A few of the deployment milestones we’ve reached since August:

1. The day of.
2. When you wake up the morning after and realize this is just the FIRST DAY.
3. The moment you get caught up on laundry and put away your spouse’s last item of clothing.
4. What feels like the first major crisis.
5. The first time some service person says “Well, talk it over with your husband…” and you say “Well, actually he’s deployed so I’ll probably just decide on my own because I haven’t heard from him and I’m not exactly sure when I will and things are complicated so…”
6. A holiday.
7. The first REAL major crisis.
8. When you finally get an email.
9. The first time some service person says “Well, talk it over with your husband…” and you say “No, it’s just me”.
10. The first trip to urgent care.
11. That moment when you make a big financial decision you wouldn’t usually dream of making alone.
12. First major crying breakdown.
13. The first OMG WHAT am I even going to do major crisis.
14. When some service person says “Well, talk it over with your husband…” and you just say “OK” because it’s easier.
15.  Doing something you hate and usually your spouse would do but that’s not an option.
16.  Using your power of attorney.
17. Losing 10 lbs because being on a diet is easier alone.
18. Completely throwing your diet out the window because being alone is horrible.
19. When you wake up one morning and realize this is totally normal now.
20. HALFWAY.

We’re not at that last one yet, but it’s getting closer every day.

This is just the past week.

1. Taken off all his clothes and his diaper and peed on his brother’s bed.
2. Taken off all his clothes and his diaper and pooped in the play tent.
3. Taken off all his clothes and his diaper and rolled around on his sister’s bed naked for an indeterminate amount of time before I found him and he denied peeing anywhere but I am suspicious.
4. Pooped in the bathtub.
5. Intentionally poured his sippy cup of milk all over the iPad.
6. Drew on himself with blue marker.
7. Drew on himself with pink marker.
8. Drew on the dining room walls with pink marker.
9. Drew on the bedroom walls with pencil.
10. Dumped a bag of chips on the dining room floor.
11. Dropped a towel in the sink and then left the water running.
12. Rubbed lotion all over the bathroom.
13. Blew bubbles in his chocolate milk until it spilled everywhere.
14. Jammed orange peels into part of Finnegan’s exersaucer I can’t get them out of.
15. Refused to stay in his bed at night.
16. Refused to stay in his sister’s bed at night.
17. Refused to stay in his brother’s bed at night.
18. Refused to let anyone in the house sleep because he felt like screaming.
19. Demanded I get him more cereal to eat even though he was currently eating cereal.
20. Cried because I wouldn’t let him watch two tablets at once.
21. Run away at Target.
22. Run away at the grocery store.
23. Run away at Home Depot.
24. Pulled his sister’s hair until she cried.
25. Punched his older brother in the face.
26. Climbed up the dresser and stood in the drawers until they broke.
27. Dumped half a canister of salt on the kitchen floor.
28. Licked the wall mirror.
29. Licked the television set.
30. Licked the baby.
31. Licked a box of cereal at the store.
32. Picked up the cat and carried her around like she was a sack of potatoes.
33. Pull the play tool bench out of the closet and thrown all the pieces all around the room seven different times.
34. Opened several packs of kid card games, ripped up the boxes and spread the cards all over the house.
35. Banged on my laptop until he deleted what I was working on, messed up my desktop, sent random emails and changed all my settings.

1. Stop feeding your brother like he’s a dog!

2. Please stop shouting “Weasel-town! Wesselton! Weasel-town! Wesselton!”

3. Caroline, stop crying about your dinosaurs being dead. They are plastic, they cannot be dead!

4. NO you cannot use the potty in the basement because there IS NO potty in the basement!

5. Neither of you is a horse!

6. Evan, YOU are upside down! Stop telling your sister she is upside down, you’re making her cry!

7. Falling down is GRAVITY’s fault, not your sister’s!

8. No you cannot look in the toilet leave it alone!

9. Don’t eat candy you found under the couch!

10. No, you can’t eat candy you found under the couch EITHER!

Bonus thing I yelled as I was about I hit publish: Guys, I’m serious! I don’t want your boogers on me!

1. They have crazy sleep schedules and are often awake at 3 am.

2. They throw totally epic tantrums over minor things.

3. People are always shoving cameras in their faces and bossing them around.

4. They wear tiny clothes.

5. They can exist all day on a couple of crackers and one slice of cheese.

6. It’s pretty funny when they fall down.

7. They can be best friends with someone after knowing them for 5 minutes, but lose interest almost as fast.

8. Their outfits would be totally ridiculous on a regular person but are fabulous on them.

9. They have no real concept of money, like how much a gallon of milk or a flight to New York City costs.

10. They’ve been know to put stuff up their nose.

1. I am covered – COVERED – in bug bites. I was going to count them for you so you’d understand what “covered” meant, but I got to 7 just on my left ankle and gave up. I need to invest in some long yoga pants and a pair of Hunters so my poor legs don’t get any more torn up as I roll around in fields, hike through woods and lie in long grass to get a shot. I need a sponsorship from Off bug spray, stat. Or at least a huge can of it to keep in my camera bag for me and my clients.

2. Besides bugs, there are other hazards to shooting in scenic locations. Like when you ask a pregnant lady to take two steps forward and she steps on a snake. Luckily no one ended up in labor (instead, her husband showed my kid how to poke it with a stick) and she didn’t run screaming from the field. I’ve also ruined a pair of shoes by walking right into the ocean to get a shot, not to mention the little girl who followed me into a lake and ended up soaked herself. I’m already dreaming of a nice, snake-free climate controlled studio.

Sit right here, in this long, unmowed grass! I’m sure there’s nothing lurking in it!

3. Cutting down the number of photos I offer is SO HARD. My session package comes with 12 digital files the client gets to choose out of 30-40 edited pictures. I set it up that way so I wouldn’t have to spend a million years editing every picture from a session, since I usually take around 300. AND YET. I can’t bring myself to skip anything that’s even halfway good, so my galleries have 75+ pictures. I’m going to have to a) edit faster and b) learn to cut back so I don’t spend 20 hours on every session (which would mean I’m only making $5 an hour before you even add in travel and insurance and equipment). Yikes.

4. Setting up a business is a lot less fun than just taking pictures. There’s the tax stuff, the legal stuff, graphic design for business cards and web and more (huge thanks to my friend Alena for my logo), packaging, labels, price guides, what to wear inspiration, websites…it’s a lot, is what I’m saying. If I wasn’t already pretty good at this blog stuff I might have quit after the first 24 hours. I don’t know how the really amazing photographers can even be so good at both parts – the part of my brain that loves the artistic elements of photography curls up in a corner and cries every time I have to fill out a tax-exempt certificate.

Don’t even tell me if there’s a typo on my business card design. I am the world’s WORST proofreader (I ordered 200 wedding invitations without a time for the ceremony/reception) (not to mention birth announcements with the WRONG DATE) and I can’t handle it right now.

5. I love it. Despite the bug bites and snakes and crossed-eyes from editing and hours spent staring at different flash drive options and paperwork and having to answer the phone when strange numbers call and OMG TALK TO STRANGERS…I’m so, so exited. I’m getting better with every single shoot (practice makes ever-so-slightly-closer-to-perfect) and the experience is priceless. I’m still sort of stunned anyone would pay me in real actual pennies to do something I enjoy so much. AMERICAN DREAM HELL YEAH.

OK, I swear I’ll blog about something else soon. Who wants to hear about how blue-colored Icees turned my children in MONSTERS yesterday?

 Website / Facebook Page for Ginger Snaps Pictures

I thought I didn’t like newborns, but I was wrong. Well, except for the fact that I could barely walk the next day I was so sore from crouching/squatting/kneeling/bending in weird ways to get the shot. I need to get in better shape for this.