Playing with light

Our house has some pretty great light for pictures, especially our play room. Since I take a lot of pictures in the play room, I thought I'd play around with the light in the family room downstairs. I've been shooting in manual for about a month now and am FINALLY getting the hang of it, though white balance always seems to throw me. Hence the unnatural skin tones I sometimes end up with. The beauty of digital is that you can adjust it after the fact, making me look WAY cooler than I actually am.

The dimple!! It kills me.

I think this is my favorite shot from this session.

Despite the ridiculous amount of light in this photo, I like it.

Hank's first haircut

Before:

After:

Doesn't he look like a little man now? I swear, he looks a whole year older with short hair.

It's funny, with Johnny we took him to a special kid's salon for his first haircut. He sat in a seat shaped like a little car and held on to the steering wheel while the experienced stylist cut his hair nicely with a fade and everything. I snapped pictures of the before, during and after.

The second child? I held him while John buzzed his head with our clippers at home. Number 4 all over please. And really? HE LOOKS ADORABLE. And we saved $30. Win.

Hank is 11 months old!

I'm 11 months old!

Well, I'm a toddler now. It's official. This past month I went from taking a couple of steps to walking full-time. It's really great because I can carry stuff around with me from room to room. Like Johnny's treasured foam numbers. I LOVE picking those up and walking around with them. The biggest problem with walking is that it's an awful lot farther to fall when Johnny pushes me over. Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger and I'm already pretty tough.

I'm really enjoying putting small things in containers and taking them out and then putting them back in. Also? Tupperware with lids? Fascinating. I love to sit down with a bowl and put the top on it and then take it off over and over. The lid just... fits on it. Amazing. 

I'm making all sorts of great noises and have become even better at mimicking. I have my "monster noise" where I growl at you and I like to do this in the car. Or when I hear Daddy blowing his nose in the shower, I'll echo him with my monster noise. Mommy thinks it's hilarious. I say mama and dada and make n, go, ga, and w noises as well. I'm quite the chatterbox! But I have to be in order to keep up with Johnny.

Sleeping hasn't been going too well. I'm usually up at 5am and then I take two 45 minute naps during the day (if Mommy's lucky) and go down for bed around 6:30pm. I REFUSE to go to bed any later than that. For awhile, Mommy tried to push back my bed time, so I just started waking up earlier in the morning. Did you know that she can be pretty angry and mean at 4:30am? Anyway. I used to sleep through the night, but now I wake up about every two and a half hours. Finally, Mommy will give up around 4am and bring me to bed with her, where I reward her with another hour or so of sleep. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks? I think I've effectively trained Mommy at this sleep thing. I have certainly let her know who's boss!

29 months!

I'm now 29 months old!

The biggest news in my life is I'm actually starting to recognize words by sight now... which means I'm on my way to reading! I know my numbers (still up to 100) and all of my letters (plus the sounds they make thanks to YouTube) and now I'm remembering which letters go together to make certain words. I've known the word "Vons" for awhile now, I mean, it is my favorite store, so I should know the name of it. Now I know other words like "cow" and "circle" and "Chobani"... Daddy came into my room last week and found the word "Chobani" written out with my big cut-out letters on my floor. What can I say? It's my favorite yogurt.

I'm still not very interested in leaving the house. I'll go to the occasional park and I'll sit outside on the lawn with Mommy and Hank for a little while, but then I'm ready to go back in the house and play with my letters and numbers.

One thing that I've started doing is acting out videos I've seen. Mommy takes lots of videos with her phone (and never shares them here... bad Mommy!) and I like to watch them and then act them out. Mommy thinks it's hilarious. She especially likes it when I fake laugh to imitate her laughing in the video. I'm pretty funny, what can I say?

My food preferences have been shrinking and in flux for quite awhile now, but I still have some basic likes and dislikes.
Likes: blackberries, bagels, Greek yogurt, Havarti cheese (don't even TRY to give me that Cheddar crap), French toast, Cheerios, yogurt pretzels, quesadillas, beef, strawberries, broccoli (occasionally), sweet potato fries, and the occasional banana.
Dislikes: eggs (sometimes), any veggie but broccoli, raspberries, tofu.

This is what desperation looks like.

Life has been a little... crazy lately. I got the stomach flu a few weeks back and John had to stay home from work for two and a half days to take care of me and the boys. I've been playing catch up since then and am FINALLY getting to the point where the laundry is getting done in a timely fashion and I'm making dinner almost every night again.

While I've been playing catch up, the boys have started trying to kill each other. Well, not so much Hank trying to kill Johnny. It's Johnny trying to injure Hank. It starts out with Johnny giving Hank a hug and ends with Hank prostrate on the floor and Johnny lying on Hank's head. Sometimes it's obvious that there isn't any malice intended, it's just that Johnny doesn't know how strong he is and how Hank gets hurt. Other times it seems that Johnny's intent is to bash Hank's head into the wall. Or wrought-iron fence. Or tile floor. Or toilet.

So, whenever I can find a way that the boys can do their own thing and ignore each other, I pounce on it. And it usually ends up looking like this:

Yes, that's Johnny taking his fourth bath of the day at 1pm. And yes, that's Hank playing in the toilet. I'm desperate to find these 10-minute oases where I can have a glass of water and a granola bar and stop trying to keep the boys away from each other. Even if that means one or both of the boys may end up with hepatitis. Like I said, desperation.