Filed under: Crafting to keep the crankies away, Cricket, Ella, holidays, video
Ella woke up today and was thrilled that the Easter bunny actually came, and that he brought her SOCKS. Because for all the excesses in clothes my kids have, one thing we are always running short on is socks, especially for Ella. Tom is tall and skinny, and so far Ella is living up to his genes, though I was also the tallest person in my 4th grade class, and the shortest one by 7th grade. So much for my basketball career. Ella has the equivalent of mastiff paws on a chiwawa though, so maybe she will grow into her feet. And it turns out that socks, rolled into themselves, look a lot like eggs, so I can’t be called a complete killjoy.
The Easter bunny DID share a couple chocolate eggs from her stash, which Ella clutched in her (also large and pointy for her age) hands and declared “Chokat!”so maybe she got a few of my genes also.
The plan for today is pretty lazy - Tom has to work all day, and then when he finally gets home, we are heading over to the inlaws to hide eggs and eat. Ella and I are trashing the house with art projects, and cursing the fact that my camera was in the car when Tom left this morning. I’m also trying to edit a bunch of the videos we’ve taken lately, though it’s slow going. Here is a tiny window into life around here:
Filed under: holidays
May the day bring you enough candy canes and sugar cookies to keep you on a sugar high through New Years.
- I am now officially down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Don’t be too envious - squish belly is still in full effect. Nothing like having a deflated beach ball around your midsection to make you feel great. I am anxious to put away my pregnancy pants, but don’t want to fight this flop into a real waistband. That’s right - pants with a button intimidate me. Good thing I’ve got this inflated rack to distract you from my elastic waistband.
- Cookie day tomorrow at the MIL’s. I already made the sugar cookie dough, and plan to make the dough for a couple variations of butter cookie, Chocolate peppermint crinkle, and maybe some of these, in the morning. Oh, and no-bake cookies also.I was going to just make cookies here, but I like the idea of a cookie making tradition at grandma’s, for the girls. Plus, my kitchen stays (semi) clean. Woot.
- In the comments of this article about kids and gifts (The Four Things Children Really Want for Christmas), I found a great suggestion:
Peg Kerr said:
The smartest thing we did as a family about Christmas was to use an idea my sister had given me, the Five Gifts of Christmas. Each year, we would give our two daughters:
1. Something to love, to teach nurturing (for our daughters, this generally meant a doll. This worked well for us. For younger children, it might mean a stuffed animal. For older children, this might be a pet, or pet supplies. This category can stretch a little. You might think it means nurturing/caring for something like a garden, so you could buy garden supplies. Or perhaps a bird feeder (caring for animals).
2. Something to help them be artistic (paints, bead kits, other art supplies)
3. Something to help them be athletic (jump ropes, soccer ball, stilts, etc.)
4. Something to read (books were always a big hit in our house)
5. Something for them to do with parents (a board game, a puzzle. One year we got them tickets to a play for us to see together).This worked very well for us, because it was simultaneously limiting and yet creative. The kids liked it, too. We felt the gift-giving experience was well-rounded, and once we had picked the five gifts, it was easy to tell ourselves we were “done,” without that nagging sense that we needed to get them another gift.
A little late this year, but I don’t think we went too far overboard. For Alice: we got her life, and a few footie pajamas. I think that is a pretty good haul. For Ella: an aqua doodle, markers and a notepad are all artistic, a little stuffed mouse to love, a couple books of course, a box of puzzles that we will do together… Oh, and a set of orange plastic traffic cones, from her dad. I.. don’t know. But that is athletic, right? Ha.
- Guess who is going to an Ani Difranco concert in April? Meeeeeeeeeee! Oh, and Tom. It will involved leaving the girls for 4-5 hours, which freaks me out (Alice will only be 4 months!) but I will deal with that when I get there. For now I am all giddy and happy that Tom finally listened when i told him what I wanted for Christmas. (My exact words were “I’ll buy myself a ticket on the 26th if you don’t get me one for Christmas, so just buy it, okay?” And then he DID. Amazing.)
Guys! Why didn’t you tell me it was only three days until Christmas?! Holy.. lord. Jesus. Baby Jesus. In a sleigh.. no, a manger.
I can’t even begin to make a list of what all I had hoped to accomplish before Christmas, and have given up on. I am trying to be gentle with myself, because obviously when I try to be super-mom my boobs revolt and sent me to bed for 36 hours, but Booo is what I say. Ella is going to Pam’s for a few hours tonight and I will try to at least wrap the few presents I managed to order/put together before Cricket’s birth. Tom has tomorrow off, so I’ll also make a list of things we still need (like peppermint schnapps! Ohh hot chocolate, how I love to spike you! Or this works too.) and send him out into the madness, possibly with a toddler. Mwahahaha. I also might make sugar cookie dough, which I can just throw in the fridge and pull out when I need to distract Ella for a couple minutes (because this girl loves to use the cookie cutters. If I wasn’t so scared, I would make her some play-doh, but I like my floors too much.)
So, the girl’s Christmas outfits are not handmade, the majority of Ella’s gifts are second hand books and toys, and anyone who doesn’t live with me is getting a gift certificate. I can live with that. This year. Next year I’m locking both the girls on their side of the craft room and using up some of this fabric I am drowning in. That photo I linked to above? I think the fabric is sexing it up down there in the basement and multiplying, because there is no way it would all fit in those cubbies now. Of course, that may have more to do with my compulsive fabric buying, and the fact that my mother in law owns a fabric shop (and a storage unit of her own random fabric collection) but whatever.
My grandma sent the girls some little quilts for their birthdays, and I love that they have great-grandma blankies. This doll is from her also, and is among Ella’s favorites. I have a strange relationship with my mother’s side of the family, partially carried over from my mom’s own muddy relationship with them, but also of my own doing. I would say “It’s hard to explain” but really, whose family workings are easy to explain? Regardless, I am glad we (meaning, I) have started talking again, since I truly do want my kids to know their family, even if they are so far away. My grandma also sent a piggy bank that had been my aunt’s for the girls, and three unicorn figurines that had been my mom’s. One is a potpourri holder, and has had the same smelly scent in it since I was little, and as soon as I opened the box I felt six again. It was a very welcome Christmas present.
Head over to Toddled Dredge tomorrow for the conclusion of her advent series, which has been thought provoking and refreshing, even for those of us with a… hard to explain relationship with religion. Because other people have an easy to explain relationship with the Lord? I don’t know. Really - I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll try to explain why my view of religion can only be described as muddy, but for now, head over and read Veronica’s post. The clarity of her vision is inspiring.
Do you know Hathor? Here are a couple of my very favorite comics of hers over the last few years, but I will keep it short - it would be easy to let the list get toooo long.
Ella somehow killed all the bookmarks on my computer, so I am slowly repopulating the list. As frustrated as I was at first, there were over 500 links saved and only 10 of them were used regularly, so I am looking at it as a forced simplification. Now if I would just stop bookmarking random things because “I’ll get around to reading it/making it/sharing it someday.” Bookmarked today: Origami boxes broadcloth baby quilts MotherRising: A guide to blessingways
I was going to write up a “I am thankful” post today, but I think it is pretty self evident what I am thankful for : I am thankful for my daughter’s laughter, and my body’s ability to grow these amazing people I am blessed to raise. I am thankful for my husband, who never ceases to surprise me with his generosity, patience and humor. I am thankful that I gave myself the chance to reach this place in my life. I am thankful I did not write an entire post about this because I am kneedeep in sap already and it’s only been a paragraph. Aaaaamen.
Mission Thanksgiving: Successful. Ish. Okay, so it wasn’t Norman Rockwell and we did not go around the table saying what we were thankful for (I think Boobs would be on all of our lists though…) and the vast majority of the dishes were either store bought (pie!) or thrown together two hours before (umm, everything else) but it wasn’t bad for a first attempt.
Ella even ate a bit, which is pretty rare lately. Why do toddlers go on hunger strikes? I mean, I know she is empathetic for the monks in Burma, but I think they will agree with me: fasting is not for babies. Speaking of, if you call Ella a baby lately (”Come on baby, lets go outside!”) she will look at you very seriously and tell you that “No, Lella. No baby. Lella.” which… shouldn’t make me sad I guess. She is so proud of herself when she uses the potty, or when she puts on her own shoes, and all the “big girl” things she does, so of course she doesn’t want to be called a baby… and besides, she won’t be the baby soon.. but she’s my baby. She still fits in my arms and cuddles under my neck and cries for me when she is sad. I guess by those criteria, she will never graduate into Lella-hood. How about when she is too big to fit in the wagon when she falls asleep on a walk to the grocery store? Then I will cut the chord. Or at least get an extension.
Chips: the pillow you can eat.
(Mmmmmm chips. We never have them in the house and now I remember why. I am going to blame that whole “eating a bag before Tom got home from work” thing on being pregnant. Yes.)
