every year, i have visions of blog posts full of beautiful photographs of soft candle light, little chubby faces peering through frosted windows, christmas cookies cooling on the table, so on and so forth. but i never get around to writing and uploading and editing and publishing, or even sitting still with my thoughts for more than a few minutes. i guess it's a trend in our family to up and move around the holidays, which means there is little time and little money to do much of anything. i've been meaning, like every year, to sit down and edit our holidays pictures. this is probably the third time i've tried writing a blog about december. i thought about just uploading photos and sharing without words, but i want to remember. and part of remembering is going back and reading what i've written in the past. it's my favorite way to remember. so i am going to have to fit all of my thoughts from the past month into a long, boring post, full of the most random photos, all for the sake of memories.
two new years ago, i made the resolution to take at least one photo a day. i'm glad i did, because as i was putting river's one year book together on shutterfly, i realized i did not have a single picture of him on my digital camera when he was three months old. i had a couple cell phone pictures, and that was it. for the rest of the year though, i had tons of pictures. of course, with austen, i am much busier than i ever was with river. i get distracted and even though plenty of days i think, she looks so adorable today! i have got to get a picture... i just never get around to pulling my camera out and snapping a shot. i'm a perfectionist, and the downfall with that is that if i can't get a good photo -- not just a snapshot, but a great quality photo -- then i just won't even try. that's bad! bad, especially when you have quickly growing babies that need to photographed constantly, so you can remember all the funny faces and little moments that you would otherwise forget.
austen is a funny girl. she is so different from her brother. river was smiley, content, easy-going. he would go to anyone. if he was ever upset, all i needed to do was nurse him, and all his little baby troubles would melt away. in fact, sometimes it seemed he nursed all. day. long. i am not exaggerating when i say we hardly went twenty minutes without a nursing session! he was easy to make laugh and extremely sociable. my little ray of sunshine every day. very strong and active. a horrible, horrible sleeper. in fact, i found an old notebook in which i had written questions to ask my midwife at our six-week check up, and one of them was "is he getting enough sleep?" i laughed because i remember that... how he would be awake the majority of the day, and then wake up seven, eight, nine times in the night to nurse.
she is a pretty easy baby for the most part, but in every other way she seems to be different from river. she is very particular... you better hold her the right way, shush her the right way, bounce her the right way, and don't you dare put her down and walk out of the room. she loves being around people and starts crying almost the instant you leave her alone. she is very serious and it is a tough game trying to make her smile! forget laughing... she's chuckled twice, holding her breath and smiling her precious smile, but she refuses to laugh! it's the funniest thing and makes us laugh. i can't wait until she laughs. she is still a great sleeper. i was so afraid it was just a lucky sleepy newborn thing, but every night she only wakes up to nurse twice, and she takes long naps during the day, giving me a much needed break (or rather, better attention to make sure river isn't getting into trouble).
two new years ago, i made the resolution to take at least one photo a day. i'm glad i did, because as i was putting river's one year book together on shutterfly, i realized i did not have a single picture of him on my digital camera when he was three months old. i had a couple cell phone pictures, and that was it. for the rest of the year though, i had tons of pictures. of course, with austen, i am much busier than i ever was with river. i get distracted and even though plenty of days i think, she looks so adorable today! i have got to get a picture... i just never get around to pulling my camera out and snapping a shot. i'm a perfectionist, and the downfall with that is that if i can't get a good photo -- not just a snapshot, but a great quality photo -- then i just won't even try. that's bad! bad, especially when you have quickly growing babies that need to photographed constantly, so you can remember all the funny faces and little moments that you would otherwise forget.
austen is a funny girl. she is so different from her brother. river was smiley, content, easy-going. he would go to anyone. if he was ever upset, all i needed to do was nurse him, and all his little baby troubles would melt away. in fact, sometimes it seemed he nursed all. day. long. i am not exaggerating when i say we hardly went twenty minutes without a nursing session! he was easy to make laugh and extremely sociable. my little ray of sunshine every day. very strong and active. a horrible, horrible sleeper. in fact, i found an old notebook in which i had written questions to ask my midwife at our six-week check up, and one of them was "is he getting enough sleep?" i laughed because i remember that... how he would be awake the majority of the day, and then wake up seven, eight, nine times in the night to nurse.
she is a pretty easy baby for the most part, but in every other way she seems to be different from river. she is very particular... you better hold her the right way, shush her the right way, bounce her the right way, and don't you dare put her down and walk out of the room. she loves being around people and starts crying almost the instant you leave her alone. she is very serious and it is a tough game trying to make her smile! forget laughing... she's chuckled twice, holding her breath and smiling her precious smile, but she refuses to laugh! it's the funniest thing and makes us laugh. i can't wait until she laughs. she is still a great sleeper. i was so afraid it was just a lucky sleepy newborn thing, but every night she only wakes up to nurse twice, and she takes long naps during the day, giving me a much needed break (or rather, better attention to make sure river isn't getting into trouble).
as expected, it is very wet here in washington. it's all very "twilight"... i feel like a werewolf is going to come out and attack me at any given moment. the trees are incredible. i was talking to my amazing stepmom the other day and mentioned how gorgeous the trees are here. she pointed out that everything else texas has is huge -- the squirrels, the burgers, the sky, the cockroaches. but the trees are just these stumpy little things! it's so true. in san antonio at least, the trees are pretty pathetic. i am amazed at the length of these things here. they shoot up into the sky, and sometimes the branches don't even start until about ten feet above a two-story building.
it's cold, but not too cold. the weather hasn't started to depress me yet... maybe because i prepared myself for it. or maybe because in the past three summers in san antonio, two of them were record-breaking, with incredible heat and intense drought. i was soooo ready for some rain. it's funny though, i have found i am pretty excited to see the sun when it does shine through the clouds. even river yells, SUN! MAMA, SUN! kinda sad. poor kid. ;)
it's okay though, because there's a coffee shop at every corner. almost literally. the people here love their coffee, and i'm pretty sure it's because they need something warm in their hands. a small, independent coffee shop in san antonio is hard pressed to survive for long, but here, the ma and pa coffee shops survive among the starbucks' pretty well.
i feel much more at home here in olympia than in san antonio, even though this is the first time i've ever been west, and i lived in san antonio for most of my life. it's a pretty liberal state, and the hipsters here are kind of like the coffee shops. they're everywhere. i can finally wear my hipster shoes and not feel like a dork. there are also a lot of hippies and everyone knows i like to pretend i'm a kind of a hippie, while hiding my dr pepper in my pantry. but no seriously -- i'm giving up soda this year. for real this time.
christmas pictures to come! until then, enjoy this chocolate wine. oh yes.
