A bird in the hand

Before the puppy madness began I was spending some time working on our outside spaces. This is our side porch, and since we park in the back it the entrance we use primarily. I'd post a before picture but it would be too embarrassing to show you the messy jumble of miscellaneous junk I'd allowed to accumulate there as we were moving in. Sometimes it was easier to dump stuff on the porch than to find a better home for it. Anyway, I cleared off the junk and set up the grill. There isn't room for chairs on this little porch but it needed something else on it so I potted some herbs in pots I painted, then let Dorothy and her friend next door paint our old, recently-replaced front porch mailbox a bright yellow color and set it out to use as an exchange spot for messages to each other. The girls loved this project. Then something was still missing--I thought the window looked like it needed curtains, but curtains on an exterior window seemed a bit odd so I thought of pennants instead. I made the little string of flags out of scraps from Aunt Stephanie's room and I think they look very fresh and cheerful there. They tie in the colors of the pots, the little girls' mailbox, and the mustardy-gold I painted on the exterior door. Why not?

We traveled over the weekend. We had campground reservations at Rough River State Park but they were cancelled by the park several days before our trip due to flooding. With a weekend already blocked off for travel but the weather unappealingly hot for camping we decided to move forward some travel plans we'd intended for later in the summer. Saturday we visited Kentucky Down Under where Dorothy got to pet an emu, a kangaroo, and encounter this beautiful bird. The park had the feeling of a place that is still up and coming but we enjoyed the several hours we spent there. If I had it to do over I'd have packed a picnic as the cafe food was not very good--let that be my tip if you go. After the park we drove on into Bowling Green where we dined at the surprisingly good 440 Main on the charming town square and stayed the night at a hotel. The next day we visited the National Corvette Museum which I think has my husband vowing to work harder and earn more money...for a Corvette. Oy. It was a fun weekend getaway just a car nap's drive from home. On the way home we shared our favorite memories: Rob liked the Corvettes (go figure), Dorothy enjoyed the hotel pool more than either paid attraction, and I most enjoyed our dinner at the nice restaurant. What can I say?

Our puppy may now have a name. I really think she's a Pippa, but Dorothy seemed wedded to her suggestion of Isabelle. I pulled some Mommy magic today and had her convinced that naming the dog Pippa was her idea. She'd totally embraced it, started calling her that, and even proudly introduced the dog as Pippa to the next-door friend, but then Rob came home surprised by her change of heart and totally foiled my plan. "Is that really what you want to name her? I thought you were naming her Isabelle?" not realizing I'd already carefully achieved buy-in and was not pressuring her to pick a name I preferred. Then I think Dorothy got the impression that her father actually preferred Isabelle and has firmly switched back to that. Sigh...
Bella, which would be my top choice for a nickname if the dog must be named Isabelle, is the most common dog name, according to this web site. No fewer than three people have told me that they know other dogs named Bella. This will drive my crazy. I don't like to do things like other people. No amount of channeling good memories of the trip I once took to Italy will stop me from writhing at the idea that people will think I chose to name my dog the single most popular dog name currently in existence.  Rob and I carefully chose names for our children that didn't even make the top 1000 baby names the years they were born. That was not an accident. I think we'll call her Belle for short as opposed to Bella, with the one letter's difference (and nod toward France instead of Italy) at least making the name slightly more "beautiful" (pun intended) to me. And if I show up at the dog park and can't get my dog's attention since all the other doggie owners are calling their pups by the same basic name, well, I guess I'll just have to remember that allowing my 5-year-old to choose the name and venting my frustrations on the blog instead of in her earshot was the right thing to do. Belle it is.

Locked in the basement

First a finished project. I made a super-comfy skirt out of a thrifted jersey sheet. It's soft like pajamas! It's casual but cute--a skirt to wear with flip-flops. I love wearing skirts in the summer because they are cooler than capris and don't have all the thigh-rubbing (sorry, I'm just shaped like that) and burning-legs-on-leather-car-upholstery issues of shorts. I think this one will become a summer favorite.

Next a funny story. Dorothy has been a little high-strung lately, perhaps due to all the talk at school about final days and transitions. She was passive-aggressively "waving" a doll apron at her brother, in a way that just happened to involve whipping him with apron strings. I asked her not to, she told me she was just fanning him and continued to do it. I asked her to go to her room and settle down. She stomped off to her second-floor bedroom angrily. Then I noted that the baby seemed to be happy tormenting the cat (whipping him with apron strings, perhaps?) so this seemed like a good moment for me to run some Costco purchases downstairs to our chest freezer. When I came up the basement stairs I found that the baby had tired of tormenting the cat and had moved on to fiddling with the basement door--in a way that involved locking me in the basement. As I stood there on the steps he opened the tiny cat door and waved at me pleasantly, thinking it was some kind of game that I was staying on the other side of it. It had been on my mind that I should get a screwdriver and remove those old locks before something just like this happened, but of course I hadn't had the sense to do it yet. So I had to stand there on the basement stairs, frozen turkey bacon in hand, and yell for my exiled daughter over the sound of Pandora on the Old Crow Medicine Show station. She finally heard me and came down, sort of puzzled by the very short amount of time she was required to spend in her room. I explained the situation as calmly as possible and gave thanks that she's still young enough that she just laughed at what her brother had done and let me out without further torment.  Shew! Now I really will take off those old locks before she gets old enough to be vengeful, or is waiting to be picked up at preschool next time I get locked in the basement.

Finally, I just joined Twitter but I don't know anything about it. What do I do next? I'm RenataHomemade.

There's no place like...

Worth met Santa this week!  I don't like screaming pictures with Santa so I opted to be included after it was clear Worth would not willingly participate in a hand off.  I have a similar picture of Dorothy, Santa, and my arms from her first Christmas.  I have no pictures of Santa with Dorothy since then, what with the unwillingness on my part to hand a screaming child over to a scary stranger in a red suit, and her unwillingness to get anywhere near him.  (The picture looks like an old Polaroid because I downloaded this software and am now slightly addicted to using it on my photographs.  You should try it--it's fun to watch the picture develop over the course of two minutes!)

And the packing continues.  Poor Rody Pony, getting squashed into a box!  We were sure we'd have the keys to the new place by now but we don't.  There was a problem on the seller's end with one of the repairs we requested taking longer than expected.  I'm trying not to feel excessively frustrated about it, but it is frustrating to have thought we'd have access to the house by now but not.  My plans to move everyday items (like most of the kitchen and closets) by tote and unpack them directly into their new spots have fallen through, so now we need many more boxes, much more packing paper and a lot more takeout than we'd thought.  Still, I'm trying to focus on the merry Christmas we're going to have around our new hearth, and being glad our conscientious seller is taking care of everything at the new house.  I'm thankful for the Vietnam Kitchen down the street and for disposable diapers for one week only!

Sweet feet

Most of the sweet baby booties I made when I was pregnant are no longer in use at my house.  Now that Worth can pull himself up he needs grippy-footed soft-soled shoes to keep him from skidding all over our hardwood floors.  This one pair does still work, though.  Since I'd made this pair to fit a bigger baby, I'd had the foresight to also do something about the slipping issue.  It doesn't work perfectly well, but really neither do leather soles, and it's too cold for bare feet.  I sewed a felt sole onto the bottom of these booties, then used rubbery puffy fabric paint to paint little paw prints on the bottoms.  The paint provides some traction on the floors and keeps Mr. Baby from whacking his head for any reason not related to his own nascent motor skills.  These booties stay on with the help of red leather cord laces and are very cutely U of L-y, but unfortunately I did not think to put them on him when he made his first trip to the new stadium last week to see his first basketball game!

The real estate project is progressing nicely.  We've taken care of our buyer's inspection repair quests and our seller has responded positively to ours.  We're hoping for a Merry Early Christmas closing in about two weeks.  In the meantime, *I think* (and I almost hate to jinx this by even blogging about it!) that our buyers are going to allow us to have a key very soon to start moving in some of our things.  I'm so excited!  I couldn't resist popping in on Early Bird Thursday today at my favorite thrift shop to see if I could score some goodies for our new digs, and I totally did!  A yellow bed skirt for Dorothy's new room, a little knick-knack shelf for our crafty studio, a vintage Christmas tablecloth, a rug for our studio, a mirror to hang over our dress-up box, and this little bell for my vintage Kentucky kitchen.  $18 well spent, in my opinion.

Looking ahead, I think Dorothy must have an owl pillow similar to these in her new vintage-floral bedroom.  I'm pretty sure there is a sheet in that pile just crying out to be an owl pillow.  How cute are they?

We pass the time

I really don't like it when people say "this too shall pass."  By which I guess I mean people who aren't really going through horrifying circumstances--I guess if someone living in squalid conditions in a refugee camp said it, or someone suffering from cholera in Haiti, then I'd be on board.  But in general, the people I hear say this are American parents with relatively comfortable lives who are simply wishing their lives away.  I prefer to not wish my life away.  Life is already short (and we never know exactly how short it is, so it's probably best to assume it's shorter rather than longer), and I want to live it fully, not to pass the time wishing it were tomorrow.  So I'm trying to remember this while we wait for our housing situation to be resolved.  Today is just as much one of the precious days of my childrens' lives in my care as yesterday was, and it counts against my total just as much as any day next year, no matter what my address is.

In light of that, here is my beautiful daughter, a person I treasure, being beautiful.  She is reciting a book from memory ("reading" it) to her doll, who is (over)dressed just like Dorothy.  And while my daughter is being her beautiful self, and my son is learning to crawl, talk and wave bye-bye, we are also having housing "adventures."  The potential buyer made an offer.  We are countering, but our counter is not far off of her offer, so it seems likely that a sale will work out.  We have some non-monetary terms to agree on such as a closing date, etc, and there will be an inspection, but things seem to be moving in the right direction.  Wow!  So my husband and I will spend the weekend interviewing new homes for us, which is very exciting.  Where is the kitchen in which Dorothy and I will be baking bread in just a couple short months?  I'm curious, but I'm going to take a deep breath and remember to fully enjoy our last loaves here.

My house is a mess and the newspaper pissed me off

The stomach virus is gone, but we're not fully operational around here.  Everyone is still tired and we've all just lost a little momentum.  The house is a mess and we have a real estate open house tomorrow--yikes.  The table I photographed happens to be covered with 4-year-old girl ephemera, but my own desk is just as overflowing, with mail, stamps and a stamp pad from an old paper project, a shirt that needs mending, and three different yarn projects in various stages of completion.  Somehow we will get all this cleaned up and the Halloween decorations put away by tomorrow midday.  (So this morning blogging takes the form of procrastination.)

I also just have to comment on this ugly article that met me at the breakfast table this morning.  I don't understand the so-called "mommy wars" at all.  It seems to me that some people take others' strong commitments to a parenting philosophy personally, and feel indicted if they don't share one, whereas the focus of most parenting philosophies is actually on children, not other mommies.  If a mother doesn't like a particular philosophy, perhaps she should just avoid using it, instead of suggesting that its existence is undermining decades of progress in women's liberation.  Jong seems to miss the point that if a woman disagrees with a philosophy (in this case, attachment parenting), then she is free to ignore it and move on.  It is only if she actually finds it compelling and thinks in her heart that she should be following it (or doing something differently) that it has any sway over her at all.  If she does not find a philosophy compelling, then the fact that other mothers practice it should not even be on her radar--parenting is a very personal quest, not a contest, and mothers do not have to register their commitment to any particular set of values anywhere.

I am grateful for a community that allows me to parent the way I feel is right.  Sometimes that is an accord with one particular parenting book or another, and sometimes it is not.  I know women who largely share my parenting views and work full-time at demanding jobs. I know others who stay home and share none of my philosophies.  I am glad that in this garbled world of feminism, post-feminism, and feminism-yet-to-come that I can stay home and tend my family's metaphorical fires without feeling like I have something to prove.  I stay home because that is what feels right to me.  I enjoy contributing to my family's economy in the kitchen, at my sewing machine, and out of my crochet bag.  I hold a masters degree from a prestigious university and if I felt like that piece of paper forced me out of the spot that makes me happy, then that would be enslavement.  To each her own.  I can't imagine any child would be better off staying home with a mother who felt stranded in the role.  Nor do I think women should work outside the home just because that's what they thought they would do when they were 22 and made expensive educational choices.  It's a big world--can't we make room for all the choices that are as varied and ever-changing as the individuals who make up our current generation of mothers?

A busy week

When we arrived home after our camping adventures last weekend we noticed the refrigerator was making an odd noise, sort of like a zombie.  Being the (apparently) stupid and ineffectual people we are, we just noted the noise and moved on, not stopping to check on details like are all the frozen foods thawing?  And unfortunately they were, but we didn't realize it until it was too late and much of the frozen stuff had to be thrown out or cooked.  So we bought a new refrigerator (with some odd combination of an Energy Star rebate, appliance disposal fees and a Columbus Day sale making it more cost-effective than buying used), and we've also once again lowered the priced on our house.  Perhaps someday so the new buyers, wherever they are now, will use the new 'frige for something beautiful like leftover wedding cake or champagne to toast something wonderful and we will stop banging our heads against the wall over our housing situation.  A girl can dream, right?  In the meantime we're eating meals of baked chicken with a side of fried fish, since both fish and fowl were saved from the freezer, and being glad it's not worse.
Then on Wednesday, the very busiest and most hectic day of the week, as I was recovering from the new refrigerator blues but beginning to suffer a sore throat, Dorothy informed me at approximately the halfway point on our drive home from preschool that IT WAS THE DAY, the very special and most important day, that she got to take the traveling classroom gingerbread person home, and that she had accidentally left [him? her?] at school.  I considered making the gingerbread person wait until we were already back at the very same building for choir practice later that night, but instead I rallied my inner good mother and turned the car back around.  "Gingy" was fetched, along with [his? her?] tote bag, and brought on home with us.  Gingy listened to our daily chapter from the Little House on the Prairie book, then settled down with Dorothy for a nap.  A couple hours later it was time almost time to leave for ballet lessons and I realized I should look in Gingy's journal to see just what was expected of us with regard to this plush traveling pastry.  About a half dozen of Dorothy's peers had already brought Gingy home (Gingy visitation being determined by drawing names), and those students' caring and creative mothers had written long and lovely essays about Gingy's stays with their families.  Things like "in honor of Gingy, we made gingerbread cake!" and long tales of Gingy-inspired adventures.  Those bitches, I thought.  Never mind that enthusiastic parent involvement is actually one of the things I treasure about our preschool.  All the mommies who get Gingy after us will love me, though, because I took things in the journal down a notch or two out of necessity.  We sent Gingy back today with just a few brief sentences about our busy day and one potentially embarrassing (given Gingy's uncertain gender) home-printed photograph of Gingy wearing a pink tutu.

Returning to my regular blogging business, these Lego cufflinks were a Christmas gift to Rob last year.  They are Legos from his own childhood, and I glued them to cufflink platforms I purchased from a jewelry supply store online. He loves wearing unusual cufflinks, and there aren't very many opportunities to make gifts for him. I snapped a picture of them when he was on his way out the door this morning.

And who can stay mad about houses and refrigerators with this juicy baby around to squeeze on?   He's wearing a t-shirt I did before he was born, an inkjet-printed lobster applique on a plain white tee.  He's turning into some adorable little butt-scooting backwards-crawling cherub-demon, and I'm afraid I'm having to babyproof this house already, even though I'd hoped to just do that in the next house!

A before and after

photo courtesy of Fine Design Camper Sales

I'm making progress!  The weather is finally nice and I'm hoping to make big strides on the camper exterior today, but right now I'm killing time in the house waiting for the baby to wake up.  The fabric for the cushions arrived in the mail on Thursday, so yesterday I spent the day wrestling with those.  The polka-dotted fabric is a nice thick indoor/outdoor upholstry fabric that I hope will easily wipe clean, and I found it at a great price online.   We cut the table down to make more standing room in the camper, and to make nice places to sit without being crammed up against the table (for when you're say, nursing a baby and need a bit of room in front).  The piece we cut off I stashed up above, so we can still use it when the table comes down to form a big bed.  I haven't photographed the kitchenette yet, but finishing that up is also on my weekend to-do list, so stay tuned! 

We're desperate to actually get this thing on the road and go camping, but I'm afraid if I move it from its present spot in my back yard that I will not prioritize it, and then it might never get done.  It will certainly (barring unforseen circumstances) be completely done in time for next weekend, but Dorothy gets to bring the class guinea pig home next weekend, and I'm just not sure about a) camping with the class guinea pig, or b) dragging a screaming preschooler away from the class guinea pig to go camping.  I'm open to suggestions on how to handle that one.

And as an update to our costume dilemma, the problem solved itself!  Dorothy was just a tad jealous of her brother's cute rat costume and decided that she would also like to be a rat.  So one more eBay auction won (and for a good price--hooray!), and we're waiting on one more package in the mail.  I can't wait to get some pictures of my wee rat pack next month.

A resting rug

Orientation at Dorothy's preschool went fabulously. We're so excited for her to attend this great program. I feel like the teachers share my values and that she's really going to benefit from this year or two, and that the harmony between the school's values and mine should make an easy transition on to homeschool if that is indeed the route we take. Hooray for the start of something wonderful and new!

At orientation they told us each child needs a satchel-style bag and a resting rug. I'd already taken care of the bag, but she didn't have a rug yet. I wasn't sure what the other kids would have--if everyone else had a plain bath towel, I didn't want my little princess to tramp in with some fussy handmade setup that would make us seem show-offish or materialistic. But the example our teacher showed us of a resting rug was actually a simple little floor quilt with a hook for hanging on their little hooks, so I decided to fix Dorothy up with one on that model. We tucked the baby in for a nap and then headed downstairs to the fabric stash where Dorothy selected purple as a primary color, and I dug out several fabric scraps, some hand-me-down fabric, a thrifted shower curtain, an old stained tablecloth, and two thrifted sheets that all came together in a pleasantly purple way. I just cut 3 inch strips of various lengths to make an intentionally haphazard stripe pattern, and I like the way it turned out. It's solid purple on the back and I sandwiched an old stained bath towel inside to make it comfy for lying on the preschool floor during their wind-down time. She loves it and has slept on top of it in bed the last two nights. I told her when she lays on it she'll feel like Mommy is giving her a great big hug.

And here's a little pirate booty! I crocheted dark grey longies with a skull and crossbones motif on the bum when I found out I was pregnant with a boy, last fall. I was concerned he'd grow out of them before cool enough weather came, but fortunately I could still stuff him into them (and enjoy seeing how cute they looked) yesterday.

A tooth!

I don't think they'd be good in a mixed drink, but these icy cubes of mushy squash are making a small member of my family very happy. He's been gumming at crunchy breadsticks, sucking down water through a straw, shoving handfuls of banana in his face, and enjoying these nasty-looking cubes of squash (straight out of the freezer) in his mesh baby feeder.

We made our bi-monthly pilgrimage to Costco today and had kind of miserable time. Usually it's fun to go to Costco; we buy $1.99 pizza slices for lunch, taste the samples, browse through the seasonal items and feel all mid-size-city-middle-class-suburbany, in a good way. Today was a different story. The baby started fussing before Dorothy and I were even done with our pizza, was grumping and lunging for his mama from the front of the cart before we left the paper products, and was full-on crying by the time we reached the massive vats of baking flour. The section with the granola bars--the last area we shop--saw me trying to bounce an unhappy 20 pound baby on my shoulder, maneuver a very full cart through the aisles, and herd a sample-stuffed 4-year-old to the checkout line. Both kids went home and slept all afternoon, and I figured our unusual Costco meltdown must of been related to the baby's lack of a good morning nap, even though he's usually pretty easy going about his sleep schedule. Then this evening I had the baby on my knee and was wiping remnants of (my) sweet potato fries off his chin and "recycling" them by poking them in his mouth when I felt--OMG!--a sharp protrusion on his bottom gum. The baby has his first tooth! I held him down and pried his mouth open like any good mother and took a nice look, and there it was. A tooth. Dorothy was 11 months before she popped out her first little chomper, so I would never have connected the poor babe's miserable scene at Costco (or the subsequent extra-long nap) with teething pain, but obviously it was related. Poor kid. But wow! We have a tooth. It feels momentous.

And this is my pretty thrift-store find of the week. I have a goal of replacing my standard-issue, available-at-Target serving ware with slightly more unique finds over time. I'd been looking for a milk glass lidded bowl/casserole dish that was big enough to carry a pasta salad to a pitch-in, and Monday I found it at Unique. It's hard to find such a large vessel that has both dish and lid intact, so I was pleased. The price as right too! And now, to keep things balanced, a later-model casserole is going into my own "donate" pile. Out with the new and in with the old! Or something. :)

Sweet potato mess

Solid food has arrived in Worth's life! I was planning to wait until his six month birthday, next week, but after two days of listening to him emit annoyed pterodactyl noises and pound his chubby fists against the metal table as a soundtrack to every bite we ate I decided to introduce a few days early. He can sit unassisted, has more than doubled his birth weight, and whoa--he was eager. I've been letting him gnaw on a spoon while sitting in his high chair for a few weeks, and he's pretty much got the spoon-to-mouth thing down. (We do baby self-feeding.) So now the experiments truly begin! He actually seemed to hate last night's experience with mushy sweet potato--I don't know if he didn't like the feeling of it on his hands or what. But we gave him another chance today at lunch and it was much better. He may have just been tired last night. So the bibs I made months ago came out, and we're on to a whole new phase of baby life.Speaking of messes, the advent of baby meals in my house again has made me remember just how glad I am that we don't use paper towels. We made a switch away from them about three years ago, and it makes me wonder how they ever caught on in the first place--they are horrifyingly expensive and they simply don't wipe up messes as well. I keep a little stack of clean rags in the same spot we used to keep paper towels and we just reach for a clean one any time we need one. I keep a little re-purposed trash can next to our real trash can to hold the dirty laundry. If I get a rag totally wet (like rinsing off chunks of sweet potato and then wiping up the floor) I hang it over the edge of the laundry can to dry so we don't get mildew in between washings. Since we're already washing cloth diapers every couple days I just throw our rags in with them, but when we weren't washing dipes I put rags in with towels or just ran a separate load as needed--it never seems burdensome. We have several dozen rags, which are actually inexpensive white washcloths, so we can grab a fresh one as often as wish, and I have only white so I can use bleach on them occasionally. It seemed a little wasteful in the beginning to buy so many washcloths, since I could have found things to cut up into rags, but for me to actually sit them out in the open in the kitchen (key to actually using them), they needed to look nice too. Seems like a fair trade-off given how many paper towels we would have used in the last three years!

Sandwiches, pants, babies...

A sort of rambly blog post tonight. The rest of the family is asleep but I'm up, kind of on edge, watching over this huge pile of boxes ready to be put in storage tomorrow. I'm glad our realtor is having us put all this stuff away, actually, because it is a good reminder that we probably don't need to own much of anyway. I'm not an anti-stuff purist (if vintage glass dishes put a smile on my face, is their existence in my home really something to be ashamed of, even though I already own other dishes?), but I don't want needless clutter in my space, or to be caught up in its acquisition or preservation just for the sake of it. It's a small leap from "can I store this for 3-6 months" to "can I live without this altogether?" So maybe after this move I'll shed some of these things for good and feel lighter for it.
In the meantime, it's prime time to enjoy my favorite sandwich. I didn't grow a garden this year because of our housing situation, but we've still been able to get our hands on enough fresh, local tomatoes to make my very favorite grilled cheese sandwich. It's mutli-grain bread brushed in olive oil, the inside smeared with pesto, then melty cheese and slices of juicy ripe tomato. Yum, yum, yum. So tasty that eating it just wasn't enough--I had to be a dork and photograph it for my blog. :)

And pants. I said this post was random, right? I made these pants for Worth last week during the sewing frenzy, but never got around to photographing them.

Same funky print as the hat. I don't have a pattern that has this contrasting back panel so I just cut up the pattern and left a seam allowance around the area I cut. Next time I do something similar I think I'll start the panel down a bit lower. But I like the way they turned out.

And here's my boy. He's not really waving, though it looks like he is. He'll be six months in 12 more days and is on the eve of getting his first taste of solid food. I took a bunch of pictures of him today to record all his gorgeous fat rolls and chubby deliciousness so I can look back and be proud of this boy I fed. Not that he's going to stop nursing now, but soon I won't know which little dimples I can fully take credit for. He's sitting unassisted now and is getting all this fuzzy new hair. It's trite but true--they change so fast! I'm totally silly over him, my beautiful boy.

Some projects and a nap strategy

This tank was an embellishment from earlier in the summer. I thought I'd photograph it on me to show how the sun design wraps around, but I never remember to. I love how it turned out and I've worn it over and over. It was another $5 tank top from Target, and I used a compass to make pencil circles on fabric for the sun design, cut them out and attached them to the shirt with double-sided fusible web (Wonder Under), then zig-zagged around them on the machine. It was inspired by a beautiful shirt I saw on someone at an art fair last year.

And after all my fussing over kids' sunhats earlier in the summer, Baby Worth went and outgrew his and I had to go at it again. At least by now I think I've been able to establish a good work flow for hats and this one came together quickly. I used Simplicity 5695. It looks very New Orleansish to me, in a good way. Definitely not a sweet teddy bears and bunnies kind of hat, but I think he likes it.

And speaking of that baby, he's taken a high-maintenance turn the last few days. He's waking up screaming at night, is spending less time contentedly playing with measuring cups on the floor, and is refusing to nap for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I'm not sure if the source of his discontent is teething or a new develpmental milestone (he's creeping backwards--watch out world!), but I'm trying to strategize how to keep us all sane and happy and I seem to have worked out a good nap plan, at least. He seems to be sleeping lightly and will wake up fully after just a few minutes if he doesn't see me there with pats and reassurance, so today I put him down for his nap on the sofa next to me and I sat there with my crochet and coffee for an hour while he slept. It ended up being a sweet hour where I got to admire his perfect little sleeping body, take a quiet and restful hour myself, and make some progress on a crochet project too. Now I might be disappointed after this stage passes and I can tuck him in upstairs by himself again!

A caffeine fix and an earring

We had a fun weekend with a happy baptism celebration and out-of-town guests. We're having a summer that is fun but never lazy. So lately I've been finding my afternoon energy in this yummy blended drink that seems much more appealing to me in this nearly 100 degree weather than a hot cup o' joe. I blend 10 ice cubes with 2/3 cup of cold coffee, 1 tablespoon of powdered milk and 1 tablespoon organic chocolate syrup. Yum. Ordinarily powdered milk is not something I'd consider putting in a drink (I keep it on hand to thicken homemade yogurt), but this drink is too watered down if I use regular milk and too fatty if I use cream. This version gives me just the right caffeine kick, tastes just the right amount chocolately, and is only 75 calories. Happy mama.

Yesterday I had one of those tough-call parenting moments that makes me need more coffee. Dorothy had been lobbying for quite some time to get her ears pierced. I don't have any particular thought-out philosophy about child ear-piercing. I'm not really comfortable piercing an infant's ears (although I don't really have any problem with the theory), and I was 13 years old myself before I even wanted earrings, so I don't have any helpful memory of how my own mother handled the issue. So I'd basically told Dorothy she could get them pierced whenever she really wanted to, and I'd taken her to the mall to show her where you sit and describe how they do it. That had cooled her off on the idea for a while, but yesterday she was back on it, big time.

We watched a Youtube video of ear piercing, I was frank about the fact that it does hurt, but she was motivated. I wonder if a child at Bible School last week had earrings, but Dorothy didn't mention it. To make a long story short, Dorothy ended up getting one ear pierced and then changed her mind about it. Although I'd stayed quite neutral to that point (I was neither discouraging or encouraging the piercing--this was her thing), once we had one earring in I thought it would be a bit odd to walk away without both done. I hugged, consoled, bribed her with new earrings and ice cream. She sat back up in the chair to get the second one in, but just couldn't go through with it. She's four, after all, and it does hurt. The young woman doing the piercing felt like if I could hold her still long enough, she could just get it in there (I'm sure she'd done this before), but there was no way I was forcing my kid to get an ear pierced. What a breach of trust! So we left, with one earring.

Today Dorothy is very proud of her earring and has even yelled out to the elderly man across the street (who is hard-of-hearing and certainly neither heard nor cared) that she got her ear pierced. She says she's going to get the other done "tomorrow." I'm thinking maybe in a couple weeks. Or maybe she'll just look charmingly and quirkily lopsided for years. Isn't that the way life is anyway?

Back at home last night as she was processing the whole ordeal we had to pierce her teddy bear's ears. (Both of them.) The bear did not find it particularly painful.

Day tripper

So today's post is a bit, er, off my usual beaten path. Rob had a work-related commitment in Mercer County this morning, and since the rest of the day was supposed to be a holiday for him we all tagged along to have a little outing.

Much of Kentucky's population lives in the Louisville/Lexington/Frankfort corridor, and the rest of the state is where Kentucky jokes come from. I don't mean to ditch on my Commonwealth brethren, but just to draw attention to the fact that life looks a lot different in the more rural parts of the state than it does in the comparatively urban ones. Ahem.

So Rob and I, being the diligent planners that we are, visited the Mercer County website to figure out how best to spend our day trip. What does it mean when the Mercer County website says they are "within a two hour drive of 2.5 million people"? Is that like being almost urban? Or cosmopolitan by association? What if I said I live within a two-hour drive of lovers and haters and beautiful people and bigots and fools and poets? Does that actually say anything at all about me? So we tried Google instead and decided to spend our day in downtown Harrodsburg and at Old Fort Harrod State Park.

We set off smartly this morning, kids in tow. The house was left clean for a real-estate showing, the kids were dressed very sweetly in matching outfits (store-bought this time); we made an auspicious start with four people in good moods and ready for adventure. The drive went well, Rob dealt quickly and successfully with his business, and we decided to try to find local color in the little town square area. We found a diner and decided to give it a try.
So far, so good. Breakfast served all day, yeah! The mostly senior citizen crowd seemed to think our kids were cute, so they'd likely be forgiven if they made a bit of noise. We placed our order and made friendly faces at the people next to us who were cooing over the flirting baby. Dorothy's chocolate milk arrived and it was that really viscous, dark brown chocolate milk that I haven't seen in a long time and I'm sure my organic-chocolate-syrup-stirred-into-lowfat-milk kid had never experienced. She started sucking it down, fast. I saw my food coming and decided to switch the baby to my other knee, to free up my fork hand. That's when I realized we'd had a poosplosion. My apologies to readers who don't have kids, but it happens. I'd put him in a hand-me-down diaper we hadn't tried out yet--big mistake on a trip. There was baby poop all over my skirt and all over the bottom of the fully clothed baby. I make pitiful noises at Rob, who saw the problem, jumped up and handed me a roll of paper towels from the bar (glad it was the down-home kind of place that has paper towel rolls just sitting around). But this was really not a job for paper towels, and the only restroom there was a tiny facility you accessed by walking right through the establishment's busy kitchen. No thanks. I clutch the dirty baby over the skirt poo and headed for the car.

Unfortunately we'd parked right in front of the restaurant and it also had outdoor seating. I never turned around to see how many people were watching us, but we were only a few feet away so I'm sure we had at least some corner-of-the-eye audience, which is just what you want when you're trying to clean poo off yourself and your son on a public sidewalk. I grabbed the bag I'd packed for the day and located wipes, a bag and a clean diaper, but to my chagrin I realized Worth's change of clothes had been left with some other items in the bag I'd packed for church yesterday and accidentally abandoned under our pew. Never fear, I thought, because I keep an emergency change of clothes for both children in a bag in the back of the car.
I fetched the emergency stash and pulled out...a teeny tiny newborn jammie that I could not even have tugged over the feet of my enormous 4-month-old chubster (please notice his tummy rolls in the photo above, jammie laid out on the car seat to show scale). Too bad I hadn't updated that emergency stash lately! So I scrubbed him down with baby wipes--poo-soaked shortalls pulled down, poo all over lower half of baby; poo-soaked onesie pulled up, poo all over upper half of baby. But I had a Costco pack of wipes and I did get him all cleaned off, in the front seat of the car, with an audience of sidewalk diners, and put him in a fresh diaper. He looked radiantly happy and grinned and cooed at my the whole time I tried to clean my own skirt off with baby wipes, napkins and a bottle of water, all still on the sidewalk and with an audience. At this point I was both totally grossed out and starving. There wasn't much else I could do, so I walked back into the diner with my soaked but still visibly dirty skirt and my nearly-naked baby. This time our neighbors pointedly avoided looking at me, which might have been for the best. I choked down what turned out to be very disappointing french toast (fried Wonderbread, anyone?) and tried to laugh.

We decided the next course of action should be a stop at a store that sold clean clothes, so we consulted the car's navigation system for nearby shopping options. Of course there was a Wal-Mart handily right down the road, and I swear I never was so eager to go shopping there. Target would have been green with envy to see my eagerness to rush into that blue bastion of rural capitalism. I abandoned my naked baby in the parking lot with his father and rushed first (sorry, I have priorities) to the adult clothing section, envisioning the purchase of a clean skirt or maybe, in a pinch, a pair of capris. I found the women's section quite easily ("women's" being a euphemism for "clothing for bigger gals"), then the tiny skimpy junior shorts, but didn't see the clothing for people my size. I circled back around. I wandered over to the pots and pans. Was I missing it? It turned out the Wal-Mart only carried a few pitiful little rounders of clothing for average-sized people, and none of them contained skirts or capris.

Now I get that Kentucky holds strong at the seventh-fattest state, but seriously? One cannot even purchase average-sized clothing downstate? I do not hold anything against heavier people, nor do I fit into the scrawny salad-munching soccer mom mold myself, but WTF?? I went in with very low standards--I needed something to wear that was better than a shit-smeared skirt, and I found nothing. Wow.

On to the children's department. I did a little better there. A Carter's romper for $4 that said something innocuous about surfing. At least I was able to find clothing in his size that wasn't emblazoned with a sports team or a cartoon character. I made my purchase, dressed the baby, told myself no one would notice the now-dry discoloration on my skirt anyway, and we drove to the fort.

It was a really hot day to visit an outdoor exhibit, but we figured the place would be bustling anyway on a holiday. Dorothy professed hope she'd be able to pet a lamb as we'd seen on the website, the baby was ready for a nap under any circumstance, and Rob and I were still gamely ready to learn more about our state. Unfortunately, the reality was a bit different. The oppressive heat seemed to have kept most visitors away, the (full-grown) sheep sulked deep out of reach in the shade, and the costumed staffers seemed about to melt. But the trip still felt salvageable until we rounded the corner of the fort to the "primitive" or Native American exhibit. There sat a state park employee, in the dirt, in a manner that I have to say threw me off even more than poop down my skirt in a diner.

Are you familiar with Jay and Silent Bob? Well, the man in the dirt reminded me of Jay as much as anybody, definitely with a stoned sort of look but also with multiple facial piercings, and (I'm sorry, dear reader, I warned you this was off the beaten path) was wearing a loincloth. And a shirt. But on his lower parts, which were seated in dirt, as part of (I think?) an exhibit, he was wearing only a leather loincloth. Jay, from Jay and Silent Bob. With facial piercings. In a loincloth. In the heat. It's not that I'm a prude, my friend, just that I'm confused about the historical accuracy/necessity/advisability/legality of any Kevin Smith character wearing a loincloth anywhere near me or my children. And yet there he was, talking about curing animal hides (seriously? I couldn't make this up!) to another visitor standing on our side of the fence. Rob and I exchanged one of those married-people glances that mean 1000 things in one tiny look, and we, well, got the hell out of there.

I was trying to decide if I was going to recover from all that poop and Jay-in-the-loincloth all on the same day, trying hard to focus on a soap-making exhibit that normally would have really interested me, when the phone rang. Our realtor called, and today's showing went swimmingly! We probably sold the house. The potential buyer will sleep on it first, but intends to write an offer tomorrow. We're so glad, and so anxious all in one. We need to find a house/pack/mortgage and all of those things. We finally just gave up on our day in Mercer County and drove home to a liquor cabinet that I must remember to pack last at this address and unpack first at the new one, because honestly, on days like this, isn't that cheaper than therapy?

Pesto from scratch: the sequel

A couple months ago Dorothy and I repotted some basil I'd grown from seed into bigger pots. It was really ready to cut and eat a week or two ago, but we finally got around to it today. Dorothy decided we should eat it on pizza, so tonight I baked vegetable pizzas with pesto, yellow squash and sundried tomatoes. Rob and I thought it was delicious; Dorothy picked off the visible vegetables, dug in, then declared that our basil was "nasty." Luckily I'd thought to bake a separate pizza with more traditional toppings. If you've never made pesto at home, it's fun and easy. Fill a food processor bowl most of the way with clean basil leaves, then drizzle with olive oil, throw in a handful of pine nuts, a handful of shredded parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not its bastard cousin that comes in a plastic can), sprinkle with salt and whirl. Yum.

So yesterday I went shopping with my mother. Being the generous Nana she is, she bought Dorothy some new clothes from Children's Place--clothes Dorothy picked out herself. The girl selected one of her new outfits this morning and put it on first thing, instead of the usual time spent lolling in jammies. She put on this shirt with this matching (skimpy) shrug. My first thought was, sheesh, my mother bought my daughter hootchie-girl clothes! Why must little girl clothes be so much like skanky teenager clothes? Can't they be little and non-sexy for just a few years? Then I got totally knocked off my high horse. My kid said, "Mommy, in this outfit I look just like you! See this shirt? It has a nursing bra!"

A hat for me

All the sunhat-making I did a couple months ago for the kids inspired me to alter the pattern a bit for myself. So I did, and this is the result. It's made from one of the sheets from my thrift store buying spree of a few weeks ago. I have, it turns out, a particularly small head (spare me the jokes--it's too easy) and thus have a very difficult time finding hats that fit. I adjusted the toddler pattern up just a wee bit, and now I have a hat to fit my own just-bigger-than-a-toddler (oy) head.

And what did the little guy do all this time? This isn't a flattering picture of him, but it captures the current era. He's, like, so over being horizontal. (Insert some little baby eye-rolling at Mom if she suggests he lie on his back.) Now it's all the rage to be sitting up like a big boy, with a smorgasbord of delicious toys to grab and chew on. He's at that funny stage where he can get toys to his mouth but can't let go, so in certain circumstances he really causes himself grief by retracting his hand and taking whatever delicious rattle or pacifier was in his mouth with it. Poor kid.

A first sewing lesson

Last year I made some sewing cards for Dorothy, the kind where an adult punches holes all around the edges, and a child threads yarn in and out of the holes. She enjoyed doing that to a certain extent, but she definitely didn't feel like she was sewing (she knew the difference between cardboard and quilting cotton, after all!) and she never asked to do it again. Today it occurred to me that she was plenty old enough to wield a real needle, so I set her up with a beginning sewing project and she did a great job. I just cut out a red felt heart and a strip of blue felt with pinking shears, then guided her through sewing the heart to the strip, then stitching up the sides to make a little pouch. I picked out a rather blunt embroidery needle for her, but sometimes she had trouble getting it through the felt, so I think next time I'll have to set her up with a sharper one. She feels like the pouch needs a hook and loop closure, so I need to either find hook and look tape she can glue on, or I'll have to sew that on myself, because it's hard for anyone to push a needle through Velcro and I don't want her to get discouraged (or poked). In the meantime she carried the pouch very proudly (deservedly so) to Target with her very own dollar inside.

And I've been staying up late watching online tutorials for some software I recently bought but am apparently not smart enough to use, and while I've been watching I crocheted a little green soaker for Worth. I've made this pattern before and just love it. This should be a great summer diaper with a t-shirt, nice and breathable but with the amazing waterproof qualities of lanolized wool.

And finally, slippers for myself! I found a new-to-me fun website with patterns and couldn't resist trying one out.

Speaking of cleanliness

Dorothy spent the night with her Nana and Opa last night, and Rob and I spent our first night alone with the little guy. Of course we missed all of our girl's energy around the house, but it was pretty nice to have some time to just shamelessly drool over the beautiful baby without worrying about the feelings of a touchy 4-year-old. Dorothy likes to be involved in Worth's care to the extent that I've been known to sneak around and give him a bath after she's fallen asleep because I'm concerned that all her "help" will drown the baby, so this quiet morning with her gone was the perfect time to clean him and fuss over his amazing cuteness without her there to assist or witness.

So this post is just in celebration of my beautiful, clean (and safe!) baby. Photo 1: in the washpod, which I think is the best baby tub ever. Photo 2: enjoying a towel-dry. Photo 3: dressed and ready for the day, in a formerly sports-themed onesie I embellished with a vintage VW ad. I want to eat him up!

The good, the bad, and the Easter

A few fun tidbits. I tried talking to Dorothy about the Christian Easter story last week, after listening to her run on about Bunny protocol for a while. Christmas was so much easier--a baby, a promise, some wise men with gifts. (There was a mermaid/myrrh mixup for her, but whatever. Mermaids seem like a much better gift when you're a preschooler.) Easter required a little more nuance and is more difficult to comprehend at any age. She listened, then said, "Mommy, I don't want to talk about this any more." Well, neither did I. I only have a masters degree in Divinity from the University of Chicago. Who am I to try to explain resurrection to a four-year-old? So I'm hoping maybe the version they gave in Sunday School was easier for her to digest? Which brings me to Sunday School...

Nana purchased adorable pastel taffeta dresses for the three granddaughters to wear on Easter. Dorothy is photographed in hers above. The posed photograph involved careful timing (mid-morning, not too close to nap, right after feeding the baby) and bribery with chocolate to gain Dorothy's absolute cooperation. Part of the chocolate deal was that she wear exactly what I pick out. I rarely choose her clothes, other than to make weather-appropriate suggestions. So she goes around looking like a preschooler who picks out her own clothes, which really is totally fine with me. It's not that I can't control my kid; it's that I pick my battles. Anyway, when Easter actually arrived today she did decide to wear the dress, but chose to wear black and yellow Batman socks under the white patent leathers. And I have to say, it was kind of cute in a punk/chic sort of way. I thought she was an adorable Easter kid, and was even feeling sort of smug in my ability to let her wear Batman socks to church ('cause come on, not all Moms would have gone with it!), until I realized she also went to church wearing no underpants. I have no idea if the people in her Sunday School class figured that one out or not. I wasn't there. I know not what was said about Jesus and the cross, nor what kind of peep show my daughter gave. Hallelujah?

This picture is me and my sweet baby on Easter. He's wearing a sweater and booties I crocheted for him right after I found out I was pregnant last spring. It had a matching hat, but gender-neutral blue and orange turned a little infant drag-queenish when I put him in the pom-pom hat, so the hat got tossed into the donations pile. Worth looked adorable and quite appropriately masculine. And he wore a diaper--I saw to that! I wore a ruffly shirt I sewed while I was pregnant and a dragon skirt I sewed last summer. We kind of matched, color-wise, which was no accident. :) Since I've already gone there with the underpants disclosure, I'll continue the bawdy theme of this post and state that while Worth did not poo on anyone during the family Easter celebration as his sister and cousins each had during their first Easters (a family tradition, it seems!), he did make use of his uniquely male ability to shoot a fountain of pee all over Nana's sunroom sofa. Happy Easter everyone!