Monday, April 30, 2012

April Self Portrait

Did you all hear that I am a professional photographer now?  Pause while I laugh hysterically.... HA HA HA HA!  OK, so that statement is entirely false, but I was my sister's second shooter for a wedding that she had down here in NC two weeks ago. 

She booked this wedding in the Outer Banks months ago and asked if I would be her second shooter.  I almost laughed in her face.  What did I know about photography?  Nothing.  But she said that if I agreed she would teach me.  So I hesitantly agreed.  It was not that I didn't want to learn about it.  No, photography fascinates me and I'd love to be better at it.  But the idea that a part of some one's wedding day would be in my hands was daunting.  This was not just any old photo shoot.  It was a wedding.  You know, the kind of event where people cherish their photos and show them off forever and ever.  Yeah.  I was slightly nervous.

Luckily Tina and I were together for a lot of March and April, so we had ample teaching time.  Plus, she made me an awesome (5 typed pages!!) cheat sheet, which I love.  I love having something to read when learning new things.  So I learned the basic concepts and got to work.  I took some pics of Tina, but my subject was mostly....guess who?  Addy Marie, of course!  I have to say, that she is not an easy subject to learn on.  Constantly moving, changing directions, never looking at the camera and smiling on command.  I mean, come on Addy, help a momma out!  So it was definitely a challenge trying to take decent pics of Addy, but I felt like it was a good experience.  Then we arranged a photo session with one of my friends and her husband when Tina came down to visit, and I got some practice with them too. 

When the wedding day finally came I felt as ready as I could be at that point.

Then the wedding actually happened.  Wow, it is exhausting and draining being a wedding photographer!  Constantly on the alert for the perfect photo op.  9 hours on your feet.  Lugging a VERY heavy camera around, making your hand cramp up (at least mine did ;)).  Smiling and looking happy and excited at every moment, even if you're thinking, "Crap, did that picture turn out?"  Whew!  But despite all of that, I had a lot of fun that day!  Honestly, it was pretty awesome being such an intrical part of some one's happiest day.  I loved it!

And despite the fact, that I did not leave that wedding feeling entirely confident, I did leave happy :)  Did I mess up a lot of shots?  Yes.  Luckily I was the second shooter.  So Tina inevitably captured amazing photos of all of the things that I messed up.  But it was pretty awesome working with my sister, and working in this environment:

There I am in all of my glory :)
Side note: Closed toed shoes on the beach?  Not a good time.  But we had to be professional, so no flip flops for us.

What a great day and a great weekend.  A two night stay at the beach...with my sister....without a toddler.  Ahhh, it was amazing!

Happy April!

Sunday, April 29, 2012

15 months!

Dear Ad,

You are 15 months old now and such a fun little girl!  You love going to the park and seeing other kids, so we have been trying to take you there a lot lately.  Now that you are an expert walker it's a lot easier to go places like the park than it was before.  You also enjoy the nursery at the gym since you can play with other kids there too.  You will be starting pre-school (or so they call it) in September, and I'm sure you'll love it!





Here are your 15 month stats from the doctor's office:
 
Weight: 21lbs 6.5oz (55th percentile)
Length: 31 inches (70th percentile)
Head Circ: 47.5cm (90th percentile)
 
 
You are starting to become more of a picky eater and you have mastered the art of secretly feeding Daisy what you don't want.  We have been going out to eat a lot lately and so you've been eating a lot more junk, but we're going to try to change that and get you back on track with your veggies ;)  You also are becoming Miss Independent and you want to feed yourself everything, even messy things from a spoon and that makes me cringe.  I want to feed it to you to contain the mess, but then again, I know you need to learn to do it yourself.  So mealtime has become a lot messier than it once was.  Sigh.  Mommy hates a mess, but I guess Mommy needs to get over that, huh?

Speaking of a mess....



We went strawberry picking with some of my friends from work on your 15 month birthday and you became a complete disaster.  Here's how it started...

Yup, you decided to lounge out in the strawberry patches!

Which resulted in your butt looking like this...


But you didn't seem to mind.  You just kept on eating...


And posing for the camera :)

Here are some "before" photos.  All nice and clean:




I had to strip you down completely, change your diaper (because the strawberry juice seeped through your pants onto your diaper), and wash you with wipes before I could put you in the car.  Talk about a mess.  But you had fun, so that's all that matters :)  The, once we got home I figured we'd have lasagna for dinner since your cleanliness was already a lost cause for the day. 


Lately you have also been mimicking a lot of words that we say.  And the amount that you are always learning never ceases to amaze me.  You make the noises of dogs, ducks, and cows on command.  You can point to a lot of your body parts, you know where your different articles of clothing go and you like to "help" get dressed, and you know all of your toys by name, as well as multiple other things in the house.  Now when we tell you to go to your high chair to eat, you go there and wait for us to lift you into it.  It's awesome to watch you learn new things!

Giving kisses/blowing kisses has been one of your favorite things to this past month.  You love to give Daddy and me kisses complete with the kissy noise, which makes us laugh, and in turn makes you laugh.  And you blow kisses to anyone and everyone that you meet.  In a restaurant, grocery store, anywhere.  In fact, we were leaving Harris Teeter the other day and when I said, "Say Bye Bye Harris Teeter", you turned around and blew the store a kiss.  It's so precious, and I love it!



Happy 15 month birthday Addy Marie!!  Mommy and Daddy love you to pieces!! 
 
Love,
Mommy
 

Monday, April 23, 2012

Easter 2012

OK, I know I have been a little bit MIA on this blog lately, but we have been crazy busy with traveling over the past few weeks, after which I got sick with some sort of sinus thing (again!!), so I wasn't feeling like getting up early to blog.  I am an early morning blogger, and if I don't get it done before Addy wakes up for the day then it doesn't get done.  So anyway, we are all home and I'm feeling better, so it's time to catch you up on what has been going on with the Hetricks lately.

We traveled up to PA for Easter, and Addy and I ended up being there for over a week, during which we saw both Mike's and my family.  It was really great to be able to see everyone, but now it's also really great to be home.  It's stressful traveling with a small child, making sure you have everything you need for over a week's time, and then hauling it all over the place to visit everyone.  Like I said, I love visiting our families, but it's exhausting, and it always feels nice and relaxing to get home.

Addy and I flew up to PA early and started our trip with my family on the eastern side of PA.

Easter basket time at Grandma D's house:


Addy was (as always) not a fan of wearing a headband.

But we managed to get a few smiles in that headband later in the week.



 
Addy loved that yellow stick for the play xylophone and carried it around everywhere.

Next up was Grandpa and Grandma Hertzler's house.  My stepsister's bridal shower was that weekend, so Tina and I went there while Dad and my grandpa watched Addy for the afternoon. 

Addy's Easter "basket" was a sand bucket, which she loved!  She enjoyed spending her time collecting magnets off of Grandma and Grandpa's fridge and putting them in her bucket.  We may or may not have accidentally pilfered some of those magnets and discovered them later at Aunt Tina's house.  Tina promised to return them to their rightful owner, so hopefully she did her job ;)

Addy got lots of goodies in that bucket, but the book was one of her favorites.

After our time in Allentown, Addy and I headed off to Philly to spend a few days with Aunt Tina and Uncle Jay.  I don't have any pictures from that time, because I was practicing with Tina's camera all week, so I didn't really take any photos on mine.  We spent a lot of time at the park with Addy that week, and she loved it!  Tina put some of the pictures I took on her blog, so you can check them out by clicking the links below.



After out time in Philly, Addy and I headed west to Hollidaysburg, and Mike met us there.  I took lots and lots of pictures of Addy and Luca that weekend!  Now don't be expecting "Tina" quality photos here, but I tried, and a lot of them are not too bad if I do say so myself ;)  Get ready to be bombarded with toddler pictures!....

Off to the park


Lauren and Luca



How cute is he on that little swing?


Addy's trying out the sliding board


 
Tried to get a pic of all four of them looking at the camera, but that proved to be impossible ;)  This was as close as I could get.


 
Ha ha!  Caught Addy mid-sneeze!

I'm sure our cautious girl is thinking, "Are you guys sure this is safe??"


 
A book in one hand and about to play the piano with the other.  This little girl is in heaven!


 
Reading with Grandma Hetrick


Playing in the backyard :)

Just a little fish face :)


 
Love that smile!

Daddy and Addy :)

Again, looking oh so thrilled to be wearing a headband.  She kept it on for those 0.2 seconds that it took me to snap this photo, and then promptly ripped it off.

During this trip we discovered that Addy loves drinking from a straw, and she does it like a champ!


I loved Luca's Easter outfit!!!!

There's our little Easter princess...all poised for her photo op ;)  Love it!!!!


Ready to get on that swing.  Hair blowing in the wind, grass stain on the stockings :)

Little man had an outfit change...

...and so did the little lady.

Mommy/daughter matching Easter socks :)  Thanks Grandpa and Grandma Hertzler!

Time for an Easter egg hunt!


Chocolate marshmellow peeps....yum!!!

Addy better watch out or Daisy is gonna steal her dollar!  I have a feeling Addy is on the hunt for more Peeps ;)

"This is MY cookie, Daisy!"

Getting sleepy.  It's almost time to pack up and head home to NC.

So that was our Easter trip to PA :)  We had an awesome time, and although we are all glad to be home, we are sad that it'll be a few months until we see everyone again.  Thank goodness for Skype!

 




Thursday, April 19, 2012

Big News!



Yup, that's right!  I am pregnant with Baby #2!

We are so excited and we finally told the news to all of our close friends and family, so it's time to announce it to the world wide web.  Last time we didn't wait as long to tell everyone, but it's important to us to tell our families in person, and that is not always so easy to accomplish living 8 hours away from all of them. 

But by Easter, the whole family heard our big news and we started spreading the word to friends.  It was so fun thinking up a clever way to announce our second pregnancy, and we decided to go with the photo above.  Tina took it for us on the same day that we did Addy's one year photo shoot (so I obviously told her our news immediately).  We then came up with a cute little caption and ....voila!  I decided to make each of our parents a little photo album of pics from Addy's one year shoot, and then I included this pic last in the book.  It was great seeing every one's reactions :)

At this point I am almost 18 weeks into my pregnancy and we have the big ultrasound next week already!!  I cannot wait, and I have been praying that all is OK with this new precious baby.  I just want to hear that the baby has all four heart chambers, a closed spinal column, appropriate brain growth, lung growth, kidney function, etc...  Can you tell this is a PICU nurse speaking?  We all always joke, "Ten fingers and ten toes?  Don't care about that.  Just give us all four heart chambers."  It's so true though.  I am always nervous before going to the ultrasound.  So hopefully all news will be good news on Tuesday :)  Say a little prayer for our new little nugget.

Oh yeah, and we will hopefully find out the baby's gender at that time too!!!!

I'll keep you posted!