Happy Birthday Tommy!

It's my brother's birthday today. Every few years it falls on Friday the 13th. Ooooh! Spooky!

I remember when we were living in the Lapeer house and our cat ran away from home. It was an outdoors cat, so I don't know why we were so surprised when he took off. I was sooo sad about it! For days I waited for that cat to come home.

Then Tommy's birthday came. On Friday the 13th. And we were all getting ready for his birthday party when the neighbor calls to say he found our cat. Or something like that. I was little. I just remember that after Mom got off the phone with someone, she said that our cat was found. So that Friday the 13th was actually a LUCKY day.

Hopefully this was another lucky one for you, brother!

In honor of his birthday, I did a Mohawk photo shoot with Olivia and Lucy for his birthday card. Unfortuately Lucy's 'hawk did not translate well onto film. Oh well!

As soon as I gave my name to the girl at the photo counter at Walgreens, where I was picking up my prints, she said, "I LOVE the mohawk photos! They are so cool!" Then she went on to tell me that she did the same thing with her son (who is same age as O) and how her fiance went bananas over them. He insisted that they be made into 8x10's and framed.

What can I say? Mohawks are awesome.

And mohawks on babies are priceless.

Here are some gems from the photo shoot. I hope you got your card already, brother, so that this doesn't spoil the surprise. But I couldn't wait any longer to post!!:

Getting started:

"Mother, are we doing ANOTHER photo shoot? Seriously. If you make me do another one of these I swear I'm going to feed Piglet to the dog."
"You shall put the camera down and stack blocks with me instead!"

The one baby and dog shot. Lucy was kind of nervous about sitting in a rocking chair. She had been even more nervous at the sound of hairspray being dispensed into her fur. She is so obedient!

Reflections in being a caged baby...

Oh, crap. Now that I've busted all my friends out of jail, who's gonna get ME out??

You know it's hard out here for a punk...

7.) Calendar Girl

Remember that one time, when I learned that my photo was picked to be in the Les Cheneaux 2010 calendar?

I saw said calendar at Safe Harbor Books in Cedarville last week. I got excited and flipped to the month of August, where I expected to see my photo. Instead I saw this lame photo of wooden boats. (I typically would like this photo, but since it was replacing mine, it was lame.)

Dismayed, I relayed this to JB. He then pointed out that my photo wasn’t there because it was the COVER photo.

Der! No wonder the front of the calendar looked so familiar!

Pretty Baby 2009

Last weekend I was in Mayberry for my parents' annual Fourth of July party.

Mom and I ran to the infamous Wingerts for groceries, and there I ran into my old friend Connie. She alerted me to the Pretty Baby contest that the Mayville Sunflower Festival is holding, as she thinks that O could be a contender.

So we're entering her. The rules do not state that you have to be a resident, and since O's grandma and grandpa still live there, I figure it's fair game.

The only problem is picking a photo! We did a baby photo shoot today, which turned out to be difficult because O kept looking off at Lucy, who was patrolling the yard. She is a little too obsessed with dogs, if you ask me.



This one was not in the photo shoot, but she's just so cute when she has her "reading time." Every day she pulls all the board books off of her bottom shelf and reads all by herself. It's quite entertaining to watch/listen to:



This is actually my current favorite photo, but I doubt it would garner a win. I call it "Highway Patrol Baby":



And this one just made me laugh, so I'm sharing it. Who are you yelling at, Bird?

Baby Photo Shoot

(One of several posts covering the last few days.)

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I went home to Mayville to help put on Melissa's baby shower and then we had Mother's Day at our house today. And before I left for Mayville I was hurriedly getting my Mother's Day preparations together. One of the things that I had planned was to take some new photos of Olivia for her grandmothers. Originally, I was going to take her to Sears for portraits since I got a coupon in the mail. I got all excited about this because I am not a good formal portrait photographer myself. But after I went online and looked at their backgrounds, etc., I was not impressed. It just seemed cheesy or something. This perplexes me because I've seen other kids' portrait photos and they don't strike me as cheesy. I also didn't care for JC Penney's set ups, either. ???

So I decided that a trip to Meijer Gardens was in order. Because we were quite busy, the earliest I could get over there was Thursday, which turned out to be a hot, sunny day. I took Olivia in the baby carrier instead of her stroller which turned out to be a bad idea because she is HEAVY, I had to carry my big camera and camera bag, and the gardens cover a HUGE area. Also, because she was in the carrier, she didn't have a good sun shield. Which I didn't consider until AFTER we arrived at the gardens. Fortunately I always carry her sunhat around. But the only arm covering I had was her hoodie, which combined with her outfit, made for quite a warm little girl that made my front side a bit sweaty.

We didn't arrive until around 3:00 because I was waiting for Olivia to take a nap so that she'd be in her best mood for the photos.

She never took a nap.

She wasn't in a good mood.

I got a good first shot which enthused all her Grandmas:



But it went downhill immediately thereafter, with shots that looked like this:



People that walked by would say things like, "Look, how cute!" or "Look at her getting her photo taken!" or "Oh, how fun!" Were they not looking at my child's face? She was crying and and frowning and wanting it to be over. I am quite surprised that no one came up to me and said, "Do you really think you should be doing this? It looks like you're torturing your child." Perhaps these people had been in my shoes before and understood. Fortunately, I had taken some winners earlier in the week so all was well. She's looking more and more like JB:

Calendar Girl

Earlier tonight JB called down to me from the office, saying gravely, "April, you'd better come up here. There's an email that you need to see."

"What is it?" I called back.

"You're not going to like it."

I was quite baffled about what bad email he could receive that I wouldn't like, so I hurried to the computer to read the message.

It said, "hello April,

we have chosen to use your photo that is looking from shore out into a bay."

JB is such a trickster!

It was an email from the Clark Twp Rec Committee (where Cedarville is, in the U.P.), saying that they chose my photo for their 2010 calendar. How cool is that?? I'm sure there weren't scads of entries as it is a very rural area, and considering the lack of grammar consideration in the man's email, I don't know how professional the contest is, but it's still fun to be picked!

Big Mama Photo

So I’ve received a couple of requests for “preggo” pics. It is time that I address this.

I have been avoiding it for two reasons.

1.) I don’t like the words Preggo or Preggers.

Preggo makes me think of Prego and Ragu, the spaghetti sauces. When someone says, “Hey Preggo,” I feel like they are eyeing my belly as if it were some delicious pasta-majesty that they can’t wait to devour. This is creepy.

And Preggers makes me think of some sort of scabby skin disease.

“Did you hear about Sandra? She’s got The Preggers!”

Gasp!

“Oh no! What is she going to do?!???”

Those seem to be quite popular terms, and I understand that I am just neurotic about words. But I will never post a “Preggo Pic.” Unless it’s an image of a bowl of pasta.

There are more words in the English language that I actually abhor. I don’t abhor Preggers—it just makes me uncomfortable—really, who wants to be flaunting a skin disease? I do not share which words I abhor because people have used them against me, namely JB. He likes to throw them down to get under my skin. (This is very rude, JB!) Most of these words relate to babies, so I am kind of nervous about my upcoming baby showers and then the part where I HAVE the baby in real life. I have been pretty successful in not uttering these words but I know that won’t last for long.

2.) I am not that fascinated with photos of pregnant ladies, and so I never think to get one taken of myself. I don’t have the general fascination with pregnancy and babies that most women do. Couple that with the fact that I am always the one behind the camera, and also that I am not photogenic so people are not drawn to taking photos of me, and you get NO PHOTOS OF APRIL! This has always been a bummer for me. It’s very rare that my photo is taken, and I always seem to jack them up because I don’t know how to smile naturally, etc.

However, I will honor those with a curiosity of how the gut is progressing with the best that image that I can muster. It is from the Fourth of July weekend at the Farm. I know what you’ll say…I can’t really see your gut! Yeah, sorry. Nothing I can do about that. To help you get an idea of what I look like today, people say that I look HUGE (like as big as my coworker Lisa, who is due in 2.5 weeks), but I’ve only gained 15 lbs so far (right on target), so I’m not sure where that idea is coming from. I’ve known women who have gained 45, 60, and 90 lbs in pregnancy. THAT, my friends, is HUGE. Also, my doc recently said that I’m hiding things better because I’m so tall. Then the next day a coworker exclaimed how big I looked. IDK. I’ve got 2.5 months left.

I can’t promise any more big mama photos. JB is not particularly interested in them, either, so unless I train Lucy to work my camera, I’m not sure I’ll have much more to share. Sorry, guys!