Woah, is it really Wednesday already?! Holy schmoles. I've been super busy for several reasons. First of all, Ted and I spent every free moment (e.g., while Cadence was napping/sleeping) this weekend watching episodes from the 1st Season of Heroes. 2nd of all, Cadence seems to be fighting a bug. She's had a fever since the middle of Monday night, and I think some cold/ear infection symptoms are manifesting today. 3rd, I'm super super busy at work. That's why I skipped my usual Best Shot(s) Monday post. I'll try to make it up today, but I have to admit my brain is a bit preoccupied by homeopathic remedies for all the possible things that may be ailing Cadence. She seldom gets sick (go breastmilk!), so when she DOES feel a bit under the weather, all that mommy anxiety and stress I've been saving up come out in full force.
Was Saturday as beautiful in your neck of the woods as it was in ours? I hope so. Totally perfect autumn weather. Crisp, clear and sunny. Too warm for a coat but warm enough to get by with a sweater. We took advantage of the day and visited Garfield Park Conservatory w/ my cousin Kris. My other cousin Ben and his wife Rachel and daughter Eden and their friend Seth joined us later.
It was the last weekend of Niki in the Garden, a special exhibit of Niki de Saint Phalle's oversized and colorful sculptures. It's the perfect exhibit for families, as many of the sculptures are interactive and even climbable.
Cadence made the most of the afternoon sun and even found a little hill to run up and down. She loved that the grass was covered with small golden leaves.
It eventually got chilly as the sun got lower and lower on the horizon. I had left Cadence's jacket in the car, so I put my hoodie on her. I have to say, she looks like the cutest grim reaper I've ever seen.
Okay, I'm really starting to bore myself with this post, so just enjoy the photos. I SO totally need a nap...
This is what I call signature Cadence Cheese. Snapped right before we got kicked out, as the park was closing.
At church Sunday. A totally BFF moment.
And by Sunday afternoon, it was cold enough to dig out the winter coat and hat. Here we are on our way to Metropolis for some really yummy hot chocolates.
It was so cold that the park was abandoned, and we could do goofy things with abandon.
Like kicking our feet up and using the slide as a sofa.
Or taking ridiculously sentimental and cheesy timer self-portraits.
Alright. Enough with the cheesiness. Hopefully, all that homeopathic stuff will work and Cadence will be feeling better soon. Still, I'm sure we won't be going anywhere on Halloween night this year. Good thing I already took photos of her in her costume:
When Cadence woke up from her nap today, she said it was too sunny and wanted to wear her sunglasses. As she was sitting on her potty with her bedhead and all groggy-like, I couldn't help thinking she looked like a hung-over rock star taking his/her first piss of the day.
Well. At least she's sitting on the potty. And yes, she did manage to actually pee in it this time.
My bro-in-law Dave left a comment on this photo on Flickr wanting to know who authorized a haircut for Cadence, "especially in such a style." Ha ha! Truth is, it's a fake haircut. Her hair got stuck inside her turtleneck when I was getting her dressed, and I noticed it looked like she got a haircut, so I snapped a few shots. As IF. It's taken me FOREVER (okay, 3 years, not really forever) to get her hair long enough for pigtails and barrettes, so there's no way I'm letting a pair of scissors come near her head.
Yesterday was a truly blustery day. I had a migraine almost the whole day. Luckily, it was my day to telecommute, but still. Working with a migraine, even from the comfort of my sofa, kinda sucks bigtime. I was feeling well enough by around 5pm, so I took Cadence outside to play. Holy schmoles! I was NOT expecting it to be THAT cold. The sad thing is, it probably wasn't all that cold. Maybe in the high 40's with the wind chill, but compared to what we normally get in winter round these parts, not that cold in the grand scheme of things. I'm just not ready to let go of summer just yet...
So, I realize I take a lot of photos of Cadence (that would be the understatement of the year). And yet, I have to admit that sometimes I get these shots that just take my breath away. Like this one above here.
Or this one. She can be so cheesy sometimes, but it's really her serious, deep looks that pierce me in that maternal place in my heart.
So while we're on the topic of photos, it looks like a few of you have discovered that I'm working on a new photo gallery. I didn't mean it to get out there in public, as I'm still futzing around with it, but I've discovered a great little tool called Pictobrowser that lets you create a snazzy looking slideshow gallery of your Flickr photos based on a specific tag, group or set. I'm still playing around with it, but if you like, you can go take a looksy at my new photo gallery page over here.
Or just look at the example below:
What I like about Pictobrowser is its sleek design and no nonsense font and the fact that you can see the title of the photo if you hover over a thumbnail with your mouse, as well as give you a link to the actual Flickr page where the photo resides. The downside is that I can't figure out how to get more than 21 pages of photos to show up. Of course, it's kinda crazy to have 21 pages of photos of any category, but I take a lot of photos, ya know. Oh well. I guess I have to be more critical of the photos I put in these here galleries. Currently, I just have the one of some of my favorite photos taken after I switched to dSLR. I'm working on one for all of Cadence. And the one posted in this blog is of my nature shots. I'll probably do one of Chicago, or street photography, or something. I dunno...The possibilities are endless with Pictobrowser.
It's been a busy week photo-wise, so I'm going to have to incorporate my Best Shot(s) into a blog post to get caught up. Some of the photos below I would consider part of my best shots for the week, and others just part of the story. You can see other folks' best shots for the week at Tracey's Picture This.
My friends Yvonne and Justin and I get together on a regular basis to talk photos and take photos. We call ourselves the Photopeeps. Last Wednesday, we did a little photoshoot at our place with Yvonne's dog Barko and Cadence dressed up in costumes. Cadence barely fit into her catsuit, as this would be the 3rd year of her wearing it, but she was really into pretending to be a kitty. More like a little lion, perhaps...
I have to say, though, she makes a pretty cute kitty.
She's starting to look like such a KID. I mean, just look at that hair. She actually has enough for it to be blowing in the wind. She was such a bald baby for so long, I didn't think this day would come.
[For those of you who haven't heard, Ted is now a resident small batch brewer for Half Acre, which is a new Chicago beer company that just put out a lager over the summer. It's available in a bunch of places in Chicago right now—some liquor stores, a few Jewels, a couple 7-Elevens, some Whole Foods and other specialty grocers, especially in the Bucktown/Wicker Park area. If you like interesting lagers, you should check them out. Andrew Huff, the editor of Gapers Block has given it his seal of approval. Go to Half Acre's website, and you'll see a plug for Ted's brew blog in the right hand column.]
Dave's best friend (and Ted's former roommate) Keom met up with us at Lush. We went to Pompei for dinner, which is an old favorite haunt of Ted's from back when he lived at 800 South (the apartment where he and ALL his brothers lived at one point or another, as well as some close friends).
Keom's one of my favorite people. For one thing, we share a love of some of the same bands and we always talk music together. He's also fun to banter with on just about anything.
After dinner, we stopped in at Keom's new apartment in Pilsen. Cadence was delighted to find that a kitty lived there too, although I don't think the kitty was too happy about Cadence. Poor kitty…
Speaking of poor kitty, we (including Dave) went to Ted's parents' house in the burbs on Sunday, partly to deliver some framed photos of Sniper, the family cat, who died two weeks ago today. Sniper lived a long (16 years?) and happy life, free to roam and hunt in the woods on the property. Cadence was quite fond of Sniper, and I'm not sure she understands what's happened. She knows that he's not at Grandma and Grandpa's any more, but she did ask for him when we visited.
Another reason for our visit yesterday was to attend a bike race in Carpentersville that our friend Dave Norton was competing in. Since it was unseasonably warm out yesterday, Dad and (Uncle) Dave took a ride to the race in his Cobra. Dad took the long winding scenic route, and it was just lovely. I happened to catch this shot of Dave with his arms in the air. With the pretty fall foliage all around, it was quite a pretty drive indeed.
The race was just about to start when we got to the park, and all the riders were bunched together just waiting for the signal to start. This race is part of the 2007 Chicago Cyclocross Cup which will culminate in the final race in December at Montrose Harbor in Chicago.
We located our friend Dave amongst the crowd of cyclists. He looked pretty calm to me while waiting for the race to begin.
Cyclocross racing looks really challenging, as it requires not just cycling, but a variety of terrain AND dismounting and carrying your bike over obstacles at certain points. I think doing this for one lap would be more than enough for me. I don't know how these folks do it lap after lap.
We cheered for Dave whenever he passed us. Unfortunately, we were too far from the finish line at the end of the race so we didn't actually see him finish. In fact, HE didn't even know the race was over and thought he had another lap.
Cadence wore her cycle shirt for the occasion. Maybe watching the race will inspire her to be a cyclist someday. Her name would fit right into the sport, as 'cadence' is a cycling terminology.
Cadence fell asleep soon after we drove away from the bike race, and since Dundee has two microbreweries around the corner from each other, Ted and Dave decided to stop for a pint, while I stayed by the car so Cadence could keep napping. We parked facing the Fox River, and I took some photos of the seagulls soaring over my head. The sky was so blue, and the white birds literally glowed in the late afternoon sunlight as they would catch the wind in their wings and soar higher and higher [yikes, that sentence sounded way too much like a Bette Midler song!]. Watching them, I had to conclude that flying probably never gets old, even for a bird.
We went back to Ted's parents' house to have a little afternoon tea and cake (or limeade for Cadence) before we hit the road back into the city.
Cadence of course wanted to see the neighbor's horses, so we had to stop on our way out by the little pasture. Unfortunately, the horses were in the stable, and we could only see the baby horse's hindquarters.
Oh, the photo above? Cadence's finger was in her nose just moments before it was taken. For Grandma's sake, though, I waited until she took her finger out before I pressed the shutter.
And boy, do I need it. Since we have to wait until Cadence goes to sleep to get our Heroes fix, we've been going to bed a bit later than normal on work nights. Then last night, we were out with Cadence until past midnight, and today I had to drag my butt out of bed bright and early to pick up our CSA delivery. Ugh. Plus, our upstairs neighbor is having her hardwood floors buffed and sealed, so it's been pretty noisy around here, which means Cadence won't nap. Which means I can't nap.
So Ted & Tim Lowly and gang played a show @ the Beat Kitchen last night. It was an all ages show, which is why Cadence went with us. This is a photo of Tim right before he got abducted by aliens.
The lineup at last night's show was pretty different from the usual. Matt Ganong, the pianist, is in California playing for an opera. He'll be there for a few more weeks. Ethan, the violinist, was somewhere else. He WAS in South Korea visiting his brother, but I don't know if he's back yet. Anyhoo, the lovely and talented Rebekah Miller filled in the gaps.
I hear the show went well, but I wouldn't know as I was chasing Cadence around the block pretty much the whole time.
*The title of this post is a reference to an Ian Moore song, "New Day." Apparently, Ian likes his coffee from a big cup too.
I've been taking a break from blogging this week, as I've been thoroughly preoccupied with 5 different books simultaneously, not to mention the fact that Ted and I have discovered the vast library of DVDs available for immediate online viewing on Netflix. We're currently going through The Life of Birds narrated by David Attenborough as well as the first season of Heroes (after Cadence goes to sleep). I have to admit that I'm a little obsessed with the latter show. We don't have TV reception, so we can only watch it on DVD or online, and we're hurriedly trying to catch up.
So, have you guys noticed that the one thing about Cadence I never talk about on this here blog is her using the potty? There's a reason for that. It's pretty simple, really. She doesn't use it. So there's nothing to talk about. Unless I talk about her NOT using the potty, and how that's getting old. Ted and I are trying not to put too much pressure on her. She has peed on the potty on occasion, and she'll sit on it for a while for the heck of it, but she continues to resist on most occasions. For reasons I don't want to get into right now, I don't want to resort to candy or stickers or charts, so I guess we're just gonna have to be patient.
Sometimes I think to myself, "Goodness gracious, what have I done?! I've got a kid who still sucks on my boob, sleeps w/ me and wears diapers at the age of THREE!!" It's so easy to second-guess the way you've parented and wonder if everything you've ever done is just WRONG WRONG WRONG. I'll bet there are folks reading this who'd say, "Hell, like DUH! What were you thinking?! You were wrong alright." Well, I'm doing what I feel is right for Cadence and our family. And you know what? She's still totally kick-ass. There is absolutely no denying that.
Today is a Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world will post about a single topic for the purpose of raising awareness and activism and discussion. This year, the topic is the environment. I normally participate in Tracey's Best Shot Monday on Mondays, so this week, I've decided to incorporate the topic of the environment into my post.
On Saturday evening, Ted and his brother Dave took our week's delivery from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription and cooked a delicious meal. What you see in the photo above are herbed potatoes, broccoli and leeks with some garlic cloves thrown in for good measure.
Our friend Erik came over, and we had a lovely spread on our table. The boys made a soup which consisted of 4 different squashes, and they even roasted the seeds from the squash to add to the green salad. Ted also made a pumpkin bread that was absolutely perfect (and the only thing Cadence wanted to eat).
And to top it all off, we toasted some of Ted's homemade dandelion mead, which was made from dandelion flowers that he and Dave and Cadence had picked themselves this past spring.
So what does a home-cooked meal prepared and shared with friends and family have to do with the environment? Well, let me tell ya...
As a non-farmer or gardener (like many urban dwellers), our family is dependent on other people to grow and raise our food for us. And more likely than not, most of us have absolutely no idea who or what corporation is responsible for the meals we put on our tables to feed ourselves and our loved ones on a daily basis. We may know what company is selling the products in the stores, but we don’t know much else.
CSA attempts to connect communities to local farmers so that they develop a relationship with each other that goes beyond the transactional. This way, we can "put the farmer’s face on the food," which is what the Japanese who pioneered the concept of CSA refer to as teikei.
And indeed, we DID think of our farmers Tony and Dela Ends, whose family-owned and operated Scotch Hill Farm delivers our CSA subscription every Saturday. We toasted them as we ate, knowing that our meal was the product of their sweat and tears, as well as their love for the land and commitment to stewarding it gently and naturally. Ted and I have been to their farm and seen the incredible amount of work that goes into growing food without the use of pesticides and other chemicals. The weeds, oh, the WEEDS. And to have to pull them up with your bare hands…
We are also lucky in that Farmer Tony is an eloquent writer, having been a journalist for 14 years prior to becoming a farmer. I look forward to his newsletters every week. Here is an excerpt from one of his newsletters:
"What it's all about--Every spring, Dela and I feel the same strange mix of sensations. In a progression that starts in January, we plan, budget, finance, order, purchase, seed, tend to the start of a whole season of vegetable and herb crops. The first few weeks of delivery, we sing in our hearts a joyful praise of delicious spring greens and herbal delicacies that arrive first among more than 100 wonderful plant varieties our subscribers will experience over the next 5 months. Yet as closely as we work with the cycles of life, we catch ourselves thinking these first weeks we should be able to give you the same uniformity, weight and variety you can find in any convenience-oriented store, any day or night of the year. Here we all are trying to be conscientious about the Earth, trying to do something daring and different, eating outside the Happy Meal box. We read and hear about what’s happening to the Earth and its resources every day. We all know human beings cannot conveniently and efficiently deliver mass quantities of plants and animals without mass quantities of synthetic chemicals, fossil fuels and farm and business practices that ironically kill Natural diversity, kill local economies, kill families. Yet when we have to adjust our appetites, food schedules, meal expectations to Mother Nature, we still feel somehow that she should be like a modern grocery store manager and warehouse distribution center. Seasonal eating can be delightful and frustrating. You are called on to be creative with each week’s fresh produce. We'll do our best for you. We’ll offer suggestions. We’ll give you what Nature gives us, on her schedule for this climate, these soils, this year’s rain and temperature. Yet we share in the discipline and the mental work of healthful change together." –Tony Ends of Scotch Hill Farm
This was the newsletter that opened the delivery season this summer in June. It was before we knew that there would be absolutely no rain in July and floods in August, wiping out a significant portion of his year’s harvest for Tony and Dela and so many other small family farms.
And this is the other thing our CSA-provided meal has to tell us about the environment…Global warming is real, and it affects small-time farmers in a big way. Tony mentioned in one of his newsletters how he and his fellow farmers experience first-hand the climate-changing impacts of global warming. It makes it that much harder for them to produce our food in an environmentally responsible manner. If global warming gets worse, it will have a grave impact on food production worldwide.
That being said, I want to focus on hope. I know there is a lot more to the environmental crisis than local farms, but this is the part of the story I want to share because it's something I've come in contact with in my own life that gives me hope. There are a growing number of small family farms that are committing to providing local communities with food grown naturally and sustainably. As a parent, I want to provide my daughter with food that was grown not with money in mind but the well-being of the land and water, animals AND consumers in mind. As a parent, I want to know that our kids and their kids and so forth have a beautiful world to look forward to, instead of inheriting the burden of environmental disaster created by greed and gluttony on the part of individuals and corporations.
I don't always talk explicitly about faith or God, but that doesn't mean I don't think about them. In fact, I think about them a lot. You see, my dad was a pastor. Even before he was officially ordained in the Association of Vineyard Churches, he was more involved in ministry than some full-time pastors.
There's a lot of baggage that comes with being raised "in the ministry," and I tried walking away from the whole faith, God and church thing. I tried and I failed.
Although I really tried to kick the whole organized religion thing in the shins, I just could not get over this growl of a conviction that at the heart of who Jesus was and is, there lay the key to unlocking the door to my deepest self.
I can't explain it. I've just always known since I was a little girl that I came from God. I've always known that there was something that connected me to God, even as an adult when I was trying to escape the whole "God" thing.
A few years ago, I discovered the Emergent/Emerging church. There's a lot of opinions on what the Emergent church is, some positive and some negative. To me, it's a conversation among a diverse group of folks in the Christian tradition who're trying to work out the whole faith thing in a holistic manner and trying to do it politely and lovingly and gently.
Anyhoo, one of the reasons I'm thinking about all this stuff is that I don't want to impart to Cadence the same baggage I experienced growing up in a spiritual environment that made me feel judged and never good enough. And yet, I do want to impart SOMETHING to her when it comes to faith.
Well, it just so happens that the Emergent folks are starting a new blog for parents called Emerging Parents, "a safe place for those involved in the emerging church conversation to explore holistic parenting ideas." I'm hoping to hear other folks' stories and maybe get some ideas on how to impart faith without the baggage to Cadence.
I recently got myself Marina's Underground Set List for Adobe Lightroom. These are basically different settings (presets) that can be applied to my RAW (uncompressed)images in Lightroom to achieve specific looks. They are a lot of fun to play with. You can apply the setting and then adjust the exposure, color, etc to make the photo look the way you want it to. The setting I used for this one is called Mello MaiTai3.
It kind of gives the photos an aged, yet dreamy feel to 'em, which I really like. For those of you who have cameras that can shoot in RAW format, I highly recommend it. You have much more options when you edit photos for correcting exposure and color and whatnot. I've been shooting exclusively in RAW since Lauren's wedding.
Something else that I continue to play with is getting a different angle or perspective on my photos by "shooting from the hip." Basically, that means shooting without looking through the viewfinder. I often put the camera all the way to the ground to get a bug's eye view, so to speak. My aim kinda sucks, so I never know what I'm gonna get.
Like this shot here...That's not what I was going for at all. I meant to get Cadence in the shot, but of course I was too close and my aim too poor. Still, I really like the result, which I think is more interesting than what I would've gotten had I actually gotten all of Cadence in the shot.
Go see more folks' Best Shots for the week on Tracey's Picture This!
For those who have been imprisoned by the U.S. government and TORTURED (just f*cking admit it, GW, it's TORTURE) so that we in the U.S. could be free to plunder the earth and revel in our gluttony.
For the familes who have been separated by the 38th parallel in North and South Koreas, and who may finally be reunited someday soon.
For those who are denied basic civil rights because of whom they love.
For those who have hidden behind false identies and lived in the shadows and in self-hatred all their lives out of fear of rejection and persecution.
For those who live in countries where it is a crime punishable by death to be who they are openly, and for those who live in countries where they are supposedly free to be who they are, and yet who are still punished by death.
Sunday was girl-fest for Cadence and me. While Ted and our neighbor Chad were sweating away brewing a batch of Nut Brown Ale, we girls spent the afternoon with my cousin Kris. We had lunch at Charmer's Cafe on Jarvis and hung out afterwards at our place. When Ted finished brewing, we all hung out on the porch sipping our beverages and just enjoying being lazy. Of course, Cadence was napping during this part, or there was no way we would have been allowed to be LAZY.
In the evening, we met up with Miss Mia and some of the girls from Team Do!Boo! at a newish Korean restaurant called Su Ra in Wicker Park. Ted brought some homebrews, which was much appreciated, especially by Melissa and her husband Andrew who are thinking of homebrewing. Ted was totally happy to have folks to talk to about beer, I was happy to see the girls and have some Korean food, and Cadence wasn't too bad off either with all the emoh's (aunties) there to dote on her.
Team Do!Boo! is a group that Miss Mia formed a few years ago with some of the Korean American girls she was hanging out with. We formed a collective of creative types, kind of like a Korean American all-girl art gang. We've gotten together to learn how to cook Korean food or study the Korean language. Some of the girls have done spoken word performances together. I haven't hung out too much with Team Do!Boo!, considering I got pregnant right about the time we formed as a group, but I still like keeping in touch and spending time with them.
I promised Mia I would post this photo of nose-picking Cadence and the girls. Actually, I have to consider Cadence a member of Team Do!Boo! because she's been to almost all the events with me, either in my uterus or as a baby and toddler. Like how many kids could say they've been in a Korean American all-girl art gang from the time they were in utero? Not too many, I would think.
I am sad to say that I lost ¾ of Saturday to a god-awful migraine. I finally got desperate and called my mother to send me real migraine drugs via my brother. I haven't taken any of the more potent migraine pills since prior to getting pregnant w/ Cadence, but I just couldn't take it any more. Thankfully, my brother Jim brought drugs and food, so I was sufficiently revived by 6pm to take Cadence out for the last hour of daylight to play at our favorite park on the lakefront.
Here she is conducting an imaginary orchestra of trees, grass, leaves and pebbles while munching on an apple at the park.
And here she is commanding the lake and the rocks to give her more crescendo. Or maybe she's playing a fiddle? Who knows. She's quite dramatic with the hand gestures as of late.
She did actually get some swinging in, although she seems bored with most of the playground equipment nowadays.
Although she got into some good old-fashioned pole-swinging. I used to do that for hours on my grammar school playground.
And, of course, there was running involved. She sure took a long time eating that apple, too, I might add.
Finally, we're back home taking a breather. Oh, ignore the crumbs on the carpet, please. I didn't feel like taking out the vacuum cleaner just to take a few shots.
And that's it for my best shots for this week. Go see more at Tracey's Picture This!
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