Posts made in April, 2009

Toddler + Dog = BFF

Posted by Michelle on Apr 14, 2009 in To Be Sorted | 1 comment

Best Friends Forever

Despite months of indifference and seeming disdain from The Little Empress, Miyuki has always been a good, solid companion dog. She has always known that TLE outranks her and has never complained. She’s been TLE’s devoted Guard Dog and has always been gentle yet fiercely protective of TLE.

It’s only recently that TLE and Miyuki have been allowed to play together, supervised of course. Then again, “play together” may be a bit generous of a description. More like TLE poking and prodding the poor dog incessantly. Miyuki has been surprisingly (and thankfully) good natured about all the ear tugging, tail pulling and eye poking that TLE does to her. Miyuki just lays there with this look that says,”Oh well, at least she’s petting me.”

Catching up — Birthday Party Edition

Posted by Michelle on Apr 13, 2009 in Family, Life | 1 comment

Aaah, a birthday party and a holiday in the span of about a week — so many things to blog about but I haven’t found the time! Ooops!

So since pictures are worth a thousand words, here’s a few of The Little Empress’ first birthday party, accompanied by narration from TLE herself!

Hello, I am The Little Empress. Welcome to my birthday party!

Here are some decorations from my birthday party! Mommy made the cupcakes from a mix. She says Funfetti is yummy no matter what cupcake snob purists say. I just thought they were pretty because they were YELLOW! I like the color yellow. She also got me balloons and decorated with Hello Kitty streamers because I had a Hello Kitty themed birthday decor scheme. Everything was pink — everything she gets me is always pink. (Even though I like yellow better.)

Here I am with my birthday cakes — a big one and a cupcake. The big one is an ice cream cake (chocolate cake with strawberry ice cream) from Cold Stone. Mommy made the Funfetti cupcakes for anyone who doesn’t eat chocolate cake. (Mommy says I’m too young for chocolate. I think she is trying to keep more for herself.)

By the time we got to cake cutting, it was past my naptime and I was cranky. So I started screaming! Do you know how scary it is to have a bunch of people you don’t know gathered around you, singing?? It is creepy, I tell you! I was so busy crying that Mommy had to help me blow out the candle.

After the candle was out, Mommy took the candle and unwrapped the cupcake for me. I was impatient while she was unwrapping it. After the trauma of that round of off-key “Happy Birthday”, I just wanted to rip something apart! So I took the cupcake apart piece by piece. It was fun! But I didn’t eat any of it. I just threw it onto the ground. Luckily, Miyuki the dog was there to eat the crumbs! Mommy was amused but I don’t think Lola was very happy with the fact that the dog ate some of my cupcake!

What’s Your Play #40

Posted by Michelle on Apr 7, 2009 in Photography | 1 comment

What’s Your Play is hosted by Laura at Dolce Pics. She provides a SOOC (straight out of camera) shot and the folks post-process it and share the results. More info here.

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Here’s my entry for What’s Your Play #40 -Water Wheel

Software: Lightroom 2

What I did and why:

I didn’t do too much editing on this aside from enhancing the colors.

* Deepened the shadows and brightened the high lights by tweaking the curves just slightly
* I loved the sky peeking through the trees so I boosted the blue just a bit
* I thought the ground was a little too yellow so I toned down the yellow to more of a brownish tone to enhance to earth
* Sharpened the image to bring out the detail in the rocks and trees
* Vignette to finish off

I didn’t crop this photo. The obvious crop would be to focus on the wheel. I thought about it but decided that I’d lose more than I would gain, especially because I loved the litle bit of sky but didn’t want to sacrifice the ground to do so. I like the scene as a whole very much, especially the frozen pond. So I figured that I’d enhance the feeling of the cold, crisp scene of a water wheel in winter than just a water wheel alone.

The Gentlest Thing

Posted by Michelle on Apr 6, 2009 in Breastfeeding, Media, Parenting | 0 comments

The past few days haven’t been easy since The Little Empress was a bit discombobulated from her birthday party on Saturday. Poor little thing is still so very easily overstimulated and it has made her clingier and needier than usual. For us, this means she’s been nursing around the clock again and it has been wearing me down.

I had just about lost my patience with TLE who has been bouncing from boob to boob pretty much all night. Finally, she’s gone down for the night and while she snoozed beside me, I found this video on YouTube.

I’m reminded again how lucky I am to share this special bond with my little one and despite how exhausting it can be at times, I still treasure every single nursing we have.