Lily loves dogs

And to prove it, here's a video for your viewing enjoyment!
Don't worry, she doesn't actually hit Mary (the dog), she's just really excited and can't keep her arms still. :)

Another post coming soon, I promise. For real this time!

Playing around with pictures

So as some of you already know, I really really like the site thepioneerwoman.com and read her everyday. I already blogged once about a recipe I found on her cooking page, but today I was looking at her photography page and wanted to give what she suggested a try. Actually, it's what Jodi Friedman of MCP Actions suggested, since she wrote the article today. I'm kind of hoping she'll come and look at this post and tell me what she thinks! :) The article I'm talking about is here.

And for those of you who don't want to go over there and look at that, the article was about the "Rule of Thirds." I've heard that it's much more pleasing to look at a picture that isn't completely centered, but for some reason I always center my pictures anyway. So I thought I'd take a picture similar to the picture that Jodi plays around with, and do some of the same crops, and see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to convince myself that I really should start not-centering things anymore.

Here's the original. Very much centered, as you can see. Her eyes are in the top third though, which is a good thing according to Jodi. I like that her eyes exactly follow the line where the grass and trees meet. Maybe that's just me though?

Trying to get Lily in the right third of the picture. Obviously had to cut of most of her legs (which is probably why it wouldn't have occurred to me on my own to crop it like this - getting the whole body is good, right?), but I actually do like how there is a sense that you can follow her line of sight farther. And see how long her cute hair is getting in the back.

Here I tried to get Lily's line of sight right in the middle of the picture. But because I didn't want to cut her head in half (I thought it looked funny) her eyes are almost back in the middle of the picture, instead of the right third. At least, I think. :)- I kind of like it all the same, though it does make her head look kind of huge. I do like it better than the original, actually. It's more artistic to me.

In her next example, Jodi went in really close, so I did too. I think it's cute, but I also think I need more megapixels in my camera to get this close. :) The grass and trees are starting to look a little funny.

Next Jodi tried some square crops. Her first was like this, with her subject to the far right side. I personally don't like how the grass seems more important than Lily, but that's probably the Mom in me talking.

This is too close for me, even though it's not quite as close as Jodi's subject was in this crop. To me it emphasizes too much that Lily doesn't grow hair on the side of her head yet!

Vertical. Lily's head isn't as far right as Jodi's example, but that's because I don't like cropping out her soft fluffy baby hair in the back. It still has the same amount of open space though - I like it. I like how you get a little more of the ...grr can't think of the word... depth! Depth of the picture with the grass running back to the trees behind her. (Sorry, pregnant brain!)

I'm not really liking this one. As Jodi says of her example of this crop, "there's no place for your eyes to go. " And going in this close, as least for me and this picture, mutes the really pretty green of the grass into a duller shade, and I don't like that either.

Well, with a higher megapixel camera again, or just starting in much closer when I originally took the shot, this would probably be a lot better, but it looks too grainy/pixelated to me. Plus her skin just takes up so much of the space. It's not my favorite.

So, um, in conclusion... I don't take half bad pictures with my point and shoot, but I could point it a little better. I'm definately convinced that my pictures don't always need to be exactly centered. I think my favorites of all the crop is this one:
 
the very first crop I made. I like that you can see more of her body, and still follow her line of sight out into more open space than the centered original. I decided I also like the picture right above this one, the very last one I did with Lily so close, just because it's really sweet, but visually it's not as appealing to me as the others.

For those of you who actually made it all the way to the end, Thanks!! Your comments would be appreciated (esp. Natalie, since you're a photographer now and all, and I love your photos!). And I'll do another post soon with more pictures of Lily that aren't all the same. :)

Pay It Forward

The first three people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, some homemade goodies from me or a little special gift. You won't know what it will be or when it will arrive, so you'll never know exactly what to expect.  The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then sit back and anticipate the arrival of your goodies/gift! Please submit in an e-mail or on the comment, your address, if I don't have it already. Remember that only the first three comments will receive a gift from me, so be quick!

I got this idea from my friend Stephanie, and didn't read thoroughly enough, I guess, to realize that I was supposed to write this blog before I commented on her blog. However, as I'm still the only person to comment on it, hopefully she'll forgive me. I don't know why people aren't commenting on her blog, I think it's an awesome idea. So I hope people take the opportunity to comment here and Pay it Forward on their own blogs!

Recent Happenings

Lily has decided that she is a climber. Well, she decided that awhile ago, probably, but as of yesterday, she has a new conquest: our dining room chairs. :( Of course, this doesn't make her unhappy, just the parents who have one more thing to worry about. It's pretty cute, if I'm being completely honest. She sure is proud of herself once she's standing up on the chair, too.

Half-way there! (please ignore the brown spot on her bum, she sat in something... lol :) )

So happy! She got the Rummikub tiles Mommy and Daddy were trying to play with.

So, in pregnancy news, I'm almost 23 weeks, which is just over 5 months. I'm feeling him kick all the time now. It's still weird to me that with Lily I still hadn't felt her kick at this point. It's also weird to me that everything about this pregnancy is so laid back compared with Lily. By this time with Lily I'd had 3 ultrasounds, I think, and many Dr. appointments. So far with Michael I've only had two Dr. appointments and 1 ultrasound, which should be the only one. It's weird, but I am very grateful that Michael's so healthy and doesn't need all the extra attention.

I had a huge chocolate chip cookie craving a little while ago, and I tried to resist, but it didn't happen. So I ended up making like, 4 1/2 dozen cookies. I didn't eat them all the first day... but I'm not going to admit how much I actually did eat the first day! Let's just say between me, Ben, and then when the Adams came over for dinner a day or two later, (and yes, probably mostly me) they didn't last more than 3 days.

For anyone who's wondering (cuz I know everybody is), I don't really have a special recipe I use - but I HAVE to use Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips. I usually just use the recipe on the back of the package, and they are sooooo good. They're basically the most expensive chocolate chips at the store, but I'm a chocolate snob... sorry. Actually, I'm not sorry. They are so worth it. Try them. You won't go back. And just stock up when they go on sale. Oh man, I want cookies now just talking about them. Oops.

Lily enjoyed that I made cookies. She was being really clinging at the time, so it was hard to put her down, thus she kept getting samples. Lucky her!

Last week, and the week before that too, actually, Ben, Lily and I all went to the park. I found this park on the shore of Lake Washington in the Jaunita Bay area, and I really like it. It has a nice boardwalk over the lake for bit, some good shore that looks like it would be fun for Lily to splash in this summer, lots of picnic tables, lots of swings and playground stuff for Lily, and Lily's favorite, lots of ducks! So Ben and I wanted to have a picnic awhile ago when it was so sunny, so we grabbed some Subway after I picked him up from work, and went straight there before it got too late. It was lots of fun, and Lily enjoyed everything: the swinging, just lots of walking (which she is always up for) and watching us feed the ducks. Getting her to sit still for the picnic part was kind of hard, so we had to rush through that part. Here are pictures!

I know you can't really see Ben that well, but I like how the sun silhouettes him. It was a very pretty day.

Looking up at a seagull. She thought all the birds she saw there were ducks.

I saw this photo and my first thought was "Who's that big pregnant woman in the background?" Duh, it's me! I guess I'm not used to seeing myself from the side like that - my ponytail threw me off too. It's so short!

This picture is kind of dark, but I like it. She was so happy to be at the park.

Ben said I needed to put one of myself in here, so here it is. I like the sky. :)

Wheee!!

I actually really like this one of us.

Lily right after going down the slide. She's not really into the slide yet, but Ben was pretty excited. :)

We really really enjoyed the sunny days we were getting for awhile. I hope they start coming more and more frequently. That would make me happy. :)

PS - Tell me if you like my new background. Ever since I found out I was having a boy, I've been wanting something blue. I found this, but I don't know if I'm going to stick with it. ??

The red wire or the yellow wire??

There was a very tense moment in the Lemmon household today. The events that led up to it are as follows:

For her birthday Ben bought Lily one of those riding toys you sit on and push yourself around with your feet, a Dora the Explorer thing with lots of songs. All the buttons for the songs worked for the first 3 days or so, and then they started petering out, and eventually the only thing that would happen when you pushed the buttons was a pathetic "mis am..." (the beginning of "mis amigos") or "beep b...". It was really starting to get on our nerves, so Ben completely opened it up, found all the little gears, found the one that was supposedly messing it up, and took it out so it would work again. And it did! For about 2 days. :( Sadness ensued.

Lily got a little tired of it, and didn't play with it for awhile, which was ok with us cuz it was seriously annoying. But today she got it out and kept trying all the buttons, hoping one of the songs would work. So Ben got out his screwdriver again, and as I'm washing my hands after changing Lily I hear, "Do I cut the red wire or the yellow wire?"

It totally reminded me of every movie/tv show I've ever seen where everyone stands anxiously around the sweating person trying to defuse the bomb but unsure which wire to cut. I wasn't sure if he was serious or not, but it turned out he was. "Either I'll guess right and it'll start working again, or I'll totally ruin it and it won't annoy us any more." He figured either way we win. :)

He cut the yellow wire, pushed the button, and TADA!! Success!! My husband is a genius! And he made his daughter very happy.

In other news, I've got pictures of the rag quilt I made for Lily. Here they are!

The front.

The back. The dark color is a brown, if you can't tell, not black.

Close-up of the ragginess. I just love how it turned out, and it really is soft and cuddly. Lily seems to like it too.

So right after I finished the blanket, Ben told me I should make another one for baby Michael (though we didn't know it was Michael at the time). But I said I needed a break from sewing so I wouldn't be annoyed with having to do all the cutting and sewing again so soon. But after we found out it was Michael we were expecting, I got all gung-ho again. So the very next day (the 14th, actually) we went to Walmart together and picked out fabric for a baby boy rag quilt for Michael. I'm really excited about it, and just today I got all the squares cut out so I can start sewing tomorrow. Well, maybe tomorrow. The house is getting kind of messy... we'll see what I actually end up doing. Anyway, here are all the squares of the fabric that I'm using.

 

Hopefully it'll be really cute. The three plain fabrics will be fore the back, and the 7 prints on the left will be on the front. I'm thinking now I maybe should have gotten more blue and another, maybe brighter, green, but the Walmart selection, although seriously cheaper which I appreciated, was pretty limited. I think it'll look pretty good once it's put together.

And finally, Lily is already 13 months and a week or so. Not that that is super exciting or anything, but it's just weird that it's going so fast. I've probably said this tons of times, but it just seems like she is growing so so fast. She wants to do everything by herself lately, and she is so opinionated! She gets very stubborn about what she will and won't eat, and she likes to make the decisions of what she is going to wear, and she'll even tell me when she wants to go outside and see the ducks (who live in the little creek behind our condo). Just lots of stuff like that, and it's constantly making me think, "Wow, she is so not a baby anymore."

Here's my latest favorite pictures. :)

She thought it was cool that I was letting her wear my hat, so she kept it on longer than she keeps on her own hats. I'm so glad she's not growing out of her dimples! I hope she ever does.

 
I love this!! She's constantly doing this, grabbing some sort of clothing or dish towel, wrapping it around her neck and then posing with her arm like that. She KNOWS she's so cute!

But this...
is my absolute favorite! She'd just taken off the hat, and I asked her to look at me and smile (which never works, but I keep trying), and she turned right toward me and made this face! What a goose!!! I completely adore this little girl.

We know what the gender is!

And we're not going to tell you! Ok, just kidding... it's a boy!! Ben and I were completely surprised, because we were both fairly certain it was a girl. So wrong, but that's ok. Now we have to start referring to him as a him instead of a her! Sorry buddy.

For the name, we've chosen Michael James. Michael is my dad's name, and James is Ben's dad's name. We really liked the idea of naming our first boy after our fathers. Our fathers seem to like the idea too. :)

Ben's really excited to have a baby that'll look like him. Now we just have to figure out how to paint the room Michael and Lily will share so neither one of them get a gender complex.

Ultrasound pictures:

Profile. He was being really camera shy and it was hard to get any of his face - though he didn't mind showing off his boy parts the moment she put the ultrasound thingy on my belly!

Cute little foot!

He was measuring exactly 20 weeks, 2 days, only one day bigger than we were guessing from my last period date, so he's right where we expected, and my due date is still July 2nd. So far this pregnancy hasn't had any complications, unlike Lily's where I was going in for ultrasound every month or more often starting at 17 weeks. It's been nice though that this time around is so much more normal and stress-free.

We're having a boy!!! Can you believe it?? :)

I'm 20 weeks!

I'm 20 weeks, I'm 20 weeks, I'm 20 weeks!!!!!! I really didn't think I could wait until I was halfway, it seemed like it would take forever... and it did. But now I'm halfway!! And tomorrow Ben and I get to go to the ultrasound and find out for sure what the baby is! (Ben and I, but especially Ben, are fairly certain we already know what it is, but we'll tell you if we were right or not after tomorrow!) I'm so excited. I'm also excited because we are getting a babysitter for the afternoon/evening, and going to go on a date and celebrate Valentine's Day a day early. We're going to The Melting Pot, and all I can say about that is "Mmmmmm." I've been craving it forever. Yum yum yum. Sorry, pregnant cravings showing. Anyway, tomorrow should be a fantastic day!

In other news, a few weeks ago I came across this and decided that I wanted to make my own rag quilt for Lily. It took me a long time to actually go out and buy the fabric (and I spent way too much - next time I'm going to Walmart for the fabric), and then even longer to actually finish cutting and sewing everything together. But I finally finished just a couple of days ago, and I'm really proud of it! It's my first real sewing project since I was like, 8, and I basically did it all by myself (though Ben was very helpful when I was a little hesitant about making mistakes, and cutting all the seams into rags). I don't have a picture right now, only cuz I haven't taken a picture yet, but I will soon.

Cuz what's a blog without a picture of Lily? She's enjoying mac and cheese here. :)