Happy Happy birthday to Brendan and Trevor!!

Portraits just did NOT go well this year! Glasses blocking eyes, big reflections in lenses, crooked ties, sagging pants, tricky lighting, and good ol’ attitude issues made things challenging. I just did not get even one really satisfying quality shot. I got a bunch of fun though. I love these boys and their antics and the pictures capture them well.

Of course I always have Bomby. He is cooperative every time and helps me set everything up.

I had them change in to more casual outfits. I was lucky to get a few cute shots.

I also wanted to take pictures of this pouffe I made.

The pouffe is crocheted from five years worth of collected tracheostomy-tube twill ties. Each day, we would clean Brendan’s trach with a special kit and change the ties around his neck. We used upgraded soft ties for kids with velcro and so we did not need the twill ties that came in the kit. I put them in a bucket to save them. Each kit had two pieces that were 24 inches long. In this picture I am prepping them to be dyed.

I learned after dying them all that not all of them were cotton like I thought. Over the years, we got different brands of trach kits. It turns out that some were 100% cotton and took the dye beautifully. Some were blend and took the dye well enough. The ones that were 100% polyester rejected the dye completely and stayed white. This batch was all done together.

Here is my pile of ties all tied together to make continuous “yarn”

The pouffe is stuffed with a mix of bean bag filling and polyfill. The box of bean bag beans came with this thoughtful warning on it!

It makes a nice bench or foot rest.

Or arm-wrestling platform

Or a soft place for a nap

Or whatever this is…

I can’t forget to post that later in the day, Trevor found a white sphinx moth. It was flapping really fast while sitting on the ground trying to dry its wings I think. He was so thrilled to hold it for a while until it finally was able to take off.