like a drug

Yesterday Zach mentioned that he was thinking of going over to Cyrus's for an hour or 2 this afternoon, taking D with him. Their plans to make beer didn't quite come to pass, but I think the boys had fun with some woodworking and just hanging out. And me? I was practically intoxicated by the FREEDOM. Zach does a pretty good job of playing with D on weekends and letting me have some time to do other things, but it's never scheduled or anything. So knowing ahead of time that I was gonna have the house to myself for up to a couple hours was, well, quite exciting. I even made a list last night or things I wanted to use the time for, as I wanted to make sure to use the time as efficiently as possible. This is what it comes to when you're a mom. I'd thought about heading out to Borders to catch up on celeb gossip, but instead I stayed home and read, and played some more with my lightroom trial.

The above photo is the result of such tinkering, and I'm pretty proud of it. It's interesting noticing the way different software programs will use the same tool, but leave slightly different effects. It's also interesting that many times I'll edit a photo in Picasa or GIMP and love it when it's done, but when I look at it again after a day or 2 it feels too "done," the colors won't look right, etc. With my LR edits, maybe I'm being more cautious, but the shots I have loved in the moment I've continued to love afterwards, and the bits of editing regret I do feel are that I think a particular shot could actually use more tuning.

The other thing I've noticed is, I should take more pictures of D asleep. I've avoided it as I worry that the shutter click will wake him. For the photo above he'd just gone down, and he'd been soooo sleeepppyyy that I figured he was pretty conked out and risked it. And he looks so darn sweet when he sleeps, I need to continue to capture those moments as he grows, or at least try to.

Speaking of sleep, I've (temporarily, at least) given up on the floor bed. It worked great for a while, but transitioning him abck after the move I kept putting him down for a nap and finding him standing up at his bookshelf 5 minutes later, and with how he's pulling up on everything-- and often falling over-- I just don't trust him to have that much freedom when I'm not right next to him. So he's sleeping in his pack-n-play for now. I thought about buying a crib, but if my fear is him standing up and then falling against something hard, then it doesn't make sense to put him in something that has wooden slats that I KNOW he's gonna oull up on and then fall onto. I do worry about whether it's good for him to sleep on a pack-n-play mattress long-term, but the mesh sides are a big plus during his current stage of mobility.