Sally

My daughter introduced me to her imaginary friend "Sally" a few weeks ago. She usually joins us at meals, but sometimes she shows up to play dolls with BittyBit. Tyson thinks it is silly to have imaginary friends, but he probably never had one himself. When I was a child I had "Jamie-boy" and we got into all kinds of trouble together. I was more than a little jealous when my younger sister Robyn took over as Jamie-boy's best friend. I had kind of outgrown him, but I didn't want to share. Good times.

LittleMan learned how to wave goodbye this week, and he also learned how to sign "milk". He got so excited when he made the sign and we actually delivered a bottle. Now that he knows how to communicate, he gets extremely impatient waiting for us to prepare his food.

I finished my first digital paper pack today. I might make elements for it later, but for now I'm just going to package up the paper. I'm still getting the preview ready, writing up my terms of use, and getting ready to upload my files to the file sharing site, so it might be a few days before I post it.

Rude Telemarketers

I always try to be polite to people who call my house, even when they call me when I am home by myself trying to get both kids ready for bed. I really don't like it when the telemarketers call. I have been getting tons of solicitations recently and only realized last week that it is because my time on the National Do Not Call Registry had expired, so I had to put my numbers back on the list.

I think most sales people take a speed-talking course before they begin the job. As soon as I pick up the phone they begin their sales pitch, not even pausing to breathe, and I am left listening carefully for an opening to tell them, "No thanks". I make an effort to be polite, because I know that they are just doing their job, but as Dear Abby once said, in response to a whiney letter from a telemarketer (I am paraphrasing) - "People have no obligation to talk to sales people on the phone. Hanging up on a telemarketer is not terribly rude, as the call was unsolicited and the caller often doesn't give the person a chance to disconnect politely."

I spent close to a minute listening to the guy who was trying to sell me a termite treatment package. When he finally took a breath I said,"No thank you, I'm not interested." At which point he promptly hung up. No mumbled "thanks" or "bye". So I've decided I'm tired of being polite. I'm not interested in torturing the poor people who try to sell me something(like my brother in law enjoys doing), but I'm not going to feel obligated to listen to their sales pitch either.

I thought I'd list some of LittleMan's accomplishments
words: Ma-ma, da-da, (He said his sister's name once, but he has yet to say it again)
talents: clapping hands - he just learned this skill last week
crawling, pulling up on the furniture, and a little bit of "cruising" along the furniture
giving kisses - the big, slobbery, open mouth kisses that babies give, but he does it on command
moving around on his ride-on toy, Mater (he can do this by himself, but prefers to ride around with his big sister)

He is very happy and laughs a lot. I can tell he's going to have a great sense of humor and maybe even be a joker like his dad.
BittyBit and LittleMan riding Mater

New teeth and photography lessons

LittleMan cut his second tooth three days ago. At this point, it would still be incredibly difficult to get a picture of the teeth, but when they have emerged a bit more, I am sure they will be more visible.

I am so smart
Most of the moms I know take tons of pictures of their families. Even those who started out barely able to find the shutter soon blossom into competent photographers. Many of these moms also choose to scrapbook to preserve these memories. One common problem we all face is that because we are usually the one behind the camera, we have thousands of photos and only appear in a handful of them ourselves.

Some days I am more than fine with this (especially the mornings that I can barely roll out of bed and don't want a picture to remind me that I didn't get any sleep and didn't bother fixing myself up), but occasionally I would like some proof that I was actually with the family on that last family vacation.

My solution? I taught BittyBit how to use my old Kodak digital camera. It has been gathering dust on my desk since I bought my Canon, so I figure that with proper supervision, she can learn how to use it and eventually might take some decent pictures. I see only positive things coming out of this. She finds the process of taking pictures highly entertaining. She likes taking multiple pictures, so one of them is bound to be my good side (unlike my husband, who will only take control of the camera when I beg, who usually takes one shot, then when I ask, "Did that picture turn out ok?" -glances at the camera and says,"Yeah"-when what he means is you were blinking and there was something in your teeth). She actually did a good job for her first time using it. More than half of the pictures were in focus and after the first few, I showed her how to center her subject in the viewfinder, so most of the photos contain the subject she was trying to photograph.

Of course, some of the pictures turned out like this...I guess her photography skills still need some work, but with a little practice, she'll be a professional in no time!