A photo journal comprised of my thoughts on motherhood and other life happenings, as well as some of professional work as a photographer. Southern California is home.
It’s hard when your best friend of 15 years lives in another state. I probably sound like a broken record. But you better believe we make the best of our time together.
Janet and her crew were here for two weeks over Christmas. We went to the Renegade Craft Fair, thrifting, the Natural History Museum, the MOCA, the beach, had lunch and went shopping in Silverlake, as well as enjoyed Christmas Eve brunch together and many other meals at home. You’d think having twins would slow her down, but I swear that girl is supermom, even if she convincingly tells you she doesn’t feel like supermom. With as much as I got to see her and with as much as we got to do together, I kinda wish it were Christmas every month.
I’m considering a trip out to Utah to visit soon, I just don’t know about all the stuff I’d need to bring along for the snow. I can’t fathom buying all the snow gear for the few days it would be used. Hoping to borrow from friends what I can and book that flight soon because I miss her.
Ten years ago, I never would have thought that I’d have a blog and be active in social media or put something ridiculously called an “instameet” together. I would have poked some fun at my future self in the same way I currently make fun of people who “vape”. Now watch, I’ll probably be vaping in a few years. Ha. I guess that’s part of the reason people tell you not to talk shit, because you never know what path life is going to take you.
Lo and behold, I really enjoy meeting new people. Several I have met through my blog and instagram have become real life friends; friends that I would have never met otherwise. I try to remind myself of this when I get all nervous and shy and awkward about the idea of arranging one of these meet-ups. Lucky for me, my girl Cindy is always down and hanging with her is always natural, easy, and a damn good time.
And this meet-up was nothing short of a good time. There was rain in the forecast and as I got in my car at the end, a single drop landed on my head; a reminder that sometimes mother nature is on our side. The kids all got on great. Everyone meshed well. There was even a dad that joined along. Some of us spotted a coyote. We shared snacks. We stopped for occasional photos. It all felt easy, carefree, and natural. It’s a group I would love to hang out with again.
It just dawned on me that I didn’t mention the meet-up here. If we have another and you’d like to come, pop over to my instagram every now and again to see if there’s another in the works. I’m sure we’ll do one again. This one was at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, which I highly recommend if you have never been before. Absolutely beautiful.
Do things like this make you nervous? I get the feeling a lot of people skip out because meeting new people is intimidating. I can totally relate to that…
Growth & Appearance: You’re getting so big so fast. You’re really not far off from Hooper’s height and weight. Someone the other day asked if you guys are twins. You’re able to share a lot of clothes; t-shirts and shorts, for sure, and pants depending on the length. If you can’t share pants, the day Hooper grows out of them, they go into your drawer and fit you perfectly.
You’re fiercely strong. Even your “big squeezes” kinda suffocate the air out of me.
You’ve had a bracelet tied around your little wrist since July. You’re great with wearing hats. If there’s a pair of reading glasses lying around, you will find them and wear them. Always.
Eating: The terrible twos are in full force and it shows at the table. You have no time to eat. You either eat what’s in front of you in record time or push it away and want down. It’s so hit or miss. Breakfast is usually good, but by dinner, you’re over it.
Your favorite foods are bananas, chicken nuggets, yogurt, though it all really changes day to day. The other day you scarfed down green beans and I didn’t even know you liked them.
You sit in a regular chair at the table, but we have yet to transfer the highchair into the garage. So far, so good though.
You’re obsessed with “shoda” (soda). I’m trying to convince your Papa that he should drink something better, like say water, so we can teach you better habits. Until then, you’re a magnet to the stuff.
Sleeping: You’re woken up by Hooper every morning. On the days he has preschool, you’ll typically go back to sleep. I think if you had it your way you’d get up around 8 or 8:30. Hooper has you up closer to 7. You still nap in a pack-n-play that’s squished haphazardly into the spare bathroom. You’re in bed around 8:30.
You most always fall asleep with at least two toys and one book snuggled in next to you. And, of course, you’re still attached to your blanket.
Talking: You had the best stutter that literally lasted for about a week and then completely disappeared. You speak in full sentences and understand concepts.
When you want to know what something does, you ask, “What’s it due’s (does), mama?”, to-which-I-answer, “It due’s ____”.
The other day I said to you, “Van, it sounds like you have a runny nose”, to-which-you responded, “No, Mama, it’s walking’ “.
You pronounce waffle as “raffle”, like you’re from the mid-west or something, mouth as “noufth”, and nothing as “nuffing”.
You also say things a little out of order, like when you dropped something and wanted me to pick it up and said, “Why you not pick up it?”.
Development: You are stubbornly independent and want to do everything by yourself.
You took a toy truck away from a boy smaller than you at the park the other day. When he started chasing you to get it back, you threw his truck in the trash can. It was not a trash can you could stick your hand down. Way to make me look like number one mom.
You throw a mean tantrum. We haven’t had to suffer through too many in public, so I guess there’s that.
You have a big personality, are easy going, and a lot of fun. Your Papa and I have already coined you as “life of the party”.
You hit me and it hurts. I’m kind of scared of you becoming a teenager if I’m already dodging your punches now.
You have taken to potty training well and are learning fast. It hasn’t been without it’s trials and frustrations, but I gather in the whole scheme of things it’s been okay. You wear choines at all times, minus napping and sleeping. You ask, at times, to go to the bathroom; other times you simply drizzle just a little in your undies and then tell me, at-which-point I take you to the potty.
You still copy everything Hooper does or says.
You can hop on one foot.
You make the best mean face and the best happy face, on command.
You have no fear and love to jump off of surfaces that are taller than you are.
Favorites: You love cars and planes and anything, really, with wheels. You also still love balls and ask often to play catch. You like making pretend food in your pretend kitchen. We allow you to have your scooter indoors and you ride it all around the kitchen and family room. You play great with Hooper and love to go along with whatever game he is playing. Stewart Little is a movie you ask to watch often. Also a cartoon on Netflix called “Puss & Boots”.
Growth & Appearance: We took you to a barber to have your hair cut. We love it and yet we’re still eager for it to be long, again. You’ve grown a lot it seems and while you fit into many 4T or even 5T pants length wise, the waist is too big, so many times you have to wear a belt. You wear your g’paw Jeffer’s old cub scout belt. The vintage pants fit you just fine in the waist, so I do my best to buy you those instead.
You like to take you footie pajamas off by yourself, which leaves them in an inside-out mess and added hassle for when we put them back on at bedtime (but whatever, right?). You refused to wear hats for a long time but now agree to wearing beanies when it’s cold out. You have one of Papa’s old watches and insist on wearing it at all times of the day. It’s much to big for your little wrist. You don’t really care what I put you in; you have no preferences when it comes to picking out clothes. I’m gonna ride that wave as long as I can. Dressing boys has proven to be more fun than I ever thought.
You had your 4 year check-up and you are 36lbs (51%) and I think just under 40 inches tall (71%). You’re in size 4 shirts and size 9 shoes.
Eating: You’re such a better eater these days. Like night and day. You still need some coaxing here and there, but more times than not you feed yourself and enjoy eating. Did I just say that?
You love pizza. You eyes light up when we tell you we’re lazy and ordering pizza. You also love bacon. And french fries. You’re so obviously my kid. Despite these unhealthy-ish preferences, you do eat a considerable amount of healthy foods; you love nuts, apples, oranges, carrots, and avocado sandwiches (begrudgingly, at times).
You pick your nose and eat your boogers. The other day I caught you eating one of your scabs.
Sleeping: You sleep pattern stays fairly consistent, though daylight savings has made you get up a little earlier than normal. You’re also having a hard time holding your pee and ask often for us to “let you out” to go to the bathroom. Typically you get up between 7 and 8, closer to 7 the majority of the time. Then you nap from about 1:30-3:30, sometimes 4, and rarely not at all. We have hopes of getting you to bed before 8 but you have yet to be in bed before 8:30.
You wake up most mornings in Van’s bed. I think there are times you fall asleep with him in there, but without a video monitor I can’t say for sure. You request to nap in Van’s bed since Van still naps in the pack-n-play.
Twice you’ve taken off all of your clothes and I’ve found you in your birthday suit. That’s new. Insert big eyes with raised eyebrows here.Talking: You call park rangers “grangers” and I don’t correct you; “Mama, waz dat granger say to you?”
You pronounce ambulance with a ton of extra syllables. It sounds something like, “am-ba-tu-la-ence”.
“Spicy” is pronounced “ficey” and I also don’t correct you.
When you see a cat or a small dog, you say, “I want to pick up her”. I don’t correct you because according to the grammar police, you’re actually grammatically correct.
Development: You got scolded at the dog beach by a stranger for hitting her dog. You were upset because the dog took your stick. It was really embarrassing, for me. It had a big impact on you, too, because you wouldn’t stop talking about how you no longer like dogs. Jimmie, you say, is an exception.
You love the letter H. You draw it often and point it out all around town. You don’t seem the least bit interested in any other letters, but you really hold that letter H in high regard.
Each morning at preschool you are supposed to trace the letters of your name. I stick around to watch you every now and again and have yet to see you actually trace the letters. Instead, you like to color in the inside of the letters… you scribble the inside of the “o”s and the inside of the “e” and “p” and call it a day. I have no intentions of correcting you, I like that you do it differently than everyone else.
You teachers say you genuinely like to help. I think this is a very firstborn, people-pleaser, trait of yours. It highlights your sweet and gentle side so well and obviously is a nice thing to hear.
On the flipside, you still come out of preschool each day with ragging aggressiveness toward Van. It’s like groundhog day; you come out the door, sock Van, and then proceed to chase each other all the way back to the car. Same thing. Everyday.
Your feelings get hurt if I tell you you’re not my friend. I realize this lets the I-stoop-to-my-kids-level cat out of the bag, but sometimes no time out or scolding seems to affect you. But, if I tell you that you’re not my friend, you cry. It’s my only leverage.
Felix is your best friend from pre-school. You talk about him at the most random times; like driving through Joshua Tree, “Felix would like this town”. Or the morning when you peed in your bed, “Felix doesn’t pee in his bed”. You guys send each other little videos back and forth confessing your love for one another. It’s sweet. And I dig his mom, so nice pick, Hoop.
You make the ugliest face by scrunching up your nose and showing your teeth and refer to it as your “mad face”. If I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear, you make your “mad face”. Or if you’re in attack mode and going crazy or pretending to be the “bad guy”, you better believe “mad face” comes out in full force. It’s unattractive, to say the least.
You go through phases of spitting. It sucks.
You have a love hate relationship with Jimmie; you love when he’s curled into a ball and you can cuddle him but you hate him when he’s going crazy and chewing up your toys or taking your stuffed animals off your bed.
Your imagination is on fire and you can be quite the storyteller. You’ve been known to tell tales of giraffes in our living room and that super great story you told Nina about Papa hitting you, which had no truth to it.
Favorites: You’re still, after all these years, into your cars. You now like to fill your bed with as many cars as you can and refer to it as a “carnival”. You give me a ticket (usually some sort of scrape piece of paper) and invite me to come. You love watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. It scared you, at first, but you didn’t want me to turn it off and now I think you’re so stoked that you conquered whatever fear you had that you want to watch it over and over and over again. It’s a nice break from Cars and was fun to watch during Christmas. You love to read and you love to flip through books on your own and study the pictures on the pages. You go a book for Christmas that has close up pictures of lots of different insects and animals and you love flipping through and studying each page. You recently found a container of tinker toys and that’s been your favorite thing for the last few days. We went to the Natural History Museum and ever since then you’ve been into dinosaurs. There is an educational program you like to watch on Netflix over and over. The narrator has that really old man monotone museum-esque voice so I haven’t quite figured out how he holds your attention, but he does.
Willy and I have frequented the Rose Bowl on several occasions. In fact, before we moved and sold nearly all of our furniture, we had a garage of stuff we passed at some point at the flea market and just couldn’t say no to. We always said it’d be fun to get a spot at the Rose Bowl and sell some of the stuff we just didn’t have need or room for. And then we made our t-shirts and decided that that, too, would be fun to sell. So we bought a spot.
We left the house at 4:45am and arrived about 6:15am with eager anticipation. We got set up and cuddled under blankets we luckily had in the car, unaware of just how cold 45 degrees feels with sandals on. It was an ominous start, sitting there in the cold with what felt like hardly any shoppers. We waited for quite a while before we got our first sell. It picked up eventually and we sold a lot of the stuff that had filled our garage; an old vintage kid’s school desk, a roadrunner sting art piece, a vintage rug, a wooden crate I hadn’t intended to sell but Willy sold while I was out doing my own shopping, and a few t-shirts.
The highlight of the day was all the friends that stopped by and hung out. We both said that was the best part.
Not sure we’ll do it again, as we didn’t sell quite as much as we had hoped for. Not to mention it’s a lot of work. But what I would like to do is to get our shirts sold in more stores, either brick and mortar or online. So if anyone has any suggestions — places you think our shirts would be a good fit, let me know. Thanks guys.
Can’t say the sign didn’t warn them | Baja, Mexico
Janet gave me a copy of Hamburger Eyes for Christmas and the collection of everyday, totally random, gritty images has yet to leave my mind. It prompted me, in fact, to go through several of my own photos; photos I snapped years ago, with a fresh eye and a comparatively shitty camera. The result has been falling in love with images I had totally forgotten I took and others I knew I had but never really knew what I’d do with; images I snapped for the same reason the folks at Hamburger Eyes select the images to print that they do: to document and record “the continuing story of life on earth”; the tragic, the comedic, the ironic. And so, I’ve spent much of my morning sifting through several of my images from Nicaragua, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Thailand, India, Egypt, and more. And now, I just can’t stop.
When I was a teenager, I used to always buy Jones soda at this little grocery store on PCH near Zuma Beach. I bought it because I liked their Root Beer, but more than that, I was always drawn to the photos they picked to put on their custom labels. They had information on the bottle about how you could submit your own photos to potentially end up on one of their labels. And they’d pick the most random, awesome, images. Hamburger Eyes, for me, is reminiscent of Jones Soda labels only with more edge and grit, because – well – not many supermarkets will carry a soda with an image of a bride sniffing cocaine. But in a world where anything would go, I have no doubt Jones Soda would have gone for it.
So grateful to Hamburger Eyes for having a place for these kinds of photos to potentially breath and live. Even if they look at my submission and tell me to eat dirt, the time I’ve spent sorting through them has been a walk down memory line and just the reminder I needed as we kick off this new year that life is short and experiences are everything.
And just like that, I sent my first (in what I hope will be many) emails to the lady who hooks us up with information on how to get back to Cuba. Let’s do this, 2015.
Ronald’s Play Place (a standalone structure, not connected to a McDonalds) | Panama
Protect yo’ lady | San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua
He’s got party confetti spilling out of his right pocket | San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua
Words for the wise | Nicaragua
Remember when Brittany Spears got a lot of shit for driving with her kid on her lap? Me too | Granada, Nicaragua
Piss happens | Granada, Nicaragua
Juxtaposition | Granada, Nicaragua
Juxtaposition, part II | Granada, Nicaragua
Street style | Dominican Republic
Stickball | Dominican Republic
Beach style | Dominican Republic
The birds and the bees, and the dogs too | Dominican Republic
Prey | Bayahibe, Dominican Republic
Childhood | Bayahibe, Dominican Republic
What Hooper looks like when carrying all his shit to bed | Dominican Republic
Caution: water may be shallow | Baja, Mexico
If the man in the painting came to life and if the scooter was moving | New Orleans, Louisiana
See no evil | Casablanca, Morocco
The tooth fairy’s recycling center | Marrakech, Morocco
A couple somewhere in middle America
Marrakech, Morocco
Don’t worry, it’s fake — I think | Malta
Did you know that VW’s trunks are in the front? | Alexandria, Egypt
Merman | Alexandria, Egypt
Move over bicyclists, share the road | Delhi, India
You can help by getting me out of here | Kashmir, Pakistan
“Fancy” ice cream is the best ice cream in town. You can find it just behind the piles of rubble and trash | Kashmir, Pakistan
Giving Santa Monica street performers a run for their money | Kashmir, Pakistan
Hopefully the little guy has a Wu-Tang sword | Kashmir, Pakistan
When shade is limited | Jaipur, India
Shop ’til you drop | Bangkok, Thailand
Men will always find pussy | Bangkok, Thailand
When American culture meets Thai religion | Bangkok, Thailand
The sign in our hostel that basically says no bringing Thai hookers upstairs, or up stays… you decide | Bangkok, Thailand
The Salton Sea, where the locals are always prepared | Bombay Beach, California
You can read more about Hamburger Eyes by clicking here and check out their Instagram feed by clicking here.
Janet was in town for the holidays so we decided to be brave and take all 5 kiddos (4 of which are 2 and under — insert big eyes with raised eyebrows here) to the Natural History Museum in LA. And true to motherhood form, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We got there when it opened, which was smart because by the time we left there was a line out the door (compliments of winter break, I’m sure). The fact that the older kiddos were actually into exploring the exhibits made it a lot easier. And ice cream at the end didn’t hurt either. All in all, a great day filled with a few educational lessons and second-to-none company.
Please join me in supporting the other photographers participating in the Childhood Unplugged movement by clicking here to see all our submissions. You can also follow us on instagram (@childhoodunplugged) and be sure to use #childhoodunplugged for a chance to be featured on our Instagram feed.
