On Language

Let's be honest, my son lacks in verbal skills. He understands every word you say, and will follow direction (or yell NO to not follow directions), but he has a difficult time verbalizing himself. I should've pushed the sign language, but I assumed his language skills would quickly meet up with those of his sister. She was putting 2-3 words together around 14 months, and holding conversations well before her 2nd birthday. I know she was ahead, but E has been 2 for a month and has very few decipherable words. I know some of his language, and hand gestures and process of elimination works itself out, but it is really frustrating for all involved. He looks at you with his ginormous blue eyes, a look or earnest on his face, and says, "whay go gobbly go?" I get so tired of asking him to repeat himself 20 times, that I usually shrug and say "I don't know honey, let's go figure it out." Knowing I have zero idea what he's referring to, we can search the house until something sparks what he is asking for and success! Or we just go back and forth until I distract him with something else to do.

I know there's nothing actually wrong with him, I know he'll pick up conversations some day. As for now, I have an extremely verbal 4 year old and a 2 year old that is fluent in a french-farsi-spanish-congolese combination. Let's just say he's gifted in that.

Thanks

As I'm about to enter another busy season of photography, I want to thank you all once again for being so supportive. I am constantly blown away by the internet community, forums, blogs, advice columns, and friends that inspire me daily. I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, soaking up tons of the talent I find out there. It's inspiring to me, it pushes me in ways I've always wanted to be pushed, but hadn't quite figured out how to get there. And I know I'm not "there" so to say, just on the path I want to be on. I am so in love with what I do, I can't believe it took me so long to get to this place. But that's how life is, and I am honored to be accepted into people's lives with my passion. So if it's reading this or my other blogs, being my friend in real life, a client of my business, or a passerby, thanks. I'm so glad you going on this journey with me...

Gone Fishin

I know I'm incredibly boring here and it stinks. I had a busy weekend of work and jury duty the past few days. I promise for something new soon, but I need to catch up with my kids. When gone, I miss them dearly. Though getting over an hour for lunch and time to read an entire book was a mini-staycation come true.

On Hair

I don't know about y'all out there, but winter makes me feel ugly. The layers, the lack of shaving, the all around forgiveness of anything beautiful to wear, makes me grumpy. It's hard to put on some knee-high boots (flat and practical, not heely and sexy), a bulky sweater, and jeans and feel like a hot mama. And this weather does one extra bonus of suckiness to make me feel ugly: flat, Bieberish hair. Yes, that is, in Justin Bieber. Ever since I chopped almost a foot of hair off my head, I've been in a short hair rut. I have to maintain it more, which I just don't have the time to do. So it gets all shaggy and choppy and unkempt and ugly. Key word of the day here: ugly. This is what I hate about winter, it's a never-ending rut of unattractive style. Ug.

(at the computer today, trying to look somewhat attractive while hating my current style. and don't ask what I'm doing with my hand. i really have no idea.)

So I guess I'm growing my hair out, if for anything, a lack of time or care to do anything else about it. I'm tired of hating my hair, of wearing hats and headbands, and of attempting to style a less Justin Bieberish cut. P.S. I'm not seeking compliments here, just venting on hating my hair. Seriously, I'm soooo over short hair. Though I remember not really caring for my long hair either. A girl just can't win, can she?

On Being well-lit

2 posts in one day, it's a Friday miracle!!! I wanted to post a quick tip for all you budding photographers out there. Light is very, very, very important in photography. So much so, that I am still learning about it every time I pick up my camera. How can it be that I am still learning this 8 years into my photography career? Well, because light is the most integral part of making an emotion from an image. Light can be your worst enemy (1 pm high summer sun) or your best friend (sunset on a fall day). It can blow out an image and duck behind a cloud to immediately change your exposure. And if you're like me, you shooting on manual. Oh, you don't? You could, but it's much more time consuming and takes lots of practice. Anyway, light. I love it. I love getting the catch light in some one's eye, or blowing out the sun behind

some one's head. But sometimes, lately, on cold, wintry days when the sun is elusive, the light is a bit more tricky. Actually, the light on these days are perfect for shadowless faces, and looking out the window images. I digress, sometimes you need to supplement.

This is our lesson for the day: supplementing light, or fill light. The photo on the left is no fill, the window is to Easton's right, and there is a strong shadow on his left. It's cute, expressive, moody, but his left eye is lost in the shadow. Sad. The simple, cheap solution? The photo on the right is a few seconds later, I held up a white piece of paper about a foot away from his left side. See how that reflection adds some pop, fills the shadows, and adds definition to his left eye? I know, it's hard to hold a DLSR and a piece of paper and keep your 2 year old in line. But ya know what else works? A white wall, a husband with a white shirt, a 4 year old holding the paper, anything for light to bounce off of.

Another idea is have your subject face the window. This creates a catch-light in both eyes and is soft and even. But you knew that already.

Buttons

We've been playing, have you been following? Adventures of our homeschooling family here.

If he is ever piloting the plane/spaceship you happen to be in, you'd better hope there are parachutes involved.

Engage

Today, in the freezing, blustery conditions, I had 2 photography sessions. Oh, did you have any doubts that I am crazy? Ha! You really haven't been reading for long. Anyway, here are some shots from my longtime friends, Zach & Amanda. They are getting marries exactly 10 months from today, on 11-11-11. How awesome is that? More here.

Note For The Unknowing

Dear parents of rowdy 2 year old boys,

Please go ahead and skip watching the Kung Fu Panda movie unless you want your life to be filled with wild and amateurish kung fu moves.

Love,

Your New BF

Attack of My Stomach

So I'm going to provide a bit of a warning here: I have been off gluten for 4 days now (well, this is the 4th day) and I'm really hungry. Deliriously hungry, constant grumbly tummy, hallucinogenic hungry. Ok, it's a bit of a stretch, but I'm more off the rocker than normal. Did you see that? I'm not even making sentences in a formulated fashion! That's my warning!

Backpedaling... I have always had a sensitive stomach. I'm talking hours in the bathroom because of pains in my stomach type of sensitivity. And it's never made sense, or coincided with anything specific. Some days, I have little to no pain, while others it's debilitating. Lately, it's been pretty bad, and I just blamed it on the gorge-fest that is the holiday season. Ya know, eating lots of yummy crap, drinking too much, and throwing the digestive track totally off it's normal path. So I did some research and self-diagnosed said tummy with a wheat gluten allergy. Seems unconventional to self-diagnose? Maybe, but that's how I roll, peeps. Co-pay my ass, I'm going to utilize Dr. Google for treatment.

Anyway, most sites agree that blood testing for celiac's disease usually comes back negative, but that doesn't mean you don't have a total sensitivity to wheat gluten. No, the best way to test the theory on yourself is to eliminate gluten from your diet. For a month. Once your stomach is flushed out and the lining has healed from years of toxic invasion, you slowly incorporate it back into your diet and test how it effects you. Some people can withstand small amounts of gluten a day, others realize it's been the source of pain and evil in their systems forever.

And do you know what? As day 4 is halfway over, I haven't had 1 stomach ache yet. No gas, no cramping, no pains, nothing. Zip. Nada. Does this mean gluten has been my forever nemesis? Maybe not solely, but probably mostly. You see, my gluten-loving friends, it is in everything. EVERYTHING!!! Pretty much all snacks, breads, cereals, pastas, frozen meals of any kind, pizza, crackers, hot-freakin-chocolate, soups, chips, pretzels, tortillas, soy sauces, fermented liquors of any kind, cookies, cake, candy, everything. EVERYTHING!!! The list of foods to avoid is really really really really long. The list of foods that are safe is really really really really short. So basically my life sucks. You may commence crying.

In conclusion, I can't eat anything. Or I can't eat anything good. I've been eating lots of fruit, vegetables, rice, rice noodles, brown rice pasta, beans, protein, and cheese. It pretty much is ruining my life (insert dramatic violin sounds here). So next time you sit down to your conventional meal, and your stomach feels all good and full afterwards, think of me and my suffering. And how I'm always hungry. And how I was not prepared to go on any sort of diet and I better get skinny after all this nonsense.

P.S. to show how crazed I am, upon spell-checking this, I messed up over 10 words. that's a lot for me, my brain is eating itself now. thanks gluten, thanks a lot.

New Blog

And here's the link. This will be my blog to chronicle our adventures in homeschooling our 2 young kids. Please skip it if you have no interest in our budding adventure, but come on over if you want to follow my crazy!!!

The New Year, Our New School (or lack thereof)

Happy 2011 to you all! This will be an exciting year around our household, for today is our first official day of homeschooling! I'm going to create a separate blog to chronicle all our endeavors, a virtual diary of our doings. Because who needs more blogs? Apparently I do! 3 is just not enough, let's go for 4! But seriously, I haven't quite figured out how to manage my business life and my personal life and now our homeschooling life and I don't want to abandon the random quirks of this blog (it was my first you know). I don't give this address out to any customers, so it's all friend and virtual friends, which are really the same in my eyes.

So, anylongsentenceway, here we go. Sylvia is a preschool drop-out, which is pretty hilarious. I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders when we made our decision to homeschool her, and her stress level shot way down. No more rigid schedules, no more having to be somewhere at very specific times, no more Catholic agenda, no more money sent to the Pope (I mean, not directly, but kind of). No more missing events due to school days or practices or rehearsals. No more.

We are not conventional people, but there is a growing population of Americans that aren't completely satisfied with the condition of our educational system. So what the hell can I do about it? Well, I, personally, can choose to not feed into it. Since we are capable of me staying home with the kids (and working part-time with my business and other photographers), we are able to make this choice. Many disgruntled people are forced to work full-time jobs, and though they may be unsatisfied with their neighborhood schools, they don't have this option. Private schools are expensive and have a very privileged feel to them (since mostly the privileged can attend) and Sylvia's walking distant school is slated to be torn down to build "authentic" south city condos. Right, because we don't have enough actually authentic homes vacant left & right. Tangent!

We are going to play this year by year, with the notion that our opinions are allowed to change at any time, as with Sylvia's. She may want to attend school later, and that's ok. But I'm tired of the routine, narrow guidelines, restricted paths, and regurgitation of traditional schooling. And that was only in preschool! Imagine my outrage for future years to come!