Happy 237th Birthday, US Navy!

Luke totally doesn't serve on ships, but this is an awesome picture anyway. Hoorah Navy!

Wouldn't This Make You Dizzy?

We were waiting for Apple's turn for swim lessons. She is a really wiggly kid and can't sit still for more than two seconds, but I had never seen her do this before. It was so funny. She'd already been doing it for 3 or 4 minutes before I started filming it. She never noticed me.

Strawberry's 10th Birthday

My sweet Strawberry hit the double digits last week. Insane! She always gets very antsy about the days leading up to her birthday because she is usually the youngest in her class and she hates everyone being a year older than her. I think it stems from Kindergarten when she was still four for a couple of weeks and the kids who were five wouldn't play with her until her birthday. Children are terrible.

So this is how her birthday started out. Not a happy camper. We had this series of unfortunate events. She really wanted to go to this nice little restaurant for breakfast that we had been to once before because they had this amazing french toast. Well, they totally switched bread they used to just regular bread so it was basically what she gets at home. She was a little bummed, but determined to be positive about it. So then we head down to DC so we could go to the National Zoo. Except we accidentally took the road to Baltimore and didn't realize it until we were almost there. So we had to backtrack quite a bit. Then we decided to take the train so we parked at a Metro station. It turns out that there was an outage that day so everyone had to get off at one stop and jump onto a bus so stops that would normally have taken five minutes took half an hour. It was supposed to start raining at 4:00 so were were definitely cutting into our zoo time. So we finally get to the zoo and head straight for the bathroom because Mango hadn't gone since we left our house. Well, she had recently developed a phobia of public toilets and totally panicked. Luke had taken her into the men's room to avoid the huge line for the women and I could hear her in there screaming. After a couple of minutes, he brought her back out. She'd had a huge accident and was hysterical. I had made it up to the front of the line by this point so I could take her in with me. My mother's instinct had kicked in that morning and I had brought an extra pair of panties and shorts, which I totally never do because she hasn't had an accident in months. I got her cleaned up as well as I could. She still had stinky shoes, but I couldn't make her go barefoot. So we finally get out into the zoo. The whole purpose of our visit had basically been to go see the pandas. As soon as Strawberry had found out they were there, she had wanted to go. So we head straight there and half of the area is closed because a new baby panda had been born a couple of days previously. (Unfortunately, the new baby died the next day. We were devastated). We got one quick glimpse of one of the pandas that walked into view for a second and that was it. We were all having a pretty terrible day.

I was tempted to just give up and go home, and probably would have if our car was there. But we decided to just go ahead and keep going. It was our first time to this zoo so we didn't know what was there. It turned out to be pretty amazing. They have put a lot of effort into making the habitats really nice and the animals all seem really well cared for. The best part turned out to be the lions. Usually big cats just sit there, but after we watched the female lions for a couple of minutes, two of them suddenly jumped up and started playing around and kept us entertained for quite a while. The apes were really cool too. One orangutan walked up to the window and was interacting with people on the other side of the glass. Apple managed to wiggle her way through the crowd until she was right next to it. And the aquarium was amazing. Strawberry totally perked up and her birthday turned out to not be a disaster. So yay! I did have to take Mango to the bathroom one more time before we got on the train. I had to sit her on the toilet and then just hug her tightly until she went. She was screaming at me, but as soon as she went, it turned into exhausted laughing and she was very proud of herself. Silly kid. Thankfully, the rain held off until we were on the bus. It came down hard after that so we were really lucky we got out of there when we did.

We stopped at a bike store on the way home as a surprise. We told her that we were going to take her somewhere special and she somehow got it into her head that we were finally going to let her get a second piercing in her ears. She said that she was so excited that she was shaking. I have no idea where that came from, but she was pretty cool with the bike instead. This one has gears. Oooo-ooo. We had to stop and pick up a cake too and didn't make it home until about 8:00 when she finally got to open presents. We spent the rest of the night playing Settlers Jr. which she loved. So even though it was a crazy day, she was still pretty with how her special day turned out.

We waited to have her party until the next week because she wanted to take some friends to see Hotel Translyvania. I've decided that is a great way to have a party. It was just me and 7 tweens, but they kept each other happy and I didn't have to come up with a theme or activities. We had pizza and M&M cookies and then they had a farting-noise contest in the car as I drove them home.

Anyways, we really did try to make this birthday a special one for her. You don't turn 10 every day, hey? I can still remember perfectly the first time I saw the scrunched up little face of my first child. I had ended up having to have an emergency C-section after 12 hours of labor and the contrast was very intense between how traumatic that was and how breathtakingly wonderful it was to meet this new little person. She was and has always been such a bundle of joy and is growing into such an amazing young woman. She is so smart and strong and determined and so full of love and concern for everyone around her. I love this kid so much and am so grateful for her.

Photographing a 3-Year-Old

When I was going through the pictures of the kids, it was really funny seeing how the ones of Mango were turning out. I have no idea what I'm doing and my technique is to just take as many pictures as I can and hope one turns out. Out of 400 photos, I had maybe 20 that were really good. When I had a film camera, I would try harder, but with digital, I just snap away. I need to take a class, but this is working okay for now. But Mango was being very difficult. She's started her Terrible Threes with a vengeance and is just annoyed with me all the time. She wants to do what she wants to do and really doesn't like being bossed around. She won't ride in the cart anymore at the store. She wants to buckle herself and dress herself and be in charge of everything. It's all very healthy, but not great when I'm trying to get her to smile for the camera. She would start out overdoing it and then get frustrated and annoyed at me. She was also getting mad because it was breezy and her hair was blowing in her face.

All of my pictures were like this group. It was so funny. But I wasn't getting anything I could use. They were cute, for sure, but most of her smiles were forced and she was getting tired and cranky. Or I'd get a good one and her hair would all be in her face. I had an epiphany just as we decided to give up and go home. I had Luke lay down on his back and then set her on his stomach and had him bounce her up and down. She was laughing so hard and I finally got some real smiles out of her. Most of them turned out blurry, but I got a couple that were perfect.

Anyway, it was fun. I really need to figure out lighting though. And settings. And lenses. I want those pictures where their eyes really pop.