19 months

Kate is nineteen months old today! We've really noticed a difference in her language in the past week or so, as far as putting words together and repeating what we say. It's a hoot. (I've been trying to get her to say "Hey nonny nonny.") She shows signs of understanding "big" and "little," though colors still seem to be largely eluding her.

While we were out walking I showed Kate a flower called a Lily--the same name as her tiger puppet--and now she keeps pointing at random flowers and saying "Lily!" She also thinks that any little bird now is a "dee-dee-dee." She's so observant and imitative, and she remembers things.

Fire!

I made this in Photoshop yesterday (finished it up yesterday, anyway). It's going to be in the August mega kit at ndisb. Now I'm working on a marshmallow on a stick.

Keeping Cool

One of the things I liked about this apartment is the patio and the little grassy lawn area out back. Of the four buildings in the complex, ours is the only one where the back porches face east, so we're nice and shady in the afternoon. We've been spending a lot of time out there while it's been so hot.

This is Kate on Sunday, with Ozzie, one of her puppet friends. (We couldn't decide whether he was supposed to be a cheetah or a leopard, so we declared him an ocelot and named him Ozzie.) She was so cute with her little pink skirt on, I just had to get some pictures. We've discovered that if she's out there barefoot she's less likely to run around the side of the building where the beauty bark is, so we don't have to keep chasing after her. We can sit outside and draw or grade papers or talk to Grandma on the cell phone.

When Kate sees this picture she points and says, "Ossie! Ossie!"

Brother, can you spare a bird?

I have a new project which involves drawing animals (and other things). I did this little guy yesterday. I've been teaching Kate to say "chickadee-dee-dee!" She's got the "dee-dee-dee" part down pretty well. And when we were outside the other day we saw a real chickadee, so she got to make the connection.

I had this idea just a little while ago and immediately started searching for photos on pbase and contacting people to ask if I could use their pictures. It's been a real pleasure to converse with these talented, generous people who share a love of nature and the visual image, and I've been thrilled by responses from people like Tom Robbins and Greg Lavaty, who said I could use any of their photos that I want (as long as I credit them and let them know which ones I use). They have so many wonderful, gorgeous pictures. It's seriously like being a kid in a candy store. (Check them out! The chickadee is Tom's.)

I posted this on Two Peas not long ago:

Five reasons why digital designing is better than drawing pencil portraits

• I don't have to make sure my hands are completely clean and dry before I start working.
• I can eat (and drink) while I'm doing it.
• It's not such a big deal if my daughter jostles my elbow in the middle of something.
• I don't have to worry about the post office losing or damaging my designs.
• Two words: undo button!

So now I'm designing and drawing. This should be a bit less stressful than doing portraits, though. At least that's the plan. The chickadee only took me a couple of hours, which is promising. (And we got our scanner hooked back up, finally! Yay! It's been in a box since the move.)

Things have been going well at ndisb--over 200 people have downloaded my firefly sample tag, and about 30 have actually bought the kit. Off to a good start!

Cheesy grin

Well, it's actually a goldfish cracker grin. But they're cheesy.

Look, she's got teeth! Those top ones poked through, finally, too. She had a couple of molars come in before the top front teeth. Our Kate is an odd one.

Kate has started putting words together--mostly with "more," though the other day she was saying "my Daddy!" very cutely. I don't think she knows what "my" means but she sure looked pleased with herself when she was saying it.

Doug has been exchanging family history information with Ola in Norway. He sent us a file with documents going back to the 1600's. Lots of neat stuff. Ola and Doug are fifth cousins once removed.

Boogie Kate

Yesterday we went out to the Freedom Fest at Fort Lewis for a little while. There was a retro 70's band called The Afro-Desiacs (or something like that--I never saw it written out). When we went into the concert area to check them out, they were playing that song that goes "Boogie-oogie-oogie till you just can't boogie no more." So here's Kate boogieing. (That looks funny. Boogying?)



We had a pretty laid-back kind of day. We figured Kate might appreciate fireworks, but would appreciate them even more when she's a little older, so we stayed home. It turned out to be a good thing that we were home, because we got a call from a man in Norway who was doing some family history research. Doug's mom has done a lot of geneaology and has information on where the family came from. This was somebody on the other end of things looking for information on where the family went. It turns out he and Doug are distant cousins. That was pretty cool.

I'd like to send big hugs to some friends who lost their father a couple of days ago. He will be missed.

Here it is!

My big news: I'm now a designer at ndisb.com! (That's Natural Designs in Scrapbooking.) I got my firefly kit up in the store today. It's official--I've got my profile picture there and everything. Woo hoo! (Yes, I'm excited....) And I'll be featured as a new designer in the July newsletter, which should be out in the next week or so. Theresa and everybody else at ndisb have been just great, showing me the ropes and helping me get set up. The biggest problem was getting those big files uploaded--apparently our Comcast cable modem connection, for which we pay good money every month, does not like uploads of more than 10MB or so. Doug was able to take my files to school and send them from there.

You can see all my stuff (so far) here. If you download the free sample tag, there's a coupon for 10% off the full kit. I was especially pleased with the way the stitches and my larkshead knot ribbon turned out.

Doug has been so amazingly patient and helpful as I've been working on all this (everything always takes longer than you think it's going to...). For my next project I'm going to tackle some of these pictures from Ohio. Actually my immediate next project probably should be straightening up the house a bit. And then I really, really have to free up some space on my external hard drive.