**Apologies to my Facebook friends who have already seen these photos ad-nauseum**

My oldest daughter, Cindy, is an amazing photographer. The word “amazing” is often overused these days, in my opinion, as the go-to adjective to describe anyone or anything with slightly more-than-mediocre or impressive skills, talent, or results. In fact, I heard it in abundance the other night to describe the average Joe bachelor, Jake, on this season’s “The Bachelor” reality TV show… but I digress…

Back to my daughter. She really is a talented photographer. It’s in her genes. Her great-uncle (my uncle – my father, Jim Conant’s oldest brother) was Howell Conant, renowned photographer of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier Grimaldi of Monaco. So, it’s not surprising that she picked up the talent. I have been encouraging her for years to start her own business, but it’s hard when you have little ones at home and no seed money to get started. (Benefactors, anyone? hint, hint…)

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This last Sunday, my younger daughter Stacy, the preggy one, and I packed up a bunch of my fabrics and together with Cindy and her hubby, Cody, (primarily them) we set up making a makeshift studio and played around with lighting and backdrops so she could take Stacy’s pregnancy photos before baby gets here. Cindy caught some lovely photos, even if we didn’t have the best lighting or professional backdrops. We had a BLAST and laughed a LOT. I’ll do a separate shout-out to Cody once Cindy sends me the fun pictures she took of him.

Here are the pregnancy photos she took of Stacy. We’re really happy with how they turned out, and I think this weekend, if the weather holds, we’re going to try some outdoor shots.

This one is our all-time favorite:

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The scar on her belly is from her gastric-bypass surgery she had several years ago.

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I love this one. These are the hands of her two nephews and niece. Left to right, clockwise: Cayden, Elise, Evan.

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Evan’s hands.

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How precious is this? Evan adores his Auntie Stacy.

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And the photos wouldn’t be complete without Stacy’s doggie, Trixie in them. She even had on her finest dress in honor of the occasion.

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Coming up for air

by Claire on February 3, 2010

Phew… there’s been so much going on lately that I’ve been a neglectful blogger. Sometimes I don’t blog because the hugely disparate thoughts that go through my mind are hard to congeal into any sort of substance that might make sense to my peeps. So I stay quiet. That, and I’ve been swamped with work and family. I haven’t done any sewing in a couple weeks, haven’t done any activity in over a week, but I’ve stuck to my Weight Watchers program and have maintained my weight. So that area of my life is stable.

(The picture below is of Laila from last week – how adorable is she with that sweet button nose and chubby cheeks? I can’t wait to meet her in person.)

Laila 3d On the baby front – the major focus in my life lately – my daughter’s pregnancy is progressing quickly. Yesterday, the doctors finally verbalized what I suspected for a long time – that she is at high-risk for having a preterm delivery. She’s at 35 weeks as of yesterday, so we really just hope to have her make it a couple more weeks. Right now, she has too much amniotic fluid. This increases her risk of complications such as placenta abruption (where the placenta pulls away from the uterine wall) and her water breaking early. All along they’ve had subtle questions about her placenta so now I am guessing that they’ve been worried about this from the start. I could be reading more into it than is there, but usually my intuition is pretty accurate. She’s had contractions that have been stronger than your typical Braxton Hicks contractions and has been on modified bed rest (not strict, but take it easy and no excessive walking) for a couple weeks or so now. She goes twice a week now to the fetal medicine doctors for a biophysical profile ultrasound and fetal non-stress test where they check the baby’s breathing, swallowing, heart beat, and her contractions. At this point, if she were to start labor, they’d probably just deliver her. I’m very grateful that my daughter chose the hospital and doctors that she chose because they’ve watched her very closely from the beginning due to the extensive medications she’s on and has had to stay on during her pregnancy.

That means, then, that I’ve been a busy bee. Not only am I taking my daughter to her appointments, but my job is extremely busy right now. My team has a deadline of February 12th, so I’m hoping baby waits until after that to arrive. I have a LOT of work to do until then.

On the sewing front, my daughter wants me to make her some maternity delivery gowns, so we have purchased some pretty 100% cotton fabric for that, and I should be sewing those up this Sunday. I’ll do a separate blog post around all that.

Last Sunday, we went up to my oldest daughter’s house (the amazing photographer, Cindy) and she took Stacy’s pregnancy photos. Separate post coming up about that as well.

And finally, there’s all the normal stuff of taking care of a home and our three little Chihuahuas and two cats. Somewhere in all this, I’m trying to sleep as well. But that’s not happening much and the lack of sleep was evidenced Monday when I fell down the stairs! I slipped off the last three stairs and ended up on the hardwoods on my knees, complete with my doggie Lily in my arms. I laughed at first cuz I’m weird like that, but within a few hours my back had stiffened up considerably, and now a trip to the chiropractor is warranted. At least it was me who slipped, and not my daughter. My oldest fell down those stairs when she was pregnant though but the stairs were carpeted then, so it’s not a carpet vs. hardwood issue.

I’ll leave you now with a sneak peek of the pregnancy photos:

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More in the next blog post!

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I had to do it.

January 23, 2010

Really. I did. Not that I was on any sort of self-imposed restriction or anything like that. But when I saw this in my inbox from Lucy’s Fabrics, I couldn’t resist.
What I love about this is that it’s chocolate brown and pink and has a border print. This fabric is also 58-60” wide, so [...]

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I am a machine…

January 17, 2010

…To quote a friend of mine.
I’ve been burning up the sewing machine trying to get rid of the stacks of projects (aka fabric) in my sewing loft. It’s been driving me nuts. In addition, baby Laila will be here in about 7 weeks and she needs receiving blankets. Lots of them. And burp cloths, [...]

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Sewing Sunday

January 11, 2010

You’d think that after all the work and prep for my daughter’s baby shower, I’d be spending all of Sunday resting and sleeping, and doing absolutely nothing. Well, if you thought that, then you probably don’t know me that well. It’s nearly impossible for me to sit still for very long. I slept [...]

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No Rain for this Shower!

January 10, 2010

We started by posting signs wrapped in plastic wrap (it’s called the low budget version) anticipating rain and wind all day, but the Baby Shower Gods smiled on my daughter and the clouds parted and sun poured forth. We still had some wind, but we’re not complaining.
We had a great turnout. I think [...]

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15 comments The rest of the story →

We are not tidy crafters

January 9, 2010

Thursday night, my youngest (the mommy to be) and I went up to my oldest daughter’s house and we got the party favors ready for the baby shower. What a fun time that was. When my first grandson was born, we spent time at my house making candles. I remember my son-in-law and daughter working [...]

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National Hug Your Scale Month

January 8, 2010

I’m declaring this National Hug Your Scale Month. Who’s in with me? If there isn’t already such a thing, then there should be. So many people are starting – or restarting – their weight loss program this month after a month or six weeks of food binging from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. And for many [...]

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No rest for the weary

January 3, 2010

It’s looking like this year is going to be a very busy year. That’s fine by me, but I’m exhausted already and we’re only on day three.
I started off my year with some sewing – my favorite hobby – next to bicycling and running. I had a choice to go to a New [...]

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Resolutions or Solutions?

January 2, 2010

Anyone who knows me knows I really don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I really think they’re silly for the most part. Being the editor and writer that I am, I also like to play with words. If you think about the word “resolution” it has two parts: re and solution. “Re” implies doing something over [...]

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8 comments The rest of the story →