Burlap wreath

My sister asked me to make a wreath for her door. Her door is not blue. But I keep telling her it should be.

This was really easy and quick. Unlike that ruffled wreath that required 4,305,975 (or thereabouts) felt circles and shriveled my hands into cramped tyrannosaur claws. It was worth it though.

I cut the burlap into strips. Then I held the center fiber tight and pulled the fabric down along it, making a loose ruffle (but without the hassle of a basting stitch!) I took these ruffled strips and wound them around the wreath, pinning them as I went. If the wreath base and the fabric had contrasted more, I think I would have wound the wreath in non-ruffled burlap first. But I didn't.

True story: my sister and I came out of totally different aisles of the store with the exact same feather thing in our hands. Hers was black. She said "I love this but I would like it more in red."

Mine was red.

World... meet Fang

Violet's teacher is having a Valentine box decorating contest and told them to go nuts.

I guess he's not totally nuts. He could have had moving parts or said things like "feed me candy!" But he did involve sewing.

And that's something.

Sicky sicky sick

Smitty McSickly is ill. He has some sort of RSV-like virus with a really long and ominous-sounding name that I can't remember. Basically he has a nasty cold and is too little to blow his nose so he is all stuffy and boogery and congested-in-his-chest-ery. Food tastes icky to him, sleeping in his lonely crib is not nice and people keep suctioning his nose and testing his blood O2 and touching and poking and pestering him when he just wants mom-snuggles, thank you. I keep telling him we're trying to keep him out of the hospital. He says to leave the dinosaur socks ON and stop pinching his pudgy feet.

Also today he crawled into the laundry room, industriously dug around in a basket until he found a particular sock, clutched it to his chest and said "oooooohDOboh!" He hugged it a minute more before crawling off, special sock in hand.

I have no idea.

Today's checkup involved too much of the poking and listening and pestering. Now he has two angry-looking infected ears and the doctor suggested 3 days of antibiotic injections and I just couldn't do it. We'll try the liquid.

You've definitely had too much of the doctor's office when sleeping in your sibling's trash-pile room is the best alternative.

February decisions

Remember how February makes me go crazy? Like that one February when I up and decided that we needed to move to a different house as in right now this minute? And the time that a fist through the wall started a years-long remodel of our entire upstairs (totally worth it!) And that other February when we sold our beloved Pathfinder because there was not enough room for the carseat of the third baby that I could not possibly continue life without.

February. It's a problem.

I gave last February a pass because sweet baby Smitty had rearranged our lives pretty well on his own. My major decisions last year were scaled-down decisions.

Will baby look more snuggly in his Valentine pajama suit or his hooded sweater suit?
Should we both have a little nap in our bed, or in this delicious patch of sunshine?
Do you suppose another diet Dr. Pepper before lunch will keep him awake?

February again! Change is in the air. Joe's recently replaced the red jeep with a black one. Supposedly he'll sell the red one later. The driveway is getting crowded. Also Big Blue had some ignition problems, because he was feeling left out. Blue decided that using a key in the ignition is Lame and Common and something that Other Cars Do, and that keys were no longer for him. So instead of a boring metal ignition key, Joe fashioned one from a bit of Trex decking that he found on the ground and this little notched bit of wood is how we have to start the truck.

......yep.

But hey! Swapping one jeep and repairing one truck is boring. It's been done. It's February! Joe also decided that if the Tahoe needed to be registered and I really couldn't stop complaining about it, then it was probably time to sell it too. Normally I think I'm not a complainer. I would like to think so. And maybe if we hadn't purchased the Tahoe from criminals, maybe I would have felt like I could trust and love the car. The little things would not have bothered me. But every minute of its life, I felt like I was waiting for something to go wrong. It made me worry. The heat only worked at 3 and 4. The keyless entry worked some of the time. The tachometer worked most of the time. The speedometer came and went. The CD player only played at certain temperatures. It squeaked. It rattled. And I worried.

It sold. I watched it lumber off it its new life in Idaho without any regrets. Actually we left it in the bank parking lot where the buyer was supposed to go back for it, except he called the next day to ask where was that bank again? Because he couldn't remember. I hope he found it.

And because Joe's brother is borrowing one of our cars and another is parked at his mom's house for no particular reason, our driveway was suddenly, strangely empty.

The neighbors commented on the new look.

So today, hooray! we officially joined the Nissan team again, with Nissan #5 and Pathfinder #2. And little Violet exacted a promise from all parties to not switch any of the cars for a year at least.

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.