Cara's World: August 2009

Catching Up-July 15-more home arrival pics

Catching up-July 15-Arrival home!

I was explaining that there was going to be lots of excited people at the house that would be holding and kissing her. She said, "oooh."

Heat killed the welcome home balloons.

Talia meets Kate for the first time.

And Grandma meets Kate for the first time.

Catching up-July 13th-Last night in Hot Springs

We found this delicious Mexican restaurant. It has beautiful murals on the walls and these ornate chairs (you can kinda see one behind mom in the second picture). We feasted on delicious food-so much more delicious than we expected to find. Even had a guacamole/green pepper dip that came with the chips. Yum.

Even Kate got into the act-8 days old and hogging the chips!

Zoo Date

Some of you know that my biggest challenge with two kids (so far and right now) is bedtime. Talia LOVES her baby sister, but is struggling with the massive reduction of exclusive mom/Talia time. That manifests at bedtime. She may also be afraid Kate and I will do something that she will miss. Bedtime is a nightmare some days. It is also Kate's fussy time. Not colic fussy, but just your regular fussy. Talia switches back and forth from having a fit to her tummy is hurting so much she "is going to die!" The most recent behavior modification technique (remember I am a special educator...I have techniques) is to let her earn time with me by going and staying in bed. Each time she gets out to tell me about a phantom pain, she loses minutes. (Thanks, Fred Jones). This week was the first trial of the most recent attempt at control of the 5 year old. We were working towards time at the zoo. She earned 1 hr and 27 minutes. Much better than last week. She earned the full time on Thursday evening after the zoo, then has spent the weekend with the grandparents, so no idea what tonight will bring.

So, we get to the zoo, see the flamingoes and then....

Owen and Christian!!! This is the fallout after Ring around the Rosy (yes, that was random.)

They totally made the trip 50 times more fun.

Still learning

So, some of you know I took a class at MTC about photography. So, since the class was talk, talk, talk, I've spent the 6+ months since figuring things out. Actually its been a great little process...tweaking, manipulating, etc. My new trick is changing the white balance. This is within a few minutes of each other, the second one being after I changed to "cloudy." Going to embark on a photoshoot of Kate today to see if I can get a couple of good shots without taking her to a photo studio at the mall.