It got so bad at one point that we had to do the glycerin suppository thing, at which juncture I realized that we HAD to figure out a way to get this kid to eat more vegetables.

He’s not ENTIRELY opposed to vegetables, like he will take a bite or two of broccoli or cauliflower, loves cucumbers red peppers and cherry tomatoes, but that’s where it ends and it clearly wasn’t enough.

That’s when I started hearing about Plum Baby Organic “Mashups” from a few different sources.

My friend Ami had been giving them to her three-year old daughter and suggested them to me, but I didn’t see them in the health food store I frequent and never followed up. Then, coincidentally, my mom who has been working doing demos of different products in health-food-stores ended up demoing the same products and I finally got one for Jasper to try, the Plum Baby Spinach, Pear & Peas Mashup.

It was love at first bite (or suck, or squirt?) and since I knew no one would actually believe me that he goes NUTS over these things, here is the video proof:

He usually requests seconds or thirds!

The only downside (as my friend Ami warned me) is that at your local store these can run you $2+ each..which is fine for an ocassional snack, but Jasper eats A LOT of them. So I was thrilled to discover that you can get them on Amazon’s subscription service and then they only come to just over a dollar each AND delivered to your doorstep. Love it!

Obviously, you might want to try ONE first before ordering a case of 24 to see if your kid likes them. If so, they are in the baby food aisle of your local health food store, not the freezer section where I had been looking for them (my only prior experience with premade baby food was the frozen kind!).

In fact, you will find several different flavors by several different manufacturers. Let me warn you though that they are NOT all created equal..

After the enthusiastic reception from Jasper for the Spinach flavor I bough some of the Happy Baby brand Mashups when my health-food store was out of the spinach. He HATED them. I tasted them too and I have to agree with him, they just did not taste good. Whereas the spinach one tastes vaguely like a not-so-sweet applesauce, the Happy Baby one I tried was just bitter.  I feel bad posting that because I like Happy Baby as a company and Jasper loved their infant food (the frozen kind) but I have to be honest and tell you that the mashups were NOT yummy.

Let me also state that I am aware that it is FAR preferable that your kids eat their daily servings of fruits and vegetables from FRESH sources – if for no other reason than training their palate (yadda yadda yadda) and if your toddler’s favorite food is fresh kale or dandelion greens then god bless you!

But for the rest of us, I’m so happy that there is a way to get a few servings of something other than yet another variation of  wheat or  cheese into our children’s daily diets!

(It’s nice having a husband who’s an illustrator!)

The RSVP date was yesterday, and of course, I have only heard from two people so I have NO idea how many kids are coming and how many favors to order!

Though I had aspirations of perhaps custom making (or having my mom make) Jasper’s superhero outfit for his party, I finally faced facts and ordered one from this Etsy seller.  I ordered a matching cape for Bear too!

In the meantime, I needed capes and masks as party favors and after a lot of searching, I finally found safe (velcro closure) assorted color capes and cute red and black reversable masks – no matter what cape color a child gets, either the red or black should look great with it!  There are only 10-  no idea if this is enough, but they came really fast so I could order more next week if I find out we need more.

Yesterday we were bored at home so I decided to let him try the new masks and party favor capes and Jasper was in heaven!

He even did “superhero poses” for me!

He insisted on taking the mask and cape to “mum-mum and pop-pop’s” where I got an outdoor pic:

Apparently, saving the world is EXHAUSTING:

Lastly, a few little Jasperisms I don’t want to forget in the future:

Last week, he totally used daycare-speak on us.  “You’re not listening to my words and you’re making bad choices” he said when he didn’t like what we were telling him!

Saturday I had my first shoot at my new studio (more on that later!) and Jeff and Jasper helped me set up a bit. I had hoped to get some pictures of Jasper but he was SUPER cranky and kept insisting he was thirsty and wanted water.  Not persuaded by the fact that we had no water at the studio Jasper insisted that “he smelled water” and there must be some there.

He found mommy’s razor in the shower and asked Jeff what it was. When Jeff said “It’s mommy’s razor” Jasper asked him if he “razed” with it!

There are so many more that I’ve just forgotten..I had the idea this morning that I should use my iPhone’s voice memo feature to record these as soon as they happen so I don’t miss any more!

Edited to Add: I can’t believe I forgot to post this the first time, but Jasper also hit a baseball being pitched (as opposed to T ball) for the first time on Saturday!  He did it three times in a row, so it wasn’t just a fluke!

I guess I didn’t realize what a big deal it had become until Friday his primary teacher asked if we could have a meeting about it..I felt like I was being hauled into the principal’s office!

So today I went in and she described to me what’s been going on..

Apparently he’s been saying really nasty things to the other kids, like “you can’t play with me” or “you’re not my friend!”  She even told me at group time he looked around the room at all the kids and pointed to each one saying who was his friend and who wasn’t.. (only two kids made the cut.)

The teacher told me that he actually causes other kids to cry when he says things like that (um, yeah, those are really mean things to say!)

Of course there is more going on here than meets the eye, he is very attached to his one friend Derek and gets really upset when any one else tries to play with him and that’s when a lot of those mean words come out.   It’s also so weird to me because when he tells me about his day he’s always got some story about how this kid or that one wronged him in some way, so I actually believe that beneath it all HE’S the one that feels left out or uncomfortable and he’s using those types of words to assert some control over his inherent “shyness” (social awkwardness?) to attack first or lash out.

The purpose of the meeting was so that I could help them in their approach and understand why they may be talking to him about these things – but honestly I don’t know how much I can help because I don’t see this exact behavior from him because I don’t see him interact with a group of children very often, or ever really.

I DO see him say mean things sometimes, like if Jeff or I have been playing with him for a period of time he’s VERY reluctant to let the situation change.. he’ll say “go away mommy, I’m playing with Daddy” or the reverse. It’s almost like he’s just terrible at transitions and will do anything to avoid a change, even in something so simple.

She also said that with some exceptions, he is really a loner that will hang back and not want to join in, or need more time than everyone else to be comfortable to do so. No surprise there, he’s ALWAYS been like that.

Part of me is disappointed in his behavior and part of me feels sorry for him.. I KNOW that a good deal of this stems from his shy/loner nature – it’s HARD to feel comfortable and at ease socially when you are super shy and I know that from experience.  I also know he does really well (for the most part, the exception was this past weekend which Kristy can attest to!) with one-on-one play, he shares and generally has a great time on play dates where there isn’t a large group.

I just hope he learns quickly that it’s NOT ok to say such mean things! His teacher said all the kids really like him, but I’m sure that will change if he keeps this up :(

Any advice?

I think this split has been a long time coming because for one thing, it’s a bit of a one sided love affair. Shelby is going to be 5 this summer, and I think she’s a little too mature to be happy about Jasper going around telling everyone that she is his girlfriend! She’s told him on numerous occasions that she wasn’t his girlfriend which made me so sad for him when Jasper told me!

He was really very enamored of her- he even told me a few days ago that I was pretty like Shelby, which I took to be a very high compliment given his level of devotion to her.

Alas, no more.

I joke and make fun but by the time I filmed this I had heard the story several times and it had lost some of it’s pathos. The first time he told me about the incident in the car ride home from daycare he told me he cried and was sad when it happened and I was so heartbroken for him!

My poor little Romeo..here he is in his own words:

Two nights ago Jasper was in his PJs downstairs right before bedtime.  I was just getting his milk and water ready to bring up to bed when he looked at me completely panic stricken and said “Mommy, I have to go POOP!”

He caught us totally off guard, a) because we are trying to sell our house his downstairs potty got moved to the basement and b) because it usually takes a massive amount of arm twisting to get him to poop on the potty.   I have no idea what switch went off in his brain that all the sudden gave him the idea that skulking off into a corner to poop in his diaper was not OK anymore and that pooping is to be done on the potty instead but I was more than happy to go with it!

So I picked him up and rushed him upstairs where he sat and waited and finally pooped. It was big and he was proud and we made kind of a big deal about it.

Fast forward to last night at our weekly dinner at our local cheesecake factory with my parents. We are sitting in a booth, and in the booth next to us is a very nice family of four with a 3 year old girl and a 5 year old boy. Once the kids discovered each other, they took turns popping over the divider to tell each other things, each proclamation getting louder and more excited..and then Jasper busts out with:

“I made a BIG POOP on the potty!”

I’m pretty sure it was loud enough for even the patrons in the back of the giant restaurant to hear. The family next to use was dying laughing.  Never a dull moment!

In other news..

My best friend is getting married next year and this weekend is her engagement party in DC. Since I’m the matron of honor (and yes, the word matron makes me feel like an old bag!) we couldn’t miss it.  We went back and forth over what to do with Jasper – bring him and miss much of the party while trying to get him to go to sleep?  Leave Jasper and Jeff home and go to DC alone? In the end we decided to leave him with my parents overnight because 5 hours in the car one day and then again the next is a lot even for a grown up.  Plus, I figure he’s almost three – a night away from us is probably long overdue.  Still, I’m a bit nervous being 5 hours away our first time leaving him overnight!

Wish us luck.

Next week I’m going to do an exciting giveaway – a lifetime membership to Clickin Moms AND sets I, II & III of my wall guides (yes, I finally finished set III!) so make sure to tune in for that one :)

Have a great weekend!

Ever since Jasper moved to the preschool room in January, he has been best buds with a boy named Derek.  Every day in the car on the way home from daycare we talk about his day and it goes something like this:

Who did you play with today Jasper?
“Derek!” he always says (or, “My girlfriend Shelby”)

Derek is quite a bit older than Jasper, but they did overlap in the infant room for the first few months that Jasper went to daycare. I remember Derek use to bring me little presents and leave them on my knee while I was nursing Jasper on my lunch hour.  He’s such a sweet kid and I’m always so happy when I drop Jasper off and he’s there because they start playing immediately and I can leave without any protests from Jasper. In fact, Fridays when Derek and Shelby are out are difficult days – sometimes I have to stay 15+ minutes until Jasper finds an activity or someone to play with.

So last night on the car ride home Jasper said “Let’s talk about my day mommy” and I asked “Who did you play with?”

“My girlfriend Shelby” he replied.

“Did you play with Derek?”

“No, Derek’s not my friend anymore Mommy, he’s only friends With Jun Wan.”

He said it mater-of-factly without any apparent hurt , which just made it somehow all the more sad and my heart shattered into a million pieces for him on the spot.

I tried to get out of him what happened, why he and Derek weren’t friends anymore but I could only understand that someone wouldn’t sit next to someone and someone hurt someone else in line. I have no idea what really went down, and quite possibly it was nothing, or quite possibly Jasper started the whole thing. But just the mere idea that my baby’s feelings would EVER get hurt is pretty much the saddest thing I can ever imagine.   How am I going to handle him going to real school?

It reminds me of this quote I heard a while ago:

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” ~Elizabeth Stone

Truer words were never spoken.

Jasper was a little pooped after the walk up the hill to campus!

That’s Jasper’s canvas – the second from the right on the top row!

And Jasper’s favorite part..

The best part though was taking Jasper to see mommy’s office which he’d never been to before. Luckily for him I just had a printer delivered and there was a big box on the floor to play pirate in!

Or.. just take a little break!

I don’t know if you all know that Jasper’s daddy is an amazing artist – so maybe this will be the first of many art openings in Jasper’s future?

At almost three, Jasper seems to be approaching just the right age for the “kids say the damdest things” type of utterances..

Like yesterday I had to take Jasper with me to the ATM and I told him we were going to the bank.   The next bank we passed on the way to ours he piped up and  said  “is that the money tank we are going to mommy? ”

Then, on the way home from the bank we passed the barber where he gets his haircut with daddy sometimes and I told him he needed a haircut again soon.  He assured me that he already had gotten one, at which point I tried to explain the concept of hair “growing.”  He thought about it for a minute and asked “Does the rain make it grow mommy?”

Then there are the heart melting things he says, like “I love your eyes mommy, they are beautiful” or, like yesterday when I looked back at him in the rearview mirror and he lifted his eyes to mine and said “I love in you in the world mommy,” which is his version of “I love you more than anything in the whole wide world,” something I tell him often.

Lately he has been waking up in the morning and saying really funny and random things plucked out half waking/half sleeping consciousness.   Yesterday morning was an interesting one when he proclaimed that soon he would have a little brother or sister. I asked him if he wanted mommy to have another baby, half expecting him to say no but he said “yes please.”

I sure hope he knows something that I don’t because I just got back from a consultation with an R.E. (reproductive endocrinologist) with a long list of necessary test and procedures. I sure didn’t realize I’d need to be repeating so many of them – somehow I guess I thought it would be easier the second time around.  But nope. Apparently  infertility is the gift that keeps on giving…

Whenever I get ready to release a new Wall Display product I sort of go into lockdown mode.  It’s just the only way I can get it done and out the door. Unfortunately, (depending on how you look at it!) it’s also been crazy busy season photography wise. The long winter is finally over and everyone and their brother wants family photos all of the sudden. Normally that would be a good thing, but there’s only one of me and so little time so even just the last two shoots I’ve done have pushed me over the edge of having NO time to get everything done!

PLUS we have a lot going on at home too,  not the least of which is that we’ve decided to sell becoming-home (or try anyway in this crappy market) so there goes any remote hope of a free second I might have.

But, before all hell broke loose I was a woman on a mission.. a mission to find and do a photoshoot in a field of the beautiful yellow dandelion flowers before they turned into actual dandelions. This was easier said than done – I saw them every day on my way to work in the median of the highway, but had the hardest time finding a safe place to shoot with kids that also had them until I struck gold at a little field next to my gym parking lot!

Now, what to shoot..?  Somewhere along the line I came up with the idea of a teddy bear picnic with Jasper and his friend Peyton.  When I was little we used to have a these amazing Teddy Bear picnic illustrations that hung first on my walls and later my sister’s.  We were fascinated by them.  And of course you know about Jasper and his Bear, so it all seemed perfect.

I had to go out and buy the picnic blanket and basket from homegoods, but I’m pretty sure I’ll use the set up again with clients. The bears of course we already had!

The outfits were the part I worried about the most, but I bought them together at H&M so I was able to get something in a similar color story. The tricky part was making them early spring proof- it wasn’t yet all that warm around sunset, so I couldn’t have Peytie sleeveless and Jasper in short sleeves!

It was pure luck that Jasper happened to have a bright turquoise long sleeve shirt that matched and I was so lucky that Peyton’s mommy went out to BRU and picked up up just he right shade of fuchsia little cardigan for her. I was very happy with how the styling came out.  In fact, if I could only ever do concept shoots like this for myself I would be totally content.. it’s so much fun!

Also, I highly recommend this sort of thing for the 2-4 age group – like the valentine’s day cookie shoot, this picnic shoot gave them something to do (cheers your glasses, eat an animal cookie!) which really helped keep them on the blanket instead of running around wild which things DID deteriorate to at the end, but not before I got the shots I wanted!

And finally – here are the pics!

I shot all of these with my canon 70-200 II (of course, I LOVE that lens!) and the processing was something totally new for me. I don’t usually go for that vintage look – but it totally felt right for these images, and gave me an excuse to finally try out Florbella Collection actions. It was fun to mix and match the different effects (I think I used Hibiscus, Swoon AND Mademoisella all at ~ 20% opacity plus the pastel tints and hazes.)

Now, since these are photos purely for me and don’t need to be prepped and delivered to the client, what do with them? I was happy with how them came out, so I want them to have a life beyond the jpg..

First I decided to order the second to last image of Peyton standing with her bear as a 16×20 canvas from H&H as a gift for Peyton’s parents.

It was actually the first time I’d ordered canvas from H&H and it TOTALLY blew me away.  The colors of course were fabulous, but what I couldn’t get over was the backing. I seriously didn’t know canvas could be wrapped that tight or perfectly, or the back finished so impeccably.  And what was even more amazing was that they totally bent over backwards to get it to me for mother’s day. I seriously love H&H and I’m so so proud to be working with them to have my wall guides and their clusters be compatible (same names, sizes etc.)

The other product that I recently found and am totally in love with is Oh Snap Boutique. I don’t know where it’s been all my life but along with Angie Monson’s Simplicity Designs, this is my new favorite source for cute, whimsical album templates. You have to check it out!  I went on a bit of a buying spree during the mother’s day sale and scored this “Whimsy Garden” template that is perfect for the bear picnic shoot:

and I couldn’t resist the accordion mini template:

or this one..

and I had to have the own one of course!!!

Well, you get the picture. I have a LOT of new studio samples to make – and of course no time to do it!

Next blog post (if anyone is still reading) will be about my first twins shoot.. yikes!

When I signed Jasper up for the 4 week mini soccer session I guess it was a case of massive over-optimism about his ability to a) enjoy group activities and b) adjust to new situations.

From the second we stepped on to the (admittedly) chaotic field, Jasper wanted NOTHING to do with it. He would barely let us put him down, let alone participate. He kept saying he wanted to go home, so after 15 frustrating minutes we took him home.

Now, he wasn’t the only toddler out of sorts – it’s for 2-3 year olds, so cooperation isn’t exactly easy to elicit from this age group – but I do believe we were the only family that just walked out.

Last night at bathtime I asked Jasper if he wanted to try again, or if he wanted to not go back. He said “I’m going to be a good boy mommy and kick the ball.”  Which was so heartbreaking! I told him he was a good boy and asked how he felt about soccer and he said “I was a little afraid of it.”

Being a shy person myself, I wish there was something I could do to spare him a lifetime of “fear” in the face of what could otherwise be fun – but I don’t really know how to help him come out of his shell.   The only thing I can think to do is take him back for the remaining 4 sessions and keep my fingers crossed that he warms up to it enough to be brave and later proud of himself for being brave.

What else can I do?