thinking about weaning

mats turns one (1!) in less than three weeks ... i truly cannot believe how this year has flown by! there are so many changes that come with having a one-year old toddler rather than an "infant".

• we bought a bike seat for the little man for his birthday - the yepp mini front bike seat at rei, paid for in part with the rei giftcard that i won from the frugal girl's giveaway last year!
• we're looking at convertible car seats since mats is reaching the height limit on his infant seat (bummer, since that one will stay in the car, meaning that when he falls asleep in it, he has to wake up when we get home.)
• since he can walk, he gets to actually play at playgrounds
• we have to find real soled shoes to put him to protect his feet walking around in public since the little leather booties he's currently in won't do much for him if he steps on something sharp
• i get to start thinking about weaning

(if you're a boy and don't want to think about nursing, go ahead and stop reading now.)

i was admittedly pretty excited about the weaning idea a few months ago, particularly just before christmas when he was teething awfully and biting up a storm. then, i was practically counting down the days. but now? i'm a bit more reticent. his nursing time is such a sweet time for us - he knows just what to do, he lets me snuggle him, i get to feel all warm and fuzzy and motherly and have set aside time to pray for him and his future, and it's a nice little break from the day. in the evenings when we're doing his bedtime routine, i'll sit in the glider in his room and read a bible story while he plays on the floor with scott, and when he's ready to have his milk and go to bed, he'll walk over to me at the chair, lift his arms to be picked up, then immediately lay down in my arms while smacking his lips and opening his mouth like a little baby bird! pretty precious.

on the one hand, i'm eager to be past this stage so that we have more freedom during the day to not have to hide out somewhere to nurse, but on the other hand, i feel like it's one of the few baby-ish things my kid does anymore. i'm not in a rush to move us past this. (although i say this and in the same thought also really hope that we're done by this summer sometime so that we can go hiking and camping and biking without a nursing cover. and so that scott and i can get a night away.)

allegedly, pediatricians ask at the twelve month appointment about your plan for weaning and i'm really not sure what i'm going to say. do i have a plan? i plan to start offering him milk in a sippy cup once he hits a year and it's "allowed" ... but i don't really plan to push the end of this. maybe my plan is to let it end naturally, as he transitions himself to milk more and me less? i guess i assume that'll happen in a timely fashion on its own. if it doesn't, then i'll start my planning.

fun with photoshop

i realized recently that because of scott's student status, we can get education-related discounts of software ... specificially adobe cs5.5 design standard, home of indesign, illustrator, acrobat pro, and photoshop.  i acquired that little bundle for myself for $229 (around $1300 without the student discount) as an early birthday present and have been having a delightful time with it.  i'm working on a project in indesign (more on that at a later date), am utterly confused by illustrator ... but photoshop.  oh, photoshop.

my first stop was to download the pioneer woman's action sets (here for the photoshop cs versions, or here if you're an elements user like my dad), look through some of her action set tutorial posts, and start playing.  for some of the actions, you just press a button and it's done, for others you get to play with settings.  i have yet to do anything other than using actions in photoshop yet, but it's an easy first step in learning how the program works since it can be super intimidating opening up photoshop for the first time.

one of my favorite pictures thus far, entitled "swinging in sunshine":
before:

and after:

i'm kind of captivated by it!  i'm sadly not sure what all steps i took - i saved it in jpg format (which deletes layer information, ie the things that tell you what you did to the picture) rather than photoshop's format (psd) so that i could post it on facebook.  clearly next time i need to save it in psd AND jpg just for good measure.  i think i used pioneer woman's boost, seventies, bring on the eyes, and sunshine ... maybe more, maybe less.