Penelope turned two (90 days ago).

Penelope is two.  She's twenty three pounds dripping wet.  If I'm determined to worry about something, I worry about her weight.

She is still a big Daniel Tiger fan.  She can sing the choruses of a few of her favorite songs, "Shut up and Dance with Me", "Uptown Funk", and "Girls Chase Boys".  During our trip, she started adding a -y to the end of some of her words.  "Can I sit on your wappy?"  "I can do it my selfy."  She thinks she can do a lot of things her selfy like fastening her carseat or walking across the street.  She gets angry if you try to help her out.

On our trip, she spent most of the time in the Ergo carrier while hiking.  We let her out for a bit when we were on Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake.  I suggested she walk around the big rocks, and she decided instead to step on each one.  Because she's big and independent and two.

But, really, she was such an awesome traveller.  She spent time coloring, but mostly just chilled.  We did keep her pacifier in commission so we could pacify her on the road if needed.  Someday soon we'll take her out of a crib and take the pacifier away at bedtime.  There just isn't another baby on the way to need them.

One right of passage that she's eager to get under way is potty training.  She asks daily to sit on the potty, and lets me know when she is going in her diaper.  A diaper free home is in our near future.

Her big sisters and brothers have taught her a few things.  She can count to twenty pretty well.  It's a game.  I'll say one and she'll say two and we'll count together.  Then she'll ask to do it again and again.  She'll also give you a fist bump if you ask.  She follows the bump with a "fa la la la la" as she pulls her fist back and wiggles her fingers.

When she doesn't think she's being listened to, she'll grab my face, put her head up against mine, and whisper her request in the most infuriating and adorable way.  She is quite persistent.  When we were in South Dakota, we watched a little movie in the Badlands.  She was having trouble sitting still, and I promised her a Swedish fish if she would watch quietly.  Less than a minute later, she asks, "I have fish?"  And on and on it went until we headed to the car to get the fish.

In May, we were out shopping, and as we were going into Kohl's she started naming her family...Schroe Schroe, JuJu, D'arcy, Maggie.  I said, "Who else is in your family?"  She looked at me and said, "Daddy!!"  It was this first moment of verbal recognition of who her core people were.  She belonged to us and we belonged to her.  And, I had this rush of joy knowing that she had all these great brothers and sisters to love and care and teach her.  How cool is it to be a fifth baby!

Stephen and I were out of town on her birthday.  We celebrated a week earlier with a little party at our house.  I made her a birthday cake that was collapsing and falling apart.  I topped it with two plastic princesses we have in the house.  She kept asking to look at her cake.  She would sit at the table and just look at the wobbling mess.

Happy Birthday Penelope!

I blogged a family session!

A client emailed me recently and asked if I still was photographing families.  I am!  Although, this fall, I'm only booking returning clients because I have a tight schedule.  I'm trying harder than ever to walk into a session with no preconceived ideas of what I have to capture.  I'm trying to throw that mental checklist away and capture the beauty unfolding before me.  Tonight, I got to follow these sweet kids around their grandparents big yard.  The oldest asked how I knew her name.  I told her that I knew her name before she did because her mom is an old friend of mine.  The youngest two are twins, and it's fun to remember a conversation I had with Leslie when she was newly pregnant.  She told me her belly was growing much faster than she had expected, and I sort of shrugged it off as a normal second pregnancy symptom.  A couple weeks later she texted with news that she was expecting twins!  

I'm celebrating.

Two years ago, I gave birth to Penelope.  After my body recovered from the birth, I was fifteen pounds heavier than I was when I got married.  For the last two years, I've been slowly, gently trying to get myself back to my wedding weight.

This is the fifth and last time I will go through this process.  I will never again be able to call extra weight "baby weight".  In the future it will have to be called soda weight or chocolate and marshmallow weight or salt and vinegar chip weight.

When we were on our trip, we were hiking daily and sharing meals at restaurants to save money.  I lost those last two pounds somewhere between the Devil's Tower and the Grand Canyon.

I've been telling myself for awhile that when I hit my mark, I would pull out my wedding dress that was lovingly smashed at the bottom of my hope chest.  I would put it on for the first time in twelve years and celebrate.

D'arcy came up to help me focus the camera.  She asked why I was in my dress, and I told her.  She said, "Well, you are down to your wedding weight, but you still have stretch marks underneath there."

I'm celebrating those, too.

Schroeder is six!

Schroeder turned six at the end of March.  The week before his birthday, I started a little note on my phone and began jotting down little tidbits I wanted to share about him.  Like the fact that after six months of school, all of his pants have holes in the knees.  And if you check his pockets, you will find skylander or pokemon trading cards or a package of leftover graham crackers from afternoon snack.  Before he goes to bed, I have to smell his breath to make sure he brushed his teeth, and I have to make sure he takes his shoes off or he'll just sleep in them leaving gross dark spots on his white sheets.

At school, he has been learning to read and write which he is excited about.  He'll write me cards and stuff them in envelopes.  His name has progressively been getting longer on his work as he learns to write the whole of his name.  Schr.  Schroe.  Schroed.  Schroeder.  I love his name.

There is something about my boys being tender and loving that just melts me.  I'm not sure if it is counter to what we perceive as masculine or if it is simply that most of their time is spent turning items into guns and taking all the enemies down.  But a sweet note, a hug, or sweetness showed to their littlest sister is so dear to me.  I'm glad they get to experience first hand the joy of a baby in the house.

We were at a friend's birthday party the other day, and another dad observed Schroeder hitting the piñata.  He mentioned to Stephen that Schroeder was very athletic.  Stephen wondered if by athletic he meant aggressive?

When we get calls from the school, from the nurse or his teacher, he gets on the phone and literally doesn't say a word.  I have to listen closely for the sound of his breathing to see if he is still connected.  His behavior seems to have improved this semester.  I haven't any discipline calls since January.  The other day, I got a call from the school in the middle of the day and cringed. I picked up the phone and their art teacher said she was calling to discuss some behaviors in the classroom.  She went on to talk about some GOOD behaviors that Schroeder exhibited, and then the whole class yelled how much they liked having him in class.  I started to cry.

I love it when he comes home from school and catches up with Maggie Lu.  They clasp their hand together and have a little talk.  She takes him out to her fairy garden to show him her new setup.  I also hear he and Julian laying in their beds talking about boy stuff, LEGOs and skylanders and minecraft.

The other day, Julian was showing Schroeder a animated video of minecraft characters playing five finger fillet, that game where you stab a knife in between your fingers at a fast paced hoping not to hit one of your digits.  Schroeder reached into the drawer to grab a butter knife and try this game out.  Thankfully, I was there to stop him.  I asked him if his fingers would grow back?  No.  I asked him if we wanted the experience of putting his finger on ice, going to the hospital, and having it sewn back on?  No.  I asked him what was required to play video games?  Fingers.

He has a plan for every big cardboard box delivered from Amazon.  Cardboard inspires endless hours of play.

He has yet to lose any of his tiny little baby teeth.

For his birthday, he asked for a sleepover (which didn't work out), goody bags for his friends, and a copy of "The Day the Crayons Quit".  Believe it or not, I've never done goodie bags for a kids party so this must have seemed like a big treat to him.  We invited a couple of his school friends over for the evening.  We had pizza and cupcakes and the boys played with all the little toys in their goody baskets.  On his actual birthday, we were headed to St. Louis, and I handed back his book.  All the big kids in the car shrieked with excitement.  I would say he is pretty easy to please.

His Grammy and Poppy took him for a night and out to McDonald's and shopping.  He came home the next day, and as we were taking a walk it began to sprinkle.  Schroeder turned to me and said, "I know about this rain."  He had watched the weather report with his Poppy, but the way he phrased it made me chuckle.

These two are getting married.

I haven't posted photos of clients in a while, and I had a fun time with my sweet friend Laine and her fiance.  They were great at being relaxed and low key, and I really dig how these photos turned out.