Being StormChased.

The clouds are out to get me.

I don’t know how the rest of the nation has been lately (how have you been?), but Alabama’s weather has just not been quite right since our tornado outbreak.

First, we had a drought – in some crazy twist of irony.

Then, all of a sudden, we were having daily crazy thunderstorms.

And when I say daily, I seriously mean set-your-watch-by-it-daily.

A couple of weeks ago, me and the kids got caught in one of these.

(Obviously, I didn’t set my watch by it.)

We were at the hospital visiting my Grandmother (she’s doing much better now, thank you), and I managed to brilliantly park on the furthest-from-cover end of the top level of the parking deck.

When we left Mammaw’s room, it wasn’t raining.

When we made it to the parking deck, the rain was basically a solid mass of water, coming down horizontally.

Ali is not fond of getting wet.

Noah didn’t know how to close his mouth so he drank at least a gallon of rainwater.

I had no idea how I was going to get me and my two kids and my huge diaper bag and myself to the car without us being carried away by the wind, but somehow we managed.

(Noah is still drying out.)

Also thanks to these daily storms, we have basically been without power the entire month.

Literally, our power went out four times in three weeks, plus at least once while we were on vacation – every time the wind blows, or doesn’t blow, or it rains, or it doesn’t rain, the power goes out.

Living without power and with a four year old and a six month old is not what I signed up for.

But the most fantastic parts of our bizarre weather have been the skies.

These were cell phone pictures, so I can’t imagine how awesome the photos would have been if I’d had my “real” camera with me…

Before the Storm:

After the Storm:

That almost makes it all worth it.

Almost.

Except for the power part – nothing makes that worth it.

BabyFacts

There are some facts about babies that are absolute.

They will always sleep in on the mornings that you have to get up.

They will always get up at 5:30 am on the mornings that you could have slept in.

Their spit up will always miss their spit-up-catching bib and hit your shirt…especially if you just put it on.

If you’re dressed up to go somewhere fancy, they will most certainly award you with the trifecta of baby fluids.

At some point, you will find yourself comforting a baby by letting them ruthlessly gnaw on your fingers… or shoulder…or arm… or even leg…or computer, as mine is doing right now.

In some desperate moment of needing a break, you will convince yourself that waking a baby to change their dirty diaper is a greater sin than leaving them in it until they wake up.

And, at some point, you will most certainly put your baby in a laundry basket – for just a moment of having them trapped in one spot.

Ali

Noah

Good thing babies generally like laundry baskets.

Six Months: A Comparison.

Yeah, yeah…I know you’re not supposed to compare your kids.

Noah:

Ali:

No, she wasn’t ever as blond as him.

Yes, the real pier / beach grass background is WAY better than the cheesy portrait-studio-half-painted-half-fake flowers.

Oh – and yes, he most definitely smiles more than she did at this age.

Noah’s Stats:

17 pounds – 55th percentile

27 inches – 85th percentile

Ali at 6 Months:

16.8 pounds – 50th percentile

26.25 inches – 75th percentile

One day my kid’s not-so-tall genes are going to catch up with them – one day.

So I got my Camera!

After a bunch of research, I finally decided on the Canon T2i.

I settled on Canon because my point-and-shoot is Canon, I love it, and am already familiar with the terms and controls.

I chose the T2i because it is a) one of their newest models, and therefore has more features (and won’t soon be replaced with a newer, snazzier one that I’ll be wishing I had), and b) because it’s a step up from the lower end one, but not a super-duper professional one.

Also, on Amazon, they are running a deal where you got a free (!!) $200 Zoom lens, and the $200 zoom lens came with a free (!!) $16 UV protector. Plus the camera was on sale, so with all that together, I felt like I was getting a good deal.

(I adore Amazon.)

And, if you’re wondering, it wasn’t really a “push present” persay – really that was just my justification for spending the money --- because I’m romantic like that and all.

So.

I got it last Friday (after an adventure of chasing down the UPS man after missing him by 15 minutes), and have been reading up on it, but am still definitely a beginner. I seriously have no idea what I’m doing.

But, luckily, the automatic settings are pretty good until I figure it out, so that’s what I’ve been playing with.

And, since I’m not so agile right now, my only photographical-practice-muse is that which is with me at (almost) all times – Ali.

And, oddly enough, she’s been somewhat willing to let me practice on her…

This was the very first picture I snapped with it:

I was impressed by how well it captured her eyes – they are often shadowed out with my other camera – and also how clear the photo was. I could zoom all the way in to her nose hairs.

(Yes, the poor kid has nose hairs. She’s got Greek Blood, after all.)

One thing this camera does that my old one didn’t do is purposefully fade the background out if I’m taking a portrait shot – I really like that. I was always trying to blur my backgrounds on my old pictures to make the subject stand out more, but now I don’t have to:

I played with the black and white settings a bit, and Ali started getting a bit silly…

And then she got really silly.

A three-year-old muse can only last so long, after all.

I know nothing about the zoom lens, but this is the one photo that I’ve successfully taken with it so far…

At any rate, I have a ton to learn, but I’m excited about the possibilities. And, I figure, this will really even the score on the whole second-child-gets-less-baby-photos thing – because even if he gets less, at least Noah’s photos will be a LOT better than Ali’s were!

Processing and Calculating The Week.

The past few days have felt like a strange twilight zone where everything comes in extreme highs and lows in an odd string of events. I think if I made a super-geeky-yes-I’m-an-Accountant-what-of-it-balance-sheet for the week, it would be on the plus side, but I’m not sure until I process it all…

Monday: I got this unbelievable urge to clean up Ali’s living room toy corner (a tinge of nesting maybe??). She’s quite the little hoarder, and has mixed up every possible combination of toys into a jumbled, unplayable mess, so she’s been actually playing with all of like 5% of the monstrous mess that is her corner.

And although I’m all about getting a kid to help with their junk issues, a total toy overhaul is just not one of those things that you want to do WITH your kid, because then she rediscovers every toy and can’t stand to part with a single one.

So Chris, after realizing how much it was under my skin to get done, suggested that we do it together the next night during election returns – perfect combination.

Tuesday Night: Wow, did the organization process become a mess:

(And that was just half of it, since I don’t have a wide-screen camera lens and all.)

But, besides the extreme therapeutic satisfaction that came from getting everything in a properly organized and sorted through manner, I got an extra reward.

I found this at the very bottom of her toy box:
My heart has been painfully distressed for about three months, ever since it went missing. It was a very special, romantic gift from Chris, and I had laid it on the counter one day after Church. It disappeared. We rooted through the garbage – no luck. I grilled Ali, and at first she said she hadn’t seen it, but then when I showed her the matching earrings, she confessed.

“I took it. I broke it. But I don’t know what I did with it.”

I bribed her with all sorts of wonderful promises if she could find it, but no luck – she just didn’t remember.

I searched high and low through all of her things, but apparently my search never made it to the bottom of the bottomless pit that was her toy box.

Ah, the reward of finding it – and it wasn’t even broken!! I was ecstatic the rest of the night.

Wednesday Morning: Chris discovers a water leak. The dressing room floor is wet, and the living room ceiling has a slowly growing water stain.

Nothing distresses my husband more than a water leak. Nothing.

(Except maybe squirrels.)

I promise to schedule a time for a plumber to come out when I’ll be at home, and we both dread the possible end result.

Then I head to my doctor’s appointment. Wearing a sleeveless dress, thanks to my last horrifically traumatic weigh-in.

But it paid off – my weigh-in was completely redeemed, and so I rewarded myself with a Reese’s Cup.

And then – as if the visit couldn’t get any better after being four pounds less than that obviously erroneous former weigh-in, the doctor confirmed that Noah had, indeed, finally flipped – no more breech!!

Who gives a rip about plumbing problems?

Oh yeah – me. And Chris.

Before I left the hospital, I went ahead and filled out my pre-admission paperwork – and signed so many papers that I think I might have refinanced our house at the same time. But my favorite blank to fill in was under “Section II: Spouse Information” – question five asked “Relationship to Patient.”

Seriously?

Like, other than “Spouse”?

I know it’s Alabama, but still…

Back home. Back to the Plumbing Fiasco.

To find the leak, Plumber had to cut a hole into our Living Room Ceiling – nothing could be more horrific.
And as if that wasn’t traumatic enough, the cutting of that diagnostic hole cost us $474 more – before the leak was ever touched.

Two seconds after cutting the sad, sad hole, he said “Yup, there’s a leak. I’ll now have to cut a hole in your bathroom cabinet.”
Chris and I sat in dread as the number of holes in our house and the dollar signs rose.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I told Chris that I believed that this plus all the repairs afterward would, for the first time ever, get us over our homeowner’s insurance deductible and that we should, most definitely, start a claim. And so, to prevent further psychological trauma, I left the scene of the crime and began the conversation with State Farm.

Thursday: Leak now fixed, damage all known, so now it was time to finish our claim and get State Farm to send us a check.

I ADORE State Farm.

Instead of adding “Carpet Cleaning” into our settlement for our now-stained dressing room carpet, they figured in “New Carpet for the whole dressing area”.

Instead of adding “Fix hole in vanity” into our settlement, they figured in “Replace entire 6.5 foot, two sink vanity”.

They asked questions such as, “How much time did you spend sopping and mopping? We will pay you for your time because we would have paid someone to come out and do it for you.”

And so, after all of the claim dust settled, and even after our deductible, thanks to the wonderful, lovely, adorableness of State Farm, instead of the dreadful dollar amounts Chris and I were discussing the night before, we are now looking like we’ll come out ahead, even after all the repairs are finished.

And, in even more amazing fashion, I filed the claim yesterday morning, and got the check in the mail TODAY.

Thank you, State Farm. I dearly, dearly adore you.

So, to sum up,

• Ali has a nicely organized toy corner (for at least the week)
• Found my precious necklace
• Noah finally flipped
• My weight was redeemed
• Plumbing fiasco scared the wits out of us, but then
• Plumbing fiasco turned into a net credit, rather than a huge out-of-pocket expense
• I love State Farm.

Yes, this week’s balance sheet turned out pretty good.