I love film! I told you about taking Anna to the park on her birthday and letting her take some photographs with my Papaw’s old Mamiya C330 on her birthday blog. And though it was more fun for me than for her, and though she really didn’t get into the whole clicking a button with “no” result, I think someday she’ll look back and enjoy knowing that she was allowed to use it. When comparing film to digital, there are still a lot of differences in the final outcome. The roll of film Anna found was a black and white 12 exposure roll. Film requires you to be wary of your remaining shots, wary of your light exposure, constantly changing settings on the camera to be sure you’ll have the best exposure at all times (specifically when your subject matter runs around sometimes under the shade of a tree and sometimes in full sun on the swing). Film forces you to be a better photographer. No checking the display on the back of the camera to “confirm” your camera settings (or be reminded that you didn’t set them in the first place) No changing your ISO for indoor or darker situations- when a roll of 200 speed film is in the camera, 200 is what you get. There’s just a “quality” about film that I love- and some day, when I have my dream home, I hope to set up all of the darkroom equipment I inherited from my Papaw and be able to develop and print my own black and white film and prints again.  And share that joy of “doing it yourself” with my children!  Oh, I can’t wait for the day!
On a different note, there is more flexibility with digital.  A slide of my computer mouse (or rather, my Wacom pen) and I can make an underexposed image look a little better, I can edit out the the telephone pole that happened to be in the wrong spot in the background, I can recrop the image when it wasn’t compossed exactly as I would have wanted in the first place, etc.   From a professional standpoint, digital is more convenient, more cost-effective, I can offer our clients 100% retouched images to give them the best possible printed memory, I can digitally design composites of multiple images, etc. 
But not only are the outputs of film and digital different, the entire camera can be complete opposites. Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras have a removable lens and the viewer {photographer}, through a series of mirrors sees directly through the lens to view exactly what will be recorded on the film/digital sensor. However, I forgot about the lens perspective thing on TLR’s which is what my Mamiya is (T-twin)  The Twin lens cameras have 2 lenses, one for the viewer to see what is displayed and the other to record on the film.  After several feet, the “perspective” evens out and most images never know the difference, however with close-up images, the bottom lens overrules what the photographer sees in the viewfinder, so a few of the following images are not compossed correctly or didn’t end up with what we had origianlly planned.  (I apologize to those of you who were just reading “French”)
For this roll of developed film I just had the lab process the film and then print me a contact sheet so I could see how well we exposed the film before having individual prints made.  So these images are just photographs taken with my Digital camera of the contact sheet… sorry for the graininess, but hey that’s a part of what film is too.

These first two are the ones Anna took. 
 We lined up the first one of the tree line at the park, but in order for her to push the shutter button, she tilted the camera up, causing it to only be the sky with a lone tree top in the bottom corner.  But this is officially her first picture she ever took with a film camera!   The second was supposed to be a flower in the grass, we lined it up, focused it, and I told her she could push the button- she then reached her hand in front of the lenses to press the shutter, resulting in a blurry hand instead of a nature shot.

And these are some of the other ones I took that day… A second roll is being developed at the lab right now too, I’ll add them when a get them back.

Anna and I are both ready for gymnastics again! Spring classes ended at the end of May, and We enrolled in summer classes that went from the middle of June to the first week of August, but they took 3 weeks off before Fall classes started last Friday.  Anna has been practicing her skills like crazy the past few weeks!  The new swingset helped that too. There are several bars on it for stability, but they are just another play option to Anna.  I took this video last week when Kylie was here, but check out her perfect form here! Holding the bar, bringing her toes up and perfectly pointing them to barely touch the bar.  GOOD GIRL!

And our new flowerbed has become a “balance beam” too. After watering the flowers every evening Anna stands at the end on some bedding bricks that the hose curls up on so I can rinse the dirt and grass off her feet before going inside.  One day I finally figured out that she was saying “balance beam” while pointing to the new cedar 4x4s we have stacked around the flowerbed, so I held one hand and let her walk across them.  I gradually started letting go a little farther away from the end over the past few weeks, and though she rarely walks forward without me to help her balance, she will walk several feet sideways, which is a great start.  I even let go yesterday about half way down and when she stopped walking because I wasn’t there I encouraged her to do a kick (which she did) and a bunny hop (she bent her knees to try it with no help, but didn’t pop back up with a jump- she just bent her knees and then stood up) Hey, you gotta start somewhere!  And she’s off to a great start.  Most likely Anna will be pretty tall (I mean, have you seen her parents?)  And most gymnasts are not.  So we don’t expect her to become a famous gymnast and she may not even stick with it when she’s older and in school, though we won’t discourage her if that’s what she wants to do.  But for now, it does help her coordination skills develop strongly!

Anna is quite independent these days! It’s funny how we spend so much time in her early life encouraging her to step out on her own and encourage her to crawl and explore, take those first steps, use utensils to eat, and make her own decisions etc. And then the toddler years hit and we’re surprised by how much she can and wants to do things herself.
I mentioned in an earlier blog about Anna going potty on her own and showed a video of her telling me she wanted to do it “by a self”, but thought I’d mention a few more things that she’s become independent about too.
I love how much she sits in her room and recites books (also shown in the videos of earlier blogs). And since she likes to go potty by herself, I use that to my advantage: we always go potty before we leave the house, so when she insists she doesn’t need to go potty, I give her the option “do you want to go potty by yourself, or Mommy help you?” Of course she’s going to choose “by a self” and take off running to the bathroom.
She is quite the climber these days too! She was once very big into sliding, but over the past month or so she’d rather climb on equipment at playgrounds than slide, and it has been all I can do to get her to go down one. She’ll slide down the one in our own backyard all day, but the big ones at playgrounds have been no-goes for her, until yesterday…
The Southlakes Park not far from us put in a new huge set of slides for the bigger kids, which has helped get the big kids off the smaller equipment and made me feel a lot safer about letting Anna explore a little more on her own without me up there with her the whole time. As we were playing yesterday Anna saw the big slides. It’s shaped like a rocket with multiple slides coming down from it, straight ones, curvy ones, tunnels that curve down back into the staircase, and the biggest one has a pretty steep drop off before it curves down and around to the bottom. The smallest one is a good 15ft tall, and the top one is probably over 2 stories high!
Anna decided she wanted to slide “BIG slides!”, so we climbed up to the smallest one and went down a couple times with her in my lap, then as we climbed the enclosed stairs to go again, she by-passed the small one and went to the next one. She went down in my lap a time or two again, and then went down in front of me, not waiting for me to sit down too before sliding on her own. And since she managed it well, I decided to climb the stairs with her and then hurry back down the stairs to the bottom of the slide to see her come out of it. We did that close to 20 times! I definitely got a nice stair workout! In the video, this is the last time I followed her up, I just let her go on her own a couple more times since she was practically beating me up the stairs anyways before I encouraged her to go play on the swings. Don’t get me wrong, My heart was RACING letting her go up the stairs on her own! And as soon as another kid came around we did something else, no way was I going to let her play inside there with older kids, no matter how gentle they think they are.  And please disregard the shakiness of the video, I was obviously more interested in watching her than watching the screen on the camera.

She really desires to do almost everything by herself, she can easily take off her panties to go potty, though she hasn’t completely figured out how to put them on by herself. I put her shirts on over her head, but she puts her arms in the sleeves by herself.  If I request for her to clean up, she does for a little bit before getting distracted, and it typically helps to have a goal in mind for best results. (“We’ll do *this* when all the toys (or books, in most cases) are cleaned up”).

She’s such a good girl most of the time.  Matt and I still need to figure out the consistency thing. There are times when we both get busy working on things in the evenings and don’t pay attention 100%, so she gets into something or starts messing with things we’ve told her not to touch.  And I think she’ll only get over that stage when she gets consistently disciplined for being disobedient.   I’ve been trying to use the word “obedient” when I praise her too lately.  I don’t want her to only hear me talk about obedience when she’s done something wrong, and she still needs to know we recognize her good behavior too- not just her accomplishments, but when she’s doing what she’s supposed to do and/or is showing good behavior.

The Mini Social is a website that organizes boutique style clothing, shoes, diaper bags, and sometimes furniture, accessories, etc. into one website with items offered at about 50% off.  They have super cute items and though a lot of things are still more than what I’d pay for clothes for a child that will outgrow them in a few short months, they do have a lot of good priced items as well.
We went shoe “window shopping” last week in a hunt for some new shoes for Anna. She only has size 5 and 6 shoes now, and I’m pretty sure she’s in the 7s.  Thru next Tuesday there is one “boutique” that has shoes on sale (and some cute house slippers too).  Most of which are all about $10/pair (Target’s prices are around $12-15).  And the T-shirts offered on the MiniSocial boutiques are typically pretty cute, and if nothing else, give you some cute ideas if you’re into making your own logos on shirts.

The link above is the same as here: The MiniSocial.  It’s a link to register with them in order to see the sales, and they give me $10 credit for referring friends who end up placing an order- wether it’s the first day you sign up or years later.  So check it out.  They send an email every once in a while when a new boutique will be opening soon, and even post the new ones a day in advance so you can sneak peak them before they’re open for ordering- But all items only have a limited number available, so if you see something you plan to order, Order it early!

Just my little MiniSocial blurb

The previous blog talked about Anna getting to go back to JoyfulNoise.  She’s super excited and gets to see all her friends regularly again, but I think last week’s schedule helped with that a little too.

Tuesday we had to be at a HS senior’s house early for portraits in her flower garden, so Anna played at Camryn’s house for a couple of hours.  She got to wake Camryn up, play with different toys and blow bubbles while I was gone- she even used the potty at their house too! Good girl!  Here’s a picture her mom posted on Facebook that day.

Wednesday afternoon I had to be at Newcastle High School at 3pm for picture day of the Cheerleaders, so Anna went to Kylie’s house- we arrived a little after 1:30 in hopes that both girls would play for a little while and then resume their normal afternoon nap schedule around 2:30 or so.  Andrea had zero luck convincing them it was time to sleep!  They’re only 2, they’re not supposed to be having slumber parties yet!   But that’s what they did. They just giggled and talked the whole time- oh, well, no biggie. Anna greatly enjoyed playing with Kylie and her dogs and toys!  And was even a real trooper the rest of the day and never got moody despite the lack of a nap.

Then Thursday, Kylie came over to play with Anna while Andrea checked out the new Crest grocery store.  Sure Kylie could have gone with her, but why sit in a shopping cart when you can play with a friend!!?  They had so much fun! I think it helped Anna to have two days at friends houses before one came to hers

though.  Anna has no problem sharing her friends’ toys, but she had a few concerns with sharing her own.  So it was good to be able to remind Anna that her friends had shared certain toys with her (and specifically name the toy to help her remember), now it was Anna’s turn to share toys with her friends- and encourage them to take turns by letting one of them play with a toy for a minute and then asking her to let the other one have a turn.  The girls did great at handing off the toy when prompted to do so, and though they didn’t really share when not prompted, they’re at least on the right path. And to top off the afternoon, both girls were in panties the whole time and never had an accident! I took a few videos of the girls playing. And of course I took pictures too!  I hate to even think about her DRIVING! but can’t you just see them 14 years from now behind the wheel and grinning for the camera?  I hope they’re still friends then and take one like this!
Thanks Hannah and Andrea for letting Anna crash your homes! I greatly appreciate it! Let me know if you ever need the favor returned again!

Here’s my favorite video. They’re so excited about the Disney Playhouse CD songs for MickeyMouse Clubhouse. Notice not only are they jumping and being silly, but they also sing along with it a little too!

And here are a few more videos of the girls being silly- if you’re interested!

 Anna had her first day of JoyfulNoise today!  Her Parent’s Day Out program is fantastic! Besides keeping a structured routine to their days (play, learn/craft, lunch and nap), they teach the kids too.  They learn shapes, colors, letters, numbers, etc, as well as social skills like sharing and playing with friends and developing imaginations too. It’s weird to me to say that Anna is in “school”.  But we call it “school” now so that when she does start school in a few years she’ll be used to the concept- the days there will just be a couple hours longer than what she’s doing now.

Last year there were 6 kids in her class, one of which moved a month before it was over, and usually about once a week, there were only 3 of them in the class.  This year, however, not so much.  They now have 2 teachers in each class, and this year there are 14 2 year olds!!  No way am I going to remember all of those names and recite them with her on the way to class like we did last year!  At least this year Anna’s not the youngest in her class.  Though there are only 2 younger than her, and she was developmentally right there with the older ones anyways, I think it’ll be fun for her to not be the “baby” of the class.

Isn’t she just the cutest with her little backpack? This morning was rainy so we didn’t get to take a cute one on the porch like I had wanted, but none the less, here she is in all her Anna-cuteness.  We arrived a little late this morning. I forgot to set my alarm to attempt to get up before her, so when she climbed into our bed at 7:15, we weren’t running late, but could have been doing better. And by the time I made her breakfast and let us both eat, and got her dressed, it was time to leave-except I hadn’t dressed myself- oops!  So we were 10 minutes late to class because if we don’t leave our house by 8:30 we hit some school zones on the way which delays our drivetime.  When we arrived it set in that this many kids in her class was going to be morning chaos!  Anna was never a crier last year, and she didn’t this year either (at least that I saw) But one other little girl was late and arrived a few minutes before us.  I found out after encouraging Anna into the room of 11 crying kids out of 13 that they had all calmed down until that last little girl got there and started crying, and then it started all over again!  Even Anna’s friends from last year joined in on the tear fest   And as I was organizing Anna’s things into her hallway basket her teacher shut the top half of their door so the kids couldn’t see the parents standing in the hallway.   I felt terrible! They had obviously been waiting on Anna to arrive so they could get started on their day and get the kids calmed down!  I’m going to do much better at getting there early/on-time from now on!  Hopefully the 5 from last year can help set the example to the newbies and start playing to set the tune of the day.

I’ll be doing their picture days again this year!  I love those days and getting to interact with all of them. They range in age from 6months to 4 years, but I’m thinking we may rethink the gameplan on that! There are twice as many kids in all of the classes this year, so I may need two cameras going!

And just for fun, this is what Anna looked like the day before her first day of JoyfulNoise last year! WOW how she’s grown!!  And check out all that hair! I knew it was getting longer, and was long compared to most 2 year olds, but that much in one year is amazing!

Here are some of Anna’s most recent skills:

One of Anna’s favorite books is Dr.Seuss’s Foot Book.  Everytime I read the pages with “left foot” and “right foot” on them, I pick up her corresponding foot.  It has paid off! She’s two and knows her right and left! 

Check her new tricycle pedaling skills!

Singing Jesus Loves Me and reading books that she has somewhat memorized.

She likes to put the shapes into the lid on the floor instead of dropping them through the lid into the container. I didn’t realize until I watched the video that it looks like she was trying to find all red shapes to fill the holes, and removing other colors. Nice organization skills there too!

Sorry for all the potty videos, but she’s getting so good at going potty by herself that she goes by herself about 75% of the time.  And a couple of times a week I only know that she’s gone because she comes to find me with no britches on and holding some toilet paper in her hand so I can wipe her.  Silly! The top video I captured after realizing I couldn’t hear her playing in her room anymore, so I got up to check on her, only to find that she felt the need to potty and had grabbed a book for while she was pooing.  I’m so proud of her for jumping in and realizing how to do this whole potty thing!  The first few times she got on the potty by herself, I said “Are you going potty all by yourself!!?”  so now, when I find her on the toilet, she says “All by a self!” 

This last one is just funny.  Have you watched the original version of Disney’s 101 Dalmations lately?  There’s a line towards the beginning, when the mommy dog tells the puppies it’s time to go to bed, and the little chubby puppy replies, “I’m not sleepy, I’m hungry”.  Just watch:

and did you notice that when she was “reading” the Clifford book in the previous video she turned to a picture of a mom tucking her little girls into bed and Anna says “Not sweepy, I hungy” then too?

Anna knows better than to use her crayons on the wall, or furniture or CozyCoupe.  Does it stop her?… usually.  We have trained her to “only color on paper” while always handing her an acceptable peice.  If she’s sitting at the table and I have a magazine or thank-you card envelope, she may grab it and use the pencil or pen that’s also on the table and go to town “coloring”, but we can usually catch her before she does too much damage (when we’re being good parents and notice what she’s up to before she’s up to it )

I set my calendar on the floor next to my desk.  Which is also next to her easel, which also holds all of her crayons.

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I should have known better.  I told her to “only color on paper”… and that she did.  As if my calendar wasn’t already full for the month, now it looks even fuller!

And speaking of Thank-you notes.  You may be getting one of these schnazzy creations in the mail soon!
I saved the first 4-5 feet of Anna’s used roll of easel paper, but the rest has been used for random things like: paper to wrap around packages we mail (I use a little square block of the back side of some for the “address label” so that it blends with the paper well), I’ve also used it for notecards to grandmothers, but most recently I cut long peices to fold into cards for the Thank-you cards we made for Anna’s Birthday gifts she received! I’m sure I’ll find more crafty things to use for it; gifts/ Christmas gifts, etc.  Or maybe I’ll make paper sheets from some of it to send our Christmas letters on!  Oh, the ideas could go on!  (BTW- you can blame my recent visits to HobbyLobby for making my mind think about Christmas already!)

My mom does this.  So, of course, I should too!

These past few months, the stores and farmer’s market have had an abundance of yummy fresh fruit.  It’s in season right now, so because they have an abundance, they also have really great prices!  So, duh, now is the best time to stock up on some of those much eaten fruits- And here’s how:

Freeze them!  For best freezing results, spread them out on a cookie sheet (or several) in single layers, and then pop them in your deep freezer for a couple of hours

then bag them and label the date on  them… just in case a bag slips to the bottom/back of the freezer for a while.

For the cherries, I scored them around the seed, from stem down and back around

give it a slight twist to pop them into halves, and then scoop out the seed; and lay them on their “backs” to prevent them from sticking too hard to the cookie sheet after they’re frozen.

I luckily had several different types of cookie sheets or pans with low edges, so I put the blueberries in my smallest lipped pan, and then grapes in the bottom part of my broiler pan (obviously without the broiler insert) so that I could criss-cross and stack the pans to save room in the freezer, but also keep the sheets flat.

Then enjoy eating a little fresh fruit at a time- And since Anna LOVES fruit, I figure a few frozen peices will also act as an ice pack for her lunches I pack for JoyfulNoise. They’ll be mostly thawed by lunch time, thus serving multiple purposes!

Where you say… “Elise, it’s just grass.” I say “It’s GRASS!!!”  Our yard got the best of us last year.  We didn’t spray anything for the weeds, didn’t pull weeds, and didn’t even really work in the flowerbeds (I’m going to use the excuse that we had a fast crawling/walking baby to keep up with and yard work wasn’t tops on the list-take it or leave it ).  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’ve had Atlas come out and spray our yard, which immediately killed all the weeds, and they’ve been returning to fertilize the yard too.  The main downfall of them killing the weeds was, well, we didn’t have grass underneath the weeds in some places, so our yard went from green-looking to dirt.  I had been watering the grass along the flowerbed occasionally to try to help it grow, but as soon as the weeds were gone, it really took off and the watering actually seemed to help! Imagine that!

This video shows Anna watering the grass for me. It’s really not that interesting, but it does show a “before” view of the lack of grass and the old flower bed- this video was made back in June.

And these pictures show our new grass and the new flowerbeds too.  I’ve heard that if you let the bulb plants die off on their own that the extra sunlight and watering will help them survive the winter and make them healthier the next year.  So, just like my tulips, I’m letting the daylilies and gladiolas continue to just be green sprigs in the flowerbed until they start dieing, and then I’ll put some other bushy plants in their current spots for the fall months, so right now it doesn’t look like much, but next year you can be quite sure it those flowers will look amazing .  And I actually like the fact that it hasn’t been edged and the grass is tall along the border. Sure it may look a little tall from the street view and up close, but the tall bermuda grass up there will only make the grass stronger and help it put out more runners to make it thicker before winter comes along and makes it dormant for a few months.