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!

I didn’t take these photos of my kids. Unfortunately, they just don’t cooperate for me. I’d much rather photograph someone else’s kids–it is a lot more fun for everybody. These were taken by my awesome photographer friends, Katie and Dan, at Peekaboo Photos. I know I have put quite a few photos on this blog lately, I thought I better put some up of my own kids too.

At two years and nine months Nora is still sleeping in a crib. She has been in a crib far longer than any of my kids. I moved Emma out of her crib at 22 months, because Ian was about to be born and he needed the crib. Ian climbed out of his crib shortly before his second birthday, so I had to move him to a big bed earlier than I wanted to.

So far, Nora has been happy in her crib. I have been expecting her to climb out for months now. This past week she finally did it.

Last week she woke up from her nap and decided she wanted out. She came walking up the stairs and startled me! I quickly turned around and asked Emma if she had gotten Nora out, all the while knowing that she hadn’t. Nora was so proud of herself that she had figured out how to get up herself.

That night as I was putting her to bed, she tried to climb into the crib. She almost fell, and I knew that it was time to move her to a bed. For the time being, I decided to just take the side off her crib so she could sleep in it like a toddler bed. She and I went down to her room with the tools and took off the side. She was so proud of her “new” big girl bed.

The first night she went to sleep as peacefully as always. I tucked her in and she went right to sleep. The problem was, she work up at 2:00am and decided to exercise her new found freedom. She came in my bedroom and announced that she was awake and ready for breakfast! I explained that it was still the middle of the night, and that she needed to stay in bed until it got light out. I tucked her back in, and didn’t hear from her until the morning.

Luckily for all of us, she has slept all night every night since. So far the transition to a big girl bed has been nearly painless. It has been a welcome relief. After the nightmare we went through to get Ian to sleep in a real bed, this has been a walk in the park.

Today (or last week since I am a little bit behind ) we learned how to use brushes to stamp designs on photos. I can see how this could be really fun. There are so many great brushes out there. As a matter of fact, Jodi from MCP Actions posted a whole list of free brushes this week. You can check them out here.

I know that one of Nora’s eyes is out of focus, but I love this photo anyway.

I got a new portrait lens last week–the 85mm 1.8. I finally had some time to play around with it yesterday. I got some shots of Nora that I ADORE! I haven’t gotten any great photos of her lately so I was really happy with these. Enjoy!

And thanks to the amazing women at ClickinMoms, I finally got my color to look the same on my blog. Woo hoo!!

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Emma and Ian have been telling knock knock jokes for a while now.

Nora picked up on it and wanted to get in on the action. She has been telling the same joke over and over for a few weeks now.

“Knock-knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Banana Face.”

“Banana Face who?”

Nothing but laughter!

She cracks herself up and she loves to tell it over and over. Out of the blue, especially when we are in the car she will just yell out “Mom, I want to tell you my joke.”

She is so silly!

Two little stories about Nora.

Yesterday morning as we were getting ready for school Nora came walking up to me and said “Mommy does Daddy have a penis?”

I answered “Yes.”

Then she looked at me and said “Mommy, do you have a vagina?”

“Yes” again.

She looked up at me and in a very serious voice said “I don’t like penises” and then she walked away.

I was dying! I was trying not to laugh. On one hand, she is smart and is starting to figure out the differences between men and women. On the other hand it is just funny to hear her talk like that at 2 1/2 years old.

Then today she went into my bathroom and got out the tampons and panty liners. I didn’t notice at the time. When I went to put her down for her nap I put her on the changing table to I could take off her underwear and put on her diaper. As I was taking off her pants she said to me “I have something in my panties.” As I took off her panties I saw that she had put one of my panty liners in her underwear! She had taken off the paper and used it just as it was supposed to be used.

I guess Freud would say she is definitely in the “Phallic Stage” right now!

I took this photo of my youngest daughter on her second birthday. We were camping with our good friends at Lake Powell. I made the cake at home before we left and kept it in the cooler the whole time. I knew we weren’t going to be able to do anything big on her actual birthday, but I still wanted to be able to sing to her and have a birthday cake. It was almost dark by the time we finished dinner. I love how the only light in this photo came from the candle. I love how it casts the glow on her face. I smile every time I look at this photo and remember her special birthday at Lake Powell.

Be sure to check out I ♡ Faces to see all the amazing photos that were entered in this week’s contest.