18 Merry Months of Joy, Peace and Jesus

I'm a broken record. But, yes this monthly is coming at ya a whole month late! Maybe I ought to just scratch her birthdate out on her certificate and say she was born in July to make everything align. Probably not. It's sort of akin to when we tried to change her name a month after she was born and shyed away when we saw the court fees. Goodbye forever, Aniston.

Gosh darn it. Isn't she precious? This was BY FAR the most fun time we've ever had doing this. I usually spend the first few minutes where she's crying - sorry grandmas - to adjust my camera settings. But this girl was so on fire with her modeling that I went straight to the little green auto button and got going. Couldn't pass this stuff up. (I remembered later why I never do that...Hello, over-exposure!! Also remembered why I never draw the text in the middle of the page...)

But so that I never forget, here's what was really going down on that butcher paper. Girl got her song on.

But in the end, I contend that there's no clear winner.

By the way:

Here's last month's picture HERE!

And here are all the pictures HERE!

Thankful for Seventeen Months

It's that time again. Ok, I'll stop lying. It WAS that time again at the beginning of November and I spent three weeks moping around with a lack of creativity and inspiration. So she's more like 17 months and 25 days old. But who's counting?

The extra time gave me extra reasons to be thankful for her though.

So here we go. Annie, I'm thankful for your chubbiness. Cheeks. Thighs. Swollen belly because you don't know when to stop eating. Ever. Chubby fingers between those button knuckles. Stuffing fat feet into little leather shoes. Love the chubs. 

 I love how you eat. You scoop yogurt out of the bowl with your fingers. African style, says your daddy. Slurping and sucking your fingers, your palms, your wrists. Stretching out your tongue to grab yogurt off your nose and your chin and your cheeks. Food always on your face.

I like your busyness. Busy, busy, busy. Always off to explore. A loner - and a social ham. All at the same time. Off to your room - close your door. Playing for days with your books. Then straight to my lap - around the dinner table. Friends over and you sit and stare and giggle and clap your hands with company. Taking it all in. You run up to stranger's kids and offer them your sippy cup. Sometimes you mistake their movements for an invitation to borrow these strangers' kids toys. And they yank them back and start to cry. And you, girl, are resilient - and compassionate. You look confused and then offer them your teddy bear. 

Sometimes your dad and I catch you standing, staring off - making funny faces. Leaning one way, then the next. Your eyes are locked and your mouth is pushing smirks and pouts. Often, we catch you stealing away to the piano. Already like your daddy. Clapping when you hear music.

You like to touch things that you aren't used to and then turn around in search of approval. Sometimes you aren't looking for approval. Sometimes you are looking to get a rise out of us. Already. At seventeen months, you can be devious...

We're thankful for your generous spirit. Always putting crackers in our mouths. Sharing your half-eaten food. Wrapping clothes around our necks. Feeding the dog. Even when he's already eaten. Always when he's already eaten. He's always already eaten because, Annie, you are ALWAYS feeding him.

You're fun. You make us laugh. You're silly. And adorable. Are these too generic? But they're the truth. You're real bad fun.

I'm thankful that you run and crawl into my and daddy's laps and let us read you stories. I'm thankful that every night before bed we get to rock you and sing Jesus Loves You.

I'm thankful that you forgive us. We're not even into the hard part of parenting and yet we're already screwing up. But you can stare at us in desperation one moment and then pull up and kiss our faces the next.

We're thankful for seventeen months of waking up to your coos and cries. We're hopeful for hundreds more. We're thankful God is letting us raise you. We love, love, love you, Annie.

***For more of Annie's weekly/monthly picture posts, check out these: 13, 14, and 16.
*****For all 17 months of weekly pictures, check out this page.

Sixteen Months

What kind of mother subjects her daughter to agonizing photo shoots every four weeks? This kind of mother. Oh Annie, learn to like monthly pictures. They're your friend.  

Annie: "daddy, please pick me up. please don't make me do this. i'll be the most precious baby ever if you just pick me up."

"alright, fine. if you don't pick me up, then get out of my face. i'm not looking at you."

Don't be bashful about that tummy, Bo-dan. They say the camera adds ten pounds, but relative to your body weight, that's like adding ten ounces. Ain't no thang.

And, you aren't fooling anyone, darling. That smile looks painful. Try again, dear.

Screaming and crying will not get you out of this one, girlfriend.

Yep, that's right. Suck your thumb until you can pull it together. All I need is one shot, love. 

What? It's not tickling you? But my makeup brush ALWAYS makes you laugh! Why does everything laid back about you go out the window when a camera gets pulled out!

Ok, we're getting there. Make it a touch more believable, though.

And that's a wrap.

****To see more of these photo shoots click here, here, or here. And to see a compilation of all the final photographs, click here.

olympic glory

Oh, the Summer Olympics. You've made me such a bad mother. I know my daughter has a dirty diaper and yet I make her wait until a commercial break to change it. What's wrong with me? Sadly, it's just a warm up for the NFL football season. But, seriously, what's the deal? I'm not even athletic. Why do I love televised sports so doggone much? I don't know. But I'm concerned. Last year it was okay. I would just nurse Annie in my arms while I watched the Saints play. This year I may just instill a real bad TV watching habit in my daughter. But I'll make a vow. I will only have the TV on for football games. And the Voice. I heart music competitions. 

Anyway, all this Olympic nonsense and what do I end up with? An Olympic themed weekly picture, that's what. And what do you think I was doing while drawing this picture? Watching the doggone Olympics on TV. I really do know how to spell things. I promise. But somehow when you are watching Beach Volleyball with one eye and writing words with another, you spell medal with a t. And it's embarrassing. And you think, oh no prob. I'll just photoshop it out. Then you remember you're an absolute novice at photoshop, so everyone will know the truth. I spelled medal with a t. I'm a loser. Whateves. But you know, gold is in fact a meTal, people. Just melted into the shape of an Olympic meDal. So let's be nice and give me grace and act like you DON'T see the photoshopped text box.

Some day Annie will ask me what the weird pink and yellow shapes above the Olympic rings are. And I'll tell her that I haven't a clue. They were just plastered all over every Olympic arena in London. So let's roll with it.

But it'll be great. Because in the spirit of asking questions, I'll then ask her why at fourteen months she continues to NOT walk AND upon our insisting that she learns to walk, decides to take up thumb sucking instead. Yup. That's right. It's a new thing. Like, she never once sucked her thumb until last week. And now, instead of walking like her other fourteen month friends, she just lays on the ground like her four month old friends and sucks her thumb. It's awesome. 

Here's John saying 'Come on girl! You can stand!'

And Annie's like 'Oh, daddy. Don't be silly. I'll just lay here on the ground sucking my thumb. Now PLEASE give me my baby doll!'

And everything's right in the world again.

So John yanks the baby away and I snap the picture while the smile lingers...

It lasts but a moment. Enter thumb once more. And yes, if you're wondering. She often leaves her thumb in her mouth while taking bites of food, too. 

Let's be real. She only takes it out when reaching for baby doll. And when harassing our dog. And when pulling important breakables from tabletops. 

But as of just a few days ago, it mainly stays in her mouth. In fact, when I drew this picture last week, she had never sucked her thumb before. So she won the gold medal in CUTENESS. But, really, the picture should have looked more like this:

Even though we'd hoped it could look more like this:

Who am I kidding? This kid could crawl on the ground forever and we'd still be obsessed with her. As my dad says, she's the apple of our ear. Congrats on your gold, cheeks. No matter what you won it in. 

P.S. Check out all the weekly pictures here. And some more behind the scenes here.

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.