Who Would Have Thought Part 2

Yesterday I began a dialogue between my current self and my younger self. I know that this is only possible in bazaar soap operas, sci-fi movies, or schizophrenics, but humor me for a minute. Although, I am glad that we don't know the future, it's been interesting to think about how I would have responded at 16 to what my life is like now. We'll start with a recap from yesterday.

"You are going to be a photographer and you will photograph people for stories in a magazine."

"Well that's neat."

" Oh, and you are going to marry J."

"WHAT!!!?" Teenage self jaw drops.

" I said you will marry J, the one that leads worship at your church"

"I heard what you said, but it's hard to believe. He has plenty of pretty college girls hanging on him and competing for his attention I really don't see how he could want to be with me."

"Well he does. He doesn't care about them, he loves you and you two will be married in a couple years."

"Holy Crap! You can't be serious?"

"I am. You're parents will move to Kentucky and eventually you and J will buy a house."

"Is it my dream house?"

"Well..." Older self starts out reluctant. "It has a lot of the things that you love like wood floors, and lots of big old windows, but it's in pretty rough shape. You won't have all the time and finances that you need to fix it up quickly so it may not be exactly what you dreamed."

"That sucks." Younger self pauses. " But, you said I would be living with J right?"

"That's right."

"Well, then I am sure I will be happy wherever we are. Do we have any kids?"

"Two for now. A boy and a girl"

Teenage self lifts her eyebrows ready to hear more.

Older self continues on "You will take a natural approach to parenting with things like home birth, breast feeding, and cloth diapers."

Teenage self starts to gag. "That sounds disgusting"

"I understand, but you will do lots of research and find out all the benefits. It's really, not that big of a deal. Just trust me on this one." Older self reassures her.

Of course this is way to much information for a young teenager to take in at once. She thinks about her future life, and she begins to process it all out loud. "My parents are moving, J's my husband, and I've got kids? My entire world is completely different."

"Yeah, but you'll have plenty of time to grow into all of it. Oh and one thing never changes."

"What's that?" Teenage self asks.

"Your still messy." And older self begins to laugh. "You even have a blog titled the messy mom!"

"What's a blog?"

"Oh, never mind."

Who Would Have Thought

I have being thinking a lot about the past and where I am today. First of all I found this.

It's an old notebook we had on hand and I have been letting Z use it for our little at home preschool lessons. One day he got it out and was writing the letter Z when I noticed that there was a little love note t0 J and it was definitely not my handwriting! Now before you all think he's a jerk and start throwing things at your computer this notebook was from around 1995 according to the stuff he has written in there. I didn't even know J then. He had a very serious girlfriend at the time and the message said

"J,

Hey Honey! I wanted to surprise you and make sure you remembered I love you. I never want you to lose sight of that. Baby, you mean so much to me..."

I share this story because it's funny to me now. SURPRISE! I wrote this message in your notebook so that your son you have with your future wife can find it in 16 years and scribble on it. Boy, who would have thought how things would turn out.

Then today I had to revisit my old high school and photograph my former principal. Once again I find myself thinking who would have thought I would be back here in 11 years working with this man as a professional with him following MY instructions.

There are so many things in my life now that I never dreamed would happen. I pictured what my 16 year old reaction would have been if someone would have told me.

My 28 year old self says "You know you'll be back at this school someday for work."

My 16 year old self responds "Oh no. Please don't tell me I will be a teacher. I hate getting up early. I don't want to be in school for the rest of my life. I don't want to be a teacher."

"No, don't worry. You are going to be a photographer and you will photograph people for stories in a magazine."

"Well that's neat."

" Oh, and you are going to marry J."

"WHAT!!!?"

To Be Continued...

Unexpected

Things were going pretty well when I blogged this past Sunday. Little did I know that that night my son would fall out of bed in his sleep and some less than ideal situations would transpire after.

Sunday night I awoke to a loud thump that came from across the house. I shot up and knew what had happened. Z fell out of the adult size bed that he was sleeping in and he was screaming and crying in pain. We didn't think too much of it since he is almost always grouchy when he wakes up, especially abruptly like that. The next day he said his neck hurt so I called the panel of nurses and moms that I know to get their opinion on what to do. He would wince and scream when I picked him up or changed his clothes, but by noon he was running around playing and as active as ever so I decided not to take action, until today when he was still complaining and not using his right arm to do things he would normally do, like climb up into his favorite spot at the table.

So we decided to bring him to the ER were they concluded right off the bat that his collar bone probably was fractured and they took some x-rays.

The x-rays were alarming for a couple reasons. First of all because they discovered that he had Pneumonia! He has had a runny nose and a little bit of a cough, but I did NOT see this coming. Besides that there was a spot on his bone that looked suspicious. We were told it was probably nothing and could have been due to him moving around, but they wanted to check and do some scans. There was a brief period of bawling my eyes out in fear of my baby boy having cancer (this was even more emotional considering he is the same age my little brother was when he was diagnosed with leukemia). However, praise the Lord it was just a fluke and the foreign legion spot did not show up in any other x-rays.

It's been an emotional roller coaster and I will take all the prayers I can get. On the one hand Z doesn't have a terminal illness so I guess I should be grateful, but on the other hand I am still in shock both emotional and financially to be honest (our insurance stinks!). For a boy that is always so healthy and resilient the diagnosis of Pnemonia and a broken bone was pretty intense. Z will be wearing a sling and taking some medicine for the next few weeks.

I have to admit I figured some major injury would happen, but I thought it would come from one of his boyish death defying stunts not in his sleep.

More On That Later

Last week was busy, but productive. I have so much to say, but too much to elaborate on in one post so here is the sneak preview on topics I hope to share more on later.

Cupcake Party!

I already mentioned that SJ is going to have a cupcake party and now the date is just about a month away. I am so pumped about this party package that I just got in the mail (thank you mom).

I have had a couple other packages come in that are also going to be for her birthday, but more on that later.

Freezer Cooking

Some of my friends have previously blogged about freezer cooking (like Mandy and Katie) and I have wanted to try it for a while now. Since my mom was in town last week she helped me with my first trial run.

I told her I wasn't going to blog about it until I knew the results of her labor and so I will share all the details about freezer cooking and what we did in another post.

Total Money Makeover

I literally just finished reading Total Money Makeover. For those that are Dave Ramsey followers or if you know someone who is then you probably can guess what is coming. J and I are pumped about becoming debt free (although we've got a long way to go, trust me.) I am about to join Money Saving Mom, my friend Amy, and thousands of others that are blogging about "living like no one else so that later you can live like no one else".

So that's the skinny on what is happening around here, stay tuned for updates!

Photo Booth

For those of you that have macs you know all about the photo booth application. I have used it many times on this blog, but I had no idea how much fun my 3 year old would get out of it. Remember the post where I talked about Z's new glasses and how he kept on taking photos of himself on the computer?

Well, that was just the beginning.

Later that week I found him making kissy faces and taking tons of photos.

Sometimes other people would join him.

Sometimes lots of people.

By day 4 of this newfound hobby he had figured out how to add effects.

Is modeling his future? Maybe a career as a photographer like his mom? Maybe not. But he sure is having fun.

I Remember When

Last week I shared some of my opinions on an article titled "What Babies of 2011 Will Never Know" and it did get me thinking about how much my childhood will differ from my children. I may only be in my late twenties, but a lot has changed in the past few decades. Here is my list of ten things I can brag about remembering.

I remember when..

1. you could meet or drop someone off at the gate at the airport.
2. you had to pay for internet by the minute.
3. babies and children could ride in the front seat. Being buckled up was optional.
4. cassettes, particularly Carmen.
5. manuel projectors were used for worship services (the kind with transparencies that had the words printed or written on them).
6. having to memorize phone numbers or record them in an address book.
7. the popular clothing store Express Men was Structure and Express was for women only.
8. CiCi’s pizza was all you can eat for $2.99
9. Phones had cords
10. Staying in touch over long distances took effort. Instead of Social Networks we had long distance phone bills and snail mail at best).

I could sit here all day and tell more of what I remember from the past, but then it wouldn't be part of Oh Amanda's Top Ten. So tell me what do you remember when...?

Pack Rat In Denial?

I always blame the clutter on my husband. He has a HUGE heavy container of CD cases that he will not let go of even though most of the CD's we own are really outdated. We don't even listened to CD's anymore because of our ipods. I understand wanting to save some of them, but not hundreds. Then there are things like scrap metal, boxes, electronics, and wood that he thinks are valuable or could be made into something that would be valuable. He's pretty amazing and he probably could do something with all the junk we collect, but he does not have time to do it.

I could rant all day and think that if it were up to me we would be clutter free, but the truth is I may have a slight tendency to hoard things myself. This year I am determined to declutter and I mapped out a different room or closet for each month. This month was my closet. The last time I REALLY cleaned my closet was October 2008 and this time it has been harder than I thought. There are somethings that are easy to toss like the empty box to my GPS that was stolen two years ago (yes that was still in my closet). But then there was the Wilson's leather glove that I love and was so hoping that the matching glove would turn up, but never has. I also had to let go of some beloved clothing items that are literally falling apart and about to disintegrate.

I bought these used REI shorts in 9th grade. Here is a photo of me wearing them when I was 15!

I wore them every summer for 12 years. They were like the magical sisterhood of the traveling pants because when I grew they grew with me. They were comfortable and versatile. I even wrote about them in one of my first posts on this blog.

"I tend to live life out of the box. We use cloth diapers, we’ve never had cable TV, and I am wearing a pair of shorts right now that I have had for over ten years and I got them from a thrift store to begin with!"

I would have hung onto them, but last year they got a huge rip across the back, so sadly I think it's time to let them go.

The shirt was also from a thrift store and I have had it since I was a newly wed. I even washed it with a pen at the laundry mat once, but I still wore it even with the blue speckles. It's the kind of shirt that fits/feels just right. These authentic vintage tees are hard to come by, but it's holey, as in lots of holes. It's like some kind of bad 90's grunge wear or something. The above photo was taken in 2004 of me and a band called Radial Angel. The band is still around, but the shirt is not.

There are some things I found that I am hanging onto like our napkins and matches from our wedding.

I looked all over for these when we had our anniversary in November, but I could not find them anywhere. Apparently I never looked in the very back of the top shelf in my closet.

Sorry for the long post, but I have a closet full of stories/memories that I could share. It's hard to let go sometimes. I am sure I will have more therapeutic posts throughout the year as I get organized in 2011 and become a little bit less of a big time mess.

I'll Wash My Hair, My Hands, My Face With...

SNOW. That titled would be from White Christmas for those that are not familiar. It's the song that's been going through my head since we got a couple inches on Sunday. Saturday was gorgeous. My friend and I put the kids in strollers and walked to a coffee shop without even needing to put on a coat.

At Zula's coffee shop on a sunny afternoon.

The next day this was our walkway.

That's Texas weather for ya. I was happy to have been able to make a snowman in Kentucky and I thought would have to hold me over for a year or two. So I was pretty excited when we actually got a second helping of snowfall back home. This was a great opportunity to do our first family activity of the year (part of my new year's resolution).

Our family of snowmen quickly became a local attraction. Snowmen in general are rarely sighted in this region so they are kind of a big deal.

Last year we had lots of snow, but I was very pregnant. The winter was not kind to me and I was not in love with it either. But, this year has made up for it. The weather has been a beautiful and fun blessing.

This was our Kentucky snowman.

We didn't leave the ukulele outside, with the melting snowmen even though it was cute.

The kids have gotten use out of the winter gear they received over Christmas.

This bird was eating a squirrel in the snow at the Library. I think it's a red tailed hawk. Maybe?

2011 Babies Will Know More Than We Think

I recently read an article on Yahoo News, go figure, and it was titled 30 things babies born in 2011 Will Never Know. While our rapid advancement in technology always amazes me I didn't agree with all of the thing writer Stacy Johnson was saying would be on the out in the next 15 years or so. Paper maps was on the list and that makes sense to me. With GPS and online resources who is going to go out and by a paper map these days? Dial up internet is another one that I would agree is pretty much obsolete. However here are a couple that I thought were a little far fetched, or at least I hope so.

1. "One picture to a frame: Such a waste of wall/counter/desk space to have a separate frame around each picture. Eight gigabytes of pictures and/or video in a digital frame encompassing every person you’ve ever met and everything you’ve ever done – now, that’s efficient. Especially compared to what we used to do: put our friends and relatives together in a room and force them to watch what we called a “slide show” or “home movies."

Looking through old family photos this past Christmas.

Maybe it's my profession that makes me anti digital frames, but I like hard copies. For me photography is art (have you read my recent article?). I would never hang a digital painting on the wall so why would botch up a beautiful photograph like that? In the same way I do not plan to stop sending annual Christmas card photos anytime soon even though everyone can see them online.

2. "Talking to one person at a time: Remember when it was rude to be with one person while talking to another on the phone? Kids born today will just assume that you’re supposed to use texting to maintain contact with five or six other people while pretending to pay attention to the person you happen to be physically next to."

Oh, this one irks me to no end and I know some of you ladies are with me. My pre and post 2011 children WILL KNOW the beauty, respect, and peace that comes from UNDIVIDED attention. Another art form that I will fight to the death for. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but you get my passion.

3. Watches: Maybe as quaint jewelry, but the correct time is on your smartphone, which is pretty much always in your hand.

I personally don't usually wear a watch, but I do like having one when I photograph weddings because I need to know what time it is fast. I can't always pull out my phone when I am taking pictures. I do agree that watches are mainly for fashion, but I don't see why this one even made the list for things babies in 2011 will never know. Look at how many people wear belts or glasses even though they may not be for purely functional purposes.

It's hard to predict the future. My friend and I were talking about Back to the Future 2. That movie projected the year 2015 and we all had flying cars. It was a nice thought, but I don't foresee us all flying around in 3 years. As far as printed photographs, one on one conversations, and watches, we'll see if they are going the way of the encyclopedia, but I am going to guess that our children will still be able to experience all of them.

SJ at 10 Months

SJ with her daddy at a park in Nashville Tennessee

The 9th month was quite eventful for SJ. She had her first Christmas and her first time in the snow.

I was so excited, because when Z was a baby I was given these two 6-9 month winter suits. I have a picture of Z's first time in the snow wearing this navy one when he was 6 months old.

and now I have some photos of SJ in the white one at 9 months.

It was a picture perfect holiday.

Cousins napping on Christmas day.

SJ's latest milestone is standing on her own.

Not the best pic of her "beaming", but it's the only one I have of this latest talent.

She loves to practice balancing on her two feet. She beams with pride when she stands up wobbly before falling over after about 20 seconds.

She gets quite a thrill out of banging her head around too (see video below) and much like her big brother has no shortage of energy. In fact the video camera ran out of batteries before she did!

My only complaint, if you want to call it that is that she loves me soooo much. She absolutely lights up at the sight of me and prefers me over anyone else. It’s a great feeling to be wanted like that, but on the other hand can’t a mother get a break? The past two weeks I was surrounded by family begging to take her off my hands, hold her, and keep her entertained, but she wants nothing to do with them when I'm around. It’s not always that bad, but she is definitely more clingy than Z was and sometimes it does get a little tiring. I am aware though that there will probably come a time when I miss the days she showed such obvious affection.

Only two months before the big birthday celebration and believe me the planning is already underway. The theme is cupcake!

Page 24

The article about me came out this month and I went up to the Now Magazine office to pick up a couple extra copies today. I've worked for this magazine for 5 years and photographed hundreds of subjects, but this was my first time being on the other side of things. The reason I was featured was because one of the community editors contacted me after seeing my work in a photo expo. It's been a fun experience, but the best part about it hands down has been the overwhelming amount of support I have received from my friends and family. I posted a link to the online edition of the article on facebook yesterday and the encouraging comments haven't stopped since.

I had a couple people repost the photo and link including my brother who said "This is my little sis. She's so talented." My mom, my uncle, my best friend, and others have all taken just a moment to say "I am proud of you". Those words in that moment carry more weight than any of them will ever know. Ironically the article is titled "Finding Truth In The Moment".

When I was being interviewed I talked about how I don't like to over-edit things and I tend to take a photojournalistic approach to photographing events to really capture the truth of that moment. When I said that you could see the interviewers light bulb went off as she scribbled down on her notepad and blurted out "Finding truth in the moment. I have my title". One of my favorite parts of the article is where she quotes me saying that I am a bit of a mess when it comes to regular mommy jobs, but I am good at baby books and photo albums. To me that was like a subliminal shout out to this blog.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me for the past eight years of pursuing photography. Every time you say I am proud of you it is like rocket fuel for my dreams.

Another photo taken that day.

2011 Goals

It’s January, 4 2011 and we are home for the first time this year. I am so syched about a fresh new year and a clean slate. That is why I love New Year’s day! I wrote down my official list of goals on the way home from Kenucky last night. I feel strongly led to focus on matters of the home this year.

I want to get back into having family time as well as alone time with my husband and in our family this takes a conscious effort. By the end of the year I hope to have reported 20 fun family activities, and 12 date nights.

I also want to work on dropping the first part of my blog title. I am sure I will always be a little bit messy, but if I could be a little less messy in 2011 that would make me happy.

Another goal for the year is to read. I started reading a ton at the end of this year, but have slacked off over the holidays. My reading goals include, 6 books that I already have in mind, the Old Testament, Second Hand Jesus with J (I read it last year and LOVED it, so now we are reading it together), and I also want to read to my kids daily. It’s a lot of reading, but considering I want to spend more time at home I think it’s totally doable.

Lastly, I want to start working on some at home preschool teaching with Z. I have a couple ideas in mind to start working on his letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. I am not a natural teacher though so this one is a stretch for me. Any ideas and/or resources you know of are welcome!

Although I may start out the year with high and lofty goals I also realize that life happens and good intentions turn into forgotten ideals. I like having something to aspire to and reach for, but I am not going to beat myself up if the year takes me in some other direction. Perhaps this is a good time to mention that I am not ready to go over my 2010 goals. Some of them were accomplished others were half way done, but either way I need to buy some time to bring them to completion and take some pictures to go along with the update. Since I am the boss of this assignment I asked myself for an extension and it was granted. It's a good thing I am such a nice boss.

In A Week

It's been about a week since I have written. I have thought about a lot of different things that I could talk about like...

our many sledding adventures.

I also thought about doing a post on a the local food and drinks we've enjoyed like Cincinnati chili, goetta (a german food that you can only get around here), or Ale 8 (our favorite local soda).

Then I wanted to hop online and give an update about the kids. Z got his first hand held electronic game called the Mobigo and SJ has been standing up on her own a little bit.

Then last week my niece was dedicated in the same sanctuary that I was and with the same pastor that dedicated me nearly thirty years ago. (I said NEARLY)

We've also been iceskating, bouncing around at jump zone, shopping at the outlets, shouting in the new year, and recording at the studio.

So as you can see I thought about writing a lot, but haven't had much time to do it!