I am taking an online photography course right now and we are working on shooting in different lighting conditions. This assignment was supposed to be shot in full sun (gasp!) using backlighting. This is usually a situation that I avoid like the plague, however, this technique worked great. I had fun with her and I think these turned out great!

When Nora was about a year old she used to pull out her own hair. She would pull it out and then roll it around in her fingers and suck her thumb. She did it so much that she had bald spots on her head. I kept trying to find dolls with hair to encourage her to pull out the dolls hair, instead of her own. She never really pulled the dolls hair, but she eventually stopped pulling out her own. Soon after that she started getting really attached to stuffed animals, and she started pulling the fur out of them, instead. I was going through my old emails today and I found this video that Scott’s mom sent me. I just had to share it!

We are definitely in the throws of the terrible threes with Nora.

She has been incredibly difficult lately. She constantly antagonizes Ian and Emma and then she completely freaks out when they do anything to her. Screaming fits are a regular occurrence lately.

I remember going through the same thing with Ian and Nora. I thought I had even written about it here. But I went back through the archives and I couldn’t find anything. I know that most people complain about the “terrible twos” but my kids seem to go through the terrible threes instead.

I have just been trying to be patient with her, and not let her get the things she wants when she is throwing fits. I have picked her up and carried her away from what she wanted multiple times this week. A few days ago at my parents house she wanted chocolate milk. She started whining for it. I asked her to talk to me in her nice voice and I would give it to her. She refused. She started escalating until she was having a complete fit. I picked her up and just carried her down the stairs and put her in her car seat. She fell asleep mid cry.

I just keep telling myself “this too shall pass”. I’m hoping it will pass quickly

Emma went for her first time a few weeks ago. She loved it, and Nora has been talking about going ever since. She is the stuffed animal lover in our family, so I knew it would be right up her alley.

She picked out the softest bunny. She loved it as soon as we saw the display. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t quite understand why she couldn’t have that one, instead of the flat one without any filling. But we convinced her to put that one back and she took hers to be stuffed.

She picked out a heart, and kissed it before putting it inside the bunny.

She took it and gave it a “bath”

Then she picked out a fairy costume and she got the bunny all dressed.

She named her “Hunny Bunny” and she hasn’t let her out of her sight since we left the store. It was a fun day, and a fun way to spend some special one-on-one time with Nora!

Nora is just past her third birthday and hasn’t had a real haircut yet. I really love her curly hair. It has gotten so long, but the curls just keep getting tighter so it doesn’t look very long. I have been noticing that the ends looked kind of ratty and it is starting to get a bit frizzy. I knew she was ready for a haircut. But I didn’t want to take her to the local Great Clips. They seem to have a hard time with curly hair. The way I finally got Ian a great haircut was to take him to my hair stylist, Eddie. I decided to do the same for Nora.

We talked about it beforehand and she was really excited. She kept talking about Eddie and was excited to get a big girl haircut.

We got there and she was a little bit shy at first. But Eddie was awesome with her. He just talked to and she warmed right up. He asked her if she wanted to wet it, or wash in in the sink. She wanted to have it washed! It was so cute. She hopped right up into the chair by the shampoo bowl. She got a little nervous when the water went on.

I don’t think she loved the shampooing, but she was excited to sit in the chair to have her hair cut. She jumped right up there and did such a good job of sitting still.

Eddie trimmed off the ragged edges and added a few layers. The layers will help it to curl more and she won’t look like she has a bell on her head anymore. I can’t wait to see how curly it will be in Maui in a few weeks.

Nora’s first haircut was a success. She was excited and was almost perfect in the chair. I couldn’t believe how cooperative and still she was. Hopefully Eddie won’t mind cutting her hair again some time!

Nora’s third birthday came and went and I really didn’t post much about it.

I was going back through some of my photos and wanted to post about Nora’s Montessori birthday celebration. This is Nora’s first full year in her Montessori preschool, so this was her first birthday celebration. She started last year, but it was past her birthday.

I love celebration birthdays “Montessori style”. You can read more details about the Montessori Celebration of Life here. Here is my account of what we did for Nora.

They start out by lighting a candle, which represents the sun, and placing it on the floor with all the months around it. Then they give a globe to the child, which represents the earth. The child takes the earth and walks around in a circle one time for each year of the child’s life. As they walk around the kids sing a little song (to the tune of Farmer in the Dell).

“The earth goes ’round the sun
The earth goes ’round the sun
The earth goes ’round the sun
and now your one”

They also get beads for each year, and with each rotation around the sun they place one in the little cup on their birth month.

We also brought photos for each year of Nora’s life and talked a little bit about what she did at each age. We talked about how as a newborn she mostly just ate and slept. Then at age one she learned how to walk. At age two she was talking and at age three she started school. She loved walking around the circle.

Her teacher told me that she was impressed that she was so willing to participate in the ceremony. I guess some of the younger kids don’t like being the center of attention. That isn’t a problem for Nora I think her favorite part was putting the beads in the cup!

I always really like the birthday celebrations. It is such a fun way to reminisce and think about how much they have grown. I love the way the Montessori method incorporates the celebration of the child’s life while teaching them a lesson at the same time.

For Halloween this year, my kids dressed up as Star Wars characters. Emma was Queen Amidala. Her costume looked OK on the hanger, but it was AWESOME on her. It came with a plastic mask that didn’t look like much. But when I painted her face and dressed her up, she looked great. She was the star of the show at Disneyland. Everywhere we went people commented on her great costume.

After I did Emma’s make-up, I wished that I had some green to paint Nora’s face for her Yoda costume. How convenient that there was a Sephora right at the entrance to our hotel! I went there on our way out to the park and picked up some great green make up. It was the perfect color and very pigmented. A little went a long way. Nora loved it! She loves make up and any kind of cream she can rub on herself.

I know I should have been more careful, knowing Nora’s history, but I wasn’t. When we got home Sunday night I started unpacking the suitcase, but I didn’t get it all done. I left it open on my bedroom floor and went to bed. The next morning was the usual mad Monday morning dash, compounded by the fact that we just returned home late the night before from a trip. As I was getting ready for the day and making lunches Nora and Ian were playing with the green make up in the bedroom. I yelled out to the kids that it was time to leave for school, but they didn’t answer. I walked into my bedroom to find two kids with the green make up all over their faces and all over my carpet. The nice heavily pigmented make up was great when I put it on for Halloween, but not so great on my carpet or on my kids faces on a school day.

I madly cleaned them up, but I know there was some left. I’m sure their teachers thought I was a negligent mom and that they hadn’t been bathed since Halloween. Oh well, I am sure it isn’t the last time Nora will get into make up or lotion!

Today is my youngest daughter’s third birthday. For her special day I thought I’d post a few photos I took of her this week.

Happy Birthday Nora!

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I did a little photo shoot with my own kids tonight. I just haven’t been photographing my favorite (HA!) subjects lately. My kids are so sick of my camera and it always ends in frustration for all of us. But I have really been wanting to get a good one of the three of them together. Tonight I took them out onto the golf course behind my parents house. There were so many great spots to use! I was able to get a few good ones of them together. Yippee! I have lots of keepers and a bunch to edit, but here is one to tide you over.

For the past few weeks Nora has been having some sleep issues. It has been harder to get her to go to bed. Now that she can freely get up from her bed whenever she wants to, she seems to be taking full advantage of it. She routinely gets up 2 or 3 times when I put her down to sleep and she wakes up in the middle of the night and comes into our bed to sleep. I always plan on getting her and taking her right back to her bed but I am so sleepy and out of it that I often just wake up in the morning and find her in our bed.

One night last week I put her to bed. She seemed to go down easy, and she stayed in her bed. Scott and I were both upstairs working on our computers. About 2 hours after I put her to bed Emma let out a blood curdling scream and yelled “Mom, HELP! NORA!” I jumped up from my computer and ran downstairs. My heart was pounding and I was so worried that something bad had happened to Nora.

I got down stairs and was greeted by this:

When we thought she was sleeping, she was actually playing in the bathroom. She climbed up onto the counter and got the Eucerin down off the highest shelf. Somehow she figured out how to open it and she proceeded to put the ENTIRE JAR into her hair. She looked like she was wearing a white wig.

ARGH!!! I had no idea how to get all that grease out of her hair. Scott and I took her into our bath tub and first wiped out as much as we could with towels. Then I decided to get the Dawn dish soap, since it is supposed to be good at cutting grease I washed her hair with that about 10 times!

Now after about a week her hair is finally starting to look normal. Everyone thought her hair was constantly wet for the past week! Since then I have taken every last bottle of cream and lotion out of her bathroom. I can’t wait for her to outgrow this phase!