Tuesday, March 26, 2013

back on the horse-wagon

Hey, remember when it was January? Me too. In fact, we're going to see just how much I remember about when it was January, because it's time to start catching up with blogs for the current year, now that I've finished 2012.

First thing's first: I decided to do another 365 project. Or rather, I decided to continue... If you're keeping track, this is my fourth year of daily pictures. I did 2009, 2011, and 2012, so I guess maybe it's a 1096 project now (2011-2013). Really, it's gotten to be a habit, although it certainly still takes some effort to find something to shoot every day. Anyway, I'll attempt to catch up on the blog posts, but I'm organizing them slightly differently. The last two years' weekly posts have just started on whichever day of the week the year began. But I think that's awkward for 2013—beginning on a Tuesday—so I'm going to make each post Monday through Sunday instead, after this first week, of course.


So... January 1. Since Evan's birth in mid-October, he had been sleeping in the pack & play next to our bed. He would take naps in his crib in the nursery, but we put him in our room when we went to bed after his last feeding of the day. It worked out well, because he was nice and close when he woke up to eat in the middle of the night. Then shortly after Christmas, he started sleeping through the night—from around 11:30 or midnight until 6 or 7am, when we would all get up for the day. That was the kind of predictability for which I had been waiting; it just happened to also match the deadline that I had had in my head for moving him to his room altogether. We waited until the end of the year and then packed up the pack & play on January 1. But before taking it down, I took a picture of our room as it had been since Evan came home from the hospital.

1/365 beginning/end


Wednesday's picture ended up being the Evan picture for the week, showing off his newest trick: grabbing his bib. He hadn't entirely "found" his hands yet, but he was starting to pull up his bib and lick it frequently. Over two months later, he still pulls his bib up. The difference now is that he tries to stuff it all in his mouth and seems to get frustrated when it stays attached around his neck or covers his face.

2/365 bib grabber


Evan's galaxy mat was the subject for Thursday's picture. He was still enjoying watching it move and play music, and his favorite things on it seemed to be the monkey and the yellow cow. Only one of those came with the mat... We put the cow on after he got it for Christmas, since we weren't using his car seat or stroller often enough to make it worth attaching there.

3/365 cow in space


For Friday, I took pictures of my afternoon snack: a brownie and some milk on one of the Heath Ceramics plates that Steve got me for Christmas. The brownie was part of my stash in the freezer, leftover from a Christmas party we attended. (I had made them, so I knew they were worth saving.)

4/365 circle gets the square


On Saturday, I took yet another picture in the nursery. This time it was the shelves. We had gotten more stuffed animals and books for Christmas, so the cubbies had been rearranged a little.

5/365 growing collections


Finally, Sunday was the day of the Downton Abbey season 3 premiere. I didn't seek out photo subjects with that in mind, but it was convenient that the stuff we passed in the windows of Ambiance in Noe Valley felt appropriately period.

6/365 downton day


Well, that's the first week of 2012. Only about 12 more to go to catch up...

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

end of the line

At long last, it's the final post for 2012. Took me long enough... It turns out, it's more difficult to catch up on blogging than it is to catch up with posting pictures. The blog just never quite recovered after Evan was born, since I have to be in the right mood to write these things. Add to that a baby who likes to stir and/or wake up 40 minutes after the start of every nap lately, like clockwork, as well as my truly impressive ability to fall asleep on the couch after about 9:30pm, and you have a pretty accurate idea of why it's taken me this long. In any case, this entry finishes the project for last year. I've kept going with the Project 365 pictures since then—and will probably continue trying to catch up with the blog posts for those two-plus months—but for now, we'll call this progress.

So. Sunday, December 23rd. This was the day when I put Evan on his galaxy playmat, and he actually enjoyed it. I had tried it here and there before, turning on the music and seeing if he would like watching the toys moving over his head, but he had been too little to care. Now, he suddenly appreciated it; he smiled and talked to it. I think it was the first time he had done any cooing that wasn't directed at a person. In terms of the picture, I wish I had taken the burp cloth out from under his head or switched it out for a plain white one. It's a little busy. But at least I caught some cute facial expressions.

358/365 ooooooh


Monday was Christmas Eve, and we spent some time hanging out with Dan and Carmen that evening. I ended up just taking a picture of the Christmas tree, which we had all decorated the night before. Most of the ornaments were on the top half this year to keep Elsa from getting them.

And speaking of Elsa, we compared her footprint ornaments from last Christmas (at 6 months old) with Evan's feet (at 2 months old), and Evan's feet were a perfect fit. He will probably be bigger than she is in no time.

359/366 christmas eve


On Christmas morning, we headed back downstairs for presents with Dan, Carmen, and Elsa. A few pictures had to happen first, though. Since it was Christmas, we decided to try to get a picture of Evan and Elsa together—their first, actually. Elsa, at 18 months, was still not to be trusted completely with the baby, but we managed to make it work with Evan in the bouncy seat. We even got Elsa to give Evan a few kisses for the camera. Evan looked a little unsure as she was coming at him, but they both did well with supervision.

During the opening of the Christmas presents, Evan stayed in his bouncy seat and took a short nap. He also spent some time in there while we ate Christmas dinner, cooked by Steve: salad with pears and blue cheese, prime rib, mashed potatoes, and some roasted vegetables. Sadly, there was an incident with the roasted mushrooms seesawing off a tray/counter, and all but a few of them ended up on the floor. The surviving ones were really tasty, so it was especially tragic. That dish (minus the unfortunate end result) is now called "floor mushrooms."

360/366 christmas morning


The next day, I took a picture of a couple of our new stuffed animals. The fox was Evan's Christmas present from Steve and me, pointed out at the store by me and then purchased later by Steve. It felt kind of silly to wrap it and then open it again on Christmas morning, but whatever. At least we ended up getting Evan something for his first Christmas.

The elephant was a gift from Carmen. I had found it online when I was looking at baby stuff while pregnant, but since it didn't fit the woodland theme, I hadn't gotten it. I probably should have gotten it, because I kept thinking about how cute it was. I left it on my Amazon wishlist just in case someone needed a gift idea for me. Then, when I rechecked my wishlist before Christmas, I saw that the elephant was suddenly unavailable. A different website still seemed to have them, but the next time I checked, they were sold out there too. I spent an hour looking around online and came to the conclusion that the only elephants left were in Europe, and Amazon UK wouldn't ship theirs here. I guess it was good that I didn't have the heart to take it off my wishlist, though... Carmen took up the challenge and managed to get one of the British elephants shipped here in time for Christmas! She even had time to wrap it.

361/366 the elephant and the fox


I took a walk with Evan to Noe Valley on Thursday. One of the antique stores still had some ornaments displayed outside for sale, so I took a picture of those for the day.

362/366 old-timey ornaments


That night, a miraculous thing happened: Evan didn't wake up at 4am. He didn't wake up at 5am either. He slept from 11:45pm to about 7:30am. It was the first time that he had skipped an early morning feeding entirely, rather than just waking up at an awkwardly early time when we wouldn't know whether to put him back to bed right away or not. This was the "sleeps through the night" we had been waiting for. I happily stuck the sticker on his calendar and took a picture of it the next day.

363/366 filling in the calendar


On Saturday, I decided to try recreating a picture that I had found of myself at two months sitting in my crib with my various stuffed animals around me. (I scanned that picture and posted it to Flickr too.) I wished I had taken off Evan's bib for the shot, but he probably would have spit up down his front before I was done taking pictures.

364/366 party at evan's crib


Nearing the end now... I took another picture of Evan for day 365, the day before New Year's Eve. I think we had just come back from a walk to get dungeness crabs for the next night's dinner. I had removed most of Elsa's old bear suit, and I thought Evan looked cute with hood still on.

365/366 bear suited down


Last, I had to figure out what to do for day 366—the final shot of the year. The previous two projects had ended with pictures of the "3," "6," and "5," magnets that I bought near the end of the first project. However, I didn't have another "6" to make "366" for this time. Instead, I broke out the chalkboard tags that I had gotten for Christmas from Bruce and Bonnie. I had also ordered some colored chalk from Amazon so I could write numbers on the tags. It was a little tricky to get the picture and avoid Evan knocking the tag off his chest or smearing the chalk, but I got a decent shot. Since 2012 was essentially the Year of the Baby for us, it seemed a fitting end.

366/366 the end (again)


And now for the final mosaic of 2012: