And here’s a few more shots of mine that didn’t have comparable photos by the realtor.

All in all, I think it was a good learning experience for me. It’s not difficult to take better photos than a real estate agent, but I certainly could use more practice. You could focus on staging a house to the nth degree, but that’s not always an option, especially when people are still living in it. I think taking the shots in the evening or at dusk would be fun, although would likely require more light. I didn’t use my flash at all for these shots, although with more time I could have to balance the blinding ambient sunlight in many of the shots. Fun time for me, good practice, and I hope the new photos help the house get sold a little faster!

This one took a bit of photoshopping, as I really didn’t want to lose the sky while brightening the foreground.

This was right across the street…

And, one of Amanda…

Now I feel the only words that come out of my mouth are – “No! Don’t do that! Put that DOWN! STOP doing that! Listen to me child!” and the like. I feel like the bad Mama. But lately all Ariella seems to do is get into trouble. Exploring, necessary, trouble. She is starting to tell ME what to do.

Yesterday as I made dinner I hear her telling me, “Wipe it up, Mama! Wipe it UP, Mama!” Then I realized that I was suddenly smelling chocolate. She had grabbed my can of baking cocoa and opened it. All over my kitchen floor. We have a berber CARPET in our kitchen. Then she was stepping in it and leaving little, cute, brown footprints all over everything.

Lesson learned from this? 1. Don’t leave the pantry door open. 2. Baking cocoa does NOT come out of berber carpet. There are STILL cute, little, brown footprints all over my kitchen.  3. Baking cocoa will clog up your vacuum filter. *Sigh* I love my daughter so much, and I need to do more gentle teaching with her. I feel like I am super frustrated at every turn. And this is only with ONE!!!!!

Heaven help me. The terrible two’s are upon me and I feel like I have no “tricks” up my sleeve! Is there a seminar, or class I can go to on how to survive this? And honestly, at the same time, I am loving every minute of it! Is that normal?

This is is one of my favorites.

Well, with no support of the idea, and the thought of all that work ahead of me with our first newborn, I gave up and bought disposables for the first nine months. But every time I threw one away, all I could think of was how it was going to sit in a landfill for such a long time that MY disposable diapers from WAY back when are STILL out there somewhere trying to break down.

So I asked a few friends who used them about how easy they were to use, did they leak a lot, did they smell, were they good for baby’s skin, and of course how much work were they. All the ladies I spoke with were gushing about them so much, it got me excited again! But I was also confused about so much, I had no idea where to begin! It seemed like there were so many steps into actually diapering my baby – fold this like this, put this under here and fold this way, then use these things to attach it here, then get the cover and put it over here… – I was lost in all the directions and steps it almost made me give up again!

But thankfully I found the #clothdiapers chat on Twitter one Monday evening, where everyone was talking about the diapers they used, how easy they were and how much they loved them! I got talking with a wonderful woman named Marissa from Growing Green Bums, and she saved me! She sent me links and e-mails, offered to show me on-line how to fold and use the dipes on the baby, and was so encouraging for me to try them out!

With her guidance I chose to go with a bit of an easier version of the cloth diaper, the Bum Genius 3.0′s. The pocket system has been wonderful, and after a full year’s worth of use the only thing I have had to do to them is take out some of the laundry tabs in the back that were scratching my daughter’s back. These diapers are so wonderful, I can not say enough about them!!

Now that we are expecting our second child, I am so excited this one will be a cloth diaper baby from day one. I am hoping that potty training Ariella will come soon, I’ve been so sick so far with #2 that I’ve let it really go by the wayside (bad Mama!). This way I all ready have a good stash for “Poppyseed”, because Ariella should only be wearing them at night. I would like to suppliment our stash somewhat, but now I’m not sure what to get! I wouldn’t mind saving a bit of money and trying some prefolds, but does that make sense when I am used to the ease of the pockets? And then comes what brand to try? There are so many out there it can be confusing trying to figure out what you’d like!

All in all, I am a VERY happy cloth Mama! I have become an advocate within my circle of friends and am a proud cloth diaper user! Happy Anniversary to us!!

This is the back. I like how they even try to hide the elements under construction with style.

There’s a surprising amount of color in the stonework, although it doesn’t show up in many photos.

There is detail to be seen everywhere.

And the coolest part of the Duomo, which I didn’t know on my first trip to Milan, is that you can go up on the roof – which is possibly even more impressive than inside.

Lots more to come…

I am currently at eight weeks along and feeling sick as a dog again. Wish I could say differently, but it’s just not the case! So far, both our Birthdays have been dialed down to bare minimum, and housework and potty training have been neglected more than ever. It has now been four weeks of feeling nauseous and I am beginning to lose my mind.

However, I am very lucky in the fact that I have the most wonderful Husband on the planet. He has truly taken over most of my duties when I am too ill to do them myself. This would be – dinner, dishes, some laundry, many baby duties, and gently rubbing my back to help me go to sleep as well. All this after working a full day, driving 40 minutes each way and having his own work to accomplish at home. Which he has also been getting done. I cannot say enough about this man I Married and how much I appreciate his caring for us during this first trimester!

I keep telling myself that there are only four more weeks to go until the second trimester. But do you know how long off that seems right now? Keeping myself focused is becoming more and more difficult with feeling worse each day, but Ariella is helping with that. We have been watching far too much TV for my liking lately also. It is usually HGTV or Food Network when it’s not Sesame Street, but still I HATE doing that. She’ll tell me, “Turn it off, Mama!” when she gets bored with my shows though, so I guess that is a good thing! She would rather be outside. Thank GOD for that!

So I guess to sum up I should say, here’s to the next four weeks – may it go by quickly, and without too much fuss. I am ready to be excited for this new baby’s arrival finally!!

This light display features the coat of arms of Milan in its center.

So, to finish off my photos from Madrid, here are five from the very interesting Madrid-Barajas Airport.

Couldn’t decide if I liked the black & white shot, or the saturated color shot best – so here are both.

I’m not usually a Sepia fan, but it really saved an otherwise noisy low-light photo.

Psst…. I also made a little tweak to the site’s CSS so that anytime I center an image it automatically adds a 20px black frame around it. Nice, huh?