Haven't blogged in a bit

This month has been, well, dull. At least the first couple of weeks.

This weekend was a little more fun because Friday was our five year anniversary, and as a gift (not that I deserved one; that's what our trip was!), I got a Canon 430EX II Speedlite! For those, like me six months ago, who don't know what a speedlight is, it's basically an external flash for the camera. It's a pretty good one, too! Right now I don't have any kind of trigger for putting the flash somewhere other than the top of the camera, but that's okay.

I've been playing with it to bounce light into the room by aiming it upward. It should really help my indoor pictures. And then tonight we played with the tripod and a long shutter speed (5 seconds), low ISO and medium aperture, and a half-powered flash (due to distance), and some glow sticks.

And here's one where the flash failed to fire:

Not really sure why, but the result was pretty cool. I am aware those pictures aren't great or anything, and aren't even technically correct yet (overexposed mainly) but I'm posting them because they were 100% manual. Manual camera, manual flash. I'm still totally learning but I can actually DO THIS. Six months ago the idea of taking a manual shot in daytime without flash petrified me, and now at least half my pictures are full manual and another fourth are at least in aperture-priority or shutter-priority mode (i.e. half manual, roughly). And now I can make the camera work for me with a manual flash on top! Wheeeeee!

And P.S. Charlotte picked the outfit in its entirety. We even went to the science museum like that today. Oy!

Look at me, mommy!

Yesterday Char was jumping up and down on my legs (I was sitting down), and she started plopping down on her knees suddenly. Which is fine and all, but I was worried she was going to accidentally head-butt me. I warned her, but she still seemed to be getting a little rambunctious. So I put my hand up to shield her chest, but I misjudged and her teeth brushed my hand on her way down.

Char, of course, knows how bad biting is, and immediately apologized profusely. I explained that it was just an accident and I knew she didn't mean to, and it was okay. All was well for about 5 minutes, until...

She walked up and touched me under my chin and said, "Look at me, mommy! You hurt my mouth with your hand, and you need to be more careful! It could hurt me and then I be mad!" LOL I think the discipline lessons are paying off ;). She's such a little ham!

Mad Scientist! or just a really really smart one

This is actually in backward order (as usual; stupid Blogger). Today was the Trunk or Treat day that a lot of churches had, and we decided to go to one today and skip Trick or Treating on Monday since DH has to work and Char and I won't get home until 3.

Char's costume:

And if you said Albert Schweitzer, well, you'd be half right. :) Einstein, of course!



They had some inflatables including this industrial/biohazard looking one:

And just for fun, a picture of my very favorite car of the evening. Angry Birds! Awesome!

This morning we did a little science experiment and made green slime, or silly putty, or whatever you want to call it. I had been intimidated by this recipe, but there was no reason to be, as it was easy as pie (or pi?) and not at all messy. Really!

Dissolve 1 tsp borax in 1 cup warm water (didn't bother getting this one on camera).

Dump 2 (4 oz) bottles of school glue in a bowl, add 1/2 cup warm water, and add a few drops coloring. Char started with blue and added a little green down the road, if you notice the color change.

Stirring the glue. ^^^

Now add the borax solution:

The solids start to form right away!

Knead the solids for a while until it dries out mostly, then play with it at will :).

We played "hide the gems" using the little glass flower decorator things from the dollar store. The slime doesn't stick to things at all, but if you pull it apart you can still put it together again. It was really cool!

Then we played by throwing the ball to (read: AT) each other. Lots of fun and we'll definitely be making this one again soon!

Compassion and hilarity

Sunday we went to eat at the Olive Garden, and Char insisted she wanted "macayoni", so I obliged (with a side of broccoli cut up inside it lol). She even ate a couple of "trees" on her own, for the promise of a hunk of bread.

The problem was that the server brought me meat sauce on my raviolis, and it was not fast when being fixed. So slow, in fact, that DH and Char both pretty much finished their meals before my food came. So DH took Char to the restroom. This story is from him:

"I was in the stall with Charlotte when a man came in who had some, uh, congestion. Meaning he was hawking loogies. And I knew what was coming, and already felt embarrassed before she even said anything. And she piped up, 'OH MY!!! Man, you okay? Bless you, man! Bless you!'" LMAO!

Also, she saw me looking sad and (unprompted) said, "Mommy, I'm so sorry she brought you wrong sauce. It's disappointing!" Good lord, I love this kid!

Some fun pictures

This weekend was pretty fun. If I hadn't had to go to work on Sunday to catch up for 4 hours, it would have been REALLY fun! :)

Saturday, Char and I met some internet friends for lunch, and we had a really nice time. Char dressed up like a punk rocker and we shot what might be the cover photos for her second rock album (just kidding; mostly). Here are some of those pictures:

(Because, believe it or not, her hair is too long now for a fauxhawk):

Then Sunday, after I got back from work, we went and bought a couple of pumpkins, and carved one of them. Well, I should put "carved" in quotation marks because really we drilled it with a cordless drill. Char seemed to have a great time, chasing us around to make us eat the pumpkin guts and handling the drill like a big kid. (I, of course, guided the drill until it was all the way in the pumpkin and she couldn't get it out by herself, so don't panic at the pictures):

Pumpkins are HEAVY:

The finished product. He kind of looks like he has measles:

And then we made and played with a homemade light box. By the way, both the drilled pumpkin and the light box ideas came from the Play At Home Mom blog. I LOVE this blog; they have the very best ideas. Check it out if you haven't already!

It was really expensive and complicated to build this homemade light box. NOT! (I just injected a little 1991 up in here, up in here). It was simply a translucent/clear rubbermaid type storage container, a string of clear white Christmas lights, and a hole drilled (or broken, more accurately) in the side, with some wax paper taped to the lid to disperse the light a bit more evenly. The colored glass are the little flower decorator gems that came from the dollar store. I bought 3 packages of them, and we also use them in our sensory table a lot.

Sometimes you have to experience the senses through your FEET, too!

Just catching up

Not really a whole lot needs to be caught up on, to be honest, but I feel bad for not writing for several over a week.

Charlotte did 2 cute things today, at least according to my husband. Recently, Char has been having a minor potty regression, but only overnight. I think it's because of the new daycare situation; they make the kids go to the bathroom every 45 minutes to an hour, and Char is used to going about 4 or 5 times a day. So she may be getting used to having an empty bladder and not wanting to hold it at night. So instead of her previous holding it all night and then for an hour or so in the morning, she has been wetting the bed a couple/few times a week. I don't want to put her back in diapers, so we've been dealing with it with training pants, fleece pants, etc.

Anyway, I decided to put her potty chair in her room last night, in hopes she'd use the potty instead of the bed. And guess what???? She used it. And then? She picked the potty up, and put it on her bed, and then she got in bed and pulled the covers up over herself so she was completely hidden. So when the husband went into her room, all he saw was a potty in her bed. LOL!

The other funny was that this morning, she told him, "I want to go see mommy." He replied, "Oh, mommy's at work." And she replied, "Let's go get her! Let's go rescue mommy!" Heheheh, some days she speaks the truth, and today would definitely be one of those days.

This guy, right here

Totally non-child related post here! Saturday, Alan and I drove to Atlanta to see Frank Turner live. I've wanted to see him forever, but the only time he comes to Nashville is for Bonnaroo, and, yeah, well, that's not happening. The last time he came through Atlanta, he was opening for Flogging Molly, and I really wanted all 3 of us to go, but they were sold out so we couldn't. At that time, Char was 8 months old so I could have worn her; this time she is 2 and would never be worn long enough at a place like that, and I can't have her get trampled, so she stayed home with the in-laws (who drove here from Knoxville to stay with her for one night so we could go; wasn't that nice???).

We've had the tickets for a while, but we never actually planned the trip out much. So we took our chances when we got there in finding a hotel. We ended up staying at the Hotel Indigo a few miles down the road, which we've actually stayed at before. Our room sucked; we were next to the ice machine so we didn't sleep well, but the manager comped us $50 so that's helpful at least.

We drove up there, found the Masquerade venue (it was deserted in daytime and looked really small) and checked into the hotel, unpacked, and ran across the street to dinner at Baraocanda, an Italian place. Across from Hotel Indigo is the Fox Theater, and Wicked is playing (as it was the last time we stayed there; weird!), so it was a little crowded. The food was yummy, though.

Off we went to the Masquerade. And this time it was not remotely deserted. In fact, there were police cars with lights flashing and officers directing traffic. Lots of traffic. Alan and I start giving each other the WTF look, and pull into the parking lot. Every car was spending a lot of time with the lot attendant, which seemed odd, so we asked the attendant if we were in the right lot. We were.

Then we started noticing the people getting out of their cars in the parking lot. Now, let me tell you a bit about Frank Turner. He calls himself a folk/punk singer. Some of his songs are more folk and some more punk, but the people getting out of their cars did not look like they were dressed for a folk OR a punk show. Women in stiletto heels and fishnets, guys with arm measurements bigger than their IQ's. So we were still giving each other the WTF face.

We both decided we had to know what was happening there. So we raced each other on our Droids. I won. "Masquerade Fight Night". Twelve rings of Mixed Martial Arts, fight (nearly) to the death, no holds barred. Nothing at all like Frank Turner. Luckily, the venue has 2 sections: "Heaven" upstairs and "Hell" downstairs. Frank was in Hell, possibly not for the last time lol.

And the show ROCKED! Definitely in my top 3 of all time. And you want to know the best part? Before the show, FT went out to the merch table and chatted with someone, and I had a pretty good view (you know, through the corner of my eye when I was pretending not to stare? yeah). And I saw him leave the merch table and run up the little stairs on the side of the venue, and he looked really, really, genuinely, truly HAPPY! I loved that!