digitalwoe.com scrapbook

Twitter Updates for 2010-02-28

Lynda — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:01:00 +0000

So far it's like a typical Saturday morning as if Mark were just sleeping in. It's going well. #
Noah's down for a nap already. He's a snotterpus today. #
Elias just asked, "Where Daddy?" #
Elias likes coloring with brown, black, yellow and redthe most. #
I'm ready for my nap now. Yawn. #
Despite Leah's efforts to thwart me, both boys are down for a nap. Hope it sticks for Noah! #
I'm so sick of getting @replies from idiots: @rtlewis777 @femlaw @punkinmoon @ShaGibbs @cag1223 @twilight2000. Wish I could just delete. #
Why won't these brownies make themselves? #
I just talked to Mark. He's about 350 miles away from his parent's house. He's making good time! #
Elias is not yet actually asleep, but seems quite content to hang out in bed. Every once in a while he softly chatters or sings. #
I asked him much earlier if he was ready for a nap. He shushed me with his finger raised to his lips and whispered, "Quiet." #
RT @mental_floss: We lost Mister Rogers 7 years ago today. Here are 15 reasons he was the best neighbor ever — http://bit.ly/b4WmMr #
That's it. I'm preheating the oven. Brownies are being made. #
Brownies are in the oven! #
I smell brownies! #
Dinner is in the oven! (Frozen chicken/veggie/rice bake. Mark's the cook so I'm going for easy town tonight. We did leftovers last night.) #
Noah is a stuffy nosed mess, but he seems to be coping pretty well. #
Elias is playing with duplos. Poor little thing gets so frustrated when he can't get the blocks to stay together right. #
30 minutes until dinner. Wonder if Noah will make it. #
I love listening to Elias sing. #
I can't believe how mellow Noah's being for how stuffed up he is. #
Dinner's over and cleaned up. Elias didn't eat as usual. Next major task is bedtime which is tricky because Noah usually goes first. #
Hearing ElIas tell Swiper to stop swiping is hilarious. He is so concerned. #
Boys in bed; watching Bridezillas. Where do they find these women? #
This Bridezillas is actually kind of sweet. #
Still watching Bridezillas. Dude calls off wedding after an incident-free dance lesson just because it was a dance lesson. Huh? #
This is like the Cops of weddings. #
This chick thinks she can just arrive late to her rehearsal, even though someone else has already reserved the space an hour after her. #
She yells angrily and curses innocent people, absolutely ignoring her 3 year old daughter sitting next to her in the car. poor poor kid. #
OMG. The Bridezilla said her 3yo had to get over herself because she didn't want to put on her dress. ALMOST 3. Just an accessory. #
Vomit. This woman is horrid to her little girl. I wnt to go give Elias a hug. #
This bitch's young nephew goes missing and she's upset it delays her party. "Where's the candy" she says, sugesting a place to look. #
Rofl. This bridezilla quit her job because it was too stressful to do while planning a wedding. #
23 year old Bridezilla forbid her 21 year old fiance from having a bachelor party and makes them have a joint celebration with HER friends. #
Awww. At least this bridezilla is affectionate to her young daughter. #
I had too many brownies today. #
JLo on SNL? I haven't seen any of her skits, but this musical performance is embarrassing. #
I just spoke to Mark. He's settled in at his friend's house and about to get some much needed sleep. I should go to sleep too… #

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Noah, Sick and Sleepy

Lynda — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:27:13 +0000

Project 365 – Day 22

Noah’s getting a tiny bit more fuzz on the top of his head. We think he may start out blond if he ever gets enough to fill in to form a color!

He was sick with this stomach bug yesterday, but seemed a lot better today. He must have been super tired this evening since he was mildly cranky from about 5pm onward. He went out like a light at 7pm and still hasn’t stirred once, as of 12:30am.

He’s been sleeping so well lately. He seems to be really comfortable in the bed and knows that if he needs me, I’ll be there. I love seeing independence take shape. Soon we may try laying him to sleep at night in the pack n play. He’d likely come back to bed with me in the middle of the night if he woke though I would really enjoy some room on my side of the bed to spread out. I have no idea how he does this, but we’ll start out fully on my side of the bed with room to spare and by 4am I’m a quarter of the way into Mark’s side of the bed. And we have a king sized bed! Elias was the same way.

We never even tried moving Elias out of our bed at night until he was 10 months old and started to crawl. For a few weeks prior to that, I’d awake to find him flipped with his feet up near my head, or he would try to climb over top of me half asleep. It was pretty obvious he wanted some space to himself and he had zero problems whatsoever transitioning. I don’t know if it’s time yet for Noah; I guess we’ll see.

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Through my Eyes

Lynda — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:59:44 +0000

Project 365 – Day 21

This was taken through my eyeglasses of this photograph (which is quite a bit better than my photo here leads you to believe!) [I searched specifically for a file with the attribution creative commons license, so hopefully there's no issue with my use of it.]

I was inspired after seeing the same idea in another 365 stream.

I’m not quite happy with how this turned out, but I really like the idea and may revisit it! I’m especially excited to try it taking a picture of something other than my computer monitor.

Flickr notes: I’m so excited this was Explored! It appeared on page 17 of explore tonight. I don’t know if it will stay there or how it really works, but more exposure to my images is exciting!

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Noah Sitting Up

Lynda — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:14:08 +0000

Project 365 – Day 20

Noah is still wobbly sitting unassisted, but today he was able to sit upright long enough for me to go get my camera and take a picture. He played with the toys in front of him for a good couple of minutes before tipping over. The pillow behind him is not propping him up, it’s just in case he falls directly backward, which he didn’t.

He’ll be 7.5 months old on Friday. Elias started sitting unassisted well around 7 months, 3 weeks. We captured his first time sitting unassisted as well:

This stomach virus Elias brought home has been making its way through the family. All was well on Saturday and Sunday, so we thought it must have been food poisoning. Then I got it on Monday and spent Tuesday recovering. Today Noah and Mark are experiencing symptoms, though thankfully no vomiting!

I can deal with runny noses and congestion. I don’t like this stomach bug one bit!

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Easy Potato Side Dish

Lynda — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:47:55 +0000

Project 365 – Day 19

We ate dinner late. Lemon pepper chicken, this potato side dish and a vegetable side dish which included carrots and sugar snap peas. The potatoes were super yummy and easy to make! This made about 3-4 servings:

RECIPE:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

INGREDIENTS:

4 new potatoes (depending on size), cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 medium white onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
Dried thyme, oregano, salt and pepper to taste (about 1 tsp of all except pepper)*
Olive oil

* We would have used rosemary if we had any – use whatever herbs, spices or seasonings you like!

ASSEMBLY:

Cut all the vegetables and place on a cookie sheet.
Drizzle with olive oil (1-2 TBSP)
Add herbs, salt and pepper to taste.
Mix well on the cookie sheet, spreading out evenly.
Cook about 30-40 minutes until potatoes are tender, tossing well every 15 minutes.

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Catching Up

Lynda — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:52:22 +0000

Project 365 – Day 17

I snapped this really quick while taking Teyla and Elias on a walk this afternoon. Originally, I was just going to take Teyla out, but when Elias saw me getting ready he grabbed his jacket and shoes. He was very excited about coming with me! Unfortunately, he prohibited me from taking any pictures since I had to keep a close eye on him.

I’m happy with how this came out, even though it was a snapshot. I love these trees (someone, please tell me what they’re called!)

Project 365 – Day 18

I was sick ALL DAY. I woke up feeling exhausted, which is never a good sign. I felt queasy throughout the morning. My wonderful husband allowed me to sleep until 3pm. Sometime after my stomach purged itself, I picked up the camera briefly to snap at whatever was in the way. I couldn’t care less! Luckily in the evening I felt much better. Nevertheless, the stomach flu is not fun.

In an effort to make a really boring shot somewhat less boring, I played around with actions. The file was so large (over 19MB) that Photoshop wouldn’t allow me to save it as a JPEG. I had to Save for Web, which I never do. I haven’t experienced that yet.

Edit: OMG – it scrubbed my EXIF data. Not cool. I need to figure out how to upload the original file. Boo.

Edit 2: Fixed it! The problem was it was in 16-bit RGB mode, not 8-bit. Apparently it won’t let you save as a JPEG if it’s in 16-bit.

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Little People

Lynda — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:11:20 +0000

Project 365 – Day 16

I didn’t think much of this shot when I took it, but looking back on it, I think it’s a really sweet moment! I originally had this photo as 365 shot.

Elias loves playing with this door. He’ll ring the doorbell and laugh when I pop a little person through the other side to inspect the scene. He loves it when I have the people look through the windows and he’ll instruct me on which ones to send them to. This doll house is COMPLETELY different than the Little People Doll House I had as a kid. I loved that thing, not that the new one doesn’t have some cool features.

Elias was feeling a lot better today, but he still didn’t want to eat much of anything. I think tomorrow his appetite will return. (Too bad we’ve run out of bananas!) I’ve enjoyed cuddling him so much these past couple days. He’s such a sweet little kid!

This is cropped down from the original. I also applied a grid to the photo in Photoshop and rotated the image to try to make all the lines straight. The lines are straight at the bottom, but not the top. Boo. Pioneer Woman’s Soft and Faded Action applied.

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Poor Sick Elias

Lynda — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:32:48 +0000

Project 365 – Day 15

When I went into Elias’ room this morning to wake him I found him already awake. He and his bed were covered in vomit. We still have a monitor in his room and he was just making his usual waking up sounds. At no point did I hear anything that sounded like he needed attention. My poor little baby! We immediately got him into the bath, which he seemed to enjoy. He was actually in such a great mood we thought it might just have been a one time thing. After his bath, we gave him some milk and before long, he vomited again. He didn’t seem to be bothered by it, fortunately.

I sent Mark out immediately to get Pedialyte and cleaning supplies. While he was gone, Elias vomited again while leaning into the storage ottoman to retrieve his coloring supplies. What bad timing! Mostly, he hit blankets, but it still took a while to clean up.

After downing about three cups of Pedialyte he started feeling better and stopped vomiting. He climbed up in his booster seat around lunch time, so we gave him a half of a banana and tried offering him some soup, but he wasn’t interested.

We set him up on the couch to nap because we didn’t want to take the chance of him throwing up all over his room again. He was delighted to go “night night” on the couch. Since he gave up the pacifier, I’ve learned that I need to get down next to him for naps and bedtime and place my head on his pillow to cuddle him for a while. I really enjoy it and I think he does too. I did the same for his nap on the couch. He slept from about 2pm until a little after 4pm.

He got a whole banana and some crackers for dinner. We could tell he didn’t feel 100%, but he was in wonderful spirits and very sweet throughout the day. It seemed safe to let him go to sleep in his room for the night, checking on him every hour or so. He’s been asleep since 9pm and seems just fine. I think the worst is over. This was the third time in his life he’s had such an episode. He’s handled it well each time! I really hope Noah doesn’t get this!

Photo Technical Notes: Ridiculously low light! All the lamps were off and the couch is far from the window. The exposure is 1/20s, ISO 800. Normally I would’ve used 1600 indoors, but I’m trying to cut that out since it produces a lot of noise. This was pretty noisy too, but I reduced it in Photoshop and now I’m pretty happy with how this shot looks large. It lost some of its sharpness, but I really don’t think that’s so important in this photo.

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Project 365 – Day 14

Lynda — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:10:13 +0000

I’ve decided to start posting my Project 365 shots here since that will guarantee this blog has some content. It’s taking up a lot of my free time!

I’d only taken four other pictures all day long (of my dinner) and I didn’t like how any of them came out while reviewing them here at the computer, so I decided to try a self-portrait. (Actually I tried it about 7 or 8 times.)

This photo was taken in a dark room by monitor light and no flash. I had the camera set up on the desk, but it couldn’t have gotten much further away from me. Times like these are the few I wish I had a lens other than 50mm!

I did some selective color here in post-processing.
Edit: I took some time to play with it and did the eyes better. I also like the colorization better here too. Here’s the first version of this one in large format.

I saved the PSD so I could play with the hue and make my eyes different colors. I made them pink for my own amusement.

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Noah Update

Lynda — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:31:05 +0000

We decided to go to the store tonight as a family. Usually one of us goes and the other stays home with the boys. Sometimes Mark takes Elias. We’ve only gone as a family a couple of times and I’ve always worn Noah in my Moby. While he’s not sitting unassisted quite yet, he does have really good balance so we thought he’d do just fine in the seat with the cart cover. Noah did do a great job, though he was a bit lopsided at times.

We got one of those carts with the car in front because Elias usually loves those. After two minutes he insisted on walking with us, but he wanted to touch EVERYTHING. It was chaos.

I snapped this photo while Elias was content in the car. It’s pretty much the only usable shot of the day.

I have a lot of updates and no time to make them. This taking a photo a day thing is really eating up pretty much all of my free time.

Noah is such a wonderful little baby. He turned seven months old last week and he still doesn’t have any more hair on his head than he was born with! He’s blowing raspberries and babbling away like crazy. He still won’t sit unassisted, but I don’t think that’s far off. Elias was 7.5 months; I thought for sure Noah would beat this milestone, but so far it isn’t look like it! I guess I should stop comparing them so much.

On Saturday, Mark and I went out to see Avatar in 3-D with some free passes I got at work and it was awesome! I was so good; I’d love to see it again. I was worried throughout the whole movie about Noah as it started around his usual bedtime. I hate leaving my kids at night, especially before bedtime. We got home by 10:30pm to find my mom and stepfather sitting alone out in the living room. My mom was able to lay down with Noah and get him to sleep somehow and he stayed asleep until well after my parents left. As is usually the case, I worried for no reason at all.

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