BAD. Really, really bad. One of those days that makes you question why you ever wanted a child, and then why it is that you're carrying another one. *sigh*

Because of that, there was no picture taking of any kind.

So, instead, I busted into the archives and played around with my new-found photoshop skills (I've been editing in Aperture this whole time... not a bad program, but definitely not as versatile as photoshop - or photoshop elements in my case).

I chose to go with a Disney picture, though, in honor of making our dining reservations this week for our trip down there in May. Yes, we're going back only 8 months after our last trip, but we have a free week coming at our timeshare again, and we need to use it before Yellow gets here.

We'll be having breakfast with Pooh while we're there, so I found a picture that proves she should enjoy that!

Day 16 - January 16

Today was not an awesome day in toddler world. The funny thing is that today's picture doesn't show that at all. But, honestly, taking a picture was the last thing on my mind while I was literally wrestling the kid for a diaper change. *sigh*

She had roughly 10 minutes of smiling time this afternoon, and I happened to head out with my camera while it was happening (by the way, I finally cleared off my cards yesterday - YAY!!! 8 full gigs of memory ready to go!). So you don't get a cranky toddler picture. You get this instead.

If you hadn't been here for the rest of the day, you'd never know that this was a complete anomaly.

Meanwhile, she's finally figured out how to make her Power Wheels go on her own. Now we work on steering. And now that I think about it, she may have been smiling so big in this one because she was driving into me and thought that was hilarious. I don't know how I feel about that.

Day 15 - January 15

Know what happens when you leave your house at 4:55pm to go get the buns you need for cheeseburgers and the green beans you intend to serve for dinner?

You change your mind.

So, what do you think? Do our cheeseburgers look great, or what?

(No, that's not a cheeseburger. Yes, it is Mellow Mushroom pizza.)

Day 14 - January 14

This picture is hilarious.

To me.

About 3 years ago, shortly before we were leaving on a trip from Kodiak to somewhere in the lower 48, Jason decided to have leftover tacos for lunch, while I was upstairs packing.

Why is this important?

Because, shortly after deciding to have leftover tacos for lunch, I heard yelling from downstairs. Because there were flames coming out of the toaster over, lapping at the upper cabinets in the corner of the kitchen, and Jason was panicking.

Perhaps he should have read the warning on the side of the box of taco shells before choosing to reheat said shells in the toaster oven. Sadly, until tonight, he didn't know this warning existed.

He takes comfort in knowing that at least one other person did the same thing.

Day 13 - January 13

I still haven't cleared off my memory cards. Plus, I sat on my toosh as much as possible today, so I wasn't going to pick up my real camera anyway.

But we went out to dinner (Zoe's Kitchen. NEEDED their slaw!) and I always have my phone, so at least I had a way to get *a* picture.

So this is a quick shot of Michaela dancing after dinner. The kid will dance anywhere and everywhere. She LOVES music and she LOVES to move. Can't beat it when you can put the two together!

Day 12 - January 12

In a super scientific process, we found out the gender of the baby today.

This method is currently 83% accurate (5-for-6), so I'm pretty confident that we know what we're having now.

What method, that isn't an ultrasound, could be so accurate? Why, none other than the pick-a-Snickers-out-of-the-bag method at MOPS.

Michaela, who only wants a sister, and is convinced that the baby is a sister, was pleased with the results. So here's to hoping this super scientific method is now 85% accurate!!

Day 11 - January 11

One day, I will clear off my memory cards. Or buy a new one. Then I'll be able to use my real camera again. One day.

Meanwhile, thankfully I have the Hipstamatic app so my cell phone pictures look cool and retro.

Fred never looked better.

Day 10 - January 10

This picture speaks volumes.

It says:

1) I'm pregnant.

2) I'm lazy.

3) Jason wasn't home for dinner.

4) I'm lazy. Wait. I said that already.

Mac 'n' cheese from a box anyone? It was the fancy kind, at least - Kraft Deluxe - and it was the kind made with 2% milk so it's a little less fatty. That's how I'm making myself feel a little better about the fact that I made mac 'n' cheese from a box for dinner tonight.

Also, I made Michaela eat some left-over sugar snap peas from last night and I had some Cuties oranges. So there was something healthy.

Then we had brownies for dessert.

Tomorrow I'll try harder.

Day 9 - January 9

First, the technical stuff. Do not attempt to just pick up your camera to take a picture in your kitchen near sunset when you know your settings were last changed for outdoor pictures and you don't want to stop to adjust everything you need to. Opening up your aperture, just to get to a 1/30 shutter speed does NOT mean that you will be able to capture your toddler doing toddler things in a clear manner. Just so you know. Do yourself a favor, and adjust your ISO, too.

So pardon the blurriness that comes from camera shake (and toddler shake) at too slow a shutter speed, but I think the subject is cute anyway.

Michaela helped me make some brownies tonight. She mixed them (I was going to use that picture but it was even blurrier) and then helped me clean up the spatula. This was her first taste of "licking the spoon" and I think it's safe to say she enjoyed it!

Day 8 - January 8

So much for that whole thing about using my big girl camera more this year.... so far, I've got 5 days of iPhone pics and only 3 days of real camera pics. I'm going to blame the fact that I have two very full memory cards and I'm too lazy to get the pictures off the cards and backed up (not a short process since I download them all to the computer, delete ones I don't want to keep, back up the rest to my external hard drive, then to CD, then erase from the computer and re-format the card. And I'm lazy.)

Anywho...onto the picture. It's sort of a silly one today. On an online discussion board, someone said "post pictures of your Pandora jewelry!" So I took a picture of my bracelet, which I then could not get to upload to save my life. I'll have to try again. But it's a picture I took today, so it counts for this.

Thank goodness for Christmas so my bracelet doesn't look as naked as it did the day before Christmas anymore! I went from two charms to seven, in just one day! I think Pandora bracelets are the best gift to give someone, because then you ALWAYS have an idea for another gift in the future. They're perfect!!

Some people like to make their bracelets around a theme. I just picked out charms I liked on the website and put them on my wishlist. Some of them have meaning (the ladybug is for Michaela, as is the little girl which "she" gave me for my birthday; and the cross is for my faith), but most of them are just ones I think are pretty. So the theme of my bracelet is that it has no theme. I think that's a good theme to have.

Day 7 - January 7

Some days - most days - I am awestruck by how my little baby has somehow turned into this kid. She's still definitely more toddler than anything else, but there are glimpses of pre-schooler that make me wonder where the heck the time has gone.

Tonight, I had one of those moments. One minute, she was asking Jason to trace her hand in her coloring book. The next minute - mostly to get her to let Jason and I talk for a couple minutes - I told her to try to do it herself, and she (sort of) did. I'm pretty sure she's not supposed to be old enough for this kind of thing yet.

(My apologies for the pink-ish glow in the picture. We were at Cheeburger Cheeburger, sitting in the window, with the glowing pink neon lights.)

Day 6 - January 6

I'm not a big fan of Jason being gone. Whether it's for a few weeks or just for a night, it's just not the same around here without him.

That said, there are some perks. Like I get to watch whatever I want. Mostly I like to work on completely wearing out my copy of the BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice."

Hope you're enjoying your vestry retreat, Honey. Not to worry... Colin Firth is keeping me company!

Day 5 - January 5

If you have a small child in your house, and you have cable TV, and it is often on Nick Jr., you might understand this picture with only a few words.

Michaela has a small obsession with The Fresh Beat Band. And by small, I mean enormous. As in, we have 20 distinct episodes of it on our DVR right now, and we have seen them all multiple times. She will scream "Pause it!!! I need my Kiki dress!!" when the show first starts (that would be a pink dress-up dress, which is similar-ish to the dress that one of the characters wears, in that it's pink). We had to remove the anti-chewing plastic things from her crib rails because she was pulling them off and drumming with them, and yelling "Wake up, Fresh Beats!!" at 6 in the morning (and ruining the crib more than she did when she used to chew on it). She sings all the songs, randomly spouts lines from the show (our favorite is "Watch the master at work!"), and today, when we were leaving the house, she even set it was time to "go-go a go-go."

So this is my own little Marina. Marina is the drummer on Fresh Beats (she prefers the old Marina to the new, in case anyone was wondering). I am making it my life's mission to track their concert tour and get tickets if they are anywhere near here and I can make it work. I'm pretty sure that would be cooler to her than all of the coming years of Disney vacations she's sure to have, all put together.

(And I had to use 2 pictures so you could get the full scope of what she was doing.)

Day 4 - January 4

In the battle of the pacifier, Michaela is winning. In our defense, we haven't tried that hard to get them away from her (because I'm afraid of losing her nap time), but we can't even seem to get her to understand that we're going to take them one day.

Anyway, Jason has decided that Michaela may have given us our tool for pacifier removal herself.

If all her dolls/toys need to have pacifiers to sleep, then maybe there won't be any left for her....

Day 3 - January 3

Have I ever mentioned how much I like the month of January in respect to doing this blog? Probably not. But I like this month because it's easy to remember that Day 1 is January 1, and Day 2 is January 2, and Day 3 is... well, you get the point. After January 31st, it gets a lot harder to keep track of the day (as my good friend Justin has pointed out on more than one occasion when I got the day wrong last year).

Anyway, moving on to the picture(s).

Today I was grateful for the fact that my child, nearly everyday, does something that makes me crack up. Why was I grateful for that today of all days? Because it assured her safety, and that she'll see tomorrow. My goodness, did she have a BAD morning (and then so did I)!!! But a nap can fix a lot of things, so after two+ hours of good sleep this afternoon, she was back to entertaining me.

You get two pictures because, well, you'll see.....

Day 2 - January 2

Today, I went back to my roots. What I mean by that is that I went out into the yard and took pictures of flowers.

That's my "roots" because that's exactly what I did when I got my first DSLR camera in April 2007. Jason surprised me with it so I'd have it for our cross-country trip to Alaska, and the first thing I did was head outside to take pictures of the daffodils blooming in our yard.

So this afternoon, I headed outside to take pictures of camellias. I got a lot fancier than the one I snapped with my iPhone last week, and even a little fancier than those first daffodil pictures almost 5 years ago. Back then, it was my Sony a100 with the kit lens on it, and the camera firmly set on one of the preset automatic settings. Today it was my a850 with my 50mm/2.8 macro lens, and in full manual mode.

I really do love macro photography.

Day 1 - January 1

On one front, I'm starting off better than last year. On another, I'm already falling short of my goal to pick up the big camera more often.

So the good... I'm actually starting on January 1st this year. The bad... I'm starting with a cellphone picture. Eh, you take the bad with the good.

Christmas is put away (almost all of it anyway), and yet, there is a pile of toys in my living room still. I haven't figured out where to put everything yet.

But worse than the pile of toys, is this. There is a tent and tunnel in my living/dining room. And I have no idea how to take it down without upsetting the kid, even though we could put it up anytime she wanted. So there it is.

Starting all over again

Alright. I have decided. I'm going to keep going. I think I would miss doing this too much.

I still think I need to get back to our other blog for some of the other things that are floating around my head, but this one serves a good purpose and gives me something to do every day, so I'm sticking with it.

I'm going to keep the title the same, even though there are 366 days this year. And I'm going to try to keep the same track record I had this year of taking a picture every day, and posting them as soon as humanly possible. And I'm going to try to pick up my actual camera a little more often. There were a lot of cell phone pictures in 2011 and I'd like to challenge myself a little more to get the big guns out in 2012.

Although I'm a little worried that the coming baby may make that more difficult than it's been this year, I figure I have two things going for me in that department... if all else fails, I can use the belly pictures I'm planning on taking again with this one every once in a while, and the baby will certainly provide endless material! Oh, and I just thought of another one - I'm sure I'll be up at all hours of the night through the tail end of the year, so I'll have plenty of time to blog - as long as I can figure out how to do it one-handed while nursing!

So welcome back to another year of Becca's 365 (or, 366).