I just don’t think it’s possible! She’s such a doll!!

I just love taking pictures of babies! There is no pretense, no posing, no fake smiles; just pure honesty.

Aubrey and I decorated the tree last night. Brandon had to work (sad face) but I think he enjoyed watching Aubs get really in to the whole decorating process. All of her ornaments were in roughly the same spot on the tree and if she didn’t have room, she just shoved. None of her ornaments actually ended up with their hooks on the tree limbs. They were more just balanced between branches and on top of each other. I left them that way because it was just so cute to be able to look at the tree and say, “That’s where Aubrey helped.”

I’ve also been trying my hand at a bit of decorating. I think the room looks pretty cozy. It’s not quite done but I don’t want to rush it. I’ll know what else it needs when I find it.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year. I’ve gotten some gifts for people that I’m really proud of and I know Aubrey is going to have fun opening presents this year. She was still too young to get the point of it all last year.

I keep thinking I’m going to pick a theme for our tree and start buying new ornaments but then I start going through them and I have so many great memories of playing with certain ornaments as a child or remembering how I came to own a certain ornament that doesn’t go with anything else on the tree; as shown below.

I used to play with these little elves every year. I imagine Aubrey will enjoy doing the same.

*Note – this will be the long rambling post of an incredibly proud parent.

Aubrey’s day care provider has had a vacation planned for November 13th through November 21st for several months now and the plan was always to make an attempt at potty training while I worked from home with Aubrey. She turned 21 months on the 14th and everything I had read said that kids weren’t really ready to start trying until after age 2. I wasn’t nervous about trying early though. I have had a clear plan in my head of exactly how I was going to tackle this particular milestone for quite a while. I was also prepared for failure. I figured if she wasn’t ready for this step, we would just try later. I knew it would happen eventually.

I bought Aubrey a “Princess Potty” several months ago and it has been in her bathroom all this time so she could get used to seeing it and hearing the word ‘potty.’ Every time I went to the restroom I would say, “Mommy’s going to go potty, do you want to come?” Aubrey would almost always excitedly follow me into the bathroom where she would sit on her potty chair, lid up or lid down, it didn’t matter, while she waited for me to finish. Sometimes she would even pantomime wiping, even though her pants were always up.

I took Friday off of work, and if you glanced at the calendar you may have noticed that I did in fact decide to attempt this endeavor on Friday the 13th. I woke to Aubrey yelling, “Mama! Mama!” from her crib in an effort to tell me that I had clearly slept in and she was going to be late to day care. I slid out of bed around 8 a.m. and Aubrey and I had cereal while we planned out our day. I told her how we were going to have 10 whole uninterrupted mom-baby days and that we were going to learn to use the potty. She seemed rather indifferent as she munched on her Apple Jacks.

After breakfast we got dressed, kissed Brandon and wished him a good day at work and then Aubs and I headed off to the grocery store to get all our provisions for the day.

We stocked up on 4 different kinds of juice and plenty of salty, thirst inducing snacks. Then I vacuumed up all of the dog hair and dust bunnies, rolled up the living room rug and laid out the ‘throne.’

In front of the t.v. where I put in The Chronicles of Narnia.

We have a definite advantage in the fact that we don’t have carpet anywhere upstairs other than in our bedrooms. That’s mainly thanks to one of my pregnancy hormone induced nesting binges in which Brandon came home to me removing large hunks of carpet with a box knife and heaving them into the front yard.

Once I had everything in place including a Costco sized helping of paper towels and disinfectant wipes…

I stripped Aubrey down to nothing.

She ran the house naked for the entire day and each time she would start to pee on the floor I would try my best to get her to her potty chair before she was done, all while telling her in an encouraging tone what she was doing. Ex: “Aubrey you’re pottying! That’s good! Potty goes in your potty chair.”

Once or twice I managed to get her to the chair in time to get a few drops in there. I didn’t take my eyes off her for the majority of the day, with the exception of my own calls of nature. It was on one such occasion that she followed me into the bathroom and wanted to play with the light switch like she usually does, but she was missing her usual step stool/potty chair with the lid down. She went back into the living room to retrieve it and I could hear her, what I thought, struggling with the chair. Suddenly she burst into hysterical crying. I called to her to come back to me and tell me what was wrong. She thundered down the hall, stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, gave me her most distressed, tear soaked look, pointed back at the living room and declared, “POOP!” I was shocked. I asked her if she had pooped and she again said, “Yeah. Poop!”

Sure enough she had gone right on the floor and she was quite upset about it. I calmly told her that it was okay and that next time it needed to go in the potty chair. She seemed suspicious that something like that could go in her chair so she simply responded with several proclamations of, “Ew.”

Overall I didn’t consider the day a failure or a success. It was just a step in the right direction.

Day 2, Saturday. Aubrey had one accident on the floor as she was declaring, “Poddy!” and left a trail of it all the way to her chair where she sat down, albeit a bit too late. The second time however was a resounding success. I was distracted by the television and came back to reality as Aubrey stepped in front of me, again declaring her intentions by yelling, “Poddy!” She sat down and went! I was so excited I cried. Not horrific sobs of course, just proud tearing up.

Later that day during my shower I brought Aubs and her potty chair into the restroom with me. She was haphazardly removing everything that wasn’t nailed down from underneath the vanity, as usual, while I was washing my hair. Suddenly I heard the musical chimes from her chair, I peaked out to see her proudly sitting on her chair. She smiled at me, kicked her legs and said, “Poddy!”

Day 3, Sunday. More pottying success. Brandon had to leave last minute to fly to Louisville for work and shortly after he left I found myself sucked into a movie I’ve seen a dozen times. Next thing I know Aubrey comes streaking down the hall, not saying anything, and sat on her chair. A few seconds later I was brought back to reality by her yelling, “Ew!” Lo and behold, she had figured out that number 2 really does go in her chair!

Day 4, Monday. Not one accident! She has made it to her chair for both potty and poo. I am just glowing I’m so proud of her! Now what the heck am I going to do with the giant, unopened box of diapers I bought last week? What a good problem to have!

Last month Aubrey’s day care provider told Brandon that Aubs had played so hard that day she literally fell asleep standing up. Well she just sent me the proof. I guess Aubrey would slowly drift to the floor and wake up enough to stand back up and keep sleeping with her head resting on the ottoman.

My photography obsession is going really well lately. I opened an account with a company who handles all of my online proofing, color correction, printing, shipping and payment processing which takes a ton of the work off of my shoulders and has actually increased my profits by more than 50%. I have also joined a local group of professional photographers that I found through this company. The group meets monthly and shares tips, stories and basically learns from one another to become better in our field. Our last meeting we had a guest speaker from a wholesale frame company based in Alabama called Wild Sorbet. I can’t even begin to describe how inspirational it was to hear how the company started and how realistic it is that these frames will help me sell more of my photographs.

These frames are so darn cute I couldn’t help but order some for myself. I haven’t received them yet but they are going to be a focal point of my redecoration of Aubrey’s room. I have a plan to redo her room for her 2nd birthday and we will be converting her crib to a ‘big girl’ bed. Her crib has bed rails to create a full size bed using the front and back sides of the crib as the headboard and foot-board.

A few months ago I assigned myself a project to take pictures of objects I found that resembled the letters in Aubrey’s name. My end goal was to frame each letter individually and hang them on her wall. These frames were just icing on the cake. Unfortunately they don’t really have an online catalog to show you what the frames look like so you’ll have to wait until I put them up and take a picture. I’m so excited! I don’t know if I will be able to wait until February!

About a week ago I met with a family to take some long overdue family pictures. They hadn’t had portraits done of everyone together in years. I was so happy to be asked to take their pictures. We had a great time at the park. The weather was fantastic and the colors of the trees were amazing. The kiddos were such hams. As soon as I took out my camera they started posing and turning on the charm.

I’m so happy with how their pictures turned out! They were such a fun group and I really look forward to taking more pictures for them in the future. These are just a few. You can see more on my Photography Blog or by going to my Flickr photostream on the right.

My office had a decorating and costume contest for Halloween. Most departments put up some lights, a few rubber spiders and a fake pumpkin or two. My department however…well we come to a competition with all guns blazing. We strung enough cobwebs to make The Crypt Keeper squeamish and filled it with various spiders and other bugs. We had tombstones and a body outline, complete with murder weapon still present on the floor. I even brought in my strobe light that makes thunder sound effects and my fog machine. Oh yes, there was fog. So much fog in fact that it was getting into the air ducts and spreading throughout our 16 story building!

Everyone in my department donned makeup and fake blood to make themselves into zombies. They looked fantastic! I bowed out of the zombification session since I didn’t want to scare Aubrey when I went to pick her up.

At lunch quite a few employees, myself included, brought in their kids dressed up in costume to trick-or-treat from the various cubes. One cube was a little confused about what holiday it was but the incredible amount of work that guy put into it was worthy of winning a decorating contest anyway.

That’s my bloody hand print.

My whiteboard artwork.

That’s my desk back in the corner…all alone. I love it!

Hmm

He even sprayed fake snow on the windows!

Well isn’t that just the cutest pink leopard you’ve ever seen? She’s standing on my desk eating M&M’s.

Our family makes a point of going to the pumpkin patch every year. Choosing a pumpkin from a pile at the store will never equal tromping through soggy fields of pumpkins in search of that perfect canvas for a festively ghoulish carving.

The pumpkin patch we have gone to for the past two years is more of a theme park than a generic pumpkin patch. There are so many things to do in addition to finding a pumpkin that you could easily spend an entire day there. They have slides, train rides, hay rides, a corn maze, tricycles for kids to race, tricycles for adults to race, farm animals to pet, rubber duck races, cutout stands for ridiculous photo ops, snacks and more. In the end you walk away with some fun memories and some very exhausted kids. Unless, that is, you’re a Johnson. In which case you also walk away with a lot less cash and a couple hundred pounds of  pumpkins because both Brandon and his brother have to find the most massive pumpkins they are able to strong arm from the field to the checkout stand. We filled the backs of two SUVs with the spoils of our pumpkin hunting with barely enough room left for Lyla’s stroller.

Luckily, it was an unseasonably gorgeous day. Oh summer, where did you go?

Down the slide with Maya and Gavin close behind.

My goodness how those two have grown since last year…

Aubs liked the ducks.

His stud pose.

Showing off his giant stack of checkers.

It’s never too early to teach your kids to haul their own pumpkin wagon.

Fridays are trash days in my neighborhood, so like I do almost every Friday morning, I was gathering up everything that needed to go to the curb. As I was removing the trash bag from our kitchen trash can I thought to myself, “I need to remember to grab my keys and start my car so it’s warm for Aubrey.”

I should mention here that I have a remote start device on my car which I have had since 2005 when I bought the car. It has always worked great and I haven’t had to get into a hot (in the summer) or cold (in the winter) car in years! So spoiled. All I have to do is press the start button on my key chain twice and the engine fires up.

As I was tying the strings on the trash bag I heard two very familiar, consecutive beeps. I froze, and like a slow motion scene in a horror film right before something really bad happens, I turned my head to look in the direction of the sound. There, hanging on the hook where I always put them, were my car keys.

I walked over to them slightly hesitantly and picked them up. The graphic display on the remote told me that my car had indeed just started…on it’s own.

“No freaking way.” I walked out the front door to witness first hand that my car was sitting in the driveway…engine running.

Despite the adrenaline pumping through me the logical part of my brain said, “I wonder if there is a short in the car and it has been running on and off all night.” That was easy enough to check because two things would be immediately evident. I had gotten gas on my way home last night so I would be able to see if my gas gauge had moved and the car should be warm, right? As I made my way to the car suddenly I had the thought, “What if someone is in the car?”

I have tinted windows and while you can still see into the car, you really only see silhouettes of people. As I strained to see into my car in the dim early morning light, my heart started pounding as if it was trying to fight it’s way out of my chest with each step. I whipped the driver’s side door open to discover an empty, cold car with a full tank of gas.

Of course then my illogical brain decided to join the party with thoughts of, “What if something started your car as a sign that you need to leave for work RIGHT NOW.” I know, someone has seen way to many supernatural/scary movies. But never-the-less, I was especially aware of everything going on around me for the entire drive to work, half expecting, half dreading something happening because I had waited another 20 minutes to leave the house simply because, well frankly I was a bit freaked out about getting into a car that just started itself.

If only my brain worked like Brandon’s. I’m sure his thought process would not have taken him to the possessed automobile conclusion. He probably would have thought his car was a Transformer, which would definitely be a lot cooler.

***UPDATE: My car has not does this since that day…the mystery continues. (11/11/09)