Kelly (aka @kellymerrill) is the photographer behind Spindle Photography.  She is one of my Twitter buds and I had fallen in love with so many of her pictures.  These were my fave and were the ones that kind of sealed it for me.  I was so excited when she agreed to shoot the kids (that’s funny, shoot the kids) even though she’s not a “children’s photographer”.

Kelly has posted the pics of my kids on her blog and I am so excited to get to show off these gorgeous images of “Wog” & “Bug” (which most folks know are not their real names). So click on over to Kelly’s blog & soak up all the super-duperness of it all.

I apologize for the amount of time you’re going to  spend pouring through all of her posts and photos.

“The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.” — Clairee Belcher, Steel Magnolias (1989)

1.  Madame Poopypants

6.  Sassypants (Yeah. We’re pretty much in trouble for the next 20 or so years.)
7.  Butternut (As in the squash)
8.  Punkin Pie (This one just flows?)
9.  Little Angie (Angie is my mom. They are too much a lot alike.
10.  Bug

Check out more Top Ten Tuesday posts, over at Oh Amanda.

For years, I’ve struggled with feeling undervalued.  Very few people I interact with regularly knew me before my days consisted mostly of wiping behinds and watching Blue’s Clues.  So, I try not to hold a grudge when someone dismisses my opinion, or, even worse, doesn’t even care to ask for my opinion on some sort of an intellectual issue.  After all, I am not very well-spoken (never have been), I tend to make jokes (A LOT) and, chances are, if you engage me in conversation for any length of time, I’ll end up mentioning diapers or lipgloss before it’s over.  The thing is that I know I’m smart.  And I know I have intelligent thoughts on things other than Lego blocks and Glee.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve left church or dinner with friends and said to my husband “______ thinks I’m shallow.”  But I knew I wasn’t.

Or was I?

³Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

¹⁸“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: ¹⁹When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. ²⁰The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. ²¹But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. (Matthew 13: 3-6, 18-21, NIV)

I, my friends, am that shallow, rocky soil.  I’ve spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself because I have these two kids that consume me in every way imaginable.  And, while I have been thankful for them everyday, I have been mired in my own inadequacies and have become too shallow  for anything fruitful to take root in me.  I have lost focus. It’s not unusual.  It’s expected, actually.  You have kids, they become the center of your world.  You lose yourself a little, then you get in a rhthym and it all comes back together. You are no longer the you you were before marriage and kids, you are an enhanced you.  A better you.  What no one told me (or I was too busy wrapped up in how hard this whole wife/mom thing is to really hear) is that the rythym doesn’t come on its own.  You have to go get it.  You have to fight tooth and nail until you claim it as your own.  You have to earn it.

It’s not for the lazy. It’s not for the navel-gazer.  It’s not for the shallow.  It’s not for the martyr.  It’s for the determined.

I am determined.

So, if you think you’ve sensed a different tone around the blog, you have.  I am pretty sure I’ll still feel compelled to go on and on about lotion or inundate you with Christmas picture outtakes.   It’s just that this blog is a tiny window into my heart.  And my heart’s changing a little.  I’m digging a little deeper.

Tilling the soil,  if you will.

As I bent over to kiss Bug goodbye this morning before leaving for work, this sweet little face looked up at me and asked,

 ”Wif you?”

I’m quitting tomorrow.

Celebrating the anniversary of that birth from the second floor of my parents’ home, filled to the brim with chocolate-covered everything– in comparison, not so bad.

Then, it seemed in an ironic twist that the Advent theme for our worship service was HOME.  The word found me most Sunday mornings flip flopping between tears of thankfulness and weariness.  “Jesus is your home”, Bro. Don said more than once… words I mumbled to myself each time I would start to feel overwhelmed by the house situation.

I made peace with the holiday.  Kind of.  It’s more like I called a truce.  The ups and downs were getting to me, so in the spirit of  “it can’t get any worse”, I decided to just get over myself, count my many blessings, and get on with it.

Then, I saw this year’s Santa picture:

Yeah, it’s really blurry.  Yeah, I’ve already “Picnik”ed the heck out of it.

Then, my prone-to-febrile-seizures- little boy awoke at 2:00 A.M., Christmas Eve morning burning up with fever.  A fever that didn’t break for over 48 hours.

This short-lived smile was courtesy of the Batcave.  The blurry photo, courtesy of my phone, which, surprisingly takes better pictures than our real camera.

So, yeah, it did get worse.  I think it’s safe to say that our Christmas was kind of stinky.  Maybe one day we’ll laugh about it.  (Personally, though, I think that day is WAY. FAR. OFF.)  We have been blessed in that our problems, though monsterous and all-encompassing to us now, are temporary.  Tomorrow is a brand new day.  A brand new year.   A brand new decade. Good things will happen in 2010.  We will become homeowners.  Sure, maybe it won’t be the house we’ve prayed for and over for the past four months, but we will buy a home this year. 

Of course, we do still have to issue before us of the blurry pictures and not appropriately capturing the memories of 2010 for all of posterity.  That’s why I hope 2010 will bring this:

It’s already in my Amazon shopping cart, by the way.

Yeah, 2010 will be better.

I read of more and more families not doing Santa for the kids, in hopes to keep their Christmas more Christ-centered.  And, you know what?  I SO get it.  But for us, Santa just seems to fit.  You can read more of my thoughts on Santa over at Impress Your Kids.

Looks like we can add “skeptic” to the list, too:

Though my mom and I fluffed and straightened and Febreezed for what seemed like forever, I thought it would be a quick come in, snap a couple poses of HH reading on the couch and then it would be done.  My parents would be gone to Bible study, so I could easily keep the kids entertained with some play-doh and/or coloring books.

Wrong.

The photographer stayed almost two hours.  He was very pleasant and didn’t seem bothered that my 15 month-old stood staring at him the whole time.  (She’s a little intense.  And judgemental.) And he seemed quite interested in Wog’s Halloween candy and guitar playing skills.  He even invited Bug into a couple of shots.

I don’t think  he was prepared for the slingshot.  Or the massive gas-passing from my parent’s geriatric, not-so-miniature dachshund.  But, hey,  he works for the New York Times while living in Alabama.  I’m sure “Rollwithit” is his middle name.

The article turned out really good.  Surprisingly, it didn’t have the whole Look, folks in Alabama CAN read! slant, as I’d jokingly anticipated.

Click on over to see the article and feast your eyes upon the handsomeness that is my hubby.  It appears that Bug has made it to the big time as well.