I was out of the office yesterday for a photo shoot which means I’m playing catch-up today. I have all sorts of things I want to blog about, but no time to do it. Not even enough time for a bulleted list. Then I remembered that I never shared our “keepers” from my photoshoot gone bad I did with the girls.
So, BOOM. Post. Plus cute photos.
These were all taken when Reese was about 6 weeks old. You know…over 6 weeks ago.
{Dear Time…PLEASE STOP! xoxo, Kat}
So, basically…I’m dumb. I thought, hey, I’ve got one of these fancy cameras, I think I’ll try and use it!
Pffft…that was my first mistake.
My second mistake? My subjects…a newborn, a 4 year old and a dog. Laughable.
While I did get 1 or 2 “keepers” I got more that were just plain funny {where funny either means, “haha, that’s funny”, or just plain awful}…
Can you say…bad lighting? Poor girl is blinded.
::sniff, sniff:: Yup, she needs a diaper change!
Fake smile is painful looking.
Aaaand, the dog has reached his patience level tipping point.
That’s a wrap!
Apparently I never mastered the whole “blogging while on maternity leave” thing. I’d either feel bad I was ignoring Rylee or Andy or it’d be nap time for the girls and I’d either catch a few Zzz’s myself or look around at my disaster of a house a feel the sudden urge to scrub all the things. Or you know, load the dishwasher at least.
Don’t fret. This is my last week of maternity leave. Yep, 6 weeks has nearly already passed and I’m headed back to work on Tuesday the 4th. September is part time, then I’m back full time at the beginning of October.
I’m ready, but not. If that makes any sense at all.
While it seems nearly impossible to bust out my laptop for some legit blogging, I always have my phone handy so while 1 kid naps and the other eats I thought I’d give a quick update…
Ry heads back to school next week. She has a new teacher that we met in Saturday. She is really looking forward to being back at school! She’s still struggling with her sassy attitude. Well, ok she has no problem with it. I’m the one struggling.
Reese will be 6 weeks on Thursday. Crazy. She’s doing ok sleeping at night. Normally only waking once around 3 AM then up again around 5:30. I use the term “normally” loosely. Last night she had me up 3 times.
Her favorite place in the whole house is her changing table. She’s completely content just to lie there for minutes at a time.
She’s been smiling for a couple of weeks now. And she’s starting to coo a little bit now too.
I swear her eye lashes grow longer every day. Her hair is starting to lighten up a bit. It may end up being more auburn than we originally thought it would be.
She is finally big enough for cloth diapers which makes my wallet happy. Though today I’ve been lazy and just used disposables. But I’m not complaining at all because she has totally wrecked almost every diaper shes had on today.
She LOVES hanging out in our Ergo baby carrier. That thing is a magic worker! I swear I don’t know how people with more than one kid can get by without baby wearing. I wear her at the grocery store. I wear her outside while Ry is playing. I wear her around the house. Super convenient.
Ry still thinks her baby sis is the cats pajamas. Always wanting to be all up in her business. Always wanting to hold her. Always wanting to get up from the dinner table to go check on her. She does get kinda pissy if Reese cries too loud during her cartoon time though.
That’s all the update time I have for now. Hopefully once I’m back at work we’ll be in a bit more of a routine and I’ll be back to my old self.
Of course no update post would be complete without photos…
Since Reese has been born, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to spent one-on-one time with Rylee.
Sometimes it works out, other times? Not so much.
The other day Andy was busy running errands or something. It was just the girls & I pretty much all day. Things started out okay, but then took a turn for the worse when I was feeding Reese and Ry needed or wanted something and/or wasn’t happy with the answer I was giving her. I was determined to make sure the rest of the day didn’t keep that momentum so I thought fast and decided that as soon as I was done feeding Reese, we’d head outside and do a photo scavenger hunt with Ry and her camera.
I quickly thought of some clues, scratched them them out on a piece of paper and explained the rules to Rylee. I would tell her the clue. She had 60 seconds to find the item/take a picture of it. Each photo was worth 10 points. If she got 100 points she’d get a “special prize”.
She LOVED the idea. So much so, that she wanted to do a practice run while I was still feeding her sister. Her attitude did a complete 180. I found some extra stores of patience. She ran out some major energy. Reese napped in the Ergo the entire time. And the day turned out awesome.
She came up with these all on her own! And for the record, she won the special prize of some Hello Kitty nail polish.
Somethings taller than you…{a tree}
Something Red…{the Buick}
Something Pink…{her sunglasses…I took this pic, so she only got half points. ;) }
Something Hot…{the sun} {Apparently Ry’s toddler tough camera is not a fan of the sun}
Something Yellow…{on my shoes}
Something you can eat…{pears from our pear tree}
Something you can climb on…{her play structure}
Something that smells good…{a flower} {this is totally a weed but I gave it to her anyway. haha}
Something Stinky…{her feet…she giggle uncontrollably while taking this photo!}
Something Blue…{the farm truck}
Something smaller than you…{SISTER!!}
Something you can drive…{the tractor}
Something that crawls…{this fly}
Something Brown…{the chair}
Something Round…{the brick}
Conclusion: Best spur of the moment made up game ever!
Y’all have heard about the movie Brave, right? About the red headed archer? I just watched the trailer for the first time a few minutes ago. {Seriously, just watching the trailer I got that HELL YEA YOU GO GIRL! feeling.}
Last weekend among the umpteen other things we had on the agenda, we had to make time to take Rylee to shoot her first bow. And by we had to, I mean there was no ifs-ands-or buts about it. And for a very special reason.
I spent nearly 4 years working for one of the largest bow manufacturers in the world. Through my time there I met a lot of amazing people. One of which, being this guy down below, Ray Howell. He founded a 1-on-1 youth mentoring program based out of Minnesota called Kicking Bear. Over the years, Kicking Bear has grown by leaps and bounds and it is truly just an amazing program.
Anyway, even since I’ve left the bow company I’ve stayed in contact with Ray. When he was in town last summer, we had him over for dinner and at that point he said that he would love to teach Rylee how to shoot her first bow. Well I found out on Friday that he was going to be in town for only the weekend, and working an event at Cabela’s. So Saturday, between the k-9 police competition and my cousin’s graduation party we swung into Cabela’s to see Ray and Rylee got to shoot a bow for the very first time.
The entire rest of the weekend, that was all Rylee could talk about.
Safe to say, I think she’s hooked.
In related news: I think we’re going to be knocking something off of our baby bucket list this weekend and taking Ry to see her very first movie in the theater!