if she starts playing dungeons and dragons...

i'll admit it. i make fun of grown men who read comic books.

(oh, excuse me, graphic novels)

whatEVER.

jeff reads them. collects them. has titles ordered for him at the comic book store so that every wednesday they are ready to be picked up (did you know that new comic books came out on wednesdays? neither did i until i married jeff. not when i was dating him, mind you. MARRIED. he waited until we were legally bonded to spring the secret comic book obsession on me.)

so the point. if it's not bad enough my otherwise normal husband reads comic books, now my daughter is starting to. she loves them. asks jeff to look at them and asks where batman and superman are.

she'll never get a date to the prom.

jack strikes again

i made a cake with the kids today (i'm so sick of coloring and finger paints). we iced the cake, put sprinkles on it and covered it with the promise that the kids could have a slice after dinner.

then i went to get the mail. as i was walking back into the house, kate runs to the door and starts screaming 'mommy! mommy! mommy!'. (which, to a mother, means that someone's head has fallen off or found the knife block and is sliced to ribbons)

turns out jack had dragged a chair over to the counter, taken the cover off the cake and was up to his elbows in cake and frosting, stuffing it in his mouth hand over fist.

here's what the cake looked like when i finally wrenched him away from it:

13 all over again.

we've lived in our community for just over two years, now. when kate started preschool this year, we really started meeting people and making friends. it's been really nice.

but.

i'm starting to feel suffocated. i'm starting to feel like i'm 13 and in junior high again. worried about whether the popular girls will like me, if they'll make fun of my clothes or think i'm just hopelessly uncool.

i'm almost 33 years old. i have two kids and a fantastic husband. why the hell do i care what people think of me? i ran into a few woman at the coffee shop this morning. i recently met one of them and she is really nice (and actually knows my husband from a previous job). the other two women with her seemed nice, too. but as i was standing in line with jack, in my workout clothes and my frizzy bedhead, i couldn't help but wonder what they thought of me.

isn't that ridiculous?

the whole ride home, i played it over in my mind...did they notice my nervous tic (scrunching my nose)? were they looking at my highlights (i think they're a little too blonde this time around)? did they just think i was a dork?

isn't this self absorbed? i know it is. really, i do. and yet...

i don't know what the point of this post is. just nervous energy, i guess. no, that's not true. the point is this: the more people know me, the more worried i am that i will disappoint them. i suppose that's why i like being by myself - no one to disappoint. no expectations to meet or fail to meet. that's why i feel so suffocated right now. i'm starting to know people. i'm running into people i know at the grocery store and the coffee shop and at mutual friends' parties.

and the more people i know, the more chances there are to disappoint people.

i know my mother is to blame for this, somehow...
(kidding, mom! if you're reading this)

photography client

had my first real photo shoot yesterday (with a family who wasn't actually related to me).

i was incredibly nervous going into it, but as soon as i started shooting, it felt natural and i found my rhythm. i wasn't sure if i was getting any worthwhile shots but after the shoot, when i downloaded the images, i found some that i really like. i still have to learn how to do better color correction, but for my first stab at it, i'm pretty proud of the photos. i hope the family likes them too!

photos here.

(another big thanks goes out to wendy, who got this family in touch with me.)

jack's first real haircut

jack elliott

if this picture doesn't make you laugh then you have a cold, dead heart.
(more photos here)

new photos

one of our neighbors came to play with kate and jack yesterday.
i posted photos of her on my other site.

another milestone

kate started taking showers. one of the little girls in her class likes to take showers and kate has been hesitant to try it. so i told her that sara took showers and that she could, too.

that did it (look at me, using peer pressure. bad mom. in a few years i'm going to be trying to teach her to resist it.).

so now she is hooked. and there is almost nothing cuter than a three-and-a-half year old little girl splashing around in the shower.

we also cleaned out all the baby utensils yesterday - no more first stage spoons and forks or bowls with suction cups on the bottom. i bought a bunch of plastic dishes and utensils at ikea. it feels good to have the old stuff gone.

am i the only mother (besides my mother?) who doesn't long for the days when my kids were babies? who actually looks forward to them becoming more independant and needing me less?

warm fuzzy

do you know people who leap at the chance to help other people? who are genuinely glad to see others succeed and who go out of their way to help make that happen?

i have a friend like that. she is a champion of other people reaching their goals (which sounds totally hokey but is also totally true). i don't see her often despite living around the corner and most of our talking is done via email. we are at different stages in our lives and careers. our kids are different ages. on the surface we don't seem to have a lot in common. and yet, this person gladly, willingly, enthusiastically sent out feelers for me today regarding my photography (and i got three responses!).

it makes me feel...i dunno...excited? amazed? dumbfounded? that someone thinks enough of me to recommend me to her friends?

i want to be more like her. i want to be an encourager.

(thanks WGS)

free photos

going out on a limb here. i've posted a few times about my secret dream to be a photographer. i know i'm not ansel adams but i think i can take a decent photo.

so. if anyone reading this (is anyone reading this? (besides wendy, of course!) i feel like i just send these thoughts out into cyberspace without knowing where they land) and you live in the baltimore/columbia area and you want some free photos (or know someone who does), email me. to give you an idea of my style, my personal photos are here.

i'd like to start taking pictures of people and kids and families just to get some work into a portfolio and to get some practice. in return for taking the time to pose for me and being my guinea pigs, i'll give you a CD with all the (good) images on it. you can print the images yourself and use them however you want.

anyone?
bueller?

mopey mcmoperson

feeling mopey and blue and blah today for no reason whatsoever. so instead of a whiny, mopey post, here's a picture of kate and her great-grandmother (jeff's grandmother), mema. we went to see mema yesterday morning and she made pancakes for us.

this picture makes me happy.

genealogy

i've always loved research. in college, my favorite part of writing papers was the research on the subject. it's like detective work and in the end, you have all this new knowledge on a subject you previously knew nothing (or very little) about. sounds incredibly geeky, but i've always loved it. the problem is that i like doing the research but hate then having to assemble it into something that makes sense (a report... a term paper...a proposal).

BUT. i started playing around with genealogy this week and i've found the mother ship. the whole point IS the research. i'm hooked.

by happy coincidence, i found a first cousin once removed (what does that mean, anyway?) on a genealogy board and she has been gracious enough to share her findings from the past two years with me. turns out we have family living in lyon, france which is just so cool. my cousin sent me pictures of this newfound family and they actually resemble some of my family members.

that whole six degrees theory? i'm beginning to think it's true. sounds hokey, but i think if more people got into genealogy, we'd see how small the world is. how can racism and bigotry survive in a world where we're all somehow related?

(this is my great, great grandfather giovanni cocco. he is my dad's grandmother's father)

(this is my great grandmother, amalia cocco. she was married to my great grandfather, vito, shown below)

(the short man standing up on the far left is my great grandfather, vito laciringola)

vanity

i've become obsessed with anti aging products lately, specifically for my eyes. i realized that the reason i look so old and tired these days isn't the wrinkle between my eyebrows or the fine lines around my lips. it's the huge bags under my eyes (i know, i know. how could i not know? i just got used to seeing them there. they snuck up on me.)

so i now have a pot of creme da le mere and a little bottle of DDF wrinkle relax on my bathroom sink. when i ordered the creme de le mere, neiman marcus sent me free samples of a bunch of other anti aging products. i'm obsessed with them.

obsessed.

i like to think i'm not a vain person. i like looking nice. i like wearing nice clothes. i get my hair highlighted faithfully every 8 weeks and i'm a semi-regular pedicure client at my nail salon. but i also very often wear ratty sweatshirts and stained jeans. today i'm wearing the same sweatshirt i slept in last night. for the most part, i'm comfortable enough with myself to wear what i feel like wearing without worrying about what other people think.

but these bags. i want them gone. now. no one mistakes me for the kids' nanny anymore (that actually happened to me when kate was about 6 weeks old. this woman in an antique store was taken aback when i mentioned kate's birth. she thought i was the babysitter).

i want men to look at me when i'm in the mall, pushing two small children in the stroller, and wonder how my husband got so lucky to have such a young looking wife. i want to pick my daughter up at a birthday party and have someone i've never met before ask me if i'm kate's nanny. i want people to look at me and think i look way too young to have a three and a half year old and 20 month old.

i know it doesn't matter what these people think. but i want to look young again. can liposuction, botox and a facelift be that far behind?

what kate said

i just asked kate to help me clean the glass storm door. as we were on our knees with our paper towels wiping down windex, kate said, "mommy, we look just like cleaning people."

lower 9th ward

jeff and i were in new orleans for a good friend's wedding this weekend. on saturday, we climbed into our rental car with three other friends and drove down to the lower 9th ward to see the effects of hurricane katrina.

pictures are here. (i took all of these photos from the car so they're not great. i needed to document the damage for myself, not to create beautiful photos)

so. the lower 9th ward. we all felt a little weird driving down there. we all wanted to see the damage but we all realized that if it weren't for hurricane katrina, the five of us wouldn't have dared drive to that part of town. we would have walked the (relatively) safe streets of the french quarter drinking our strong fruity hurricanes talking about how cool new orleans was and how much we loved it.

we would not have driven to the real new orleans. the impoverished new orleans. the crime infested, drug mecca of the city. we wouldn't have given the people who live there and their struggles a second thought. we probably would have talked about how dirty that part of the city is and wondered why the people who live there didn't care enough to take care of it.

but we did drive there. and we saw the damage. and truthfully, when we first turn onto the streets, i was a little disappointed. i was expecting more. more damage. more chaos. more something. i guess i'd read so much and heard so much about the damage that it had become monumental in my mind.

so we drove around a few streets, sort of aimlessly, looking for "the damage". and slowly i started to see not just piles of debris and garbage, but pieces of people's lives. i saw dressers and pieces of headboards. i saw houses with their fronts sheared off and saw people's kitchens and living room curtains. and then the damage seemed monumental.

there has been a lot of talk of rebuilding the lower 9th ward but after seeing it this weekend, i don't know how that's possible. they will have to bulldoze everything and completely start over. and it seems unfair. these people who already had so little now have absolutely nothing. we saw mud covered tricycles on the street. children's teddy bears hanging from fences. we saw writing on house where, presumably, agents had checked the houses for bodies. there was one house that had several dates listed, followed by F/W which we assumed meant food and water had been dropped off on those dates. one of the dates was late october, followed by the spray painted message, "still living here".

and that's unbelievable to me. that there were people still living in that shell of house in that bombed out, deserted ghost town makes me wonder if the family stayed out of loyalty or desperation.

i don't know that there's any point to this post. or perhaps there are too many points to this post. i feel embarrassed that i was a rubber necking tourist, gawking at these people's pain. i feel mad that the federal government so badly bungled the entire rescue effort. and mostly i feel guilty that there are people living in those conditions while i live my comfortable life.

the big easy

i'm leaving for new orleans in an hour; a friend of jeff's is getting married there tomorrow.

this is the first time in quite a while that i've flown without one or two children in tow. i only have one carry on bag (jeff brought the big suitcase when he left yesterday) and i'm not quite sure what to do with myself. i'm used to flying with umpteen little snack packs of goldfish crackers and cheerios. i'm usually weighed down by multiple sippy cups and new toys from the dollar store that i've hidden and will take out on the flight - look at this! a new crappy dollar store toy! - to keep the kids occupied.

but today it's all me. i'm wearing fun platform shoes because i don't have to worry about running through an airport with a child on my hip and dragging a stroller behind me.

i've got a few magazines that i'm going to be able to read all the way through without interruptions. heck, i may get really brave and buy an actual book at the airport. i've got a two hour layover in atlanta with no one asking me what that is and where that hallway goes and why do the planes come to the airport and can we go to mcdonalds.

sigh.

bliss.

watch this

Robert Deniro Skit

who says SNL isn't funny anymore?

buckle up

this morning when i got out of the shower, i just threw on a sweartshirt and some sweatpants. kate was in my room and when she noticed that i didn't put a bra on she said, "mommy! you forgot to buckle your boobies!"

new photos

i took pictures of my niece, haley, yesterday when she was at our house. pics are posted here.

things i'll miss

1. kate running into my room, butt naked and completely comfortable with it, to ask for help getting dressed
2. the sound of jack's bare feet as he runs in his funny, waddling way across the wood floors
3. jack's way of giving hugs: by placing his head on you
4. the sound of kate and jack laughing at each other in the back seat of the car
5. sleeping with kate when jeff is out of town
(6. getting to make all the decisions about what clothes they wear)
7. the warm smell of sleep in their hair when they wake up in the morning

peace

i found this on another blog i read occasionally. it really resonated with me.

peace
it does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble
or hard work. it means to be in
the midst of those things and still
be calm in your heart.

car detailing

add another chore to the list of chores i hire other people to do: car detailing. i got the name of a guy who comes to your house and does a total detail of your car. he and his partner are here right now and i am unnaturally excited about this.

they are going to clean out all the goldfish crackers, the teddy grahams, mud, dog slobber and grit that has settled all over the interior of my car. the windows will be free of kid fingerprints and dog nose prints. the car seats will be vacuumed and free of the last 6 months of god knows what that has been ground into them.

it will be like driving a brand new car.

sigh.

swoon.

i'm so excited.