The Rinrins

Twelve

I'm sure it sucks to turn twelve while you're sacked in bed with the flu.

A few days later, a bit of fresh air for him (and a few pictures as close to his birthday as possible for mama) did the whole Flu family some good.

I keep catching myself getting all wobbly on the inside from the fact of his Twelveness. 

He still owes me a proper birthday photo shoot.

The Spider and the Little Toddler Fly

Ha. Finally caught the little bugger for a good enough shot to hand out to family with the yearly portraits. She's fast.

Sweet

I get to soak up more of this in just a week!

Aren't you jealous? Look at that mug!

I've only gotten to snug on her for five days of her whole life so far, and that is just not enough!

The girl turns Ten

I am late in posting these. Sorry, concerned and disgruntled family members.

We went to Brenna's favorite place to take her birthday pictures: the farm where she takes her horse riding lessons. It's just a simple family property with various farm animals and Norwegian Fjord horses, and the goal is learning to ride a horse. No jumping, no expensive fancy English riding gear, no competitions, no snotty girls. It's right up Brenna's alley, because she just wants to learn to ride horses. She wants to own horses someday. I can see her having her own family farm when she's grown, with her own horses and goats, teaching kids to ride. 

She's getting really good. She has a naturally calm balance on a horse, something she has trouble with on the ground down here with the rest of us. She's cantering now, fast, so fast I can't watch. She gets bumped over to the side and right when Mom is sucking in her breath and cursing involuntarily under her breath, waiting for the fall and the dragging and the stomping, she easily scoots her body back in, not afraid at all.

I do better when I stay in the car.

Our little country girl.

Two and a half

I think this month will be the last I try to catch the monthly birthdays. I am missing six of the monthly markers, which, because I am an unholy perfectionist, tortures me to no end--especially since two of them are from a computer crash, but I manage to pull through every day. I had grand plans of taking Ellery out to her favorite spot of late, a little duck and frog pond in our neighborhood, for a little photo shoot. But it was one hundred and 5 freaking degrees yesterday. And it is also one hundred and five freaking degrees today, too.  I can't imagine any of those pictures would have turned out well. She'd be nothing but a limp noodle.

I did catch her doing something she hardly ever does, and that is sleeping. For three hours. Behold the Miracle:

I didn't know what to do with myself, other than run over to her every ten minutes to see if she was still breathing.  I am not kidding, I really did that. She did fall off the couch onto her face once, but went right back to sleep. I could have cleaned the whole house in three hours. All three toilets, even, in ONE SINGLE DAY. But no.

When she woke up, she did it in an equally rare way: by NOT thrashing, grunting, crying, or calling for my slow death. This kid has me on pins and needles lately. I always have a fluttery hole in my chest, from anxiety, waiting for the screaming.  She wakes up like some mob boss who's just been informed that his load of guns fell off the boat into the river, and instead of getting to play poker and smoke cigars with beautiful women hanging on him for the rest of the evening, he has to go tie up loose ends by setting his nephew's house on fire in the middle of the night.

Yesterday, she just woke up. Like this:

I was pretty happy to get that. Definitely one of my all time favorites. I could have kissed her. But she doesn't allow me to. It would only get me a slap and that animalistic noise she makes that reminds me of a large monkey protecting it's food. She even sticks her tongue out a little when she does it, like they do.

I spent a few minutes looking through all the other months, to see the changes, and I was a little surprised to see two certain similar pictures from the first month marker.

This next one was taken by one of the kids. I don't remember which one. I'd like to say Brenna, because she loves taking pictures, but it could have been Garrett helping me out, and that's why it was so memorable, since he's not much of a photo guy. I thought I would always remember, and here it's only taken me a little over two years to forget.

I told said anonymous child (whoever it was) to focus on her face, and it really didn't take that many to get this lovely composition and focus.

Sleeping with her mouth open, just like yesterday. Also a virtually nonexistent reality from those early days, the sleeping. Had I known she wouldn't get better, that she'd always be a poor sleeper, well, I guess nothing would be different because I can't do anything about it. Maybe I would have had more cocktails and given myself a break.

And later in the day, I had her on the floor and took this, looking as sweet and calm as she did yesterday after her nap:

She was colicky. Very seriously, horribly, awfully colicky. It was hard on everyone. But here, she was just being herself.

My, my.

All this remembrance makes me pine for the quality newborn photos of the other two that I will never have. And damn, but isn't it easy to scroll through her entire life in Zoombrowser and just pick images like berries from a bush, instead of lugging out heavy albums and boxes of unsorted leftovers. I have lofty ideas of scanning all of them one day and fixing the really serious problems in photoshop. Since I can't manage to even surmount the challenge of cleaning all of our toilets on one single day, I might need to accept that this will never happen.

But the children, they keep getting older. The babies grow. The same miracle all parents see every day, all over the world, never fails to amaze.

A benefit to all the Oregon rain

Silver Falls

 

 

Taken by our brother-in-law during a trip to get all boys and toddlers out of the baby shower house:

 

Mentos and Diet Coke

My previous post reminded me of this. We all did the Mentos fountain trick; Brenna watched how we did it, but devised a better plan to get more mentos in to the bottle before it exploded . She whooped all of us.

Sprinkler

I'm going to be an auntie!!

My sister in law is expecting a little girl!  I got to throw the best kind of baby shower for her: the small, long distance, intimate get-together shower of her old college friends who couldn't make it to the giant, crowded, overwhelming family one.

Since we were a small group, we could travel. We started with a bitchin minivan ride to brunch in a neighboring town. Along the way we stopped at a dilapidated old farm stand that seemed to hold promise for funky photos, but when I got out of the car I felt a very strong vibe that seemed to scream things like "ax" and "hostage", and I could hear the audience of my personal horror movie shouting don't go around that blind wall, you freaking idiot. What, you think that pristine, newly-emptied box of waffles blew in from the landfill? Come on!!

So we stuck with having a little photo shoot in the downtown. With lots of witnesses.

We walked and window shopped, and gathered nasty looks from curmudgeonly old ladies when Brenna climbed on a steel bike rack.

It's a good thing she didn't see us on the next street over, kicking that homeless puppy and setting the mailbox on fire. And all them murders we done.

 

She came all the way outside to give us the hairy eyeball.

Here's my lovely expectant glowing SIL:

And the girls:

 

 

 

I showed my advancing age by failing to strike a pose. I opted instead to stand for a church bulletin monthly newsletter portrait.

But I had the most rockin shoes.

 

After all the street fun, we went back to my house for lots of yummy food, presents, laughing, and absolutely not one shower game.

Yay for new babies!! Especially one particular new baby that I will get to hold and snuffle.

 

29 months

Ahhh, the absolute essence of being 29 months old.