Ten (for two)

1. Last week's regularly scheduled 10onTues was preempted by an emotional mama trying to get her wee one to sleep in her room. I was unable to focus on anything else, so I missed a couple of smallish updates. This week will be a recap of the last 2 Tues's. Mkay?

2. Sun the 16th, our little family loaded up and met another little family at the Austin Zoo! We picked an awesomely rainy, humid day to go.. but we still enjoyed ourselves. The kiddos (Camy, 8ish months & Braxton, 4ish months) obviously weren't totally into all the animals, but they were definitely aware of some! Like the peacock who spread his beautiful feathers for us, or the greedy goat who hopped up onto the fence to steal the food we were offering to another more timid goat. I can't wait to go back when the kiddos are a little bit bigger and a lot more aware.

How thrilled do I look about that goat? Ha.

3. After the zoo, Andy and I decided we would introduce Camy to the water for the first time. Wow, that was an adventure. We stripped her down and slathered her in sunblock. We put on her fancy new reusable swim diaper. We wrestled her into her new swimsuit. And trekked on down to the neighborhood pool. Total time commitment to this point: About 30 minutes. We tiptoed into the water holding Camy Bean, and she immediately started crying. And trying to climb over my shoulder. And looking at me with "What the hell, Mommy?!" eyes. Sooo.. we climbed out. Total time in the pool: 30 seconds. We let her calm down a couple minutes then tried again in the "big" pool. Same result. Our last ditch effort to spark Camy's love affair with water was to sit on the ledge between the big pool and the baby pool and let her kick her feet in the water. Nope, she still hated it. Awesome.

4. Tues the 18th was a glorious, wonderful day (except for the whole Camy rolling off the bed thing!). What was so glorious? So wonderful? This mama having a salon day! That's what! I love love love my stylist, Mel, and she always makes me feel great - with the hair cut/color of course, but also by her friendship. I always have a good time while I'm sitting in Mel's chair.. we talk, we laugh, we gush about our kiddos, we gossip. Its great. I love my new short do, and I especially love my color, now void of the gray! Hooray!

Before:

After:

5. Thursday afternoon Camy and I met a dear friend for lunch before heading over to a local sprinkler park with a load of other mama's and babies. Lunch was good fun. Camy enjoyed stealing some avocado bites from my chicken wrap and gobbled up some sweet potato fries.. all while periodically peering up at a balloon tied to her chair, concerned by that red floating globe. She was not so much a fan of the nice lady who tied the balloon to her chair, and certainly didn't share the same affection for balloons as her friend Audrey did. Quite funny.

photo taken by Tabatha

6. ....and the sprinkler park? Fail.
Well, not a total fail - we both still enjoyed ourselves. But Camy hated the sprinklers, so we stayed on the outskirts of the splash area and watched the other kiddos run around in the water. We also crawled around and stole a book from our friend Campbell, a shovel from our friend Luke, and food from our friend Ethan. Perhaps we should start teaching Camy about how stealing doesn't make friends.

both photos taken by Tabatha

both photos accurately portray her disapproval of the water

7. We have solved our sleep problems, for now. Camy sleeps every night in her crib. (Don't cheer yet.) Her crib is now in our room... attached to our bed. "Sidecar'ed" if you will. We took off the front rail and attached it to our bed the same way our little cosleeper attached way back when. It is wonderful. Camy gets to have her mommy close (and her mommy gets to have her close!), she is safe within the walls of her crib, we get our bed back.. it really is a win-win for everyone. Eventually (maybe when she's 12), we'll push the crib up against the wall in our room and reattach the front rail. Then eventually (when she's 20), we'll move her bed back to her room. Hopefully this gradual transition we are envisioning will be easier on her than the cold turkey business we tried last week. We'll see.

I promise I have a photo coming soon. 

Our room hasn't been photo-ready this week. 

Cuz I suck at keeping up with laundry. 

:)

8. So as of last Friday, we had tried (and failed) to introduce Camy to our neighborhood pool and we had tried (and failed) to introduce her to the fun of sprinklers in summertime. Despite our lack of success, we took her to Andy's parents house Friday evening to go swimming. They have a pool with a solar heater and that particular day the water was a wonderful 87ish degrees. Camy still resisted a little at the beginning, but only by whining.. not the full out screaming we witnessed before. It only took her a few minutes to get used to the idea and when she did we put her in a little floatie - the girl loved it! She just kicked back and relaxed in the water for a good 30 minutes. It was too cute. She really enjoyed watching the big kids splash around at the other end of the pool, too. Hopefully she'll love the water as much as they do one day soon.

photo taken by my sister-in-law, Candice

9. Given our recent success with the heated pool, we picked up a small baby pool at Target to splash in at home. But of course, without the heated water, Camy just cried. Humpf. I am determined to get this girl to love the water. How in the world are we to survive a TX summer if we can't go swimming or splash in a sprinkler? How?

10. And last, but not least... for our 2nd Anniversary, we gave ourselves a joint gift this year: a 50mm lens for our camera. So far I have a love/hate relationship with it.. hate it because it doesn't have auto-focus (and we were not about to shell out an additional $400 for one that did), About 1 out of every 63 photos I take is almost totally in focus. The other 62 are a total blur. But I do love the ones I manage to get right.. or almost right. Hopefully it won't take long for me to get used to the manual focus.. but something tells me that with a baby who doesn't sit still for a single second of the day, the 50mm is not going to be my go-to lens as I had hoped. Oh well.

Yeah, I'm a dork. Don't act surprised.

how cute would this photo have been if I knew how to focus? hmm?

Bonus #11: Tomorrow Camy will be 9 months old (nine months old).  I have no words.