Photo shoots with kids

I don't really go in for posed photographs.  I dont like the fake smiles and the uncomfortable looking lines of the arms and legs.  The awkward too close to the other person or knee to the back.  Ugh.  And then making sure everyone is happy and no one has a bad attitude. Horrible. Especially when rushed through in 15 mins or less start to finish.

As a family, we have done the portrait studios mainly for the grandparents and great grandparents. It is excellent and cost effective for a large amount of give away photos.  (Photos that I don't really care for.)

This year both kids were old enough to listen to the girl directing them.  They were even old enough to figure out what she meant.  

My girls thrive on silly, so the photographer this year managed to get mostly real smiles.  The appointment was at an awkward time for us.  Right before lunch and well after the happy time. (My kids are mornng people.) But the girl doing the photographing managed to keep the children giggling from the beginning to the end.

Color me impressed.  But I still prefer catching the kids in those candid moments when they have no idea I am watching them.  A photo of a child concentrating with their tongue just peeking through their lips? Priceless.

Or this:

The photo is courtesy of Lee Etherton who randomly stopped us at Ren Fair and asked to take a picture of Ginger.  This is not a fake smile or posed by anyone.  This is pure Ginger and I love it.

Then there is this:

Hey, Sugar, smile! For a whole year we would tell Sugar to smile just to get this face.  

JCPenny's Portrait studio would never be able to capture the personality in these wonderful shots. Luckily, they don't have to because I have at least 5 gigs of real life photos per year of kids. (I already ran out of space on 1 hard drive, so my tech guy had to buy me an external. I may have a photo taking obsession.)

Kite Festival

This year was the 84th annual Zilker Park Kite Festival in Austin.  

The first time I went, Ginger was about a month old. My mom was still in town from the birth and we decided to go on the spur of the moment.  Ginger spent most of the time doing this:

This year, Ginger was 6 and she was the only one that managed to do this:

That white string leads to our small fishy kite.  6 grown-ups had tried to get her kite up in the air.  We tried with 3 different kites even.  Then Ginger stands in just the right spot and Uncle C gets her attention long enough for the wind to take it and zoom.  It stayed in the air for 15 - 30 mins before another kite got wrapped around it and we brought it down.

Both girls LOVED the kite festival.  The walking, the sun, the crowd, none of it mattered with all those amazing kites zooming around in the wind.  

The week before, when we tried to explain to Sugar (3 years) what a Kite Festival was she was hung up on Festival means a kind of party which to her means CAKE.  Luckily, Hey Cupcake and Uncle W were there and she got a huge cupcake that she obviously though was too pretty to eat because she wouldn't and she got mad when I did.  

Since even my dear husband seemed to have a good time, I hope to make it a yearly thing.  The girls love driving downtown under all the tall buildings.  They love driving over the bridges and being "so high."  The love riding a school bus from the parking garage to the park.  As a matter of fact, I do believe riding the school bus was the second best part of their day.

Maybe next year, Ginger can teach the rest of our group how to get a kite in the air in a huge crowd of people.

Teaching things I don't know

I can not navigate on the fly like my husband can.  He seems to have an internal GPS unit.  He can turn down a strange road and get exactly where he was trying to get.  He houses a 3D map in his head.  The only map I have is on my phone and I have to stare at it and compare it to my surroundings. Even then sometimes I go left when I should have gone right.  I wish I had a better navigating sense and so I REALLY want it for my kids.

How do I teach what I don't know? With Ginger, I put us in the situations where she has to figure it out.  Don't worry, we won't get lost.  I can usually get us back to point A even if I never manage to find point B.  I'm pretty good at the retracing my step skill.  Maybe that was my trade off for being horrible at the navigating skill.

I took Ginger for a walk a while back and told her to pick a path.  She thought she had gone right a long time ago and seemed to have her landmarks down, so we walked.  We walked about a mile until we reached a park we didn't know existed.  (That's cool, right?)  Since it was not where we intended to go, we turned around and went back.  After a water break at Point A, she decided to take us left.  

Left had roughly the same landmarks, but she says she never went this way.  After another mile we finally got to Point B.  She was excited because she did it.

I knew the way was left to begin with, but I let her lead because I wasn't trying to teach me anything.  When I gave her that first left or right choice I did hesitate momentarily. Then I got out of my daughter's way and let her teach herself a lesson.

I'm sure Robert Frost would be proud.

Lost Children

Let's be honest.  Have you ever lost a kid for even a split second?  Long enough for your breath to stop and your heart to race and your mind to say mean and ugly things to you.

I have.  It was all of 2 seconds and I flipped out.  Ginger was not yet 2.  I was big pregnant.  We were in a big box store, during the day. I was on a mission.  (I usually am when I shop.  I know what I need and I go straight there.)  Ginger did not want to hold my hand, and you all know how much trouble it is to make them at that age.  I tried to look forward and down to the side at the same time, but I must have blinked.  Ginger was gone.  My heart jumped, I inhaled and forgot to exhale and I looked at all the people around me like they were kidnappers.  I said her name, once, twice, three times.  The last time with more than a little panic in my voice.  She appeared out from under a rack of clothes.  I got face to face with her and I yelled at her.  (Sorry, mom, for doing my fair share of hiding in the clothes racks, I promise not to do it any more.)

I was not bothered by the nice little lady a couple of yards away that stopped dead in her tracks to see if things were resolved.  I did not worry about scaring my daughter.  She needed to be scared.  I needed her to know that I was scared.  It was scary, times 100.

These days, when Ginger gets ahead of me or turns a corner before me, I don't panic.  I just remind her to stay where I can see her and she comes back into view.  She usually comes back into view without the reminder.  She knows how it makes me feel when I can't find her and she feels the same way when she can't find me.

For Sugar, I was not at all opposed to using the teddy bear backpack leash thing.  I still sometimes think that a leash might be the exact right thing for keeping up with my 2 excitable children.

Menu Planning

I am a list maker.  I make lists.  I make lists of lists.  One of my lists is our menu plan.  I used to do it once a week and get 4 opinions for the weekly meals.  It worked great, so I got more adventurous.

I now make a month long menu plan.  Don't worry.  It is not as complicated as it sounds.  Fridays are Mexican Nights and Wednesday are Pasta Nights.  Tuesday are relegated to leftover.  Thursdays, however, are the best EVER!

Thursday Nights are Ginger's Choice.  She picks a recipe out of one of her cook books. Together we make sure she has everything she needs.  (We try to do this a week in advance.) She cooks it, getting help if she needs/wants it.  She cleans up her mess.  Thursday night is by far my FAVORITE night of the week.

I love having a 6 year old!

Geek Seasoning

I have a science degree. Knowing this, the rest won't come as such a shock.


I recently found recordings of science songs by Tom Glazer.  The quality is tinny, due to the originals being from the 50s and 60s and on LPs.  That is a RECORD, for those of you younger than me.


They Might Be Giants remade a few on their Here Comes Science album and I found them... meh. The kids didn't enjoy them much at all.  (TMBG just couldn't pass Barenaked Ladies - Snacktime in our charts.)


But play a few of the original Tom Glazers and they are captivated.  Maybe it's the clearly audible fuzz in the recording.  Maybe it's the hypnotic radio voice.  Maybe it's the skill of the rhyme, or the awesome beat.


The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees


Alright, it is not really, and TMBG remade the song to reflect a more accurate science, but the newer words aren't as good for earworms.  


The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma 
The sun's not simply made out of gas.  No, no, no 
The sun is a quagmire. It's not made of fire 
Forget what you've been told in the past 

I can totally sleep without that one in my head.  But Tom Glazer's... I'll be singing it or one of his other 88 songs for the rest of my life and my kids will learn something useful, if not a little dated. 

I LOVE YOU, MR. GLAZER!  You've helped make my cookies a little more geeky.

6th Birthday

Ginger recently started reading chapter books.  She's been reading the Rainbow Magic Fairies collection. I started out reading it aloud to her.  Before the end of that book, she was reading it to herself.  !!!!!

I'm a book lover. I love paper books, cookbooks, audiobooks, ebooks.  I don't care what form it is in, I LOVE stories.  So, of course, when Ginger started showing an interest in this next level of book, I went crazy.  For her 6th birthday I bought her almost 50 new books in this series.  Yes, I went overboard.  I couldn't help it.  It's books!  She's reading!