ever since jayci’s baby shoot i feel like all of the sudden babies are a bigger part of our lives. i’ve talked to more new moms and pregnant gals lately than ever before. this does not mean i am getting baby fever. so matt, i know you’re reading this, you can take a breath now. it’s still a scary thought for someone like me who cannot make dinner without something boiling over or go a day without hot chocolate, tiny dill pickles and some kind of cheese.
like many couples, matt and i talked about little ones before we were married. we agreed on a number and a timeline and that was the only serious conversation we had about it. subsequent conversations have involved: how crazy a child would look with matt’s eyes, my cheeks, matt’s torso and my legs; how, as an infant, little altmix will sport some kind of a diagonal fauxhawk and finally how we will trick him into liking good food at a young age. when i say we won’t have kids for a while it’s because we shouldn’t- at least until we find better reasons and stop betting on whose nose he’ll get.
ahhh, it’s fall. i am always uplifted at this time of year- the smells, the colors, the temperature- everything is beautiful…
yesterday i decided that it was fall enough to make granola. i only make it during cooler months and it is everything i love about fall all at once- so i was excited. matt even offered to clean the oven for me while i mixed the batter- what a perfect huz. as i dumped double amounts of every ingredient into my mixing bowl, matt took out his drill to remove every piece of the oven for cleaning. if you got uneasy at the mention of the drill you’re in the majority.
when half of the oven was back in place we decided to try the gas. it seemed to light just fine except for the roaring forest fire noise it was making. i started freaking out and stood there with my hand on the fire extinguisher’s safety tab and the sprayer- ready at a moment’s notice. matt laughed at my paranoia and ridiculousness but ‘a woman’s intuition’ was my response. good one, i know. what i’m sure are my sprouting motherly instincts set in- ‘oven, we are just trying to clean you- why are you making such a scary noise and fighting our attempt to do what’s best for you!?’ it should be a while before we have kids. i digress. anyway, matt assured me the noise was because we didn’t have all of the other pieces in and so we decided to flip the oven off and get it all together before trying it again.
at this point i wasn’t allowing either of us to stand directly in front of the oven, another great mom instinct, clearly it was going to explode. matt dodged in from the side and flipped off the gas but the flame burned on. uh oh. matt crouched down to look closer = i freaked out and made him use the extinguisher. he blasted it with a few short puffs of pressurized baking soda and immediately it looked like it was snowing in our apartment. we opened all of the windows and all of the vents and held tee shirts to our faces while we frantically tried to close our laptops and cover all food before the snow settled. we spent the rest of the day cleaning and calling our landlord since even the oven clock had stopped working. all that to say we headed over to a friend’s house to cook the granola, which i promptly overcooked. no big deal- you can’t really tell after you add the vanilla yogurt and honey so we’re eating it anyway. on the bright side, we now have a really clean apartment to enjoy and the oven guy is coming tomorrow to make our oven even better than it was before. peach crisp, pumpkin bread and apple pie- here we come!
i met becca in college. she was a few years older than me and awesome which meant i immediately wanted to be like her. we were friends. i remember her encouraging me during a rough stage of my life and how she led by example- overcoming when life threw a bit of discouragement her way. i remember spring break my freshman year when her fiancé adam sent her flowers to our beach house in florida- i knew i wanted to one day be in a relationship like that. when becca and adam were married it was an awesome day and it made me realize how unique and personal (and stylish!) weddings could be. when becca told me she and adam were having a baby we immediately made plans for a little photo shoot. having never photographed a little one before i was totally nervous for, oh, nine months. baby photography takes a special someone and i dove in blind, shocker. moving on. the one and only baby jayci was born september 17, 2008 and i had the great pleasure of meeting her just twelve days later for a couple of pictures. even though this was more of a personal shoot i wanted to share a couple with you- meet the lovely stanley clan!
