Reagan's Photography Business

Reagan is starting her own photography business. Most of the work she does is done while she is getting her diaper changed or hair combed. It is described as abstract and modern with a progressive appeal. Here is some of her more recent work. Details and pricing to come...
(She took every single one of these pictures, most of them while I was trying to take the camera away, hence the unhappy faces). I did include the one she took of me with a double chin, only because it's fun to see the world from her point of view.)

Steve-o

Steve has lived with my parents for 22 or so years, since I was very little. He has Down's Syndrome. Those who know him know his BIG personality. I am very fortunate to have grown up with him in our home. It taught me tolerance and patience at a very young age. I have since had a couple different jobs working with people that have disabilities and the lessons I have learned from Steve have helped me tremendously in these jobs. Steve's spirit is strong and unmistakeable. I get to work with him twice a week, which basically means I get to go hang out with him and talk about wrestling all day (his one true love). However, his other true love happens to be Miss Reagan Penelope herself. He always tells me that if he has a daughter someday he is going to name her Reagan. That's fine by me. He loves her so much, and the feeling is mutual. She gives him the smiles and attention he desires, and he gives her an audience while she makes funny faces and dances. I am so grateful that she is also able to get to know him and benefit from the spirit he brings everywhere he goes. They were being so cute together the other day, I had to snap a few pictures. They played patty-cake and sang Itsy Bitsy Spider. It warmed my heart.

little lady

Amanda did a little photo shoot of Reagan the other day. I am so glad that I have someone to take such cute pictures of my daughter since I have zero skills in the photography department. I am so spoiled having her as a friend! Reagan was being her usual feisty self that day, so she made lots of scrunchy mean faces, but Amanda still somehow managed to get some really cute pictures. She gets more and more beautiful every day! Here are a few of my favorites.

No way

Reagan has quite a vocabulary. I am definitely biased, but I think she is so smart. She is really starting to comprehend things I am saying, and it is so exciting! When I ask her if she wants to take a bath, she crawls to the bathroom, stands up at the tub and points to the faucet. Wehn I ask her if she wants a diaper change, she either says "By-doh" (diaper) or "poo poo" which is pretty self-explanitory. I am just realizing that I "ask" her if she wants to do a lot of these things, but the poor girl doesn't really have a choice. Maybe I just like her to feel like she is making an informed decision? She says "I lah la" (I love you) when I tell her I love her every morning, and gives me a great big hug. I live for those moments! Although she says a lot of sweet things, her favorite things to say are a little more naughty. She likes to say "no way" and "go away" all day long, and shakes her head no to pretty much everything I say. This little girl went from being the most calm, quiet, easy-going baby to one with an incredible amount of spunk and feistiness. She has SUCH a strong personality and acts more and more like Jason every day, always trying to make everyone laugh. She is one hilarious little girl full of an incredible amount of energy for such a little thing. She exhausts me, but the love I have for her is incomprehensible. Today, she was acting so funny. I am so mad I didn't catch it on video, but Jason was feeding her dinner, and he held the spoon up to her mouth and she just shook her head no. So he stops for a minute and tries again. She proceeded to then tell him "no way." We were cracking up which I am sure just reinforced her behavior, but it was too funny not to laugh. Here is a little video I took of her this morning saying "no way" and "I love you." I might be the only one able to understand it, but I am so proud to be her mama!

Easter 2009

It was a beautiful Easter full of family, candy, easter egg hunts, and being thankful for the Savior and his atonement and resurrection. I don't have much else to say about it so here are a couple pictures I took of Reagan. We tried and tried to get a good picture of her with her bunny ears on, but most of them turned out with her either mad/confused or making a crazy face. See?


She had fun playing with "cousin" Maribel. (My cousin's daughter).


Modeling her Easter dress. (This is her new face she makes in every picture.)

What happened?

Whatever happened to my sweet little newborn who loved to be swaddled and only had enough hair to stick a tiny bow with corn syrup to her forehead? I miss her just a little bit, but this new "big girl" that has taken her place is just as much fun I guess. =)

Turkey Lurkey

Today Nana (my mom) took us to get ice cream and to good ol' Hovander Park (a childhood classic of mine) to look at the farm animals. I feel like I need to take advantage of this beautiful weather because rain (and possibly snow??) is on the radar in the next few days. Reagan has been practicing her animal noises lately, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to put her new found animal sound skills to use. Unfortunately, the only animals there right now are of the bird variety. Is it a bad thing that when I see a big fat turkey, I think of how good that turkey would look in the middle of my table for Thanksgiving dinner? Disturbing, maybe, but at least I'm honest. We named this guy "Turkey Lurkey."

Oh, what's that? You'd like to see that big juicy guy up close? I thought you'd never ask...

Sans the blue face and wobbly gobble, looks pretty appetizing, eh?

We were slightly hesitant to get close right at first, but as soon as Turkey Lurkey started doing his gobble gobble dance, all was right in Penny's world.

If that isn't a look of just pure joy and utter excitement, I don't know what is. Or maybe she's like her mom and thinking of how delicious Turkey Lurkey looked. I wouldn't doubt it. She loves her meats.

We took a bath tonight to get rid of the evidence that we had a very fun-filled day rolling around in the dirt. She doesn't like when I give her funny hair-dos. She prefers the more sensible "swept back" look. Well, today, in good Turkey Lurkey fashion, we went all out. Here was the end result (lots of drool in these pictures. More teeth coming soon):


Flock of turkeys or Flock of Seagulls?

"Ummmmm...mom? You're not putting this on the blog ARE YOU??"

I spoke too soon...

Apparently I had a couple more blog posts in me. Phew! I just wanted to say how much I love my brother, Elias Stephen Pratt. At 16 years old, he is often much too cool to hang out with me and hug me as much as he used to, but I love him just the same. He is such a good kid, as well as very handsome and incredibly talented. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch him and his band, Fight the Shun, perform at Meridian High School's talent show. They write all their own songs and are individually very talented musicians. Their songs are all very catchy, and I hope Eli still remembers me someday when he becomes a famous rockstar. Fight the Shun also just performed at a Battle of the Bands in Burlington and did fantastic! Unfortunately I was not able to make their performance, but I was so proud after reading a couple newspaper articles about them. One older musician commented on how good Eli was at the bass. I love that no matter how much Eli has going on or how many friends he has over, he will always take the time to play with Reagan and give her hugs. I'm such a proud older sister!

Eli is the one on the far left with the red bass. What a cutie!
Photo courtesy (hopefully, ha ha) of my very talented photographer friend Amanda.

A couple short videos

Here are a couple of videos that I took from my phone. We'll call them "A Day in the Life of Penny." In one, she is pushing her stroller around. I love the way her little legs look waddling along. Please ignore my loud breathing in that one. And please don't tell me I always breathe like that? (I'm hoping it's just because I was holding the phone so close. Gross.) The other video is of her kicking Jason's face on our bed. So sweet, huh? =) She is in her "cave" as we like to call it - the space between the two big pillows on our bed.

What we've been up to...

Lately, I've been trying to write more exciting posts. No, exciting may not be the right word but more INTERESTING perhaps? Well, some time has gone by and...I've got nothin' for ya. So here's another somewhat boring update of what we've been up to. But, if you love us, it's not boring I hope. I actually really like to read everyone's blogs of what they've been up to and whatnot - even with no pictures, I always read them and find them interesting. I always think others' lives are interesting, but maybe they're just good at writing intruiging blog posts? Who knows - Nevertheless, here's some of what we've been up to.
- We were all sick for about a month and I found it pretty miserable. We had gone over 9 months without Reagan being even the least bit sick, which is a pretty good track record I think, but when it hit, it definitely hit and the poor girl just wasn't herself for weeks. It was so strange. I felt like I had a whole different baby. She is usually so happy and calm and easygoing and suddenly she was irritable and seemed totally indifferent to anything I did to entertain her. It was a really depressing couple of weeks. I felt so helpless. We just cuddled a lot, watched movies, and I nursed her pretty much all day long. What was her already small appetite got even smaller and all she wanted to do was nurse, which was okay with me because it gave me a lot of time to just cuddle and be close to her, something that doesn't happen very often nowadays with such a busy little girl! We made about 3 doctor visits and each time they just kind of shrugged their shoulders but I kept taking her back because I knew something just wasn't right. She got hives all over her body - EVERYWHERE, even her face, and I could tell she just wasn't feeling too hot. Turns out she had roseola. In fact, I had pretty much diagnosed her with this before we even took her to the doctor. I guess I should listen to my mothers intuition more often! They gave us some cream to put on her hives and they went away almost instantly. It made me feel terrible that she was so uncomfortable that whole time and all she needed was a little ointment. A few days later she was a different person. She is back to her sweet, wonderful, happy, and very BUSY self! (I can't keep up with her!)
- Reagan has been taking one or two steps here and there. She has a little miniature stroller that my parents got her that she pushes her "babies" around in and it's really helped her be brave enough to take some steps on her own without it. One thing that I love about her is that she has a very sweet and cautious personality. She is very busy, but also a very careful girl. She knows her limits and just looks at you with an "are you joking me??" face whenever we try to get her to do something that she doesn't want to. I love her personality. I don't know what it is, but I can tell that she has such a tender heart. It's amazing that even though she can't talk yet, I feel like I really know her heart and her personality. She gives me hugs and kisses (we're working on the no-tongue thing. That may become a problem when she can date, haha) and tells me she loves me (in her own little way). She is just my best little friend. This is probably a weird thing to say, but I feel so connected to her, like she is wise beyond her years. Sometimes if I'm sad or having a hard time with something, she just looks at me like she really knows what I'm going through. I love her age so much right now, and being her mom is more than I could ever ask for!
- She is also babbling a ton and it cracks us up all day long. Most of it is nonsense, but every once in a while it really sounds like she is saying something. Some things that I swear she says over and over again (even if she doesn't know it) are: Go away! Bad dad! (Much to Jason's dismay, ha). Hello! and Googly googly (this was from a movie we watched and Jason kept saying it over and over and one day she just started copying him. Maybe we should teach her real words?
- Jason just had a week off from school last week and it was bittersweet because I got used to him being there with us all day and starting today he is gone all day again! It was so nice to have him around relaxing with us. Poor guy works so hard, but we love him!
- Conference weekend was great. I can't ask for anything better than listening to those inspired people from the comfort of my own home (and my pajamas) with the people I love! They are all so aware of what is going on in the world and it gives me so much comfort to know that I have access to modern day revelation in an often hectic world.
- The weather has been BEAUTIFUL! We've been enjoying being able to go outside so much. I don't feel so vitamin D deprived any more. Reagan loves being outside and being "loved" by the sun. However, she doesn't love grass a whole lot. Sometimes I'll set her down in the grass, expecting her to crawl around, and she just lifts her hands up and gives me an unsure look about it. Haha, see what I mean? She's so cautious! I am okay with the grass myself, but I just don't like the crowds. Call me anti-social or something but I hate being at a park on a nice day, but having it be packed with yapping dogs and smelly naked people and obnoxious tight-rope walkers. I want to rent out all of Boulevard Park for the day just for me and Reagan. Think they would do that for me? I'm pretty mean, I know. I'm sure those people are thinking the same thing. "Won't those annoying moms with their babies just stay away?" =)
Welp, that's pretty much it. If anyone stuck with me for this long, I thank you kindly. And a blog post is never complete without pictures, right?