Pictures, Followed By A Healthy Dose of Whinging

We were supposed to go Saturday morning to do Christmas pictures, but Friday night Eli had a fever followed by some nasty intestinal nonsense (these illnesses are the only time i hate cloth diapers). The photo appointment got cancelled for the second time and I still needed pictures for Christmas cards; last years cards got sent out without pictures and that WAS NOT HAPPENING THIS YEAR. So, Sunday afternoon we had a photo shoot. I bought at a backdrop and prop at the dollar store by my house. Then I tried to get Eli to hold still and let me take his photo. That was harder.

This face was solicited by Jason telling him to hold still. Adorable but sad.

This was my dollar store prop, a tissue paper tree from 1987! So awesome! And so completely destroyed now that Elijah got his hands on it. I may go over and see if there's another one and pack it away for safekeeping. It could be worth a lot of money some day...

I took over 135 photos, if you're interested you can see a bunch of them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/emilycleone/ChristmasPhotoShoot#. Monday morning I narrowed it down to three pictures and ordered cards from CVS.com. If you read this chances are good you're on my list and you'll be getting a card, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Now is the time for people who don't want to listen to me whine or just don't care about my issues to stop reading. Close the page. OK.

My period is almost two weeks late. And as of Sunday morning pregnancy tests are coming back negative. This is bullshit. I'm feeling a lot better about this than I was last week thanks to my baby board friends and Jason happily letting me freak out at home but it's still irking me. How am I supposed to try to conceive when my body can't get it together? Through the magic of the Internet I know tons of other women are going through the same thing I am and engaging in the same crazy behaviors. Said behaviors include: obsessively peeing on tiny sticks, pulling said tiny sticks out of the trash hours later to make sure they're still negative and becoming all to familiar with the phenomena of evaporation lines http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3093/2732979251_5a2b92d359.jpg?v=0. That's what happened to me on Friday, I was sure that the very very very faint line on my test was a positive. But no it's just a stupid test defect. The tests shouldn't do that, it's mean. It taunts ladies whose hormones are very clearly already out of whack and it makes me want to write pithy emails to people. When I think of the money I've spent on pregnancy tests I'm a lot ashamed. I'll actually save money by getting pregnant. Well kind of... Anyway I'll be happier and that should count for something.