We had an evening of being almost pregnant a few nights ago. I’ve had plenty of them over the last five years. If my period’s even a day late then I start to worry. There have been many frantic moments where we waited to see if there would be two pink lines or just one on the pregnancy test.

But this time it was different. This time I held the smallest glimmer of hope that it might be for real. Hubs and I joked around with big goofy grins on our faces. He told me to go lay down after dinner so that he could bring me some ice cream. We talked in a silly voice and patted my tummy, while asking Bri if she’d like to be a big sister. I imagined a tiny baby growing inside me and was already loving this future child.

So I was really disappointed when my monthly gift arrived the next morning. I know, I know. It was only one evening of make believe. I can’t even imagine the heartache that must accompany a miscarriage or a stillbirth after months of dreaming. We weren’t even trying to conceive. The sadness that followed me the next day seemed disproportional to the happiness of our little evening.

I guess I’ve been suppressing this baby bug more than I realized. Our plan to wait a year or two makes so much financial sense, and yet my heart and arms are aching for another baby. It’s a good thing I have a newborn session in a few weeks. Maybe that’ll be enough of a fix for now.

I’ve been building my equipment base over the last six months by reinvesting my earnings. This week I won a bid on ebay for a 50mm f1.8 lens. And last night, Hubs and I sat around playing with all of my toys. It was lots of fun. He didn’t realize that I have four lenses now! I guess I’m moving up in the world.

My new lens lets me control the depth of field so precisely that I can focus on Bri’s bangs and her face will be blurry. How crazy is that?

I can also focus on Bri and her Daddy can be blurry in the background. She thinks it’s really fun to put the flashlight inside her mouth. A few minutes before this picture she was doing this in front of the mirror.

This new lens is a little bit more difficult to use than my usual partner in crime. It doesn’t have an internal motor, so I have to do a lot of my focusing by hand. When you’re shooting little kids, it’s really nice to be able to let the camera do all of the focusing for you. By the time you focus on them yourself, they’ve already moved away!

But I am totally in love with the way it creates a nice blurry background. You probably didn’t even notice the vacuum cleaner behind Bri in the picture above. I’ll be able to use this little lens for indoor shoots without worrying about busy background from normal house clutter. It’s going to be perfect for the newborn shoot I have next week! Yay!

I’ve really loved sending Christmas cards over the past five years. Each year we look a little bit different. New hair, growing baby or a growing waist line. I think it’s really special to receive cards in the mail. Plus, I’m a photo nut and I love to hang up all of the holiday cards that we receive.

So what’s the problem? Well, they’re a wee bit expensive. And stamps are expensive. Not to mention it takes a lot of time to address and stamp all of those envelopes.

And there’s one more thing. I really want professional looking pictures this year. But I don’t want to pay for them. It’s hard to buy something that you feel like you could do yourself. Except I can’t really do it myself this year. I can’t get a good shot of Bri unless I’m behind the lens. Toddlers are super hard to photograph.

I haven’t made my mind up yet, but this year I’m kind of thinking that I’d rather spend that money on Bridoodle’s pile of toys. I think she needs a miniature kitchen. And a plasma screen TV.

I had an awesome teacher moment in the halls at school today. I always think of zingers like these after the moment has passed. But today I had the pleasure of saying the witty thing I meant to say at the exact moment that I meant to say it. “Hey you! Making-out couple over there. Get to class. You’re going to be late … in more ways than one.”

After picking up Bri from daycare today, we headed home and she played while I tidied up a bit. Then I settled down in front of the computer and she came over to sit in my lap. She fell asleep on my shoulder while we listened to music and watched photography slide-shows from my feed reader. It was a magical moment.

Update: After I wrote this post Hubster came home from work. Just overheard him in the nursery yelling, “No, No, NO, NO. We do not wipe our booty and then wipe our mouth!” Classic parenting moment.

I never had much of an opinion on daylight savings time until this year. In one fell swoop my evening sessions were pretty much eliminated. Since I work from 8-4:30 most days, that leaves precious little daylight. Most of my clients won’t be able to meet me that early in the afternoon anyway. And I only have a few weeks before the sun will be setting at 4:30pm anyway!

The light has been beautiful as the sun has set in the late afternoon, though. I’ve been itching to get out with my camera. Instead I’ve been chained to the computer finalizing orders and editing photos. Maybe next week I’ll be able to get out early enough to grab a few shots.

So, I’ve got an official position of daylight savings time now. It stinks! I want that hour of sunny evening light back! Darkness in the morning would be much better. Stepping off of this soap box now. I’ll have to think of some creative solutions to this problem. Or maybe we’ll just enjoy a few more movies in the evenings now.

It’s true.

I was so excited about the trip to Chicago and the chance to meet bloggers in real life. I talked about it non-stop for a few months. I saved up all of my money. My cousin and I had great plans for fun times. Then about two months before the blogging conference FINALLY arrived, I talked my Hubs into letting me launch a photography business. On a dream and a prayer, we built a little website. By the time July arrived, my little photography business had taken off! I was already raising my prices because I didn’t have time to take on so many sessions. I’d overbooked myself and was desperately trying to churn out edited photos in time for the next client. My trip to Chicago turned into a business trip as I booked lessons on photography and met a friend for headshots in the park. It was wild and exciting but also draining.

Then in August school started. I cut my schedule back and I picked up new tricks for streamlining the editing process, but still I was working almost every evening after school on a shoot or editing. Life seemed full and hectic. Hubster says I had a shorter temper than usual. I was obviously strained.

My load lightened a little in September as I cleared room for Bri’s birthday. Things weren’t so overwhelmingly busy anymore. In October I started to feel major burn out with school. There are so many perks to working from home and my expectations for my job had been unrealistically high. I thought that all of my problems with teaching were due to the inner city school system. When I moved to my new job, I’d expected the kids to be perfect and the paperwork to be lighter. The kids, while much better, are still in fact kids. We won’t even start talking about the paperwork.

So that’s what has happened. The photography business has consumed all of my free time. I love taking pictures and seeing the final results! It’s been quite an adventure.

We discovered this little guy at a recent photo shoot. Isn’t he darling? I’m not one to kiss a frog, but he’s almost tempting.

I started a tradition a few years ago called NaBloPoMo. In an effort to get myself to blog more regularly, I committed to posting every day in November of 2007. The next year I kept up the month of blogging for November of 2008. And now we’ve come to day one of November 2009 and I must confess that I don’t have such a good feeling about it this year. Something about working two jobs has just wiped out all of the free time I used to find for blogging.

That being said, there are a lot of little posts that have been building up inside me during these long quiet periods. Plus I have tons of pictures, and they’re always good for quick posts. So I’m going to try it again. I probably won’t be very long winded, but only because I doubt that I’ll have the time!

To start things off, here’s a picture of Bri from yesterday’s Halloween festivities. We went to our town fall festival in the morning, where she spotted a life-size Abby Cadabby. She happily went over and hugged her leg while I frantically dug for my camera, which of course I’d left at home. We walked around looking at all of the booths and I promised myself to set one up for the photography business next year (in all my free time). After naptime we went to a church event where Bri enjoyed playing games and eating candy. Then we went out to dinner with friends before heading home. It was lots of fun!

Last weekend, Hubs and I had a little holiday at home. We took Bri to stay with her Mimi and Gampa, so that we could attend a party. The party was a costume party set in the 1920’s that included a full murder-mystery plot.

We were each assigned various characters. Meet Guilda – the innocent wife of the Mafia boss’s accountant.

And here’s the mayor. He’s on the mafia’s payroll. Don’t say that I told you so!

At the party, the lights flickered out and someone was “shot” in the dark. (It sounded more like a high heeled shoe slamming down.) We spent the rest of the evening pointing fingers, claiming our own innocence and discovering dirty secrets about the other characters at the party.

Secret affairs and marriages were brought to light. As well as dirty money and threats of blackmail.

Did I mention that the food was delicious? Yum!

And the setting was lovely. It was the Grand Opening of the new speakeasy – a gin joint owned by a couple known for their houses of ill-repute.

And our hostess herself, was a doll. She and I had so much fun capturing photos for the party.

She made sure that I got in front of the lens every once in awhile too. We had a blast! Can’t wait to do it again.

I’ve been overworking myself. This week I had two wonderful sessions. Last night I kind of had a meltdown and Hubs told me that I need to stay home from church today to chill. A day of rest sounds both wonderful and pretty much impossible. I’ll probably head to Sunday School anyway!

Despite the fact that I’m overworked, life has been lovely lately. Bri has been mastering words that she used to mispronounce. It’s sort of bittersweet to hear her say them correctly now. She used to say “metany” in place of monkey but now she says it right. There are a slew of other words that she’s picked uptoo. She knows the days of the week and loves to play this game where she whispers each one in succession, “monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday” and then gleefully yells, “SAH-TUR-DAY!!!”

The school year has been intense. Our teacher work days have been traded for furlough days. Most teachers are picking up the slack at home. I’ve had lots of work to juggle between papers to grade, sessions to edit and the day to day stuff at home. Hubster has made it so much easier for me. He’s great about taking Bri when I need time to edit and he’s seriously awesome about cleaning up around the house. We’re making it work.

I still love teaching but I’m beginning to love photography more. It’s hard to say no to those sessions that eat up my spare time.