Snapshots of Today

Ali Edwards is a scrapbooker/author/photographer from Eugene whose style I love and I follow her blog daily. She often has projects or creative challenges that she poses to her readers--this week it's to make an album of "Everyday Life". I am usually good about taking photos of events or random pics of Maddie, but they often just sit on my computer and therefore fail to tell a story. So I'm going to try the project--photograph and journal a normal week-in-the-life of my family. The exciting. The mundane. The unfortunate. All the little ways we choose to spend our time during a typical day.

I use the photo software Picasa and today I happened to notice a button called "collage", so I tried it out. *Why didn't I discover this sooner?! It's the coolest!* (Side note: Tonight I also started an album of all our trips and activities this summer and many of the pages have a design that looks like this grid, only with 4 pictures. Can I just tell you how much faster this collage tool in Picasa will be VS *hand-cutting* 120+ pictures?!)

So here's a snapshot of my morning with Maddie:
1) Eating breakfast in the bathroom so that I can take a shower (happens often!)
2) storytime for 2-year-olds at the NW 23rd library, which we have started going to every Friday
3) today the librarian gave out free Corduroy books to all the kids!
4) Maddie goes crazy when they do bubble time
5) after storytime we walk up NW 23rd to Starbucks and get a snack together...nonfat pumpkin spice latte for me, petite vanilla scone in a mini cup for her
6) when this sign goes up in Starbucks, you know Fall has arrived!
7) enjoying her snack in a big velvet chair by the fire
8) I think that's just about the physical limit on how high laundry can be stacked...hey, at least it's clean, right?
9) playing with her wagon of blocks, just before they all got dumped on the floor and she climbed inside to give herself a ride

At the library today, we rented a DVD called "Singing Babies Nursery Rhymes", since they do songs with motions during storytime and it seems like I'm the only loser mother who doesn't know them! (Double shame on me, since I was an elementary school teacher for 10 years! But, hey, I guess that's why I never taught preschool or kindergarten--it's better for everyone if I just avoid the whole singing thing.) Maddie's been playing it nonstop since we got home and loves it! The thing is, the babies on this DVD creep me out!! It's the babies' bodies, but older kids' mouths pasted over the top and singing the words, so it looks all distorted and freakish. Good thing toddlers don't catch on to those kinds of things. :-) Anyways, Maddie is still awake in her crib right now (yes, it's 10:15pm!) and is singing Ring-Around-the-Rosey to herself (as she says, "wing-a-wosey")...ah, what a sweet way to end the evening. I sure love that girl! :-)