Donated hair

Violet has a friend in her Primary class who is in the hospital. Her friend Natalie AND Natalie's sister Alice both have a rare immune disorder and both are having a bone-marrow transplant that will hopefully (cross fingers!) cure the condition. If you want to read more about this amazing family, you can visit their blog Fishes for Marrow Wishes.

Anyway, at church yesterday, the class had a Skype visit with Natalie. Violet was a little worried that Natalie had lost her hair from the chemo and so we had a talk about it. After a few hours, Violet came back and said that she wanted her hair cut off and donated to Locks for Love (which mostly does wigs for children who lose their hair from alopecia areata). I asked her to think about it and say a prayer about it and if she still wanted to, we would get a haircut.

Well, today she was still excited about donating her hair. Here's the last minutes of her really long, down-to-her-waist (totally-in-need-of-a-trim) hair.

10 inches of hair is a lot on a little girl!

And here's the results! Doesn't she look grown-up and stylish? She has spent the evening telling me that it's OK, I will still be able to braid her hair and do half-ups and even low piggies. Do you like how she's reassuring me?

Do you ever have a day when, in between the sibling squabbles and constant demands and threats to lock them in their room and feed them meals through a cat flap, you are treated to a part of their personality that is generous and selfless and beautiful?

This was that day.

Birthday Boy

Being a toddler is totally overrated. Do not you agree? I've spent a lot of time and effort trying to talk Smitty Baby into staying a baby.

Don't you want to stay a little snack-sized armful for a bit longer?

You don't really want those teeth, do you?

Crawling beats walking anydangday. Especially when you have a fuzzy tiger face right smack on your crawling bum.

I'm pretty sure all the cool kids are still in 6-month sizes.

Are you SURE you don't want to put some of these developmental milestones off a bit longer?

These were the most well-reasoned of my many, many arguments. I've got more!

Nothing doing, he said.

The night before his birthday, after the whole house had gone to bed, I got him back out of his crib and held his fleecy-pajamaed little self and snuffed up his not-newborn-anymore smell. And cried real tears.

And I realized that, as much as I want my baby to stay a little baby, the things he's doing now are amazing too. The pigeon-toed bulldog crawl and tiny voice saying 'momom' of 11 months is just as adorable as the scrunch-faced stretches and curled-up legs of 11 days. And we certainly get more sleep, says the rational part of my brain. Yes, says the part that's crying the tears. Only you just can't rewind the crawling to the curled-up froggy legs. You can't take 23 pounds of wiggles and make it seem like 7 pounds of helpless in your arms.

But I wish I could. Oh how I wish.


Well, my love, my own, in spite of all my advice you went ahead and turned one anyway. But we could still hold off on the walking thing. Just a wee bit longer.

Let them eat cake

Or cupcakes.

Peekaboo Barn cupcakes, to be exact. Smitty's favorite thing in the whole wide world of entertainment and Possible Party Themes is Peekaboo Barn. And Elmo. But mostly Peekaboo Barn.

Also Elmo involves waaaay to much red-dyed frosting and I am not A-OK with that.

And now, Birthday Boy Smitty will tell you how one attacks ones first birthday cupcake.

And I did receive a cupcake from my sister and I did take it for my own. Also I did wonder why I was sitting on the kitchen table.

I did poke at the cupcake. I did lick it and touch it and drop it.

And behold! I found it squishy and delightsome to taste.

And I did find that the cupcake did not end at the frosting bit but that there was a manner of cake beneath which I could crush and smoosh.

And I did wiggle and laugh and perhaps do a little dance as I pondered mine own good fortune.

Yea I did savor the cupcake. And it was good.

{fin}

Our Christmas Tree

When I was little, my mom would get a different ornament for me and my sisters every year. She usually tried to make them relate to the past year - the year I worked as a junior tour guide
at the museum, my ornament was a dinosaur with Christmas lights on him. This was a tradition I loved and wanted to pass on to my own kids. After a few years of trying to find ornaments that were 'special', I met Jodie, a lovely woman in our ward who is an amazing artist. Each December she has a get-together at her home where she teaches you to sculpt things from polymer clay. People do nativity scenes and ornaments and all kinds of things. So each year I make a special ornament for each of my children. Some are holiday-themed (angels and snowmen) and some are specific to each child (Dash is totally into zombies this year so he got a zombie elf). Violet has even started making some of her own (the red-gowned lady and the snowman with broomstick arms are hers).







So this is our tree. It is small and kind of sparsly-branched, but it will never crush any climby babies who try to scale its modest heights. It will never stand as a model of amazing decoration and design, but so far no one has been able to harm themselves with any of the ornaments. The kids are proud of their creations and baby Smitty loves to re-decorate his lower half of the tree every day.

I wanted this for my Christmas card

But then I remembered that I had three kids. You know, instead of just this one.

So I didn't use this card.

But still....

It would have been good.

Cooties and the like

I love fall. I do. The cooler weather, the decorations, the holidays and get-togethers and baking and everything good. Every year I get so excited for those first crisp, cool days that I totally forget what comes hand-in-hand with the cold.

COLDS!

And sore throats and coughs and sneezy sounds and every other bad thing. Stupid classes and stupid germs and stupid cold-weather cooped-up cooties anyhow.

After Joe and I spent a shivery, feverish, sleepless night and everyone stayed home from school the next day, I made a round of appointments for the pediatrician and I said, without thinking "I hope we all have strep throat". And Joe looked at me like I might have turned insane.

"Because" I went on as if this was making perfect sense to me, which it was "Then there will actually be Something Wrong with us all, instead of the vague 'probably a virus' diagnosis and there are actually antibiotics to take and we'll all be better".

It is perfectly reasonable, when you think about it.

So, after some taking-of-temperatures and some throat swabs and some wrenching-open-of-someone's-jaws (because the oldest, in spite of her cleverness, will never submit to any procedure, no matter how small, without a 5-star tantrum) it's official. We all have strep throat. Except the baby. He has a sinus infection.

We brought home a bag from the pharmacy that probably weighs as much as the baby, and Happy Meals for all. My dear, darling visiting teacher dropped off Sprite and popsicles. New Netflix movies arrived in the mail (a miracle!) I've confined everyone to the house for 48 hours to try and get better.

I've decided that sick days would be a better experience if you're not actually sick. I keep thinking that I'd like to sleep late, curl up by the fire and maybe crochet the remainder of Smitty's Christmas hat. Instead I lay awake all night trying not to swallow because of the cantaloupe-sized ball of ouch in my throat and wander around in a haze all day because none of the kids believe in sleeping in.

I decided to put a bit more effort into today, so instead of slouching around in Joe's pajama pants all day, I showered, put on an entirely new pair of Joe's pajama bottoms and crammed my contacts into my eyes because Smitty doesn't recognize me in glasses. Also I washed everyone's sheets, applied disinfectant spray to the house with a crop-duster.

Have you actually made it to the end of this post? Well, here's hoping that tomorrow will contain more wellness and less annoying illness than today.

To my Scrabble girls

For a while, I was doing really good at keeping up with a few Words With Friends games. And then this guy, Smitty McSmitten Mittens, discovered that he too, loves that iPod.

And if you think you're going to play a great word, or maybe toss an angry bird or two, you are confronted with this.

Oh! The iPod? Are we going to play Peekaboo Barn now for the maybe three millionth time?

Do you think it will be the sheep? Or the rooster? Or maybe even the dog! We must know!

And then you think to yourself how heart-meltingly cute his little giggle is when he hears the kid say "peekaboo barn" and you absolutely and completely give in to him, every single time.

And you lose all your Scrabble games.

This is me not caring

On kid #3, sometimes you flatter yourself that you are starting to figure things out. Then you get slapped in the face with (yet another) thing you failed to consider.

Holiday decorations and a pre-walking munchkin bent on terror and destruction, for example.

I left the nice nativity sadly tucked away in its box.

I put up the little tree which will, probably, most likely, I tell myself, not crush any little someones when they pull it over on themselves.

With the shatter-proof ornaments, because my kids have been known to eat tree-related holiday decor and, you know, safety first!

And the old, old, like from our haunted house old, gold garland.

And told the type-A part of my self that it's perfectly fine and everything will survive and he'll eventually lose interest and next year we can trust him with more of the decorations out.

Which is, I'm almost pretty sure, totally what's going to happen.

Apps for kids

In the last week I've been on a quest to find good apps for the Smittens. He loves the iPod but how much Plants vs. Zombies does he need to play? So I've been browsing interactive games and books for little kids. What I've found is that a lot of them have
a. super annoying voices
b. lame graphics (this bothers me... a lot)
c. ways to make you (or the kids) "accidentally" buy more stuff

Grrrr, right?

So in the middle of my quest, guess what happened? My friend released an app.

How often do you get to say this? Let's say it again.

My friend just released an app.

I KNOW!!

And it's a totally great one for little kids - counting, letters, shapes, colors, all in these interactive little games. Love it.


Oh, and did I mention that it's totally beautiful?


So yes, totally check it out! Click here or search for Make it Pop in the app store.

Experiences in photographing children

Thanksgiving Wreath

Maybe I've mentioned how much I love Pintrest. Everything I see on there is beautiful, so fun, so ImustmakethatRIGHTNOW! Exclamation point!

My husband has been gone the entire weekend and the kids expressed a desire to sit around and make Halloween decorations. Well, the oldest wanted to make Halloween decorations. The middle child declared his intentions to play video games for several hours (whatever, dude) and the baby said "I'll go along with anything as long as I don't have to be strapped in a seat. And make sure there are snacks. Also check out how my language skills have progressed."

So after a quick trip to the craft store, an iPod loaded with Bartelby's Book of Buttons and quantities of Apple Jacks scattered on the floor, this was our first finished creation.

It's not technically a Halloween decoration. I already have one of those that I love. But this one will be perfect for fall AND I needed to use up some of this $1.50/yd grey fabric I've had laying in my work basket for 3 months. It will just have to wait for Nov. 1 to be put up for Thanksgiving.