Posts made in January 9th, 2009

Long days, short years

Posted by Michelle on Jan 9, 2009 in Life, Parenting | 1 comment

The days are long but the years are short.

I remember when The Little Empress was a newborn. She’s been a high needs baby since day one, never happy until she gets what she wants done her way. Her newborn days were a constant litany of feeding, burping, screaming, jiggling, wearing, pacing, wiping. . It seemed that I couldn’t do anything right by The Little Empress who did nothing but sleep, scream and sh*t those first few days. I remember cuddling my swaddled, fed, warm, dry diapered, screaming little bundle and wishing for the “fun” baby days when she did something other than either sleep or scream.

I can hardly believe that it has been over 9 months since TLE made her grand entrance. She’s fast become a a little person. She smiles, laughs, babbles. She crawls and cuddles. She can’t say Mama or Dada yet but her eyes light up when either of us come into the room. It is so hard to believe that this laughing, smiling, cuddly baby who recognizes her Mommy and Daddy was that cranky little newborn once upon a time.

She’s started pulling up and standing this week. As proud as I am, I can’t help but feel my heart break a little. She’s growing up and there’s nothing I can do about it. As selfish as it sounds, I wish I could just freeze time and keep my little baby. It seems like almost in the blink of an eye, she’s gone from a babbling little baby to the brink of toddlerhood.

No matter how many pictures and videos I take or words I write in an effort to memorialize her baby days, these days are almost over and the thought terrifies me. How can they be almost over so quickly? It seems like it was just yesterday that I was pregnant, just waiting for the day she would be born.

I feel so blessed that I’ve been here at home to see her through all her milestones and yet since I’ve been home, I discovered that I haven’t made as much of an effort to record them. For her first few months, I wrote of her growth and triumphs in a family blog. And I wrote her a letter every month to recount what she did that month. I did this up to five months. My last letter to her talked about how happy I was to be at home with her. Since then, I haven’t written much. My family blog has been mostly ignored in favor of taking care of more immediate things.

On one hand I sorely regret not writing more because she’s done so much since then. She took her first bites of solid food, began to sit up all on her own, began to creep and crawl and now she’s starting stand. Yet when I think about it, I realize that I’m so blessed to have been here with her through these months. I’ve fed her all her meals, to see her master sitting and crawling. And despite not having written it down, I know that to have been here to witness these all with my own eyes is so much more important.

I have to remind myself that writing it down doesn’t stop time. Time will march on, my baby will continue to grow and there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is learn to accept that time is short and to never, ever take it for granted.

Photo Friday – Lessons Learned

Posted by Michelle on Jan 9, 2009 in Photo Friday, Photography | 1 comment

My sister is my daughter’s godmother (ninang in Tagalog.) We didn’t get any really good photos from The Little Empress’ baptism and we got none of all of TLE and her Ninang. To make up for this, my sister and I took TLE to a local park to take some photos.

Focal length – 50mm
Apeture – F/1.8
Shutter – 1/164
ISO – 100
Equipment: Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Post Processing: Color correction, cropping in Photoshop Elements

This was the first time I shot outdoors. Once we got there, I realized that I was going to have a bit of problem with my white balance. I didn’t know how to compensate for the fact that TLE’s and my sister’s outfits contrasted so much. If I metered off of TLE, my sister was too dark; if I metered off of my sister, TLE appeared blown out. Also not helping was the fact that the sun was MUCH harsher than I had anticipated even though it was pretty late in the day.

Most of my white balance problems probably could have been prevented by bringing either a gray card or just a plain sheet of white paper for my sister to hold up so that I could have used that to set the white balance while I was shooting. DUH. Lesson learned on that one.

Despite some lighting missteps, I’m pretty happy with how this shot came out. TLE is still a bit blown out but I think the image works fine.