he’s all bluster
Sawyer likes for the rest of us to think he’s this aloof, cool guy who isn’t mushy, isn’t affectionate, and certainly isn’t at all attached emotionally to his family (or anyone else for that matter). Those of us who know Sawyer well know it’s all an act ~ just a bunch of blustery nonsense.
Getting him to admit that he is attached to anyone is a chore, and he certainly doesn’t want any sort of photographic proof of his attachment. But the attachments are there nonetheless. I do manage to grab a photo now and then of him showing he’s attached but pretending that he’s not. Here’s one, for example:
Do you see that “you’re really annoying me” look on his face? Well, truth be told, I was annoying him. By taking his picture while he was holding his niece. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want his picture taken, it was mostly that he didn’t want his picture taken while he was holding Attison.
He was holding her not because I asked him to, but because he wanted to. Yes, he wanted to.
Attison had been playing in her johnny-jump-up, perfectly happy and content to do her ballerina twirls and spastic jumping routines. Sawyer came over and told her that if she promised not to spit-up on him (yeah, right, like that’s gonna happen!!) they could go sit in Papa’s chair and maybe watch a little TV.
What he was really saying was, “Hey Atti, how about I pick you up, and you can come sit in my lap while I watch TV…would you like that?”
Sawyer took Atti over to Papa’s chair, turned on the heat and massage functions of the chair, and sat back to watch a show we had recorded on the DVR. Attison managed to sit on his lap for 45 minutes before spitting up on him. 
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a cute video
Attison loves Sesame Street. It’s the only television show she watches. Of course, the fact that she’s not quite 7 months old, and that she doesn’t watch any other tv shows, may have something to do with that. 
But still, she really does love Sesame Street. I can tell she’s paying attention because she kicks her feet, waves her arms and tries to sing along. It’s SO cute!
I am once again becoming a Sesame Street connoisseur. We watch Sesame Street every morning, from 7:00 to 8:00 am on the Sprout channel. Sesame Street is one of those timeless shows ~ the kids they show on the playground or jumping rope on the street could be from any year between 1968 and 2008. Seriously, the only way I’m ever able to tell the age of a particular Sesame Street episode is by the age of the guests. My friend Holly posted a “Who Are the People In Your Neighborhood” video on her blog ~ Bob sings the song, and the first guest is a very young Martina Navratolova (I’m sure I spelled that incorrectly ~ my apologies Martina). I can’t tell you exactly what year that segment was filmed, but I know it was a while ago. The second guest is Barbara Walters, who (quite honestly) looks very much then like she does now (she must have a great plastic surgeon!!).
Holly included a link to a Ben Stiller version of “Who Are the People In Your Neighborhood” ~ I liked it better. I love the last line ~ something like, “Let that be a lesson to all of us. Never dress like a cheese at lunchtime.” LOL Seriously, you HAVE to watch it!
Now I have that silly song stuck in my head. The only thing worse would be Ernie singing “Rubber Duckie.” Oh great… now I’m going to have THAT one stuck in my head, too!
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feeds
If you have been using Bloglines or Feedburner (or any other reader/feed service) to read my blog, you may have noticed there have been a few problems lately. Since I moved from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress platform, Feedburner has been a little behind.
Would you mind re-activating your subscription to A Joyful Heart? It’s easy enough to do. Just look in the left-hand sidebar for the Bloglines or Feedburner email options. Or you can click on the “subscribe to my RSS” link at the bottom of any post.
The RSS button in the nav bar is currently down, but I’ll get it working just as soon as I can!
If you would like to see A Joyful Heart offered in a different news/feed reader, just let me know. I’ll be happy to set it up! (use the contact link in the navagation bar )
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celebrate good times, come on!
Needless to say, we didn’t make it to the ringing in of the new year at midnight! Sawyer did ~ he was playing board games and hanging out with his friends ~ but the rest of us were sound asleep. You’ll notice Roger is asleep on his LazBoy chair. He waited up for Sawyer to come home. I was completely confident Roger could handle it, so I went to sleep in my bed!
This morning our little princess was in a good mood. I’m glad she’s a happy waker. She had a bottle, then a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast:
Oatmeal is a new food and texture for her. We’ve been very careful and very slow in introducing new foods to her diet since Ashley seems to be allergic to just about everything. So far Attison has been able to eat applesauce, pears and bananas. I think the bananas upset her tummy just a bit, but not enough to say she had a reaction to them. She seems to do ok with fruits. It’s the green and orange vegetables that she has a hard time with. Everytime she eats a green or orange vegetable she breaks out in a rash all over her face, but it gets really red right around her mouth. So, for now the green and orange veggies are out. Oatmeal and rice cereals have been fine. The rice cereal in her bottles and the oatmeal mixed with apple juice fill up her tummy. I took her to the doctor December 23 and she weighed 17lb. 10 oz. That put Atti in the 80th per centile. Goodness! Time to cut back just a bit on the amount of rice cereal in her bootles!
Attison is a very happy baby!
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really happy
This photo is too cute not to share:
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coach
Look what my mom-in-law gave me for Christmas :
Do you know how much I love purses? For some women it’s shoes ~ but for me it’s purses. And one can never have too many Coach purses as far as I’m concerned!
Roger’s mom got the exact right thing for me. Thanks, Mom!!
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new driver, new car
We celebrated Sawyer’s 16th birthday on Sunday. He went to the DMV on Monday and traded in his learner’s permit for a driver’s license. And he bought himself a car. It has been a big week for Sawyer!
Here he is with his driver’s license and his new car (the car is new to him, it’s not a “new” car; but it’s his, and that’s all that matters to him! He used some of the money from his savings account to pay for the car and the repairs it needed to be in good drivable condition.)
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christmas eve/christmas day photos
I took a bizillion pictures on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I had to go through my 8 GB memory card and delete a ton of pics before I downloaded them onto my computer! LOL Not really, but I did delete quite a few that weren’t worth saving (quality-wise).
This is my favorite picture from this Christmas:
You can see some more pictures I took Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here: (click on the photo or the link below it)
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| Christmas Eve & Day 2008 |
(Click on the first photo in the album to see larger pics, then navigate through the photo album with the left and right arrows just about the pictures)
These are untouched, unedited photos. I didn’t even bother to crop them or take out the red eye effect. Maybe someday I’ll go through and edit them….
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first photos
Oh. my. goodness. I’m in love. L.O.V.E. love. Here are a few pictures I took yesterday morning with my new camera. These are straight from the camera ~ I’ve done absolutely no editing, touching up, or messing with them in any way:
I suppose it may depend on your monitor, but on my monitor the quality of these pictures is superb. I usually mess with the fillighting or the color or contrast before I post pictures. I didn’t this time, and to me these pics look better than any I have ever taken with my old digital camera.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We have a family tradition of opening presents late in the evening of Christmas Eve, then we sleep in on Christmas morning. We started doing this when our boys were little; we didn’t “do” Santa, so it made no sense to us to wait until Christmas morning and get up super early because the kids couldn’t wait any longer to open their presents. We sleep IN on Christmas morning! LOL
Roger and I put goodies in everyone’s stockings before we go to bed on Christmas Eve ~ that way there’s a little something for everyone to wake up to on Christmas morning.
I will be taking pictures tomorrow night as everyone opens their presents. We’ll have a full house ~ Ashley will be here, as will her friend Mike and my dad. And since this is Attison’s first Christmas, you can bet this Nana will be taking lots and lots of photos!
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new camera
Roger and I decided this year we were going to buy ourselves one gift rather than getting each other gifts. We narrowed the choices down to a new surround sound for the living room or a new digital camera. Today we went shopping.
All of the surround sound sets we found were wireless. That’s great ~ for a home that doesn’t already have a dozen wireless things competing for airtime. The wireless network we have set up for internet access is a bit finicky, and occasioally someone will get kicked off when the cordless phones ring. It’s a bit annoying. So, we decided it would be better to not add more wireless contraptions to the already overloaded system in our house.
That meant our choice was a digital camera. Roger did a little investigating ~ Consumer Reports and such. I’m a camera buff, so I pretty much already had my choices of digital cameras narrowed down to two. One was a Nikon, the other was the Canon EOS Rebel. I have always owned Canons ~ I still have and use my very first camera; a 1977 Canon AE Program. Yep, it’s film. But I use it and love it anyway.
I have been looking at the Nikons, but having been a dedicated Canon user since I was a kid, it was hard for me to imagine not owning another Canon. When Roger did his investigating, he learned that the EOS Rebel XSi was the best camera in our approximate price range.
Best Buy had the camera (body) and two lenses on sale this week. It’s a kit ~ you get the camera, the regular lens and a zoom lens. The zoom lens is usually a $350 lens. With the kit it was $200. I just couldn’t pass that one up.
So today we brought home our new baby ~ the Canon EOS Rebel XSi. I started playing around with it. Wow ~ the images it’s capturing are amazing. I was beginning to get frustrated with the digital camera I got from my dad ~ it was just too slow to catch the things I wanted to catch, and half the time even when I did catch something it turned out blurry! With the new Rebel I took a picture of the dog walking away ~ something in motion that should have turned out blurry ~ and the picture was as clear and sharp as it could possibly be. I’m SOOOOOOOO thrilled!
Say hello to my new baby! I can’t wait to start taking pictures with it. Roger even asked me if I would teach him some photography.
So far I love this camera…and I will be taking pictures Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and probably every single day for a while!
P.S. (Monday morning) I took pictures of Attison jumping up and down with my new camera ~ they were clear and focused! Amazing. And that was on the full auto setting, not even the sport setting! Man, am I going to have fun with this camera…
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