Shutterbug Mama

...a couple weeks or so ago, i took a whole bunch of grainy, high-ISO casual shots of cadence with the LCD flipped around so she could see herself as i was shooting. there wasn't much i could do w/ those shots, but some of her faces in them were so priceless, i decided to turn them into a strip like you'd get at a photobooth.

Labels: cadence

we are recovering from a sickly, sleepless home-bound weekend. cadence got a bit of a cold and kept me up most of friday night. her nose was in full runny swing by saturday, and i missed my friend jin's housewarming party. we also missed grandma day on sunday, which i'm totally bummed about cuz i found out grandma sophie was gonna make her greek chicken. oh well.

...i did get together w/ my friends from high school. josh, connolly and his wife chris and olarn came over saturday night and we got caught up with each others' lives.

josh just made captain, so now he's the head honcho in his airplane (he flies for a cargo company). and to think, the first time i saw him after high school was the day he'd just taken his exam to become a Certified Flight Instructor.

connolly is now a guidance counselor at our alma mater, and it sounds like he's loving it. that would be interesting to be back in my old high school, but this time as a teacher or on staff, instead of the awkward teenager trying to fit in somewhere. i actually have pretty fond memories of high school, although i was a total nerd. i was VP of the national honor society, carried around a cello and listened to debbie gibson. it doesn't get much nerdier than that.

olarn just got back from a month in thailand. his dad died on christmas day of pancreatic cancer, the same cancer that killed my dad. they were both 64, which is kinda eerie. it was painful hearing olarn describe what his dad went through because it was so similar to what happened to my dad. cancer is a bitch, and PANCREATIC cancer is one of the meanest there is.

i'm glad the 4 of us had a chance to get together, as olarn may be moving out of the country soon, and with josh in CT and flying all over the place, i don't know when the next time we'll all see each other again...

well, it sure has been quiet around here, hasn't it? i wish i could say that no news is good news, but i've actually been too tired and burned out to post here. work was really busy for a while (as it usually is this time of year) and for a couple weeks, i actually had to go in all 5 days instead of working from home on wednesdays. thank goodness that craziness is over. and now we have three big weekends in a row coming up, one of which is hosting a massive super bowl tea party. yes, you read that right. super bowl TEA party.

it was supposed to be just a TEA party for some old friends of mine from my evanston vineyard days. we're all parents or soon-to-be parents now, and i organized a reunion at my place scheduled for sunday feb. 4th. it never occurred to me that the super bowl would be that very afternoon. this was quite vexing as we don't have an antenna for our TV and it had taken months to schedule a date that most of us could get together. i didn't want to cancel the party, but when the bears ended up winning the NFC title, i felt obligated to give my guests a chance to withdraw their acceptance of the invitation to the tea party, since based on the bears' record, chicago couldn't expect to participate in another super bowl until our kids are of legal drinking age. fortunately, my friends candy and eric offered to bring their bunny ears so that we could watch the game. i think it's because they're colts fans (they grew up in evansville, IN) that they really don't want to miss the game, esp. when they have the chance to tease a bunch of bears fans.

so now my tea party is going to be a SUPER BOWL tea party. who knows. maybe the bunny ears won't work and all the football fans will scurry home early.

...in addition to work and planning parties, cadence has been a major pain in the behind lately. i hear that kids often get this way at her age. maybe their brains are developing so fast that it drives them bonkers. she's just been a bit of a beeyatch, and i can tell it's taking a toll on us. the other night, ted was going out w/ his bro, and he looked at me and asked if i was okay with him going out. i told him it was fine, but i couldn't guarantee i wouldn't kill the little bugger before he got back.

of course, this little 'spririted' phase just HAD to coincide with my finishing haim ginott's classic parenting book Between Parent and Child, which i highly recommend to anybody in a relationship of any type with another human being. some of the ideas in the book may seem oversimplistic, but overall, i really got a lot out of it, not just for my parenting skills, but in relating to ted and even people at work.

anyhoo, in case i've ever made it seem like i absolutely ADORE being a parent and having cadence for a daughter ALL the time like 24/7 and how could i POSSIBLY have been happy before her birth…well, think again. sometimes, i just want to grab my camera, buy a pack of american spirits and head on over to the empty bottle like the good old days…

Labels: cadence, parenting, this.busy.life

...in case you were worried that cadence was merely about foofy pink tutus and cutesy poses, she is much more than that.

...cadence appreciates the simple pleasure of a lazy afternoon spent reading on the sofa...

...and she seems to have inherited her mother's affinity for the chicago reader, which she enjoys especially at local cafes like metropolis or the grind, which is where she is in this photo taken by teddy. so rest assured that she has a serious brainy side too. granted, it is the brain of a 2 year old, but still...just so you know, she's not all fluff.

Labels: cadence

SARAH: HERE. CHEW ON THIS. (hands cadence half a vitamin)
CADENCE: A-CHOO! (sneezes on vitamin)

...of being CADENCE, that is...ah yes, there she is in all her pinkness. this is the tutu from aunt ali and uncle charles. i hear it is essential to every little girl's wardrobe.

...and this is the photo that went out with our christmas cards. i think it's probably one of my favorite photos of her ever. she's looking less and less like a baby. *sigh*...

Labels: cadence, photos

...i found this via the emergent village website and i found it quite sobering: http://globalrichlist.com/. go ahead. find out where you're at on the global rich list.

it boggles my mind that i am monetarily richer than more than 99% of the world.

i'm not a red hot chili peppers fan, but i think it's time to 'give it away, give it away, give it away now...'

so here's what i'd like y'all to do...leave me a comment or email me with organizations that you think are worthy of donations and why.

on the flipside, if you've got the money, it may be easy to give (to alleviate guilt) and still not lift a finger (except to click on the DONATE button) to help another person. i'm not saying that giving to charities is wrong, of course not. what i'm saying is that for me, it's not enough. what can i give of myself--my time, my talents, my sweat and tears, not just my money--to alleviate someone else's hunger, pain or loneliness? so here's part B of my request to my readers. leave a comment or email me with suggestions for things that i can DO to make a difference beyond giving financially, including things that can be done with cadence as a family.

whether you're a capitalist, communist, socialist, A-list, C-list, F-list, the inequities of wealth distribution on a global level are not something to sneeze at. i know that being in the top 1% of the global monetary food chain does not equate to being better off than 99% of the world. there's economic mumbojumbo that makes things complicated. what remains is the fact that you and i could have just as easily been born into brothels in india or a drought-plagued village in africa. we didn't deserve to be born into relative wealth, just as those in dire poverty didn't deserve to be born into their desperate situations...

...i woke up at 4:30am with the beginning of a migraine...i crawled out of bed, ate some crackers, downed 3 tylenols, grabbed a cold eye mask out of the freezer and crawled back to bed in hopes that the headache would melt away in the next two hours before i had to get up for work...

...unfortunately, that was not to be the case, and i had to drag my sorry ass into the office. on top of that, i forgot my cosmetics bag at home, so when i looked in the mirror sitting at my desk, i looked like an addict on a not-so-good day.

and then it hit me. i AM an addict. a CAFFEINE ADDICT. HOLY SCHMOLES! now THAT would explain why i started getting a headache wednesday afternoon, which mysteriously went away after a visit to metropolis. and why after over 24 hours without any caffeine, i'd gotten another headache early this morning.

it's really hard for me to admit an addiction to a chemical substance. after all, i used to smoke cigs (before getting pregnant) quite often and never got addicted. i took pride in my non-addiction while i knew folks who could barely function without their morning cuppajoe. well, pride doth come before the fall, i suppose, and metropolis proved to be my stumbling block. a very yummy, frothy stumbling block.

i guess this means i won't be trying heroin or crack cocaine any time soon, as i've proven that i AM in fact suceptible to chemical dependency.

...well, thank god it's friday, i guess! i can't wait to go to metropolis tomorrow morning! more! coffee! now!!!!

can you believe we're almost into day 4 of 2007? 2007!!! i mean, it just doesn't seem that long ago that we were worried the world was going to come to a chaotic end as a result of the Y2K fiasco. i was thinking about that the other day, that the whole Y2K thing was probably some conspiracy to sell survival kits and create job security. it ended up being so...uneventful.

...anyhoo, ted and his siblings rang in the new year korean style by making the traditional new year's day dumplings called mandoo. yes, even uncle jay got his hands all floury and pitched in. we weren't quite sure what we were doing, and i had to make quite a few phone calls to my mom, but all in all, they turned out yummy. of course, i didn't find out until today that most koreans don't make their own dumplings any more because now you can just buy them premade in the frozen section of any asian grocery store. at least that's what my mom told me. i'm still glad we got our hands all gooey making our own slow-food style.

after we ate our dumplings and we'd lounged around for a while, we went to metropolis for some coffees/chais/hot chocolates and hung out until dark. it was a nice, relaxing end to a low-key new years day.

so that's how we began 2007. it's hard to believe another year has gone by and that cadence will be turning 3 this september. i was just reading my friends michele and greg's family christmas letter which highlighted the past year month by month for their family. their daughter anna is exactly a year older than cadence, so it was interesting to think to myself, 'so this is what cadence will be doing in the coming year...' wow. we've got a big year ahead of us...

when you work full-time and have a toddler, it's really hard not to get caught up in the busyness of everyday life. to facilitate more mindful living, ted and i hope to continue simplifying our lives, getting rid of as much stuff as possible to minimize the potential for clutter, and consciously setting aside time for enriching activities like our hobbies or quality time together. when i think about all the stuff hidden away in boxes and crammed into cubby holes, i cringe...nevertheless, we've got to start somewhere, and i think i've been burying my head in the sand long enough.

Labels: family