Let's see...

Mommy is thirty. Frankly, it's just another number. It doesn't necessarily mean my carefree days are behind me nor that I am too far up "the hill" to dream (and try to make those dreams part of my daytime reality).

Yadon is a week from turning one year old, which is really a good thing because people give us weird looks when Chi says "He's zero." If you insert years old before the period, it makes perfect sense... but the casual listener who does not know my Chi doesn't get it.

And Chi, I cannot begin to express just how blessed I am to be her Mommy. To see her become this totally amazing, inspiring, intuitive, creative, original, sensitive, empathetic, caring, carefree old soul that I just cannot believe I had a hand in making. She fits her name - Good God - because she's proof that He is the creator of all good and perfect things.

Mommy is reluctantly slowing down with the photos of her kids. I mean I actually left the camera in the car the other evening and I also left it in the house while out and about a few days before. This is mostly because the hard drive cannot handle any more pictures on it, the wallet cannot handle printing every photo deemed a good capture, and because Mommy doesn't even know how to begin to filter through all the images of this past year to select the few she most loves.

Ya doesn't protest anymore when the singular black eye covers his Mama's. Sometimes he even hams it up for the picture. He's used to the attention. Chi won't usually smile (at least not genuinely), but she is still quite expressive on the days when she wants to be in pictures. And as for the rest of the family and friends? Mommy is wary of pulling out her camera (even though she always has it) because she is so very tired of the supposedly out of ear shot comments about her photo OCD. Maybe I'll filter through my best images and actually get my photography "services" out there to the public? At least then I'll have willing models and save my kids from the constant intrusion...

The next book off the shelf is The Notebook. I've not watched the movie, which is pretty impressive as it is on television quite often these days. Hopefully the novel lives up to the movie's reputation (or exceeds it). I'll let you know.

And... summer is winding down, with Mommy heading back to work in the next few weeks. This year is business as usual. No maternity leave. No late start. No watching Chi experience her first day of school firsthand - - and that alone saddens me.

I did not catch up on my scrap booking... in fact, I just pulled out my super stock of papers and stickers to sort and rediscover. I'm prepping pages and hoping I can locate the photos I took that'd be perfect for each of them. Wish me luck, as my photos are organized by date and not by subject. Yikes! But I am not discouraged... I'll keep the three journals and two calendars I have going and will eventually transfer all that information, quotes, and observations into journaling. Eventually. I promise. And perhaps, if they want, I'll even find a copy center that will print the pages of the books when the kids are all grown up and want to have their scrapbooks. I know no one thought I'd send the originals off with the kids, right?