Trying To Take A Picture Of My Kids: A Photo Essay

(Alternate title: Why I, Until Very Recently, Had Over 3,000 Photos Saved On My Phone.)

(Alternate title, the second: Why I Never Take Video, AKA Nobody Needs To Hear Me Yelling SMILE!/Stop Smooshing Your Sister/Get That Hair Out Of Your Mouth/All I Want Is ONE DAMN PICTURE, PEOPLE!!! Over And Over Again.)

Scenes From the Game

Steve's entire family was born in Cincinnati, so even though he moved to Atlanta around the age of five, he's always been a Cincinnati sports fan. When we lived in Cincinnati? We had season tickets to the Bengals, the Reds, and Xavier basketball, and while I never gave up my Indianapolis Colts fandom, no matter how many Bengals games he dragged me to, I did end up embracing the Reds as my own.

(Mostly because I had a crush on the 3rd baseman at the time, but that's neither here nor there...)

Now that we live in Atlanta, we don't attend nearly the same number of live sporting events, because one, it's too expensive, and two, Atlanta is the most poorly planned out city in the history of cities, and to get to any sports stadium in the area is a test of every ounce of patience Steve and I possess, and also, quite frankly, the strength of our marriage. Traffic...is not good for us.

But we do make exceptions when our teams come to town, because we're determined to raise the girls the right way. They will be Notre Dame fans, obviously. They will be Reds fans. I WILL WIN THE BATTLE OF NFL TEAMS, and they will be Colts fans. Indiana basketball is a must. The brainwashing has begun at an early age.

This weekend, the Reds are in town, and Steve decided it was time to introduce the girls to baseball. So we did. And last night at Turner Field, Brigid ate a hot dog, cotton candy, frozen yogurt and french fries, while washing it all down with an extremely watered-down Coke Zero* (and then she actually went home and went straight to bed, which surprised me to no end, because I figured she'd be riding that sugar/caffeine high until next Tuesday...). And on top of all of that? It was bobblehead night, so Brigid left with a new toy.

I'd say she's probably a pretty big fan of baseball right now.

Caitlin, on the other hand, got none of the good stuff. The poor, mistreated child had to settle for a bottle and an exhaustion so deep that she was able to sleep through the last two innings of the game we stayed for.

Then she woke up as we left the stadium, stayed awake through the drive home, a bath, and another half bottle, before immediately crashing once again, as soon as I put her in her crib. One thing that kid has going for her...when it's time to go to bed, she generally goes to bed (*knocks frantically on every single piece of wood within a fourteen mile radius of current location*). It almost (ALMOST) makes up for those times where she's up in the morning at 5am and still only manages about an hour of naptime, total, throughout the day.

And then Cincinnati lost. But, you know, other than that, I'd say the evening was a success...

Baby's First Baseball Game

Every new event deserves new clothes, right?

(That hat stayed on long enough for me to snap the picture, under the threat of turning off Disney Jr for the rest of the afternoon, then came right back off. We'll see if Steve can convince her to wear it all evening or not...)

(Also, the joke was on Brigid, because I had a 3-4pm conference call to take from home, so there was NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH that Disney Jr was going to disappear from our television set this afternoon. My mom lies are excellent.)

Brigid Says...

'Mommy, it's ok if I put my legs on baby Caitlin, right? I'm just resting them...'

(Am I disqualified from the Mother of the Year award race for laughing and snapping a quick picture, before I told her that we weren't, in fact, allowed to use baby Caitlin as a footstool?)

A Lesson in Manipulation

We spent this past weekend at the lake, which would have been the ideal place to spend the 4th of July, if it hadn't rained pretty much the entire time we were there. So, instead of taking the boat out, or swimming, or yelling at Steve for trying to take Brigid out on the jetski without my supervision, I spent a lot of money at the outlet mall.

A lot.

But! The weekend wasn't a complete loss when it came to the outdoor activities, because Steve and his brother were able to take Brigid down to the dock to do a little fishing.

What Brigid didn't realize was that daddy and Uncle Greg were taking her fishing for the small fish that swim around the dock, because they needed bait to lure the real fish in when they took the boat out to do their big boy fishing the next morning. Which meant that my dear sweet girl though she got to keep all seven-ish bluegill they caught as pets.

Because of course she did.

And that, my friends, is how Brigid got Steve to promise that he'd take her shopping for a goldfish this week.

The end.

(So far, she seems to have forgotten about that promise, but it'll come back to her. I'm totally getting stuck with a fish. I just know it.)

Stubborn

 I don't know why my child refuses to let me get a picture of her smiling, but she fights it with all she has in her. She won't smile, no matter what I'm doing, if the camera is up and level with her face. In fact, even if Steve is trying to make her smile while I'm holding the camera up, she still won't do it. The minute the camera disappears? The smiles come out. The camera comes back up?

I get this...

I swear, she was smiling a split second before I snapped the picture in every single one of these shots. She wasn't quite quick enough on that last picture, and I managed to get a little bit of the smile as it faded away, but honestly.

IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD TO PRESERVE YOU FOR POSTERITY, CHILD. Work with me here, ok?

(She has dimples when she smiles. Not that YOU'RE ever going to see them, but still. They're there, and I want to get pictures of them. The rotten little stinker...)

This is why I'm tired all of the time...

*Caitlin does this thing, when she gets really excited to have me hold her, where she grabs my face with both hands and tries to get her mouth around my nose. I'm going to pretend that she's trying to kiss me, because otherwise it seems like she's just trying to take a bite out of my cheek, and nobody wants to raise a creepy little vampire baby.

*The behavior chart we've started for Brigid has had mixed results, up to and including me yelling at her to just GO TO BED ALREADY at 11pm last night, when she told me she wasn't tired and wanted something to do in bed. I told her to try sleeping. She seemed to be thinking more along the lines of watching tv on the iPad. I won, but it wasn't a pretty battle. So. That's fun.

*Caitlin can sit up on her own. But she doesn't want to. I don't even know what to do with that. Except buy a baby carrier so the little turd can get up off of the floor every once in awhile, without me having to carry her everywhere. Come on...who doesn't want to learn to sit up?

*The neighbors took Brigid to the pool the other day, and when she got home, we asked her if she pooped at the pool (because she likes to wait until she's in a wet swim diaper to ask someone to take her to the bathroom...). She told us no. The neighbor texted us to say, if we kept track of those sorts of things, Brigid pooped at the pool a couple of times. I asked Brigid if she pooped, because I heard that she had. She said yes, just once. I asked again how many times she went. Just once, mommy. The neighbor said you went twice, Brigid. How many times did you go potty at the pool? OK, I went two times.

*Caitlin can also roll from her back to her stomach, and then, even though I've seen her do it multiple times before, she refuses to roll back over in the other direction. So, she just lies there on her stomach, screaming. At 11:45pm. And again at 7am. It's nice to get a good bookend on the evening, I'd say.

*Did I mention that Steve is out of town, and I'm on my own with the girls tonight?