St. Louis Wedding and Portraiture Photography - Pinxit

A quote I like..

“Children are paparazzi. They take your picture mentally when you don’t want them to, when you don’t look good, and show it back to you in their behavior.” - Jamie lee curtis

A friend has had her son this week, 5lbs 13 oz, he’s a handsome little bugger. shes got four kids I beleive…

I cannot imagine how the hell she does it.

This weekends project includes cleaning the upstairs unit.

Who thinks this will actually get done? anybody? anybody at all?

me neither.

I had a Dr.’s apointment last thursday. My constant discomfort due to hip pressue is

Cammy’s birthday is coming this Monday. So many times I watch Cammy sleep, and wonder where all the time went. She only looks like my baby now when shes sleeping. Eyes closed, covers pulled up to her chin, lips puckered - soft snore, only then do I see the infant she was such a short time ago. 

I look back on her life and see the things I never want to forget. That her favorite treat is a rice crispy treat, and we have more fun making them, even though we do cheat and buy them sometimes. Her steadfast determination to be CAMMY HENNISON!!! Often debating with you “I not a princess, I CAMMY HENNISON!!” “I not a doodle head,  I CAMMY HENNISON!!” How much like me she really is, in how much she cares about people. As much as I want her to be her own person she takes so many good things for Jerry and I both. She loves water like him, and to read like him. Shes perfectly content to be alone. But she loves outside, writing on sidewaks, basketball, and blowing bubbles and playing catch.   

I love to see the flashes of independence that I know she gets from me. She squishes her brow together and sets her self when shes determined. Shes stubborn and testing her ground as a kid, and has moments of cry baby-like attitude. Something I am hoping to work out of her. but I don’t want to kill her sensitivity. I am walking into the realm of real parenting - where discipline and love try and co exist. how do you find the line between fear and respect, I don’t want her afraid of us, but I don’t want to be a push over either. She doesnt’ respond to spankings - shes more of a conversational discipilne receiver. She responds way more to having things taken from her - physically taken than she would ever if you hit her. She also tends to listen to the opposite parent when oneof us has lost our temper.  I’m thinking a timeout chair may be the way to go for us in the future. cause I don’t like the idea of threatening bed time as a punishment. We like bed time. TRUST, mommy loves bed time somedays. At any rate, she is walking into her indiviual self and I am gladly along for the ride.

Things I didn’t expect this early - she calls me “Mom”. I went from mommy to mom like over night. Jerry is still Daddy, but I am mom. Favorite part of my day with her, in the morning her dad is a morning person so he wakes her up and they go through the morning routine - brushing teeth morning potty, then she runs and jumps in bed with me and we talk about our dreams and if we slept well, and what kind of day we are gonna have. On the weekend she burrows between her daddy and I and we have the same conversation until daddys snoring makes her want to go watch michkey mouse club house rather than lay between us. I like sitting out side with her and trying to get he to say her ABC’s with chalk drawings of the letters on the ground.  Shes so long now, she doesn’t fold into my lap as easy as she did before, shes all legs and arms, feet and fingers. She hasn’t fallen asleep in my lap in ages it seems like, and even with a new kid coming, I miss my little Cammy even though I’ve got a really cool kid out of it all.

 happy birthdyay princess pumpkin

So my fathers, father passed away on Last Thursday. He had been sick for a while - although no one expected him to actually pass away. I can’t say that i had much of a relationship with him. The last time I saw him was when my fathers youngest sister was married roughly two years ago. (see picture below and to the left - that is my father most of his full siblings and his father and step-mother) And before that He came to the hospital to see Cammy the day she was born - which was honestly the most shocking moment in my adult life when he walked through those doors, I saw him again a few weeks later at my fathers home where he fed Cammy and spent the afternoon talking and playing with her. Picture to the right.
Other than these memories - the memories of my grandfather are few and far between. When I was a kid he used to drive Santa for a Christmas float and would bring Santa buy for a visit before the parade. He also gave us Monopoly and gloves every year for Christmas for most of my pre teen years.

Other than these, most of my knowledge of my grandfather is based on my fathers love of my grandfather. i tried once - when I decided I was my own adult, to try to bridge the gap between my grandfather and I but didn’t get terribly far before I was like this is too much like fighting to save a single sided relationship, and gave up - somedays I regret that.

My father is my grandfathers clone. See above photo, my grandfather second from left, my father fourth from left. And I have always known that my father loves his father the way that I love him. And so while I morn the grandfather I never knew, I morn for my father and my aunt Pattys loss more. I cannot imagine how I would feel if I lost my father. And I know Patty had the same kind of father / daughter relationship with her daddy that I have with mine. Although Patty’s mother Mary - my grandfathers widow who he was married to for 47 years, was the person I gravitated to. She and I have never been close, I have actually felt like she’d rather - not - where we were concerned, I look a little too much like my grandmother for comfort, so I can understand honestly. But I watched her sit there - on the Friday following his death and wonder what she was gonna do, and thought to my self - no matter what has ever happened to, between, around, behind, beside, us - that right now she is a wife, suffering the kind of loss I could not fathom. She was the strongest i could ever imagine in this situation. She allowed my batty grandmother (totally smiling when I say that) - her husbands first wife whose name mocked her from her husbands tattooed fore arm for forty seven years, to visit with him on his death bed and attend the funeral with her children. She was a pillar when her grown children - trying to be strong for her - crumbled into sobbing toddlers in her arms. She was everything I hope i could be should the Lord bless me to have to endure that kind of loss. God willing, I’d like to see sixty years of marriage but forty seven is pretty darn respectable.

I loved him, even if I didn’t know him, complicated pasts don’t mean much when there is no future.

Thank you all for your thoughts and condolences.