The next great thing...

Tess showed some interest in the camera the other day...and by "interest", I mean that she demanded to be allowed to use it. I thought it would be interesting to see what happened, so I got out our older camera and showed her how to take a picture and sent her on her way. Her first photoshoot was pretty impressive.

It started out with a portrait of her favorite Dad:


And her best girl. She really captures both our essence and personality.


At one point while Tess was running around with the camera, I heard Jaime say, "Um, my eyes are up here, weirdo!"





I submit to you the greatest self-portrait ever taken...by a 2 year old...who is a quarter Samoan...in Atlanta...and is deathly afraid of slides.


The rest of the shoot seemed to focus on things that are important to her. Or maybe me:


A portrait of her comfy star blanket. It's a great self-portrait:


Her name. Referencing the egotistical nature of society today best exemplified by Facebook, Twitter and Blogs:


Her diapers. A love-hate relationship:


The Southwest (it's pretty):


Finally, she got a little crazy. I'm not sure what this is at all, and that's when I knew she had made it as an artist. It might be my face.


***Before any Ansel Adams fans get really angry, Tessa didn't take that picture of the Southwest. I hope I insulted your intelligence by typing that. I also hope at least one of you is dumb enough to think a 2 year old took that photo!

30 and still friendless

This happened to me a couple of days after my birthday:

*Tess inches her way closer to the cookies in bags on the couch
Jaime: Those aren't for you, Tess.
Tess: Not for me?
Jaime: No. They're for Daddy's friends.
Tess (not fooled for a minute): DADDY DON'T HAVE NO FRIENDS!

Apparently she is convinced of that and explained to Jaime yesterday that Tess has friends and mommy has friends, but daddy doesn't. Poor lonesome me.

And then to add insult to injury...after very loudly explaining to us that it was ludicrous that she not be allowed to have cookies based off of made up people, she cornered me when Jaime left the room. Then she looked me straight in the eyes with an intensity I've only seen in starving animals stalking what could be their last meal. And finally, in a hushed tone so Jaime couldn't hear, she calmly (yet in a very condescending manner) explained to me that she knew I didn't have any friends and would die friendless in a nursing home if I didn't give her those cookies!

I'd like to get inside her head at some point. When Jaime told her why she couldn't have the cookies, it really was like Jaime had just tried to pull one over on her. I imagine her thinking to herself: Okay morons. Nice try. Daddy's "friends" need cookies. Since when did we start feeding cookies to the Xbox and TV ?

Are your kids this crazy?..

Tess: Jesus is not a baby anymore.
Me: Nope. He isn't.
Tess: He is a prophet.
Me: He is the Savior. He saves us.
Tess: He saves us?
Me: Yes. And he makes us happy.
Tess: Sometimes we have to be mad.
Me: Um...But we always try to be happy.
Tess: Sometimes there are two men and they come to fight us and we have to be mad.
Me: We shouldn't fight them. We should try to be nice.
Tess: You don't have to fight them, Dad.
Me: Thanks.
Tess: When the two come, I will get them with my sword. Yes.

First blog post from my phone...

She is a smart one. She has learned to write the letter T, and we find her creating T's all over now. like on the fridge. And, big surprise...she knows how to spell her name now! We found her dumping out all the bananagrams letters when Jaime's family was here, and then she spelled her name. That was after she started picking up handfuls of the tiles and let them trickle through her fingers while exclaiming: "taxes! Taxes!" (she had watched disney's robin hood the day before)

Massage Colon...

In honor of our pioneers, we went to eat at a Taiwanese restaurant today. We'd never been to one, and we'll probably go back despite the second picture. I ordered this pineapple fried rice, mainly for the presentation:



The menu made this item look amazing, and it was pretty tasty. But when they brought it to us, it had a generous helping of brown fur sprinkled on top. Or at least it seemed like fur. It might have been ground up spiders. Or ground up pineapple tree bark. If you can identify this, let us know what it was...unless it really was fur or spiders.


Speaking of presentation. I have been "cooking" a lot lately (one pudding pie on Sunday and chicken tacos on Wednesday). A lot. It's made me consider starting a cooking blog. I took pictures of my pie to get the blog rolling, but Jaime said my presentation is no good. I made sure to do the whole food bloggy thing of taking pictures at sort of strange angles:


and zooming in real close on the food and having super blurry backgrounds:


But no, it wasn't good enough for Top Chef Jaime. Apparently pudding isn't supposed to look like this:



Doesn't all pudding come out with a few strange bubbles in it? Jaime refused to eat it because of the looks. But I got her back. The main ingredient in my chicken tacos on Wednesday was days-old pudding pie. Choke on that, Jaime! You've got to see the above image large. It's pretty amazing how I messed up something as simple as combining powder with liquid and stirring!

Anyhow, back to our day. After leaving the restaurant, I had to stop and take this picture:

We joked before going in to the restaurant that we hoped we wouldn't have to visit that place after eating the food. But after eating ground up spider fur, it might not be a bad idea.

Later on, we decided to continue honoring the pioneers by seeing a soccer game. Jaime got some groupon tickets for the game. When we got there, they were going to make us pay $5 for parking, but we showed them. All we had in the form of cash was $2.25. And they didn't take it. Usually, I would ask Tess for the money. I took her with me to a shoe store the other day to find running shoes, and somehow (because I am one of THOSE dads) we ended up with no shoes but a Dora the Explorer backpack instead. When she brought it to me, she said, "Can we bring this home, Dada." (She calls me Dada when she wants something). So, I said to her, "Do you have money to pay for it?" And she said yes, reached in to her imaginary pocket, pulled out the exact imaginary change and then held her hand up to me. She pays for most of our expenses these days the same way.

Anyhow, I couldn't get her to pay for parking because she had fallen dead asleep in the car. For the first 30 minutes of the game, we played Weekend at Bernie's with her and she never woke up:



This last picture is when she finally did wake up. Cheering on the Atlanta Silverbacks. Or the Silbacks or Soda Babs or Braves as she called them.

Dedicated to Erin...

I actually had this whole thing written up before your comment on my last post. Very good timing!

I love photoshop. It may seem strange or cheating (it's definitely cheating), but I sometimes take a picture, load it on to the computer and think, "Well, that's not the way I remembered that," or, "That's not how I want to remember that." For example, I was trying to get a picture one day of Tess catching bubbles. But I was taking the pictures on an old phone, and I couldn't get fast enough to get the bubbles in between her hands:


So, I went in to photoshop and made it the way I had intended...the way I wanted to remember it:


A few more examples. Like this one at the beach in Jersey. This image by itself doesn't do the beach justice:


But a simple stitching together of multiple images did the trick, and this is how I wanted to remember it:


Here's one of Tess showing us all the stickers she put on herself:


But this is how I remember it:

(I don't want to brag too much, but you can see in the original, Tess didn't have the top of her head. I really shouldn't brag about that actually, since it was a very easy fix...)

This is a really old one of Tess walking down our driveway at Easter in 2010:


But in my mind, it was much more like this:


Really the whole purpose of this post was for those last two photoshopped images.

Tseas or Saste

We had the missionaries over for dinner on Wednesday, and while we were chatting before dinner, one of the missionaries asked Tess if she knew how to spell her name. It was a bizarre conversation:

Him: Tess, do you know how to spell your name?
Tess: It has an S!
Him: It sure does. Do you know how to spell the whole thing?
Tess: It has an A!
Me: You're right, but do you know how to spell it?
Tess: It has another S!
Me: What else?
Tess: A T!
Me: And...
Tess: E!

I thought it was really strange, but also pretty amazing that she knew all the letters. Although, I'm not entirely sure she does know how to actually spell her name. Here's a picture that had a similar result as the conversation above:



So, I thought, "She's either a mixed-up genius, a smart-aleck or a little dummy." But then I started going through her emails, and found this forwarded message from one of her co-workers that somewhat cleared things up:

Subject: From Cambridge University. Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!"

We srue do lkie our sarmt ltilte Tssea. We mghit eevn lvoe her at tihs piont.