Ada finally started asking to cut her hair short. I’ve been suggesting it, but she has kept insisting she wanted long hair, so I let it grow. It was getting really long too! The problem? Her long, fine, really soft hair tangles. All the time. Badly. She can wake up or come home from school on a hat day and have a a tangle the size of a softball. Picking out her hair at night can take 15 – 20 minutes. I told her she is perfectly welcome to keep her hair long, but she had to realize that the pain of combing out tangles is something she has to deal with. I know because she inherited my hair and it is something I have to deal with. After my hair gets really long, I have to braid it at night to ward off tangles. And wind. You should see the tangles I have to pick out if I wear it down on a windy day.

Her choice everyday is to wear her hair in a ponytail because she hates it when it gets in her face, or gets wet when drinking water, and I get tired of cleaning food out of it. And her hair, like mine, won’t support barrets or most ponytail holders, They just slide right out, requiring hair fixing through the day, which she doesn’t do. At the end of the day, her hair is a mess.

We brushed it out this morning, and she had only one little tangle on the side. It was awesome. And she promised that she could sit still and be quiet, so we got to Integrite with the grown-ups to get it cut and have pink highlights. She loves the pink. And she really did a great job at the salon.

I didn’t take a photo of the back, but it is a graduated bob. And combing out her hair after she washes it will take a minute.

Ada humored me with a photo session tonight. Since she was patient with me while I curled her hair, she got to pick out more make-up. I typically let her use her sparkle gel and some of my blush for her photos as a bribe to get in front of the camera. Tonight she wanted eye shadow, so I let her have it. Despite what it looks like, the only thing on her lips is grape flavored chapstick from Anthony’s.

My camera has been sitting untouched in my office for a long time. I do have intentions to improve with this hobby, but I just haven’t touched it much. I will set a learning plan once I settle one area of my life. Sometimes I just need to tackle one area at a time.

Ada did some pilates with me the other day. She wanted yoga pants like mine, so we headed to Target after school and got her an outfit. She wanted the “sports bra” top, but there wasn’t one her size, but she was happy to have the pink tank. The tight fitting nature of this outfit shows off how lean she has become.

I’m going to travel back in time here. Part of sensory processing disorder is something called proprioceptive dysfunction. Ada has it in spades. She has poor motor planning, body awareness and control. She is so clumsy and what people would call “ungraceful.” She has had OT since she was 11 months to help teach her to do everything. Her entire first year at her Montessori school was spent in the life lesson section so an OT and para could work on overcoming this for simple things. If you presented Ada with a pitcher of water, a stool and a sink, she could not coordinate herself or figure out what to do to pour the water in the sink. She just couldn’t get her body to work right to first put the pitcher down by the sink, climb on the stool, pick the pitcher up and pour out the water. And she’s really clumsy. It took a long time of walking practice before she could go through our very wide doorway from the kitchen to the living room without bumping into the side of it. It took forever before I trusted her enough to go down stairs by herself because she would fall.

What does all that have to do with this? In all the dance classes she has taken, she is really ungraceful, clumsy, and it took about nine weeks before she was able to do a front roll. You would watch her and conclude that dancing is just not one of her talents. The one thing she is missing as I see her legs rotated the wrong way, and her knees bent inwards instead of facing up and her lack of being able to really leap is that she isn’t being corrected. She’s taking these through Parks & Rec, and while they are all taught by dance majors from KU, she just doesn’t have any 1-on-1 attention to get these issues corrected.

I’m not trying to pressure-cook her into a dancer. She loves doing it, so I’m provider her a way to do it. And right now, her clumsiness and lack of general body coordination is fine. She isn’t the only one. However, if she wants to keep doing it, that will change.

I unfortunately cannot afford to pay for private lessons and an OT, which is probably what she needs. That’s why I decided to start doing some simple pilates and stretching at home with her. I’m hoping that if we do it enough, where I can be here to help her position her body and devote 1-on-1 attention, it will help her at dance. She was excited to do it with me. I think I’ll surprise her with her own mat too. I’m not really concerned with flexibility or muscles at the moment. I’m just concerned on helping her figure out her body so she can do a saddle stretch or sit in an easy pose or even lotus.

The headband she’s wearing was a $1 find at the sidewalk sale today. She said she’s wearing it to school tomorrow as well.

Sunset at Clinton Lake. Ada and I drove out just to see where the sun hit. We took one photo from the side of the road. I have lens flare, even with a hood.

Nothing particularly interesting with the photo, other than sunset colors are pretty. It was just a spec drive to see what I had to work with for some actual interesting photos.

About now is when I wish I had my two next lenses in my collection–darn expensive things.

Going to bed before 8:00pm has the advantage of waking up at 4:00am and getting to drive in the convertible to the lake for the sunrise and partial lunar eclipse. I made a mental note and put aside my tripod for the trip and then ended up at the lake without my tripod. Figures. The interesting parts of the trip besides the moon were the constant fogging up of my lens due to the humidity and the tons of mosquitoes swarming my face. Tons. And perhaps the possums darting across the trail path.

I also wish that I had run to Kansas City on Friday when Overland Photo posted that they just got a EF 200mm f/2.8L II in. Ah well.

Ada came into my studio wearing a viking hat and trying to act the part. This shot makes her look almost grumpy, but she was playing angry. She had a couple of better facial expressions, but the composition was terrible or so was the backdrop. We stopped about halfway so I could adjust it. I need a portable steamer and two more super clips. The seamless paper I have is a little too narrow for portrait shots of my often moving children.

I have one lighting issue with this one, and a few processing issues. Considering I’m only using Lightroom, not too bad. Perhaps I will shell out money for Photoshop CS5 some day.

I finally bought some Honl gels. This is my first shot with the pink gel. What I really need is to spend time making a DIY reflector holder. No way that I’ve tried has done a good enough job holing my 5-in-1. Then I can actually get her eyes lit correctly.

I had to pull her pretty far away from the backdrop and shot wide open. Otherwise, you could see every wrinkle and draping of my muslin backdrop. It’s great to have for these types of shots. For others I want to do, I’m going to have to switch to seamless paper.

I’m leary about using it for a hair light. I want to avoid the Glamour Shot look.