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july morning. but its too over exposed now. it was lovely, but it's a stupit tradition and its maybe my last awake sunrise of july , yes.. hipster like that =d
no edit
good morning sunshine, you keep on shining, you're extraordinary
25.06-01.07
This week was assessment week at swim, and because I am always prepared for the worst case scenario, I assumed that this would be the week Olive decided she hated the pool. But, as usually happens in life, what happened was something I didn’t foresee.
When it was our turn for class, her instructor told the moms to stay on the deck and let the kids enter the pool on their own. “Let’s just see what happens,” she said. We slowly sat down, awkward in our bathing suits, and held our breath a little while we watched our kids handle this new challenge. Which they all did with aplomb.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty and slowly the moms started trickling back to the locker room to change as it became apparent that we weren’t needed. As I watched Olive run through her drills, take turns waiting on the side of the pool and play on the steps with her friends, it dawned that the week before was my last class in the pool with Olive.
I know that we all hate getting into our bathing suits every week and managing getting us both dried and changed at the end of class, but I loved being in the pool with Olive. I loved being right there with her when she mastered something or found joy in something. And like so many things in parenthood, I didn’t realize the last time had already happened.
It was funny to see how all the moms reacted after class. After we had greeted our confident and yet slightly bewildered students with warm towels and high fives. After changing them into their clothes and telling them how proud we were of them. We all slowly left the locker room and sort of congregated in front of the teacher’s area, a little bewildered ourselves. Ms Gigi told us that there would be no more moms in the pool and that all the kids were moving up to their first independent swim class. While we were all excited, we were all a bit stunned, too. Weren’t they just in the water for the first time yesterday? Wasn’t there years of Mommy & Me classes left?
The fact is, this is just the beginning of the letting go process for me. Olive goes to school twice a week but she’s carefully monitored there and her snap decisions don’t put her in danger. At swim, sitting on the side of the pool, I see her making choices. Do I sit in listen, patiently wait my turn and follow directions or do I take a risk and jump in the pool on my own? Do I give into worry and cry a little or do I suck it up and put on a brave face? I’m proud to watch her make good choices even when I’m not there to remind her.
The last few weeks have been emotional ones for me as Olive takes so many steps away from being the baby I’ve always known. But they’ve also been exciting weeks that have shown me a lot about her personality. This summer, her independence will grow even more and my role will change (notice how I didn’t give in and use the word “diminish”). She’ll hopefully start soccer lessons at the end of May and she’ll do two weeks of summer camp later in the summer. We’re going to try swim lessons at night for our next session and she’ll have an instructor we’ve had before who I know will expect a lot out of her.
I’ll have to get used to my new job as mom on the sidelines. I’ll need to brush up on my snack packing and cheerleading. And I’ll be learning to fine tune my ability to derive joy from watching and not experiencing.
Theme of The Week - Colour (part 4 of 4).
Hey everyone, my friend, Jeanine, is going through her third diagnosis of cancer. If you can't donate, please help spread the word.
Thanks
F. Capuano.
soundcloud.com/exclusivexyz/free-download-mrj-so-crazy-ho...
Montreal, Canada ~ June 22, 2018.
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Since I missed two weeks of this project, I'm playing a game of catch up.
I'm actually really excited about how the photos from this shoot turned out.
The almond orchards are in bloom all around me! It's all cloudy skies as of late, but that has its own kind of beauty.
Lately I’ve felt like telling strangers how wonderful parenthood is at the moment. We all know how cyclical parenting a toddler can be, so I don’t take these periods of happiness and calm for granted.
Olive is so funny and expressive that Ryan and I spend a good portion of the evening after she goes to bed trading stories about the things she’s done that day. After a month or so of being fairly uncooperative, she’s returned to being easy to reason with and happily complaint 80% of the day. The more we’ve experienced these highs after particularly challenging lows, the easier it is to ride out the bad portions. As a friend once said when I was complaining about Olive’s behavior last month, “Just wait, she’s about to blow your mind.”
And it’s true! When she comes out of these troughs it’s always with an explosion of skill and vocabulary. Just a couple of months ago I was amazed by her use of 5-7 word sentences but on the car ride to the beach two weeks ago, she busted out a 13 word sentence! I counted on my fingers while I drove and marveled at the kid sitting in the backseat.
A few things she’s said and done that we’ve been particularly smitten by lately.
We’ve recently read Dragons Love Tacos and she loves telling us the plot of it. We’ve had long conversations about whether dinosaurs like spicy tacos, unlike their cousins the dragons. I say they do, Olive is rigidly in the no camp and Ryan thinks it depends on the dinosaur. She likes to give me the Ikea dragon hand puppet and feed the dragon pretend tacos. I pretend in return that she’s given me a spicy taco and burp fire.
She’s very interested in wings and we like to talk in the car about what she would do if she had wings and where she would fly. We’ve also been talking about what insects and animals have wings. The other day, I got her up from her nap and the first thing she told me was that she had wings on. Another day, she found a hanger and pretended that it was her wings.
Magformers are huge in our house right now! Both she and Ryan want to add more to their collections. The click and snap of Magformers is now a familiar sound and can be heard all day long. She’s even brought them to the dinner table with her. She loves to ask Ryan to build a tower (you can lay them out in a certain two-dimensional pattern and then pull them up into a three-dimensional tower) but she also builds them by herself. Recently she’s been building her own two-dimensional towers using the Magformers.
This is something ornery she does but I still think it’s pretty funny. When I say something that she doesn’t want to hear, she’ll look at me sharply and say, “No, I’m talking to Daddy right now.” She even did it the other day when the two of us were alone in the car!
She’s beginning to grasp “best” and “favorite.” She’s also started saying I love XX or I love that! Many times a day she’ll hug an object and say, “I love you, XXXX.”
Her imagination keeps growing. She makes stories up as she plays with her baby or dollhouse. She turns books upside down and makes “tunnels”. She’ll put a straw to her nose and say she’s an elephant. In the back seat she tells herself stories and lately she’s been quietly, shyly narrating the other characters part to create dialogue in her story.
She’s really starting to grasp emotions. There’s a song on our Music Together CD about a dog being tied to a tree and for a long time she’s told me that the doggie is sad but the other day she also said that the doggie was frustrated because no one would play with him. When we were leaving my parents’ house, I said I would miss Mimi and Olive said from her carseat (while pointing a finger at me), “Hey, hey hey, you be happy now, don’t cry.”
There are a million more little stories like this but the gist is, I just love her so much. And she’s so much fun. And I know in another month, she’ll be giving me a run for my money but oh my gosh, how great is 2.25??
So yesterday I felt like absolute garbage. Woke up, took a nap, spray painted some, took another nap, didn't get much accomplished, went to bed. I am honestly blaming it on our humidifier. Does anyone else's humidifer make them sick? (It's not dirty, so that's not the issue.) I know it's dry in here, but whenever I use the humidifier I feel *terrible* the next day! Which is not what I was expecting when I bought the darn thing.
Baby just keeps getting bigger...I can't believe there's still room in there! 5 more weeks...
Also, not wearing leggings as pants. Just yoga pants that are increasingly snug these days...
13/52
Liam's Luck just got better! Thanks to all of the good he's been doing he's been given the chance to train with the legendary Sensei Wu! How do you think Liam will do?
23/52: Lake Masyu and Mt.Shari
September 2 - September 8
I have been away for 10 days guiding a cycling trip in Hokkaido.
It covered the Eastern and Northern part of Hokkaido.
If you are interested in the cycling trip, just drop me a line.
We were very lucky with the weather. This lake is famous for being foggy and the last time I went there was sure enough it was so foggy that I couldn't see anything when I got to the same spot.
It is the clearest lake in Japan and the second clearest lake in the world.
If you have a chance to visit Hokkaido, I really recommend to visit this spot and I hope you will see the lake!!
If you are interested....
Camera Info: Nikon D300S | Tamron 17-50mm (f/2.8) @ 17mm | ISO 200 | 1/60s @ f/8 | Kenko PL-filter | Handheld Camera | Unedited
Moat at night in Thailand´s northern capital of Chiang Mai. Note it is long exposure mixed with HDR.
Strobist info: Canon 580exII at 1/2 power 24mm zoom, triggered with Aputure Trigmaster Plus and a (2) Victor PG250S Wireless Mini Slaves, triggered optically. All shot into a Westcott Apollo Orb above camera.