Kate at 15 months

I'm a bit behind here. I've been working on this layout since, oh, March 27th, actually. The trouble with scrapping digitally is that there are so many possibilities, and I just have this compulsion to keep playing around with it and trying out different things. But then, the nice thing is that I can always go back and change it later, if I want to.

The blue and reddish papers are from Ronnie McCray's "Maritime" kit. I made the large curve and stitching--I was rather pleased with the way it turned out.

Since hitting 15 months Kate has been changing even more. She learned how to turn around in a circle and make herself dizzy, and she's developed a penchant for pushing things. We went up to Ikea last week and she was pushing around one of their little kid-sized shopping carts and just having a great time. Now she keeps wanting to push other things--the stroller when we go to the park, the big shopping carts at Fred Meyer, and even the rocking chair, which doesn't push very well.

Kate also has a new word, and that word is "meema." It means snowman. Over the Christmas season she had this thing about snowmen--everywhere we went, if there was a snowman decoration somewhere, she would spot it. Maybe it's their bright carrot noses (she does like carrots), or their cheerful expressions. You don't see snowmen around so much in April, but Kate does have a couple of books that have have snowmen in them, and she just started saying "meema" a few days ago. There's also somebody on Two Peas who has a snowman blinkie in her signature, so when Kate's sitting on my lap when I'm reading the message board, she'll point suddenly at the screen and say "meema!" and I'll scroll back up and see that I just went past the snowman.

I have a little Gingerbread Man book by Richard Scarry. It was given to me by one of my roommates at BYU. In the front she wrote, "This is to help you remember the gingerbread groundhogs." As it happens, I don't remember the gingerbread groundhogs, but Kate has been enjoying the book. Doug reads it to her (with humorous ad-libbing), and he has a little song that he does for the "Run run, fast as you can" part. Now when Kate sees a picture of a gingerbread man, she points at it and starts singing the little song. ("La, la, la.") It's just the cutest thing.

We do have one book, a little book of colors (which I can't find right now, but I'm sure it's around here somewhere), that has a snowman on the white page and a gingerbread man on the brown page. What fun.

Wahooooo!

I figured out how to type in Korean! With a lot of help from various sources, we finally put the final pieces together today and got it working. I got a bunch of yummy fonts from this site, and I can use them in Word and in Photoshop. Wheee!

A girl and her stuffed animals (and a flower!)

I took this yesterday:



This is Kate sitting in the laundry basket (yet again), surrounded by all her furry friends. We've been pulling her around in the basket quite a lot. Doug made some modifications--a piece of cardboard taped onto the bottom, so it slides smoothly over the carpet, and a belt on the handle so we can pull it without bending over. Loads of fun.



And here's one from today. She's becoming more little girl and less baby.

April Fool!

This is my avatar on Two Peas.





This is my avatar on Two Peas for April Fool's Day.


I'm easily amused.

Check out this beautiful family...

This is what I've been working on the past week. Actually more than the past week. I've been editing photos, but I got sick, and then Kate got sick, and everything ended up taking a lot longer than it should have.

I took these pictures for Ross and Cathryn (owners of the Jerusalem mural) back in October. They were going to order some for Christmas, but I never got the final word from them (I was insanely busy, anyway, what with the drawing and Barb's wedding and all). Then a couple of weeks ago Cathryn found an email in her draft box that she thought she had sent to me back in December, with the list of pictures they wanted. So, I've been editing.



Some of these were posed and some were just spur-of-the-moment candids (and hence not too well focused). You can see the mural in the background on those last two. We'd been taking pictures outside, but it was getting cold, so we went in and were just hanging out in the living room. One of the girls was looking at a book by the lamp, and I just loved the way the light fell on her, so I started taking pictures. Then we had to get the other girls in too.



This was one of my favorites--Cathryn didn't order any of this one, but I had to post it anyway because it's so cute. They're such a sweet family.

Testing 1-2-3

Blogger has been doing weird things since I posted yesterday. *smack!*smack!*

Have a ball

The purchase of this ball was a result of two recent incidents, and led to a rather unfortunate adventure.

Tuesday night we were at the church for Young Men/Young Women (the girls were, ironically, scrapbooking, but I hadn't gotten anything together to work on with them). Kate kept wanting to go run around in the gym, so we spent a lot of time in there. Then a guy came in with a basketball to shoot some hoops. Kate wanted that basketball. Wanted it bad. She wailed and wept and carried on for what seemed like a good 10-15 minutes. (It was very sad, and probably annoying for everyone else, I imagine, but I couldn't help laughing--I mean, who would have thought that a basketball would be such an object of desire?) When the guy took a break Kate got to have the ball for a while, and was just as pleased as punch. She has played with basketballs before--we were using one for an activity a couple of weeks ago, and during the Bishop's spiritual thought in opening exercises Kate was up at the front of the room, pushing the ball around and yelling "Wheee!" So this didn't completely come out of nowhere. We were just surprised by the strength of her reaction.

We have a couple of folding crates that we've been using for laundry baskets. A few days ago, Doug got the bright idea of pulling Kate around in one. This means that we've spent a lot of time hunched over, dragging her around the house while she signs "More!"



So, Wednesday afternoon, I borrowed a little red wagon from a friend in the complex. I put the laundry basket in the wagon and it just barely fit, so I pulled Kate around in that. She was having such a good time that I thought we'd take a walk up to Kmart, which is about 3½ blocks away. She likes looking at the stuffed animals and things. We played with the big plastic balls for a while and I picked one out for her. (Hey, three bucks!) The guy who checked us out tried to put it in a bag, but he didn't have one big enough. I said I'd manage somehow. I ended up holding the ball in one arm while I pulled the wagon with the other.

Shortly after we left the Kmart parking lot, on our way back home, it started to rain. It was a light sprinkle at first, but got progressively harder. By the time we were about a block from home, it was really pouring. Then a sudden gust of wind whisked the ball out of my arm and tossed it down the street, back the way we had come. We stood there in the rain, watching the ball dance away, performing graceful, gravity-defying leaps like an actor on wires in a martial arts movie. I was laughing. I seem to recall Kate pointing after it and exclaiming in surprise. ("Ball!")

In retrospect, I should have just left the ball and gotten Kate home. But we went after it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I left the wagon at the side of the road and picked up Kate and hurried. We found the ball back up at the edge of the Kmart parking lot. Brother Smith from church was standing out in front of his house with an umbrella (I didn't even know they lived over there) and he walked us and the ball back home.

Kate was soaked and shivering when we got home, and looking a little blue in the extremities. I tried giving her a nice warm bath, but she wasn't going for it, just hunching over and crying, so I got her all towelled off and into a nice warm sleeper, and then we spent a good long while snuggled up and nursing. I called the doctor to see if there was anything I should be looking out for. I figured Kate would go to bed early after all that, but she didn't.

Kate seems none the worse for wear, and has been enjoying playing with her ball. This morning she even dragged the laundry basket over to me and then went and pointed at the front door. But we aren't going outside right now. It's raining.

If I could talk to the animals

Kate was laughing in her sleep the other night. Doug said, "She's probably dreaming about doggies!"

Kate loves doggies. If we're outside for a walk and she hears one in the distance, she'll stop and look around and say "Woof!"

We've been reading lots of books with animal sounds. Terry Pratchett's Where's My Cow? is a current favorite. I must have read that one seven or eight times the other day. (Doug and I are both big Discworld fans, so we're starting Kate off young.) One of her other books has a turkey and a dolphin, which are both great fun. Kate has been quite amused by her silly parents' turkey impressions.

Someone posted these on Two Peas: Talking Dogs and Talking Cats. We have been watching them over and over (and over and over and over), with Kate signing "More! More!" before we even get to the end. That last cat just cracks us up.

This Funny Cats clip is also getting a lot of runtime, though it contains no talking.

"More!"

I went to a baby sign class back in January, and I'd been sort of inconsistently trying to do a few signs with Kate. Then when she started copying my "The crocodile goes snap! snap!" when reading one of her little board books, I figured she would be able to learn some. We've been doing "more" and "milk," and I think she's got "change" figured out too.

Today we all went down to Olympia so Doug could drop off a job application at South Puget Sound Community College. After a brief visit to campus we went to a couple of parks. While I was taking pictures of some crocuses (ah, Spring!) Kate was having fun stomping on metal plates in the ground. One of them was a little bit loose, and Doug was jiggling it with his foot. Kate complained when he stopped. He said, "You want some more?" and she signed "more!" (She doesn't do it quite right, but we know what she means!)

One fish, two fish

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday yesterday, I wore my One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish shirt. (It came from a T-shirt shop in Victoria, BC.) Kate was fascinated by the shirt and kept pointing to the words and the fish. We have the book, too, and she was able to make the connection. "Hey, that's the same thing!" When we were getting ready for bed I put the shirt on her, and she had fun walking around in it. (I hitched it up with a twisty-tie in the back, but it was still dragging on the floor!)

Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 35 today, and Kate is 14 months.

I got Doug to take some pictures of us when he was home between classes. Fun, huh?



My mom got the Autumn Leaves Designing with Digital book for me. I haven't had a chance to look at the CD yet, but the book is gorgeous. Doug has been waffling between getting me some more RAM for the computer and getting my boots re-soled. We are probably going to Chevy's for dinner, unless other inspiration strikes in the next few minutes.

The news this week

Doug had two days off this week (Monday for President's Day and Tuesday for an inservice day). A relaxing morning at home is a rare thing indeed for Doug these days, since he has a 7:00 class on weekdays, a 8:00 class Saturdays, and meetings at the church starting at 9:00 on Sundays. We enjoyed having him home. We were thinking about driving out to Snoqualmie Falls, but it was cold and raining/snowing, and we seem to have lost Kate's hat (sadness!) so I didn't want to take her out in it.

After many false alarms, Kate is finally cutting teeth. She's handling it well so far. She's been enjoying chewing on frozen peaches.

Kate is talking more! I guess she was concentrating on walking for a while, and now it's time to work on the verbal skills. The other day she was sitting in her high chair happily gobbling up some black beans, and Doug said, "There's not going to be any left for Mama!" Kate pointed at me and grinned and said, "Mama!" Awwww. She's also started imitating animal sounds when we read to her, which is absolutely adorable. (Click Clack Moo is a great favorite these days.)

And on the digital scrapbooking front: I emailed Lisa at Griff's Shortcuts (I designed some lasercut frames for them a few years ago) to ask if I could use some of the designs that I created for them but that they never actually used. She said they've been thinking about offering digital products on their site. So I spent a week putting together some variations of my oak leaf frame, and sent them for her to check out. She liked them a lot. It looks like we might be teaming up again. In the meantime I've been trying to get a handle on the digital community, and make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel unnecessarily.

So, hopefully, I will continue to be busy. I probably won't be blogging very regularly, but will try to post at least once a week.

A digital valentine

I've been working on this for a few days--my first attempt at a digital scrapbooking element.

I made the heart frames in Corel Draw, since I'm more familiar with that program for vector graphics, then moved on to Photoshop. I used the "atomic gold" action from atomiccupcake.com, which is very cool. For the insides I made a basic heart and added lighting effects, then put a gradient map over it and had fun filling the gradient with different colors. The marbling was done with a mask made from difference cloud filters. I made the highlights myself. That part was very tricky--it took a long time to get them looking the way I wanted them.

I found some space on our FTP server to host the .png file for a while, just in case anyone out there would like to use it. The image is 11" long and 300 dpi. To download, right-click here and choose "save target as."

May 5--I took the file down to make room for my Children's Day freebie. Let me know if you'd still like it!

Happy Birthday Doug!

Doug turned 41 yesterday (the 13th). We went out to I Love Bento for dinner, and Kate sat on Doug's lap and stabbed his tofu steak with a chopstick. It was the first time we'd gone out to eat since she's been walking, and it got a little exciting, but we had a good time. The waitress there likes Kate.

Barb's birthday is also the 13th, so we called and sang to her, and then she and Kyle sang to Doug. My family has a tradition of singing "Happy Birthday" as badly as possible. (It started out as a singing-like-the-stork-on-Dumbo tradition and went downhill from there.)

Look, I scrapped!

Baby Madelynn was born on Christmas Day. Her parents are in our ward at church, and Grandma uses Creative Memories albums (8.5"x11"). I got to go over and take pictures (I thanked them for letting me practice on their child) and then I put together these layouts on the computer.




I got the pages printed at mpix and was thrilled with the way they turned out. Mpix doesn't do 8.5x11 prints, though, so I got 10x13 and trimmed them down. I found out afterwards that scrapbookpictures.com does have 8.5x11 prints. I'll have to use them next time.

I've been finding it difficult to work on projects with Kate around (like that drawing I did right before Christmas), but I think digital scrapping will be a good outlet for me right now. I don't have to get out any tools or supplies, and I can just leave it up on the computer and work on it a little at a time. Plus all my pictures are digital now, anyway. Sounds like a plan.

Baby Steps

We have a walker! Kate went suddenly from taking four or five steps on her own to toddling full-tilt around the house.

Of course, a girl who's walking needs some shoes! I got her two pairs--these cute little pink sneakers and some pretty Sunday shoes.



Kate hadn't really worn shoes at all (I did put some on her once, just out of curiosity, and she kicked them off) so I wasn't sure how she was going to react, but she got the idea right away. She sees us put on our shoes, and she's old enough now to make the connection. She's very immitative and tries to do what we do, so the shoes were well received. Now she'll bring me her shoes to let me know she wants to go outside.


This is Kate at church the Sunday before last (Jan 29), wearing her new shoes and her dress from the wedding. At that point she was still holding onto things and taking just a few steps at a time. By the next Sunday she was all over the place.


I took these outside yesterday. She's still a bit uncertain on uneven surfaces, but she's enjoying exploring and experiencing. We're excited about spending lots of time outside as the weather gets warmer.

* blink * blink *

Here I am, emerging after being swallowed by my computer. I found a quote on luminous landscape that seemed appropriate: "Digital image processing is still new enough for most people that no matter how much we read, experiment and work at it, there seems to be an endless amount to learn. This is particularly true as regards Photoshop, that invaluable tool yet also bottomless pit of a time sink." So true.

I finally got Barb and Kyle's wedding picture CD mailed off to them, along with the Korean wedding ducks that I completely forgot to take along when we went to Utah.

I did a couple of digital layouts (which I should be posting soon). In checking out digital scrapbooking stuff on line and realizing that there are people out there making and selling kits and elements, I suddenly have an urge to design. It's very very cool. My brain is abuzz.

Happy Birthday Kate!

There's a special Korean tradition for a child's first birthday--kids are offered a variety of items to see which one they pick up first. The item chosen is supposed to reveal the child's path in life, or innermost character, or something.

Here's the table as we laid it out:



bowl of food The traditional item is a bowl of rice, but we used Unburied Treasure (the Trader Joe's version of the snack called Pirate's Booty), which is one of Kate's very favorite things in the whole world.

piece of string representing long life

mechanical pencil representing a scholarly interest (or perhaps a mechanical one)

Prismacolor art sticks representing an artistic bent

money representing financial aptitude

Doggies book representing... err... books. Or dogs, maybe.

And here's what happened:


She went for the food! I read afterwards that the bowl of rice is supposed to symbolize wealth. Perhaps choosing Unburied Treasure means that she'll be a pirate.

Kate at 52 weeks

We came home on a Monday, so we did our photo shoot at the airport. Here Kate amuses herself while waiting to board the plane. (Coming back was more fun, since we had Doug with us!)






I'm not sure what she's yelling about in that one picture. I guess she saw something exciting.

Christmas

The rest of my family left right after the wedding. We spent Christmas in Harriman with Doug's sister Melody and her family. It was nice to be able to relax for a while, after a very busy few days.





Kate was intrigued by all the lights and decorations. She was also rather overwhelmed by having four active cousins around. (She looks a bit stunned in some of these pictures.)





We went to church with Mark and Melody's family Sunday morning, and then came home and opened presents. Here Kate watches the proceedings from the safety of Daddy's lap.

Kate got to open a couple of presents too (but needed a little help!)



A toy phone (from the cousins), and a book (from Mom and Dad). Wow!



Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book by Sandra Boynton. I saw it at the library and thought Kate would enjoy it. She does. (The howling page is a favorite.)





Our first Christmas as a family of three!