Happy Birthday, Cate!

I can't believe that Cate is 1 today. She is growing up way too fast. She is such an independent little girl with a quirky little sense of humor and attitude. She weighs a whopping 17.5 lbs (which I am happy about because J.J. was 15 lbs at a year). She never sits still. She is always in everything. She crawls as fast as she can everywhere. She loves her older brother. Yesterday, J.J. took all of the pillow off of the couches and was jumping in them. Cate got right in there and was laughing the whole time.

She LOVES her bottle! That is going to be a hard habit to break. Now that she is graduating to Milk, hopefully she will start to like the sippy cup.

My favorite thing about her right now is she is such a tease. She will tickle her Daddy and laugh, and she will pretend that she is going to give you a kiss only to reject you at the last second and then she smiles about it. She is hilarious!

Yesterday I kept saying shh to calm her down and the rest of the day she was trying to say it. So all day long she would go around the house saying sssh. It was adorable. She can say dada, j.j, baba for bottle, pa cay for patty cake, but she will not say mama. I try to get her to say it and she just looks at me and says dada. I don't know if she is teasing me or if she doesn't know how to say it. Happy Birthday Sweetheart! We love you!

Overexposure

So, I have been taking pictures and photoshopping all day long. I know...it sounds like bliss, but it is exhausting. I think it is more discouraging than anything else. I want my pictures to look a certain way, and it is not working. So, after talking to my friend, we decided that we need to overexpose our pictures just a little bit to get the effect we want. So this afternoon, I tried it. Here is the result. I like them. There is definitely more I need to do to them. I really only edited each picture for about 10 minutes, which is fast ( I usually take about 45 mins per picture). I guess just learning and practicing is all I can do. So, here are my kids at 4:30 in the afternoon...dirty clothes, messy hair, and food all over their face (and J.J. at the computer). Pretty true to color. This is how they look every afternoon. I still think they are adorable.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My husband sent me these Tulips for Valentine's Day! One of the reasons I love him. He doesn't send me generic flowers. He remembers that I love spring flowers and he sends me Tulips. I love you sweetie! Happy Valentine's Day! Don't these make you ready for spring!!!! I planted about 350 bulbs of tulips, hyacinths, narcissus, and crocuses this fall and I am really ready for spring to be here so I can see all of them.