Category Archives: Challenges

Playing

This week’s I ♥ Faces challenge is all about play – not something we are short on in our house. I didn’t fully appreciate how powerful the concept of play is to a child until I gave birth to my own. Thomas can actually get very upset when he doesn’t feel as though he has a chance to play – although admittedly his distress is strongest when this realization happens to coincide with bedtime.

This week’s photo was taken on our recent group family trip to Netarts on the Oregon Coast. It’s always wonderful (and a little frightening) to watch the boys interact with other children their own age – especially children that they don’t see on a regular basis. It’s fascinating to see the different personalities shine through as you observe them playing together (or alone, as Thomas likes to do on occasion), watching them resolve conflicts (sometimes with parental involvement) and just generally enjoy each others company in a completely neutral location, rather than at someone’s house.

I was reviewing photos of our trip when we returned home and, when Samuel saw this one he was horrified and exclaimed “Oh No!”. How dare that other child touch his face! I adore the colours in this photo and the way Samuel is looking directly at the camera as if to say, calmly, “Mum, why is he doing this to me?”

Yellow

Of COURSE I had a photo for this week’s I ♥ Faces challenge. The theme is “Yellow” and anyone who knows my son is aware of his obsession with the colour – one which has faded over the past year as his obsession with Star Wars has taken over. I am thankful that the days of him declaring “I like yellow! No one else can like yellow!” are over, most importantly for the fact that his little brother is free to wear yellow hand-me-downs without vilification.

I often wonder whether my child is more obsessed with things than others. He seems to cling to a particular object or theme and not let go for many months. But then we also have Samuel who’s hat obsession is equal to that of his brother at the same age. So either it’s completely normal for children in their first years to experience this type of behavior or it’s an Ishida family quirk.

Recently Thomas has also declared his love for the color red so it now equals yellow in favorite color status. There is one exception, however. Red and yellow in the form of traffic lights are NOT ok. That has become the latest chant from the backseat on the drive home from school and, frankly, I can’t say that I blame him for that.

A Quick Interlude

Before I continue with my “Flight From Hell” rant, I present this small moment of peace from our trip (spoiler alert: we did finally make it there) and my entry for this week’s I ♥ Faces collage challenge. One of the key things I learned from this trip is that I should ALWAYS make time to stop at a store and buy chalk. This activity kept the boys  occupied for hours and my parents were able to enjoy a constantly changing piece of artwork on their concrete driveway for our entire stay, dominated by Star Wars scenes/characters and a full airport blueprint. It seems my children are now more familiar with airports than ever.

Part 2 of the “Flight From Hell” coming tomorrow.

Looking For The Angle

This week’s I ♥ Faces photo blog challenge is angles – a subject close to my heart. When I decided to start my own photography business last year, I realized that my biggest challenge would be to come up with new and interesting to help share a family’s story through photographs. Thankfully my photo subjects usually help me in that area by all being so wonderfully different, but I am always looking for ways to stretch myself.

So when I went back through some of my sessions from last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of shots and angles. My favourite angle is to get down at the eye level of the children that I photograph, but I was looking for something a little different. This one jumped out at me because my goal was to capture the name of a favourite location with my subjects in an interesting way. I really hope they can look back on this photo in many years and it will remind them of the time they spent at this restaurant, rather than just the day we spent together taking a few photos.

Bundled

The I Heart Faces challenge for this week is “bundled”. Of course I immediately thought of my little Michelin baby back in December when we experienced our brief, but impressive, winter snowstorm.

Of course it’s easy to look at these photos while we are experiencing 65 degree temperatures and the leaves are beginning to appear on the trees.

Coming soon: Select photos from a fabulous weekend with the girls (“select” to protect the innocent) and catching up on P365 – I have a whole week of pics to share.

Off to find some time to edit pics.

Monday Mosaic: A Splash of Colour

For the past few days I have been contributing my own splash of colour to a Flickr pool started by Maine Momma. If you haven’t checked out her blog then you should definitely do yourself a favour and take a look. Her photographs are simply stunning and a great source of inspiration.

The Flickr pool is highlighting a different colour each day and today’s mosaic shares some of the photos that I have contributed to the pool. Go here to see some more dazzling colour – and great photography.

Jump!

The new challenge for I Heart Faces is jump for joy. I will probably be disqualified because this is technically more than one image, but I just couldn’t resist. This was the first image that immediately came to mind and she is clearly jumping for joy in that puddle.

Note: adorable child on loan from a neighbor. There is no way you would see that much pink on one of my boys.

It’s a Monday Mosaic Flashback

I was cleaning out some files on my hard drive and came across these little treasures that I scanned a while ago. The scanner was not very good, but the images are clear enough that you can admire the fabulous Carol Brady hairdo on my Mum and porn star mustache on my Dad. I’m also pretty sure this is the last photo of my Dad with brown hair. I sent him grey shortly after.

It’s also strange how items like the wicker chair and brown floral tablecloth, and even the antiquated bouncer chair are burned so clearly in my memory. Crazy to think that these photos are nearly 35 (gasp!) years old.

Warm Hands

It seems silly that I chose a mittened hand photo for this week’s entry for the I ♥ Faces photo blog challenge. We are enjoying an early Spring in Portland so mittens are the furthest thing from Thomas’ mind. As soon as he sees the sun he tells me it is warm outside and insists on wearing his Wiggles tank top, despite the fact that it’s still only around 50 degrees.

Still, although I am not a huge fan of Winter (we really don’t get along), I find four-year-old mittened hands holding cups of Hot Chocolate to be adorably warm and cozy.

Kith!

I was having a very difficult time thinking of a photo to use for this week’s  i heart faces entry. You see the theme is Kiss. It’s not that there any shortage of kisses in our house, it’s just that I have been waiting for a moment to capture it on film.

Samuel LOVES to give kisses. Big, wet, sloppy kisses. And he gives them freely to pretty much anyone who asks which begs the question, exactly when do you start teaching your children about personal boundaries? 🙂

I’ll take them whenever I can get them, though, which is probably why I haven’t yet been able to capture it on film. I’m too busy enjoying this fleeting moment in my baby’s life.

So for the purposes of this challenge I’ll share one of my very favourite photos – one that I have in a frame on our mantle if only to remind me that my children do truly love each other even when the screaming and yelling sometimes suggests the opposite is true.

So from Samuel to you on this upcoming Valentine’s Day, a very big “‘UG! and “Kith!”