Wednesday, September 21, 2011

It's Not Easy Being One

The weekend after Lina turned one, she bonked her head on the coffee table. It was actually quite comical if you ignore the fact that there was pain involved. She bent down to pick up a toy and hit her head on the table, cried for a second and tried again with the exact same outcome. She did this three times in a row. After the third time I decided it was most definitely nap time. Two hours later, she woke up with a black eye. It wasn’t a bad one, it just looked like she was really tired. Fortunately it was the day after we celebrated her birthday with her Grandparents and Great Grandparents.

The very next weekend, we were planning on heading over to the park to snap some pictures for the invitations for her big party in the park. I wanted the sun to be a little lower in the sky for better lighting, so I planned on going after her afternoon nap. Guess who woke up from her nap with a fresh shiner. Bright and purple. I don’t know how that one happened, I can only guess that she banged her head on the crib while trying to resist taking a nap.

Since I was the one taking the pictures I decided to postpone the shoot until the next day when her eye would be a little less puffy. I thought we should do something a little more whimsy since I would be shooting her profile mostly. As much as I didn’t mind her having pictures with a black eye, I didn’t exactly want to send out twenty something black eye invitations. Dressed in her purple tutu dress with her matching purple eye, we headed to the park and found a nice, shaded, slightly overgrown grassy patch. We were on our way to meet up with some family members so we had to keep the shoot short. I may not have gotten the perfect shot that I was looking for in that short amount of time, but I was able to get a few good ones that would work for our needs.

Later when I was playing with the images in Photoshop and looking for the perfect invitation that I could get quickly and cheaply I was pleased with how everything came together. The purple dress that she got from her Ginga (Mason’s mom) and the purple carnation that she got from Great Grandma Ev (my grandma) ended up going perfectly with the Tinker Bell invite from Wal-mart, thus changing our theme from Rubber Ducks to Fairies. I was so nervous when I decided to use Wal-mart, being a photo snob, I questioned their quality. But I couldn’t find a better price or a better turn-around time. I could have both my invites and my thank you cards in an hour. When I went to pick them up, I was shocked at how much I loved them. The colors were spot on and there wasn’t a pixel in sight. I love when my low expectations are proven oh-so-wrong.

This wasn't one of the pictures we used, but it does show off her eye quite nicely.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A Very Long Weekend

I think it’s safe to say that I need a break from the long weekend. It started off great with an incredibly HOT birthday party in the park on Saturday. The kids didn’t seem to notice the heat, but the adults sure did. It was a great party and we are so blessed to have so many of our friends and family able to brave the heat and celebrate with us. Eventually we made it home where we chatted with our out of town guests for as long as we could keep our eyes open.

The next morning we got up and got ready to head to the zoo. The long days from the week before had definitely taken its toll on my walking abilities. Which I proved by missing the last step and tweaking my ankle. I’m not gonna lie, it hurt. It hurt so bad I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stand up or not. But I managed, and limped out the door. I was going to do everything in my power to make sure my ankle didn’t keep us cooped up inside on such a beautiful day. And I’m quite sure our friends didn’t travel all the way from KC to sit on the couch and watch Netflix all weekend either.

So I played tough. But I also knew it would be impossible for me to walk around the zoo all day. So I walked hobbled from the car to the entrance. Once the chair was secured, Mason pushed me around through the zoo. Go ahead, make fun. But I knew that was the only way we were going to get to do what we had planned on doing. I thought I was feeling better when we were done. But that was apparently only because I had been keeping the weight off of it. Once I took that first step and almost fell over from pain, I knew that my $7 rental fee had not gone to waste. The boys ran off to get the cars and Tami chased Lina around for me while we waited.

That night, I promised Mason that if my ankle wasn’t feeling better the next day, then I would go and get it checked out. I lost that bet. So after our guests left we made our way to the Urgent Care where they contorted my ankle in all different directions in order to take x-rays. The x-rays proved that I was right, it was just a sprain.