Sparky's Favorite Words

It's after midnight, but Sparky's still wide awake. I think she's teething. We tried to get her to go to bed around 10 because she was all sorts of grumpy, but when she was still screaming an hour later I couldn't bring myself to make her stay in there any longer. Hopefully the Ibuprofin kicks in for her soon. And with any luck she'll have a full mouth of teeth by the time she starts Kindergarten.

Since Sasquatch lets me sleep in on Saturday mornings, I decided to be nice and stay awake with her while he turned in "early." I think he deserves that every once in a while - especially since he's been working SO hard these last few months. AND he watched both of the girls all afternoon while I had fun downtown doing a family portrait session (I LOVE it when families opt for urban sessions!!).

So, Sparky's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and she's talking up a storm and I'm trying to keep things quiet and low-key to remind her that it's time for sleep. All the talking made me realize that I haven't been very good about documenting her favorite words. She started talking like crazy while Grandma Rosie was here, and now there are some actual words mixed in with all the gibberish. Some of her favorite words are:

DAY-doo (thank you)/WEH-come (she has to say the two words together - it's never just "thank you")

Pwease (please) - Not quite as cute as The Princess' version (she used to say "Beeps" for please), but still pretty adorable - especially when she signs it at the same time

Boop (book)

SEE-see (Seriously)

BAY-bee - She refers to all of her stuffed animals as babies

PUPpy - Sometimes she's referring to an actual dog, but it also means "goose," "squirrel," or any other random animal we see while taking our daily walk

KEY-key (Kitty) - The only animal she does NOT refer to as a "puppy"

Oof-oof - This is what a (real) puppy says

Meow - What a kitty says

Cack-cack - What a goose says

Tweet - Treat

Coo-kie - She distinctly pronounces each syllable and stresses the "k" sound in the middle - I'm not sure why she can't pronounce the "k" at the end of "book"

Soos (Shoes) - She tries to put them on several times a day and gets upset when I won't take her outside for a walk

Soss - (Socks)

BUH-boos (Bubbles)

Bap (Bath) - Don't make the mistake of allowing her anywhere near the bathroom unless you want to indulge in her chronic desire to strip down to her birthday suit and take a "bap"

She also has an adorable way of saying her sister's name any time she sees a picture of her (or sees my camera - she thinks any picture on my camera's LCD is her beloved big sister) or thinks it's time for her to be home from school.

She loves to say DAH-dee and Ma-MEE, and I love how she pronounces all the consonants - so cute!!

Up - She says this when she wants to be picked up

Hep - Sometimes she asks for help instead of screaming in frustration - usually she screams

WIH-ga? (What's that?)

Hi - It's so adorable to go in and get her when she wakes up from a nap. She always says "hi" in the most nonchalant manner.

Buh-bye

DOH-stay? (Downstairs - with a question mark at the end) is still a staple in her vocabulary - she hates to be cooped up in the tv/computer/playroom

I'm sure she says more than this, and probably MEANS a lot more with her nonsense words (she repeats the same ones over and and over), but these are the words that stand out because she says them most often these days.

Read more...

Random

It’s been a while since I’ve shared any images of The Princess. Here are a couple of  images I captured of her at the pond near our house.  The pond isn’t really much to look at (although we walk down there just about every day to feed the geese), but I LOVE how well it photographs. I thought I’d already shared the wing  portrait, but I can’t seem to find it, so I must have just shared it on Facebook. If you’ve already seen it, here it is again. It’s still one of my all-time favorites.

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have my new computer up and running within the next couple of days. Sasquatch built my current computer when we’d been married for about 2 months, so it’s really old and runs slower than molasses in January. The new computer should be MUCH faster, and I’m hoping the speed will make my editing process faster, so that I can share pictures on the blog more regularly.

Read more...

Cupcakes

There are few things that I love as much as photography, but baking probably comes pretty close. More than baking, I love decorating – especially cupcakes and sugar cookies. It’s so much fun to decorate sugar cookies with royal icing, but it tastes pretty awful (I prefer cream cheese frosting for eating), so I usually only decorate sugar cookies when I can take them somewhere and leave them there.

I wasn’t terribly fond of cupcakes - especially after I took all the time to pipe homemade butter cream on a bunch of cupcakes and the Princess took one bite and told me the frosting made her want to throw up. Thanks, Alton Brown. You and I usually have a pretty good food relationship, but you failed me on the butter cream.

I’d given up on butter cream, but somebody at playgroup suggested that I try making Italian butter cream instead. Holy crow! Sooooooo much better! You use regular sugar instead of confectioner’s sugar (making a simple syrup of sugar and water and then pouring it into the egg whites), and I think that makes all the difference! In some ways, piping frosting onto cupcakes is even more fun than decorating sugar cookies with royal icing. :)

A couple months ago, when Sasquatch was in Utah with Miss Sparky, The Princess and I went on a photography outing with our friends Larisa and Foster. As bribery, I promised The Princess a stop at our favorite bakery if she agreed to have her pictures taken and gave me nice facial expressions. She obliged, so we made a stop at the cupcake cupcake counter at said bakery. I usually can’t bring myself to drop $3.50 on a single cupcake (we usually share one), but I think it’s okay to splurge on occasion.

On this particular day, they had some adorable cupcakes on display that looked like ice cream sundaes. Chocolate cake and vanilla butter cream topped with chocolate ganache and sprinkles and crowned with a maraschino cherry. They were almost too cute to eat!

I decided I had to replicate them at home. The Princess was impressed when she saw them. Without being prompted, she told me that they looked just like the cupcakes at the bakery. That was a nice little boost to my ego.

I also made some plain-looking but oh-so-tasty chocolate cupcakes with hazelnut butter cream. They weren’t quite as pretty as the sundae-cakes, but they were my favorite on the taste scale.

I couldn’t go to that much effort without taking a few pictures, so here they are. :)

Don’t you just love the “catchlights” in the cherry?

And the hazelnut… I’m not much of a food photographer, but you get the idea.

Read more...

Glee!!

I'm so excited that Glee starts again tonight!

I know it's totally geeky (or should I say "Gleeky" - ha! I'm hilarious, right?!?), but I love this show. I think it's probably my all-time favorite TV show.

Part of it probably stems from my high school choir days. Although at my school, it was actually considered socially acceptable to be in choir. I was in Madrigals, which was our version of show choir (we didn't get to perform any mainstream music like they do on Glee, but it was still SO much fun). Most of the Madrigals were pretty popular (I wasn't - I was too painfully shy and didn't know how to flirt - most of the members of the group were notoriously talented at flirting), and none of us ever had Icees thrown in our face.

But in spite of the differences between the show and my personal high school experience, there's still so much about Glee that reminds me of one of the few things I actually loved about high school - music; particularly singing. I wasn't a great solo singer in high school, but I was great at singing in a group (matching pitch, sight reading, all that fun stuff).

One of my favorite memories about Madrigals is the weeks leading up to Solo and Ensemble festival. We used to practice our pieces in the hallway near the gym - the ceilings were really high, and the acoustics were amazing. When everyone matched pitch just right, you could actually feel the notes bounce off the ceiling - it was so cool! We'd occasionally practice the school hymn in that hallway as well - just for the fun of it.

I also loved Christmas. It was so much fun to practice beautiful Christmas music and then perform at various events around the valley during the months of November and December. We had the opportunity to sing on the stairs inside the church office building during my Junior year. While we were singing, President Hinckley came into the foyer and stopped to listen to us sing. He said a few words to us (I think I wrote them down in a journal somewhere), shook a few hands (I was too high up on the stairs to get to shake his hand), and left a lasting impression on our hearts. I still miss being in a choir when Christmas rolls around each year.

The actual show Glee is so different from my high school choir experience (the music is much cooler and better produced and there's a bit too much drama), but it still evokes some of the positive feelings that I have when I think back on high school. It reminds me that there were actually a few things that I enjoyed about school (photography was my other love, even back then - I still miss the darkroom!).

I'm pretty excited for the show to start again tonight. I'm feeling a bit melancholy and homesick since Sasquatch's mom went back home on Sunday, so it will be a good distraction. And it's so much fun to watch Sparky dance to all the musical numbers!

Read more...