My parents have this great window in their living room which is huge and doesn’t get much direct sun. I like to use it for some nice little portraits.
Here’s the face Celia keeps making a lot lately. Maybe it’s teething or maybe it’s just a new trick, but we see it a lot.
I tried to set up a valentines shoot… wasn’t very creative nor successful, but I thought I’d share two anyway.
This weekend we went for our quick getaway weekend at the Cape Codder Resort in Hyannis. Yep Cape Cod in the middle of winter. We swam outside, we went to the beach, and jumped over waves. Yes, really. OK so the waves weren’t at the beach, nor was the swimming but we did all three. Our lovely neighbors Christina, Chanh, Ethan and Zach joined us again.
We drove down Friday afternoon, hit some traffic from an accident so we stopped after 2 hours and got some yummy ice cream. Celia refused to eat any of it, looked at me like I was trying to poison her when I gave her some on the spoon. She ate some goldfish instead. We got to the hotel around 4 and unpacked and went to the pool before dinner. Celia hasn’t seen a swimming pool since last summer so she was a bit cautious about the whole deal, but often opted to send Jordi chasing after me (holding her) when I’d go deeper with Josie. We had dinner in the in-house Italian restaurant which oddly had very few pasta dishes, and a wine list twice as long as the menu. While getting ready for bed, I played with my high ISO settings on my camera with the girls to see what I can capture since my speedlight is broken.
For all of those photos but the third, there is only one light on in the room. We put the girls to bed, and later that night our neighbors arrived with sleeping kids, who promptly woke up and decided that a late night walk around the hotel was needed. Our whole family is sick and so we all crashed. Jordi got sick during the night, possibly food poisoning. In the morning we went to Dunkin Donuts and got some food before hitting up the pool again. Celia was less nervous this time and enjoyed herself more. Why aren’t there any pictures at the pool? Because the room is really humid and everything is wet and we don’t want to risk the camera. Plus we have all agreed to no adults in bathing suit pictures.
After swimming the men took naps while us moms took the kids over to the mall. Celia napped and the big kids went on the carousel as per tradition and then we lunched. Back at the hotel for more swimming. But when we finally went to get ourselves to the pool, it was closed for cleaning or something. So we went to the other pool, which is new. It’s heated, but it’s outside! Did I mention it was snowing on Saturday? By this time it was mostly freezing rain but we braved the outdoors and jumped into the pools. It felt good inside the pool, but of course your head was still outside and eventually Celia was done. I took her in with many howls till we got inside the door and Jordi and Josie hung out playing some more. Josie even made friends with another girl named Clover who was probably 6. The whole pool just steams constantly from the temperature difference.
Here’s some photos of the girls outside earlier in the snow. Remember how we’re all sick and they’re not wearing coats? Yeah I’m such an awesome mom when I want to get pictures. They’re wearing more than their bathing suits!
Friday night we tried to go to a Thai place, but it was full, so we went back to our standard Mexican restaurant which is loud and good for kids while serving food. That night when we got back the four of us went to roast marshmallows on the bonfire the hotel lights up every night! It was still freezing rain a tiny bit so brrr it was cold, but it was fun and we had the whole place to ourselves.
I also tried to take advantage of the natural light through the big doors and windows so I set up some photos out the door with the remote, and in the big huge bed since we’ve got nothing like it at home.
Sunday morning we had more of the same food and swimming before we got all cleaned up and went home. On the way out of town we swung by the beach, at a really bad time of day (noon) and it was freezing so we had a super short photo session, most of the time was getting the girls in and out of the car. Have to do more this summer!
It’s always good to be home, but it was a fun weekend getaway. Tonight going to bed Josie asked “Is tomorrow Sabado?” [Saturday for the non-spanish speakers] Sorry kid, but that WAS the weekend. Tomorrow we’ll all focus on getting healthier some more.
She’s learned or is trying to learn how to:
This is Celia at Waldo Park, she keeps trying to throw herself off the structure. I’m not sad that we can’t play there much as it is winter, but today it was almost 60 degrees, so we played even though it was sopping. Josie asked why so many dogs had peed all over the park. Uhh that’s melted snow dear.
Look at all those teeth! Don’t notice that her eyes are out of focus because I had such shallow depth of field. But I don’t get many good views of her mouth like this!
Here’s Josie reading, in her cinderella dress. I’m liking my compositions lately peeking around door frames.
Another common theme for me lately has been figuring out how to do back lighting and getting dreamy hazy photos. I find they make me feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. I thankfully didn’t have to even ask for these poses, they just walk down the street like this now.
Yes they’re sorta yellow on purpose.
We haven’t had much snow this winter. So yesterday and today we played finally in it!
Since Celia’s past a year and things are slowing down developmental-wise a little bit, I’ve switched to three month updates. Her growth has slowed down but still sometimes she gets heavier overnight it seems! Her cold over Christmas definitely made her loose some of her pudge and so she’s a bit trimmer now and gained only 1.5 lbs in the last three months while growing an inch.
Celia has some major separation and stranger anxiety going on right now, developmentally on schedule, which means she hated the doctors visit this week. Even just getting her weighed and measured produced a lot of screaming and crying. She needs to be close all night long, but absent colds, night terrors, and teething (you know those one or two days a month) she is sleeping a bit better once she’s next to me.
She wants to be just like the rest of us, from using a napkin, to making art whenever and however Josie is doing it. She screams if she isn’t involved, and climbs. She moves chairs around and climbs up on things very quickly and without much care. So I need to watch her more now lately because she’ll do dangerous things without realizing it and gets there in the two seconds it takes me to wash my hands and turn around. She’s shed more blood thus far than I think Josie has in her entire life, generally from bashing her face into something and having some bleeding gums. She’s just not as careful and I just can’t be beside her 24/7.
Celia loves to dance and frequently asks for me to put music on by pointing to the ipod and stomping on the ground. Or she’ll find the musical teapot or another music making toy.
She also likes to make things a game that aren’t, like putting on her coat. It’s a bit frustrating when she see’s me take down her coat and runs the other way. I often just try to wait for her to come back and to try not to play that game. That in combination with her sister screaming that she either does her coat herself or that I must help her do it (depending on her mood) getting out of the house is a challenge, but a necessity. Celia is not much of a homebody these days, she wants to go out. Even just walking around outside the house is a good way to cheer her up.
Her language is really starting to take off. I heard her say the ‘n’ sound this morning and new words will pop up regularly. On Tuesday we counted 17 words, including those in english, sign language and spanish. She also does a jabbing sort of point to try to get her message across. When she wants to say ‘no’ as in ‘no don’t change my diaper’ she has a very clear head shake, and when she wants to say yes she just sort of jumps and bounces happily. She understands a lot of what we say although now it’s not clear how much she’s just picking up the key words or really understanding the whole idea.
She watches Josie and copies a lot of what she does. Celia has started to pick up the lacing beads and string them like Josie. Her favorite game is generally throwing things. We’ve got a big set of bean bags and balls for her to work through and she likes to play catch even though she can’t really catch anything yet. She can throw the bean bag about 5 feet with some pretty good oomph. Her aim and calibration are still a work in progress. She loves to brush her teeth, Jordi suggests it and she goes running to the bathroom.
Celia continues to not be too interested in books though. Once in a while one will catch her attention and she’ll look at the pictures for some in the car, but otherwise she finds my habit of reading to Josie to be very frustrating and annoying and generally tries to grab the book and run away.
Celia is a very polite music listener. Even if she’s falling asleep or nursing, when a song ends, she’ll sit up and clap. She doesn’t go to many sing-a-longs but I guess she’s a good music appreciator or she learned from the few early sing-a-longs she did get to go to! She also likes to clap for herself when she does something ‘right’, like taking my slippers off my feet and putting them on the shoe rack. She’s also starting to learn how to help change the sheets by taking the dirty sheets and putting them in the dirty laundry pile for me.
Overall right now she’s an eager girl who has lots of opinions on what she does, when she does it and how. Just like the rest of us.
The day after Christmas and our last day in Florida we wanted to do some stuff together as a family. The girls were feeling a bit better although as I look back at the photos I can still see they’re pretty sick. We thought about the seaquarium, but Josie had already taken a nap by 9am and her mood wasn’t the best so we didn’t want to pay a couple hundred dollars to all get in and have her be miserable. So being the northerners that we are, we said, hey it’s 80 degrees! Let’s go to the beach! It was amenable with everyone and off we went to Miami Beach. The girls dug in right away, they needed no coaching on what to do and how to do it. Except for reminding Celia eventually that sand was not for eating. We even got a bit wet as the water was probably as warm as it ever gets in Boston. I saw a jellyfish but kept that to myself since I didn’t want Josie to freak out. Celia likes to do a lot of head stands these days and the beach was no exception, so they did some yoga (downward dog) together. Towards the end of the afternoon Javier buried Josie with a mermaid tail, and Celia with tiny castles. We all had a great time and it was a fun end to our trip in Miami. And some pictures…
Actually while Celia was digging in the sand like this picture, a group of people came walking up the beach with big cameras and stopped and started taking photos of her. I walked over and said ‘hey that’s my kid!’ and they walked on. Probably nothing but it brought out the mama bear instinct quickly.
Today was Celia’s first day of gymnastics class, we’re back with Arlington Recreation and the two girls have back to back classes. They’re really laid back and so Josie gets to mill about while Celia has her ‘class’, which given that she’s 1 is mostly a free for all. But they both liked it a lot and were both really tired by the end. Josie made a new friend with a girl who also has a little sister in the baby class. Josie’s friend Sophie is also in the big kid class with her.
We also came home and had a photoshoot later with one of Josie’s Christmas gifts. Somehow Josie learned to tie a knot, she says from her lacing cards. I guess tying her shoes is next. We won’t be having my mother teach her. I had to relearn how to tie my shoes from my dad later because her bows are always crooked.
Today we made bagels which is something I’ve never done before. We eat a lot of them so I thought we’d try. Part whole-wheat, and some flavored ‘everything’, others flavored parmesan and a few plain. They were a lot of work. The dough was so stiff that they mixer couldn’t keep mixing it, it started to smoke. So I had to finish kneeding it by hand. Josie and my mom helped out some too with the kneeding to start with. Then they rise again and we boiled and baked them off. The recipe had us flip them, but mine seemed to have no problem cooking through and flipping the bagels made their tops look terrible so next time I may not do that. I’d definitely bake them on parchment next time too, rather than a lightly greased sheet then they’d stay a little more whole. But they are/were tasty. We ate a lot of them already.
Celia got her hands into it too by making the ‘worms’ with her best effort. Here’s Josie’s discussion of the bagels later.
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