Potty Days

Since I happen to know a few moms who are either in the midst of potty training or have successfully accomplished it with their budding toddlers, I thought I would give everyone an update of how our own budding toddler is doing and hope that someone has some advice. Chloe can go on the potty just fine. We'll put her on there, and if we happen to catch it when she has to go, she'll do it with no problems. Her biggest deterrent is the fact that she never, ever tells us that she has to go. We have to just guess and hope that we catch it. She is just as comfortable messing her diaper as she is going on the potty, either way doesn't seem to bother her. Most of the time I just have to read her facial expressions. I know she has to go when she suddenly gets that far off look in her eyes and her face starts to turn red just a little (I know you other moms out there know exactly what I'm talking about) and I say "Chloe, do you have to go potty?!" and she either says yes or no, but her answer is irrelevant because her face is far more telling than her words. I'm thinking I'm just going to have to wait two more months until summer where I can put her in underwear again and hope that this time wetting herself will bother her enough to tell me before she has to go so we can get her on the toilet (we did underwear once before and at first she hated wetting herself, and I was like "great! This will motivate her to actually want to go on the potty!" and then about a week later, she seemed to think that wetting her pants was just what you were supposed to do and then she had no problem with it. Needless to say I got sick of changing her clothes every hour and the underwear was packed away again).
Anyway, I'd love to hear some more mommy potty training success stories so I can learn from them. Anyone out there just not have time to potty train their kids and somehow got them to do it anyway? Where's the magic powder I can sprinkle on Chloe so she will learn over-night?

I heart "iheartfaces"

If any of you aspiring photographers out there have NOT checked out this website, I highly recommend it. I haven't been too successful in the "kids" category, but there are HUNDREDS of people who submit photos for that category. There's a little less competition in the "adults" category, where so far I've won 3rd place in week five (the theme was "silly") and 8th place in this last weeks "green" theme. I've posted the links for the top ten both of those weeks here. I didn't know that you could get an "honorable mention" badge for getting in the top ten until this last week, so now I have to show off.





Here are the links:
Week 8: http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/2008/01/week-10-top-10-adults.html
Week 5:http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/2008/01/week-5-top-ten-adults.html

If you have a chance go check out their website! I luuuuuurrrrrv it. I heart it. It's great. :-)

Crazy Hair Day

So last Friday was crazy hair day at the school I work at. When I was in high school occasionally I thought it was cool to make people think that for a day I had ridiculously curly hair, so I would tie it in rags with wet hair and then sleep on it overnight and in the morning I would tie a bandana around my head and pretend to be a real Boulder hippie for a day. I decided that crazy hair day would be a good day to resurrect the white-woman 'fro. I tied everything up the night before and in the morning just ran my fingers through all the curls to make it stand on end as such:



Once I was satisfied, I go to get ready for the rest of my day when it suddenly dawns on me: wait a minute, school's not the only place I'm going today. I had a meeting with a guy to go over some insurance things for next year at the district office and then after my meeting I had to zip over to Loveland for my yearly OBGYN check up. Great! Do I quick take a shower and straighten it out or just go with it? In the end, my desire to freak out the kids at school prevailed and I went out in public. At first I just prefaced everyone who gave me a weird look with "Oh, don't worry, ha ha! It's crazy hair day at my school! Good times...." and then I just let it go. The weird looks were amusing anyway. My doctor had a good laugh over it too. Craig was absolutely mortified by it, so of course on my way out I had to stop by the store and make sure all his coworkers saw me. :-)

Bath Time!

Let me tell you, it is SO hard to get decent lighting in a bathroom with no windows to get good bath time shots! I tried using my digital flash, and it just whited everything out completely. So then I had the ingenious idea to turn the flash backwards and the lighting was almost PERFECT! This will prove to my advantage in indoor shooting from now on.

Welcome

HOORAY!

Flower Power

So I'm revamping my photoblog, and I've put together a couple of options here. I already posted the first one, but I'm not sold on it yet. Which one looks better? Any opinions would be appreciated. By the way, these GORGEOUS daisies were brought to me by my AMAZING husband for Valentine's Day- my favorite flower. I had to take some pictures of them while they were fresh. Four flowers for four Valentines we've shared as a married couple. Anyway- can't decide which one is better, so now everyone else can decide for me! If you want to see the rest of the flowers I shot, I posted them on chelseasattic.blogspot.com. :-)


And my children, as always. Linus is finally starting to look like he wants to move- he's almost rolled over a couple of times and he's almost got his legs underneath him while he's on his tummy. It's about darned time! He's only nine months old. :-) Hopefully by his ten month birthday he'll actually be making progress around a room. I put a basket of toys in front of him while he was on his stomach this morning and he grabbed the edge of the basket with both hands and pulled with all his might, but he couldn't get himself pulled up. Finally I sat him up and he happily emptied the basket after that.
Chloe thought the flowers were as pretty as I did. She wasn't quite as gentle with them, but we can't all be perfect. And she also figured out that my name is Chelsea today and spent the morning calling me "Shoo-see" while I repeatedly told her to call me "Mommy". She thought it was hilarious. Oh, toddlers...

Good news!

Many beads of sweat on my part and a new hard drive later, we have a healthy computer again and have recovered all of our missing photos (and music and home videos)! After I clean my house tonight, my next project is GETTING ALL THESE ONTO HARD COPIES!! Never again will I let it build up that bad before I do something about it. I think I owe my father-in-law and his buddy from work, who got everything fixed for us, my LIFE! Seriously. It was touch and go there for a while...
So my plan to "build my portfolio" (in photography) has sort of gone cold for a while. I had it in my head that people are dying for this sort of work, but the reality is that the economy is bad, all my friends are just as poor as me, and getting family photos from an amateur is not a priority in many peoples' lives. Granted, I really haven't done much advertising, and after a creepy experience with a craigslist contactee, I'm not really sure how to go about that in a SAFE, non-threatening or pushy way. In the meantime, as my subject list has come to a stand-still, I've resorted to my children once again. And I think I might try this I Heart Faces thing out for kicks, it looks like fun! Thanks, Katie, for sharing the idea. :-) So enjoy yet another set of shots of my two lovely children, from a mother who has the biggest "mommy goggles" in the world when it comes to pictures of her kids.
PS- Call me a trend-freak, I know, but after mentally scoffing at every little boy I saw with the "fo-hawk" (is that even how you spell it?), I broke down and had to try it on my little boy at least once. Opinions anyone?



Also, every night both Linus and Chloe get a dance with Daddy before they go to bed. Chloe is such a Daddy's girl, it's not even funny. She hardly cuddles with me ever, but get her to dance with her Daddy and she nestles her head right into a cozy spot on his chest, tucks her arms in, and she's set to just lie there all night if she could. Here's a couple memories to share. :-)