thirteen months

Here we go again. I'm back on the horse. But I'm barely holding on. I want so badly to keep up the weekly pictures to some extent. Once a month? Seasonally? Every half birthday? But my subject is becoming quite ornery and quite mobile. Gone are the days where she laid still. Here are the days where weekly pictures require baths immediately after and bleach for her diaper because she so maliciously rolls in the oil pastels. And gone are the days where I seem to have time and SPACE in this apartment to doodle and brainstorm ideas for themes. Nothing is flowing these days.

This thirteen month session offered a whole gamut of behind-the-scenes problems. From my measuring stick getting blue oil on it and rubbing off on the wrong parts of the paper to it being nearly impossible to write the words after the rest was drawn without smearing AND dirtying AND ruining the background. And the background wasn't great to begin with so it needed all the help it could get in at least looking neat and not sloppy. 

But I started drawing this late at night and John was already going to bed, making me jealous for sleep. So I hastily wrote the words - bad font, bad consistency, bad placement. What are you going to do? Start over? I've done that before and I'm not sure that the second was better than the first.

Then add to the mix that Annie had NO desire to cooperate on her one year, one month, one week, one day, and one hour birthday. 

And of course there is the trick of getting the baby entertainer (John) OUT of the frame which seems hard for us to accomplish. You've got to be stealth to move from tickle to out of sight while Annie is still laughing. Usually the camera clicks at the exact moment that the smile dissolves to a frown.

To make this photo shoot all the more aggravating I realized afterwards that my camera was on manual focus the whole time! I guess I'm lucky that the pictures came out even remotely clear!

So when all was said and done, this was the best shot:

Not my proudest artistic moment. Not a moment of Annie's greatest joy. But a moment in her childhood nonetheless. An image to mark this day in her life. And a great day it is. A great day any day is when you get to spend it with your kiddo. Here's to many more years and months and weeks and days and hours.