Back on the wagon

I'm so hesitant to take pictures now! I'm still in shock about the hard drive and clinging to 2 small hopes. 1st, Jonathan is going to try and recover some of the pictures off of the cards from the cameras. We'll see what happens. 2nd, I have a friend if Portland who has a guy who might be able to do something with it. We've had 3 professionals tell us that it is toast and there is no way we can get anything off of it, but I haven't quite given up yet.

So, I was debating about taking Jack to see Santa this year. Mostly because I didn't want to pay the $20 to do it. However my mom went on vacation and left me her credit card! It's fun spending someone elses money.

Last week we were at the mall and we rode the train. Lakeline Mall now has a little train that goes around. It's crazy expensive, $5 a person, but Jack LOVED it. He was running after it saying "choo choo tain". At one point he ran through the area where Santa was and no one was there visiting Santa so Jack stopped to tell Santa about the train. It was very cute and after that little encounter I figured he would do pretty well with him. Which of course he did.

One of the things we've been doing is getting Jack to drop a nap. It's been rough. He still wants the other nap. Either that or he goes to bed at night and sleeps for 2 hours and then wakes up wanting to play because he thinks that he just took his 2nd nap. So then he's up until midnight. I'm hoping we all survive this transition. He does fine with 2 naps, but then he sleeps for 4 hours during the day and wakes up early and we can't do anything socially. If he only takes 1 nap we can go to story time at the library, or swimming at the gym, or meet up with our playgroup. It needs to happen, but it's tough on all of us.

So in the mornings we need something to do. We have to get out of the house around 10 or he's laying on the floor with his blanket sucking his thumb. It's pathetic. Today was a trip to the mall to see Santa and it went well. We were the first ones there so we didn't have to wait and Jack had quite a bit to say to him. I have no idea what he was telling him, but he sure did chat a lot. Santa was very entertained. And he was a good Santa too. He had a real beard and let Jack tug on it. He was very friendly and just like what you think Santa should be.

Anyways, here are the pictures I took with my camera.


The one that I bought was goofy. He has one eye almost closed and he's sitting funny. But I'm not sure which of the 3 is the best. They are all a bit goofy.


He didn't sit still for long. Really it was about 2 seconds. This kid is a busy boy and is on the move. Constantly. All. The. Time.


This would have been cute had he actually been looking anywhere near the camera.


This was just cute. It was taken in the play area after our visit with Santa.

A good reason to have a blog

So Wednesday I went out to dinner with a friend. We had a great time but I got home late. I went to check my email before I went to bed and in the middle of it the whole computer just froze. It also sounded funny. I had to force a shut down and when I tried to re-start it, I got nothing.

To make a long story short the hard drive is dead and it is un-recoverable meaning all of my pictures from the last 10 months are gone. I have a few, very few in places like face book, walgreens.com (from having pictures printed) and here on the blog. None of the pictures are full sized, they are all much smaller, but at least I have something.

I'm missing his 1st birthday, baby George, our TS walk, my friend Rita's wedding, the list goes on and on.

I keep telling myself that being home with my baby, spending my days with him and him having his mama to care for him is much MUCH more important than having stuff. In this case the stuff being a large back-up hard drive to avoid things like this happening. Because those hard drives are about $300 and we have medical bills out the wazoo, and a crazy diet that is super expensive, and a child that is growing very quickly. I could work and we could have the money to buy things like a big hard drive, but then I would have pictures that someone else took and I would miss the experience of my baby. At the same time, I can't pretend that I'm not upset by it. I love taking pictures and this blows.

My daddy has already told me that he is getting us a time machine (back up hard drive from Apple) for Christmas so hopefully we'll avoid this in the future.