Camera love (more of it)

At night the kids have their baths in the kitchen and I cook. Next to me somewhere on the table there is always a camera. Seb always says "you shouldn't leave such a nice camera in the kitchen on the table" but I tell him "I need it there." I find it comforting to have it nearby because when I feel the urge to take a photo I have to go and look for it. And this happens a lot.

At first when I found the wood table in the kitchen and decided to restore it I didn't want to get it dirty or set anything on it. I cleaned it with mineral spirits and the softest steel wool I could find. But after awhile it became so much a part of our everyday life that it was hard to protect it. Now I just set anything on it, quickly moving about the kitchen tripping over myself and all the toys. The camera is the same way. It isn't there to be pretty. It's there to be useful and to be a part of our lives.

I take a lot of pictures of the kids, and the setting sun but also the recycling and the dirty dishes. It tells a story over time and I suppose that's important to me. And if it feels like something new it isn't really. When I look back at the pictures from last year in Mexico I see the same themes. Everything is always in the kitchen and the camera is always on the table.



If you take photos then where do you keep your camera? Do you take it everywhere with you?

30 days to one year - 30

Seb took off on a business trip yesterday and took my cable for my laptop, (well I suppose it is his after all), but anyway I had about an hour of battery time and then it was curtains for the rest of the day. I didn't get time to post the last day of the month picture for Charlotte's birthday.

I can't believe my baby girl is one!

So here are just a few pictures. There are ten of them! I took pictures of her all day long and she was such a happy girl all day that I couldn't resist. I only have one blurry photo of myself on my own first birthday so I wanted to be sure she had a lot of pictures of herself on her big day.






I wrapped up a silly stuffed toy of hers in a box from my bank that cleverly unfolds. I'd been saving the box for her birthday. She loved it. Now this is her new favorite toy. She'd forgotten all about it.



We had chocolate cupcakes and she had hers served on a gorgeous gold rimmed Villeroy-Boch plate which she promptly pulled onto the floor, crash!

It was just the sort of ending you'd expect from a really good baby party and a fabulous year of being parents.

30 days to one year - 17

She learning to eat on her own, a step I would have liked her to take much earlier but you really need a good place for them to do it. And you also need to make the food yourself. Unfortunately she's been on jarred food a lot because of our moving around so much and jarred food is too messy for self-feeding.

She caught right on and enjoyed it immensely. She also threw the plate on the floor when my back was turned. I guess I'll have to glue the plate to the table until she gets her baby bowls.

30 days to one year - 16

I haven't been keeping up on the baby diary like I wanted and I missed a few days in all the sickness and in-laws coming. I take photos every day though. It's just uploading and posting that I find time consuming. The photo part is easy!

Her bib says "Te amo abuelito," a souvenir from her birth country.


With Little S gone off to the grandparents it's just us here and the house feels strange and empty. A four year old in case you don't know is very noisy and makes their presence known. The weirdest thing was lunch as today we sat down at a very quiet table, just the two of us and had our rice and veggies (I love rice and veggies) in such calm. That was when we really felt the silence. It just wasn't normal. Little S is always so animated at lunch time. He can't sit still and he always throws food in his sister's hair as soon as I turn my back. There's lots of life!

Both Seb and I laughed last night at how we were so dramatic about our first baby. Our lives felt so disrupted. We were constantly over thinking everything. It took planning to get through each stage, baths, diapers teething. We now know that nothing could be easier than a one year old. We sat there with her asleep in bed and reminisced about how we felt like we never had any time together with one baby. Last night we could actually take ten minutes together! One measly baby? What could be easier.

30 days to one year - 12

...often mistaken for a little boy,-- petit bon homme, lui, il est...mignon, grand...etc.

Yes, okay it's probably the clothes. We have a lot of girly clothes but lots of little boy leftovers.

30 days to one year - 11

Two of us ...early in the morning, flat curls (her), no make-up (me)...impromptu.

30 days to one year - 10

30 days to one year - 9

I have had a hard time finding the time to take pictures with her sick but I want to keep them for her in a little album to show her one day. Well, that and about 1000 other photos and blog posts.

It's almost impossible to get a picture of her lately where she isn't crying. If I don't hold her she cries because she isn't feeling well. I have to let her cry while I do dishes and cook, otherwise I would never get anything done. It's so hard to resist the urge to pick her up though. My Maya Wrap would be really useful right now!

I wanted to take a picture of her in her little sweater. I got it at the antique linens sale. It's so adorable with bat sleeves and cutouts! She looks like a little 19th century princess in it. I don't knit and no one I know can knit (except my blog friends!) so whenever I see hand-knitted baby things I have to to buy them. Someone spent so much time making this and it's so intricate that to see it put to use makes me very happy and probably would have made the person who made it really happy.



another look at the sweater...

30 days to one year - 8

She's still sick and has a low grade fever. We all take our temperature at bedtime and I was surprised because Little S had a fever of 103 and we thought he was almost better. This is a really bad cold and flu season.

All she wants to do is breastfeed and sleep. I've been holding her for three full days now. My arms have such muscles. Poor sweet Charlotte. She's totally miserable.

30 days to one year - 7

She's been sick for the last 24 hours with a fever and runny nose (you can see it in the last photo...miss snotty nose!). I'm holding her non-stop and taking her temperature every few hours. She's grumpy and whining a lot. When baby is sick the household stops. We all get worried, even Little S.

Thermometer and Goodnight Moon puzzle piece are by my computer. Little S who is still out of school sick is trying to stay entertained. He's been home for four days.

30 days to one year - 5

30 days to one year - 4

When I gave her these Royal Gala apples she made a sour face as she bit into her piece. She looked at it strangely, turning it over a few times in her hand inspecting it. Finally she took another bite and a little smile spread over her face. Oh the joys of discovering new flavors!

We are short on bibs since we still don't have our things. I often clip a kitchen towel around her neck with a clothespin. Mamie's kitchen towels from the 70's makes for some snazzy retro bibs!

30 days to one year - 3

One of the many battles of the day.

30 days to one year - 2

She's always laughing and smiling. It's such a delight to hear her squeals of happiness each day. Everything to her is amusing and she doesn't hold back. Everyone comments on her smile. In France standing in line I will often hear "alors, dit donc tu es gracieuse!" and realize that she has been charming the person behind me with smiles and waves and a crinkled up nose.

30 days to one year - 1

I call her lots of different names, --made up names because that's what we do in my family. We make up names for everyone and this confuses Seb so much that he just shakes his head and says "agh, Americans, why can't you just call someone by their name!"

The French call her "shar-lote" and when I call her "shar-lette" they ask me if this is the American version of the French name Charlotte. I guess it is. I just can't get used to manipulating that O in the French version because in my head the American Charlotte pronunciation is embedded. I suppose I will have to start to lean towards pronouncing it more in the French way one day because it will horrify her if her mother calls out to her in front of her French friends and says it you know, differently.

In one short month my little Nan (short for Nanette --her most used nickname to date) turns one! I'm going to post a photo a day until the big day and I'm going to bore you with stories about her but you can just humor me because I really want to do this for me and for her so that she will realize that she was once little and funny and very special.

So yes this photos was from yesterday of her taking a sort of crazy bath with her brother in a bucket of all things. You see she likes being next to him for baths but his little baby tub is too small for both of them so this is our method to let them at least be together for bathtime. As you can see there is a lot of giggling, lots of screaming (me) and lots of water on the floor at the end.

Herbie loves Mexico: 7

"Way down here you need a reason to move
Feel a fool running your stateside games
Lose your load, leave your mind behind, baby James

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so simple I just got to go
The suns so hot I forgot to go home
I guess I'll have to go now..."

Mexico - James Taylor

Herbie loves Mexico: 6

The owner of this car very sweetly disappeared into a house in a huge hurry and left me plenty of time to molest the scenery and snap a dozen or so photos. She was running as she left the car, running up to a house, and a Mexican who is running is very late let me tell you. Mexicans don't often run to any appointment so I imagine she probably was due there last night or something. Anyway she left me plenty of time and space to shoot my Herbie photo of the day. She also blessed me with a Mexican parking job by leaving a ton of space at either end, and that left me with no need to crop out an ugly Nissan or a big ugly pickup truck. Thank you late person.

So this is possibly my last picture. Herbie is nearly done and so are we. We leave in one week for the our month long visit stateside and we must say our goodbyes to beautiful Mexico on Thursday evening as we board our flight to Mexico City.

Ahh, what's beautiful about Mexico? I'm so glad you asked. ...

It is a million things, but mostly it is the colors. It's a blue sky, a pink house a black dog, the crimson colored bougainvillea that are everywhere. It's a brown desert hillside contrasted against the bluest sky you'll ever see and it's the rich green of palm fronds and the turquoise of the Carribean. It's the diversity! Not just in the scenery but in the people, amazing diversity in both that will throw all of your prejudices about Mexico being third world or backwards out the window. We heard this from friends and family and sometimes we felt it ourselves. Yes it takes a few visits to dispose of these prejudices, not look over your shoulder for them, but over time Mexico gets under your skin and you see nothing but the beauty. There is a lot of beauty here. Don't miss it and make sure you visit this country at least once in your lifetime.

I'm going to miss this place!

Herbie loves Mexico: 5

Herbie isn't jealous. He's mocking Mr. Hummer who will soon be sleeping in a cardboard box on a street corner in nowhere town. GM will slowly cease production of the Hummer due to slumped sales. Surprised? Okay well when you come out of your little cave we'll tell you all about it and all about our little plan to elect the first black president of the United States who incidentally almost got beat out by a woman. Yes you missed a lot.

When Seb and I were car shopping earlier this year we had a good time test driving all the oversized SUV's and 4WD vehicles in all of the dealerships, just test driving them with no intentions of ever owning them of course. We both are car crazy and we follow the trends each year of what changes on which vehicle, pointing them out like excited schoolchildren. Me I'm American so it's in my culture to love cars, and it's in my family. I grew up with my parents always owning a classic car of some sort. We are all car freaks. Seb is in the industry so he follows these trends because it's part of his job, and he loves his job.

In our hearts though we are a down to earth French family. We could never own one of these gas slurping beasts with a clear conscience. In our search we had fun looking and playing with the gadgets, but in the end we chose the economical Honda because it was the best of the lot on mileage and emissions and it didn't look like we were preparing for Armageddon when we drove it. We were not the least bit regretful for the Jeep we'd briefly looked at or any of the other Type A pseudo military sport utility trucks. It was just amusing to look at these soon to be dinosaurs (uh, fueled ironically by dinosaurs...) but we had no intentions of parking one in our driveway.

The Hummer is the most ridiculous car on our planet. I'm sure one day future generations will look back and say "my God they were trying to end humanity--just look at that car!" In our neighborhood lots of wealthy Mexicans own them and it seems to us like a case of he who has the biggest toys wins. Soon it will more likely be about he who can sell their big toy and recoup one quarter of its value wins. This car is headed for the scrapheap *applause*.

(I hope these closing won't leave too many families out in the cold. It looks pretty bleak for the 8,000 people who work in these plants.)

Herbie loves Mexico: 4

so much depends
upon

an red orange wheel
barrow

glazed with (mucky) rain
water

beside the white
chickens yellow bug.


-William Carlos Williams
(on a vacation in Mexico no doubt...)

Herbie loves Mexico: 3

Yesterday after picking Little S up at school I drove to the neighborhood where we had hoped to rent a house over a year ago. It's a lovely spot high on a hill with views overlooking the city. We were smitten by a little house there last May, but it just wasn't meant to be and we were a little sad about it. It isn't healthy to dwell on a thing that doesn't work out, we all know this, but I did regret that we didn't get to rent that little hillside house and I would have so enjoyed the panoramic views from the upstairs rooms. It was a lovely home built with nature in mind.

Seb and I often return to this little hillside neighborhood to take pictures and study the city from another perspective or just simply take in the view. It's another place in the city where you can disconnect from life, plugging in "self" and absorbing the nature that surrounds you. I have been really yearning for this lately and I try to get bits and pieces of it when I can, where I can. I am looking forward to getting back to my home and the lake and the mountains where I can get it in large enough doses to quench my thirst for it.

Yesterday it was important for me to bring Little S with me and let him do some of the same reconnecting by running around in circles and studying the bees in the wildflowers growing all around us. He loved it and released some of his boundless energy (where does he get all this energy--he barely eats anything!). We only stayed about 20 minutes, no more and then drove around the housing development where there is nothing but new construction and a good chance of finding a Herbie since it's often a working class car that a lot of construction workers and young Mexicans drive. We had two or three successes in finding some, one beautiful silver babe parked high on the hill with the panorama of the entire city sitting behind her. I threw my rented Chevy into park and grabbed my camera, heart surging in excitement, only to see the owner saunter over to his car keys in hand. Not today my friend, damn! I considered asking him for the picture anyway but I don't take pictures very well under pressure and it probably would have been a blurry shot or a badly composed one. I think I need to work on that because I'm missing capturing some beautiful moments and I love photography with people in it. In this case I thought he might think I was nuts because we were the only other people up there besides construction workers and it was probably already a little odd to see us photographing bees on the flowers by the ridge. So we carried on through the posh finished part of the neighborhood and I got a picture of a lovely red cutie that was about as adorable as a car can get. I love the wheels!

And later on a side street I spied another red one parked near a yellow gate and blue wall, primary colors 'a la Piet Mondrian , particularly with the vertical lines in the gate. It's funny how your perspective changes the more you take pictures. Someone stood there watching me shooting this picture with a puzzled look on his face and I thought, "does he not see the colors?" because it was even prettier in person.

Finally my photo of the day was found, this lovely gray guy hidden in the foliage and parked in such a funny way that it looked as if he had chosen the spot himself and was coyly hiding from his owner so he wouldn't be asked to drive anywhere. (oh dear now I'm beginning to believe Herbie can communicate, okay loony lady time)

I took about 57 photos which is an average for me given the fact that I will shoot at least five pictures or more of the cars I find, and of course in looking for Herbie I always find other photos that I like. The flower project is still fresh in my mind. I still take lots of flower photos because some projects just get into your blood and then you continue to be passionate about them even though everyone around you is saying "enough with the flower pictures!" but it's just natural to obsess about something for a while. I know lots of people guilty of being consumed by a project and you know what? It's a beautiful thing because it means you are inspired by life.