My handsome boys!

My handsome boys are growing up so fast! (How many times do I say that here?!)

Brenden is potty trained and its wonderful! We have to still wear a pull up at nap and night but during the day its 100% underwear. He is so funny and full of personality. The other day he told me my hair was a yellow rainbow. Or the other day (warning, a poop story) he used the potty and did a # 2 and looked at it in the toilet and said "Wow, I did a big beanstalk poo poo!" Where does he think this stuff up??? He talks from the moment he gets up until you close his bedroom door at night. He's curious and has an amazing memory. He's currently into the Little Einsteins on Disney. Of course they come on at 4 a.m. Thank God for a DVR right?

Logan is doing great. His tube is out and hopefully his eyes are on the mend. He still has some slight tearing but he also has a cold so its hard to be sure whether the cold is causing it or if his tears are still not quite draining right, but overall there is a great improvement. Logan is just as sharp as his brother and is learning to say anything he hears. He knows how to say EINSTEINS! when Brenden's show is on. He loves to pat his hands and yell blast off! He LOVES to eat. His pit has no bottom. He never stops eating until we cut him off! Such the opposite of his brother. The other day he swatted at me and I asked him if he did it again he would go in time out. He said "okay" and walked over to his time out spot and sat down and  laughed. Hmmm. I'm thinking that time out might not be as effective on him as it is on Brenden!

Here are a few photos of my little men.

Logan's "Procedure"

Logan had his eye procedure this past week. I won't even call it a surgery because they really didn't have to 'open him up.' However he did have to go under anesthesia so it was treated as a surgical procedure.

As you can see below he had blocked tear ducts and his eyes were always dripping. So this procedure was to open them both up.

The procedure itself went really quickly. We got to the hospital at 6:00 a.m. bright and early - which was good for us since he wasn't allowed to eat before the procedure. He got all dressed in his gown and ready to go to surgery. They had to write a B on his forehead to indicate both eyes needed worked on, however Brenden was sure that B was for "Brenden" and not "both." Prior to the procedure they gave him an oral med to 'relax' him. I really thought it would just make him groggy, but for lack of a better term, it made him drunk. He was HILARIOUS. He looked up at me and just started laughing. He kept trying to touch my nose and say 'Nossethhh' and then would bust out laughing. He kept trying to put his paci in my mouth and thought that was funny too. He just laughed at everything but it was that silly drunk laugh. They took him back to the operating room and at that point they gave him gas to help him drift off and then they gave him an i.v. and intubated him with a breathing tube. I barely got settled into the waiting room before my pager went off to let me know he was out of surgery. They ran a tube through both tear ducts and tied it off in his nose.

If you click on the images you can see more closely the tube that goes in between his eyes and out his nostrils. And as warned by the dr's and nurses, Logan proceeded to have the greatest of melt-downs when he came to from anesthesia. He was great in recovery until they took his iv out and it went downhill from there. He proceeded to scream and cry for over an hour. He didn't want held, he didn't want put down, he didn't want food, milk, paci, NOTHING made him happy. Finally I just let him lay on the couch across my legs and have a melt-down on my lap until he wore himself out. He slept  for 10 minutes and woke up and asked for a popcicle and then after 3 popsicles was back to his old self.

I was glad to have my happy boy back. He hasn't touched the tube AT ALL so the dr was right and I was wrong. Brenden doesn't notice it at all. It stays in for 10 days and then they'll pull it out and hopefully thats the end of these silly eye infections!

Happy Birthday Brenden!

Oh my goodness, how did my tiny little baby Brenden turn THREE already??!! Wow to think through all of the past 3 years, my tiny little preemie, his first hospital stay with jaundace, the platelet scare of 2009, becoming a big brother... every moment seems like yesterday. He is such a sweet, special, vibrant, energetic little boy (not baby!) The years have FLOWN by and though I miss his tiny baby moments, I am also LOVING this age. He cracks me up all day long. He's really talking up a storm now, using full sentences and coming up with creative unique thoughts all on his own. This morning he was walking down the stairs and saw this baby picture on the wall



He said "hey that's Logan" and I said "No, thats baby Brenden" and he said "Oh, Baby Brenden is hiding (I guess because half of his body is hidden)" and then stuck his tongue out like the picture and busted out laughing and said 'hahaha, baby Brenden is FUNNY"  How cute is that?

We had an awesome birthday party. We hired the Fun Bus to come to the house. Its sort of like a gymboree on wheels. The theme of the party was Mickey Mouse. Brenden LOVED all of his Mickey stuff. We had so many friends come to celebrate the day with us. It was better than I could have imagined. I don't think I ever saw a moment on his birthday party that he wasn't smiling from ear to ear -what more could a mom ask for?

Starting the day with his happy birthday Mickey Ears. I was afraid the 'headband' style was going to make these look too girly, but they actually looked just fine on a little boy and he LOVED them!

Look at me, I'm THREE

I just love this shot even though he's not smiling (he was watching Mickey on tv). He's just such a handsome little boy, I could take pictures of him all day long and love every one of them :)

 

The fun bus!!!

The kids staring out the window at the Fun Bus wondering when they can go play on it. Ironically half the party-goers would get scared and get back off the bus lol - but Brenden had a blast and stayed on the whole time, so that's all that really mattered to me!

Doing some rock n roll 'freeze dance' on the fun bus. I love how he dances <3

My attempt at Mickey cupcakes. Brenden loved them. (chocolate cupcakes with mini oreos for ears)

Eating ice cream with a fork lol. I forgot to get plastic spoons! Obviously this didn't slow him down a bit. 

Presents!!! 

It really was our best birthday party ever. All of the kids had fun and though there were some intensely chaotic moments, there were also lots of smiles and giggles.


On a non-birthday topic we have some good news and some .. well I won't call it bad news, just news. Logan went to see his two specialists (eye and urologist). The good news is the urologist doesn't think his hydrocele is bad enough to do surgery on at this time and wants to give it 3 more months. He said he couldn't feel any fluid passing in and out when he squeezed it or pressed on his bell so either the opening allowing the fluid to gather around his testicle has closed on its own and its just a matter of time for the fluid to absorb and the swelling to go down, or the opening is small enough that it doesn't pose a risk. Their greatest concern with a hydrocele is having part of the intestine being able to move into the opening and causing a hernia/bowel obstuction. So we are glad that he doesn't have to have surgery "down there" for now. However the eye specialist is concerned that his tear ducts (both) are blocked and wants to do the surgery to open them up. Her preferred method is using the intubation method (google it!). She will pass a single long narrow tube through each tear duct - one end of the tube goes in one duct and the other end goes in the other so you would see the tube between the eyes connecting the two ducts. She will then run each end down through the sinuses (which is where the blockage is) and bring one end of the tube out one nostril and then curve it around back up the other and tie the two ends off up inside his nostril - so you would also see tubing running out one nostril and up the other. And then... get this... we leave it like that for TEN days!! She said this is the best method to prevent them from closing back up and assured me that ALL of the parents tell her their kids don't even notice the tubing. She said that I mostly need to worry about other kids pulling it out but its likely Logan won't touch it at all... I'm not convinced, but I've been proven wrong before. To do the surgery he will have to go under anesthesia, which I'm not happy about. I am looking forward to an end to all of the eye dripping, eye infections, chapped cheeks (from being wet all the time), and am hoping maybe this will keep him from getting icky sinus infections all of the time like he has been. Anyway, lots of prayers for Logan (and Mommy) as her baby undergoes surgery this coming Friday.

Cooties go away!

It seems with two little ones in daycare we can't seem to keep the germs out of our house, not to mention this nasty snow-turned-ice crap we have outside. Brenden has an ear infection and the rest of us are just all stuffed up. I'm hoping whatever Logan has will just run its course and heal on its own. He hasn't been running the high fevers that Brenden was so I'm hoping it was a milder version of what he had. I, too, am a stuffy sniffley mess and would like the germs to leave my house as well! On top of that we had some snow and then it was followed by wet freezing rain, followed by 20 degree temperatures which now have created a giant ice slab on my entire property. So we've all got cabin fever on top of our real fevers!

Here is my frozen monkey grass:

Here is my slick high-gloss ice slab front yard. Definitely not something you can take the kids out to play in (even if they weren't sick)

And will end on a positive note: My boys!!

(Hint: the one with the bucket-head is NOT Brenden)



New Blog Site

I have created a new blog site for my photography stuff. I realized that using certain photography keywords has increased the hits on my blog - which is open to the public. And though I am flattered that people take the time to read the blog, there is a lot of my personal family information on here that I prefer stay a little less easy to find - ya know?  So I will keep this blog open, but will no longer post my photography information here (and plan to remove a few posts that I've noticed have received a lot of hits from areas I don't recognize) to make it a little less searchable. So going forward I will post my photography on the following new blog http://www.guardianangelphoto.blogspot.com/. This is my hobbyist-hope-to-be-pro-one-day blog :)  It will just be general photography stuff and some of my works.

This blog will continue to be my family update site.

Photoshop before/after images

I'll start out with an update on my precious boys - the inspiration to all of my photoshop joy!

Brenden wore BIG BOY underwear at school ALL day yesterday and didn't have any accidents. His teachers were SO proud of him as were we. He does much better with underwear than pull ups. I wasn't sure what they daycare stance was on 'accidents' but they said to just bring in underwear and extra pants and they would make sure he used the potty all day. Its a huge milestone for us! He wears underwear at home a lot but never at school until now. I hope he keeps up the good work.

Logan is doing great. His teachers told me the other day that he was SO good at talking, and he really is. He easily has twice the vocabulary Brenden did at that age. I guess having an older brother has its benefits. He goes to the eye dr. on the 12th to see about his blocked tear duct and then to a urologist on the 17th to look at his hydrocele. So lets hope neither visit is too rough on the little guy. He's been sleeping great lately!

I've been playing around with some photoshop techniques I'm learning online and in books and then applying my own artistic eye and have a fun series of before/after pictures to share (click on any image to view a larger photo)

This is a picture I took in the hospital of Logan. He is just laying on my bed with the white sheets and the harsh flourescent lighting. I will tell you with all of these pictures that I can't remember my exact workflow but will give you a general idea of what I did! I did my best to adjust the lighting, brightening, increasing contrast, adjusting the levels. I used the 'remove color cast' option in the Enhance menu. This feature has you click on an area that should be a pure white/grey/black and it determines what the color cast on that particular 'drop' of photo you picked up and then removes that hue from the entire picture. I had to click around a few times to get the best drop of pure white to really remove that blue tint. I added a vignette to darken the edges of the photo. And I used a free action available at The CoffeeShop Blog called Baby PowderRoom. An action is just a set of pre-set layers that you can adjust and manipulate to use on top of your photo. This action allows you to soften skin, lighten it, even out the color, give it a soft glow, etc. It really is like patting your little baby with baby powder :)

I really like this picture (both the before and after). I tried to do any lighting/color correcting - which was actually pretty minimal in this example. I boosted up the contrast to really get some of the cool colors of the leaves, while trying to avoid making his face too bright and his red shirt too red. I added some 'grit' to the leaves to really give it some texture and a slight vignette to 'burn' the edges of the photo.

This image I was trying to be a little more 'trendy'.. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not :) I played around with the contrast and colors to make things a little more exaggerated and the colors of the background leaves a little more rich. I also added 'grit' to the background of this picture to really pull the texture of the wood and leaves.

This was just a fun little project in trying to add a texture to a picture. I think it turned out really cool. I just put a texture (found free at shadowhouse creations ) layer on top of the original photo. I adjusted the opacity to make it a bit transparent. I masked out any of the texture on top of Brenden that I could. Then I used the eliptical select tool and selected a 'spotlight' area around Brenden and used a transparent brush to paint the selected are black on the mask to essentially erase some of the texture around Brenden. This helped prevent seeing a very 'fake' harsh edge around Brenden where tiny bits of the original white backdrop were visible around the edge of his body where I couldn't precisely cut the texture off of Brenden -- if that makes sense. The final result was quite striking though - in my humble opinion.

In this photo - I give a lot of credit to my camera and lens. All of the depth and blur are straight out of the camera. I just added some color contrast, warmed it up a little, added a vignette, and sharpened the eye area a bit to really make his eyelashes stand out.

This one was just a pretty simple crop and color correct. I also used some of Photoshops special brushes to brush on high contrast on the pillows and also to sharpen the pillows a little to give their fur more texture.

I guess the big point in all of this is that when you see beautifully tranformed images - don't think the photographer did a simple one-click voila! instant beautiful photo! effect. Most photo editing softwares require a lot of human intervention to do a great job. And a lot of it is also your own eye and taste. I think I was looking for that magic photo art maker out there and realized that it didn't exist. So I can easily understand why good pro photography is more expensive, simply because after the photo shoot, expect your photographer to spend an hour or two more fine-tuning the images.  I am in my discovery phase right now so I'm not ashamed to admit that I throw an effect or layer on my photo just to delete it because it didn't look that great. But I'm finding with practice that its becoming easier to look at a photo and go "ah, I need to adjust the levels, the contrast, sharpen a little.." etc. Its all fun tho :)

Christmas with my boys

What a wonderful holiday we had!!!! The boys had a great Christmas! I was fairly well behaved in the shopping department. I kept my total spending down and tried not to overload the kids with every new gadget on the market. I stuck to things I'd really taken notice of them liking.

This year Brenden was REALLY into opening presents. The past 2 years he really was bored with it but this year he opened all of his presents and all of Logans presents too!! Of course Logan didn't care. He was too busy playing with all of his toys. It was perfect teamwork.

Speaking of (what's gonna work? ) Teamwork! Here is Brenden loving on the Wonder Pets blanket my mom got for him. He LOVES the Wonder Pets. He did not like Logan crawling on HIS blanket - which he now sleeps with every night!

The boys each got their own tricycle. Logan is a little short still but can scoot with his feet. Both boys loved their bikes and I can't wait until spring when they can take them outside. Until then, laps in the kitchen will have to suffice! 

Here is Brenden with his Mickey Mouse puzzle (his other favorite character). And in the background is Logan's toy kitchen. Lesson learned by Amy : if you buy cheap, you get cheap. Thats all I will say about that! 

Here is one of my bargain buys that didn't turn out so bad. Big Lots had these generic Pillow Pets (Snuggle Pals or something like that). These are a hit in our house. Logan uses his in the living room when he is overtired and just needs to relax. Brenden sleeps with his every night! 

After Christmas I drove up to WV to visit my friend Erin and let our kids play together and exchange our holiday gifts. It was a great time and the kids loved hanging around each other as you can see. Notice the pacifier on Logan's mouth. This kid has REFUSED the pacifier since like his 3wk of life. He realized it was not a bottle or mama and would spit it out every time I BEGGED him to take it. Well last week he was having a teething moment and Brenden found this in the toy box and shoved it in his mouth, and its been there ever since! Lol. He calls it Sassy. And if he doesn't have it he just does this pitiful 'Saaasssseeeeeey??!!" until you give it to him. Then he giggles with delight and says "SAS-eeeeey!" and pops it in his mouth. He sleeps much better now that he has it so I am not fighting him too hard on it. I just find it funny that it took him 15 months to decide he likes it... no.. LOVES it! 

Bailey had her 2nd birthday party while we were there. Brenden was at the party and figured out if you put a balloon on the intake register for the heating/cooling system, it sticks (as long as the heat pump is running). He kills me how clever he is sometimes.

They had some yummy Mickey Mouse cake and lots of fun and games!

It was a great visit and thanks to Sassy, both boys did great on the drive up and back. It was GREAT!

For Christmas this year I wanted to keep my wish list small. It was really all about the kids for me. When my computer crashed ages ago I lost my copy of photoshop elements (never buy software from HP with your new computer, they do not give you a backup disk and will charge you a service fee to 'repair' the loss!) I found a copy of elements 8 on Ebay for a good price so I got that for myself (yes, I am my own Santa!) and asked Sean to buy me a book 'Photoshop Elements for the digital photographer' as we agreed to keep it down to one small gift each for us. I have to say that I am almost ashamed at how little I used my prior copy of Elements 6. I don't mean I didn't use it frequesntly, but did I use it for the full potential in photo editing it gave me? NO! I used mostly the canned features and basic fixing. This book teaches you how to use different techniques to turn your ok looking photos into something great. I LOVE this book. I can't put it down. Its in a textbook sort of layout and I find myself jumping all around and reading things over and over again. I really wanted a copy of CS5 or something fancy like that but just couldn't justify spending that kind of money right now. I decided that I wanted to learn how to walk before learning to run a marathon. I realized I hadn't really ever mastered PSE so why upgrade to PS CS5 just to do nothing with it like I did with PSE 6?

So in addition to my blog about my family I'd like to share my journey through photoshop. Obviously to anybody who is a photo editing wiz, this will be boring :) but I am just finding myself amazed at all the new cool knowledge that I am filling in my head. See I am a programmer and an artist, so this really feeds both the creative and the nerdy parts of my brain all at once. Stay tuned for my photoshop journey....