I love my rock star!

Neely is a great guy.  I mean, seriously.  I love him.  Don't get me wrong, he certainly has his faults and it would probably take me too long to list them here, but all in all, he's really good to me and he loves me and his boys.  But do you really know what I love about him?  He's so hot when he's on stage!  I love watching him on stage and I especially love taking pictures of him.  I may not like him practicing at home all night, but I like how well he plays because he practices ALL.THE.TIME.

Neely recently became lead guitar in the band CARBONSTONE.  He's recorded these guys before and has had them play at shows he's produced, but now he's in the band.  They had a show this past Friday at Bourbon Street in Baltimore (it's the old new Hammerjacks location).  CARBONSTONE filled the house.  There were more people there to see them, then the headliners, Pshycostick.

Anyway, I had a few too many drinks that night, but I still managed to capture some great shots.

My rocker, Neely.

lead singer & guitar, Corey.

Josh on bass guitar.

Galen on drums.

Gosh, I love him.

I want a baby.

There.  I said it.  Out loud too.

I can't explain this desire, but I can tell you that it's beginning to become an obsession.  I want one more, one last baby.  Neely says no way, no how.  My kids, except Daniel, say no way as if their opinion really mattered anyway.  Daniel does, in fact, say he wants a little sister, but I imagine that most of that is because he got to cuddle and play with Nicole's Bailey when they visited us for Thanksgiving.  I think if I asked him if he wanted a new train he'd forget all about a baby sister.  He did tell me that I should go to the baby store, though.  :D

I'm not gonna lie, having a baby right now is probably not the best idea I've ever had.  Financially we're in a shaky place.  Neely hasn't worked a full work week in probably a month.  There is some work for him, but not enough to keep him bringing home a full pay check.  Additionally, Will & Clayton have only lived here since July.  Coming up on 5 months, but still, I think adding a new family member to the household might make their adjustment here harder.  And I don't want to do that.

But I want a baby.  My friend thinks I'm crazy.  I'm 37 years old.  I'd be 38 by the time any baby would be born.  Advanced Maternal Age.  I hate that.  But because of that I would be classified as high risk and they would want me to do all sorts of tests.  And there is a significant risk.  Still, I want a baby.

I don't think any one can understand this desire unless you have ovaries.  My mom is convinced that a woman always has the desire to have babies until she can't any more.  I'm not so sure of that, but at least she gets it.  My JustMommies friends do, too.  Neely, however, does not.  And his opinion is a big factor in this, unfortunately.  I'm really trying to accept his opinion and just move on, but it's hard.  Oh so hard.  I want a baby.

All I want for Christmas

is a Canon 50D.  I know what you're thinking.  You're probably saying to yourself, "but you have a nice camera" or "your camera is only two years old" or "why do you need two cameras?"

Well, first of all, just take a look at this baby:

Not only is it beautiful, but it has several advantages over my XTi.  One of which is that it's 15.0 megapixels as opposed to the 10 mp of the XTi.  Additionally, the highest ISO setting on my XTi is 1600 and when you shoot at 1600 on the XTi you get horribly grainy pictures.  The 50D handles higher ISOs much better.  In fact, the highest ISO setting on the 50D is 3200, and is expandable to 6400.  You're probably scratching your head and wondering what all that means (well some of you are, I'm sure).  I'll explain it a bit.  ISO in the old days with film cameras was the speed of the film.  The quicker the film speed the more sensitive the film is to light, thus making shooting in lower light situations easier and using a flash unnecessary.  So if you wanted to shoot in a low light situation with a film camera, you would buy the fastest film available.  In the digital camera, the higher the ISO the more sensitive the sensor is to light.   But higher ISOs also make the image grainy in most entry level DSLR cameras and the XTi is especially bad at 1600 ISO.  Don't get me wrong, I would totally recommend the XTi (or the newer version, which I think is the T1i) to anyone starting out with a DSLR.  And I don't regret the decision to purchase mine at all.  At the same time, I know that I will not be able to market myself and do the kind of photography that I want to do without investing in a better, more professional camera.

So, as you can clearly see, I need the Canon 50D.  I probably won't get it for Christmas, though.  However, come tax time and that baby is mine!

More allergy testing

Daniel had a follow-up appointment today with the Allergist.  It did not go the way he had hoped.  I told him yesterday that he would be going to the doctor's today and he kept saying "but I'm not getting shots, right mom?"  I was very honest with him and told him that I wasn't sure if he was or not.  When the Allergist took a look at his skin and saw that his eczema had really not improved, he decided that more testing was in order.  Daniel was immediately hysterical about that.  Last time he had 17 skin pricks and today he had 21.  He was inconsolable for nearly the whole 20 minutes that he had to wait for the test to be read.  He even didn't want to play with the Thomas the Tank Engine train table that was in the room, and if you know Daniel, you know how much he loves his Thomas.

Todays results really upset me.  Daniel reacted to oats, timothy grass and a mold (can't remember the name). This means that his diet is even more restricted than it was already.  Additionally, we have to go back in January for an appointment with the doctor (the Allergist we've been seeing is a Nurse Practitioner), who may want more testing or blood work.  We just don't know.  In the meantime, Daniel is on Singulair.  I have to fight with the insurance company to get them to pay for it.  Thankfully the Allergist gave us an 8 week supply of samples while we do that.  Being allergic to the timothy grass is concerning because that's an outdoor allergen and it's also used as feed on most of the farms in our area.  Daniel may end up needing bi-monthly allergy shots, which we had been hoping to avoid.  The only encouraging thing that we learned today was that most kids will grow out of this by age 5 or 6.  Daniel is 4, so we should only have a few more years left of this.  I don't know though.  I'm 37 and I still haven't grown out of my eczema.  *shrugs*  It's all very frustrating.  Daniel is in a really bad place right now with his skin.  He's pretty much covered from head to toe with it.  Probably the most coverage he's ever had of it.

In other news, we only have about 10 more days to wait till we can move forward in our efforts to obtain full custody of Will & Clayton.  We've been waiting for certain deadlines to lapse and we're coming up on those. Hopefully by early next year, we'll have it all resolved and won't be in a state of uncertainty like we are now.