Write, Mama. Write.

Toddler tango...

What he says: "NO!... No. NO!"  And what he means, clearly: "I would not touch that yellow shirt with a palm tree on it with a ten foot pole if it was the last shirt in the world and everyone else yearned for the same exact style.  Where do you get your complete and tragic lack of fashion sense?" 

Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack.  Up, down, twirl and hop.  On, off, snuggle or complete independence.  We're in constant negotiation. 

What he says: "BOOTS!  Aucks (socks).  BOOTS!"  I try every run-around and persuasion, noting sweltering sun and Mama's sandals and then he wears me down (always) and we traipse around town, froggy boots afoot, orange polo and bright shorts.  We are a rainbow testament to toddler self assertion.

Target sent me a package of coupons.  It's designed specifically for me, as their creepy marketing and Big Brother Amazon collusion makes possible, and it's full of pull-ups and toddler "feel and learn" diapers, gimmicky hand soap and UNDERWEAR for kids.  Big business thinks we should be potty training, the boy thinks he should be in charge and I wonder if this is something I can negotiate... This whole growing up thing, can we possible slow it down just a little?

What he says: "Nana sticka more... No...."  And what he means, clearly: "No more stickers from Nana today."  One word or these new, four word phrases... He sighs, exclaims, demands.  He nudges and tests, and boundaries spring up or move around or disappear.  We dance a linguistic tango, with complexity and love, with the embrace and the theatrics.  The pace speeds.  I hold on tight.

I doubt he'd go for these.

 

Mama rumpus

It's thirty minutes fraught with mama guilt mines, especially when I'm tired.  Bath time, pajamas and bed with a 20 month old floppy fish of a spitfire and too much self-induced worry.  He's still in the baby tub because 1) he's happy with it and 2) I don't want to wash the big tub every other night.  Am I limiting his childhood experience, confining his urge to explore (four more inches on each side)?  That insidious black shower mold, creeping through the last resident's caulking cover-up... Does it make me a lousy housewife?  I'm drowsy from the wrangling, shopping, cooking, and play of the day, the heater's on my back while the boy pours and splashes and giggles.  More often than not the three of us are tucked in the little bathroom together.  While it makes sense to divide and conquer, the dishes and the boy, our time together is so short.  We lean our heads in to one another, laughing at scientific discoveries of gravity and properties of a liquid.  Bubbles pop and there are splutters of incredulity.

It's nearly impossible to play the pajama dressing game now, as tummy and toes thrash and he lunges for his elephant.  This boy knows diversion, so alternates between coy hilarity and dogmatic demands.  I want time to relax, to be still.  My mind drifts to future evening hurdles before much anticipated moments of sanity: dishes, laundry, a little work on the side before sewing or reading.  With our story time we are three tucked together once again, everything right with the world and an old, torn quilt hugging us tightly.  The quilt is a traditional log cabin pattern, quilted with hopes overcoming lack of skill in college when my husband and I were dating, in love, and already dreaming of one day being three hugged together. 

Guilt sneaks in the lull.  I have yet to quilt for this boy, just as I have yet to write his letter of welcome.  The suggestive page sits blank in his baby book and other people's handiwork envelopes him in the night.  How do I write my hopes?  How do I convey my dreams aside from simply saying, "Everything.  Everything you need."  How do I create the perfect blanket to warm his body and a bit of his soul? Where do I find all of the words, all of the pieces, and how do I tie them together in the right pattern to create the beauty he deserves? 

Max tells the beasts he's off to supper in our story and we head to the crib, but the wild rumpus is growing in me.  How do I become the mama I want to be for this boy?  How can I possibly be enough of the everything and the beauty he deserves?  He's tucked in and happy, quiet for a split second before popping up to wave us out the door.  As I sit, exhausted, it hits me that it's all here: a little self-induced mama guilt, letting things go, the drowsy splashing and giggles, discovery, hilarity, anticipating elusive sanity, learning what matters... Being tucked in together with a history and our future.  My hopes and dreams, my boy.  These are all pieces of his childhood, and all pieces of learning to be the mama I want to be.  The pattern this takes and the pages it fills are just beginning.  This is the beauty we are creating together.   

I wrote this awhile back for submission to something; they wanted something a bit different.  The boy graduated to the big tub this past month and I just cut strips for his quilt.  I decided it doesn't have to be his 'forever quilt' and could just be his 'this year' quilt.  I don't have to be the mama I want to be someday, just the mama I am right now.    

A quick trip to my favorite place in the world

The farm is summer to me.  To the left is where I turned bales over to help them dry; I charged per bale, if I remember correctly.  In this same field I tasted the salt lick when no one was looking.  To the right is where I'd ride my horse, bareback, free, entrusted with the ornery ways of the fattest little pony there ever was.  The right barn held hay to the roof and I spent hours in my own castle, my own fort, my own little house (well, I shared it with the occasional mouse).

Engines off in this picture, just so you know.  I'm a cautious one.  To the right here, twenty or so yards, is where I once helped my grandpa deliver a calf.  The vet wouldn't come, wouldn't come, wouldn't come and things weren't going well.  I learned a lot about freedom, nature, life and death on the farm.  Down the hill is the pond my grandparents put in, which looks as though it was always there.  I remember when it was just a pasture.  I remember swimming in the creek, grilling hot dogs at Horseshoe Bend, traipsing through quiet cedar groves with deer and owls.  Walking sticks, red vests, Grandpa and the scarecrow dressed the same up in the cherry trees, wheelbarrow rides, fixing bottles for baby calves and collecting eggs from the chickens and berries from the bushes...  Summer.

And now the boy has shared in a bit of it too.

Oh, boy - guilt - bag the second - play dough

Oh, boy
We have a little crib my parents brought over, with a small high chair that my sister and I used to play with.  The crib came with darling, little, handmade quilts and lots of memories, and the boy was enthralled.  I peeked in on him the other day, hearing familiar little crib noises and thinking, "Oh!-- He's playing with the crib!"  I've tried to model lots of "tucking Bear in for night-night," etc.  He had his Little People oil tanker fueling a hole in the crib rail and was whaling on the foot of the crib bed with his plastic hammer.   While I was watching he turned from this to the high chair and set up a wooden "train" with blocks along the tray, yelling, "Choooooo!  Chooooo!"  Boys can be so different from girls sometimes. 

Guilt
For whatever reason I'm just falling behind on everything lately.  It's just one of those "can't get it together" periods and I'm also not getting enough sleep so everything seems more overwhelming than it really is.  The little guy just completely fell apart as I tried to get him down for a nap (too tired, too much...) and I had this moment of: Oh, my goodness-- I did this same thing last night (too tired, too much...).  So.  I love the bloggerly love of returning comments and emailing back and forth and developing a community online which I really appreciate and I suppose have come to need.  I just can't get it together lately to get everything done, and emails and even commenting when I visit and think "Wow!" isn't possible.  It's 'give up hour four of four of sleep' or 'ignore the need to do what's right' and sleep wins because I know if I don't get hour four I'll be Super Crabby Mama and we'll end up with a cranky day.  I have this super-sized ability for guilt.  Last fall I realized it was special when the neighbor's gigantic maple tree spread leaves over four sets of neighbors' lawns and I felt empathetic guilt.  Like, 'if I had that tree in my yard I'd feel the need to rake everyone else's yard and bake them cookies'-guilt.  It's the neighbor's tree, trees lose leaves (every year, everyone expects it), I could care less about leaves in my yard and I was imagining feeling someone else's irrelevant, unnecessary guilt.  Which is to say not returning emails about lovely comments here and not returning kindnesses in kind (more my entitled guilt than that wrought by the neighbor's tree) has left me not wanting to stop in here.  I've kind-of been frozen.  I know, get over myself.  Anyhow, blanket apology here: I'm sorry.  And a determination to plow ahead, get out from falling behind and just let the guilt slide.  It really makes my day when someone writes that my muu-muu looks non-maternity or finds a pattern just for me or just says, "I hear you."  It matters to me a lot these days when new molars and mysterious fridge odors and too much rain become too much of all there is.  So, thank you for stopping by and I appreciate it and I'm sorry.

Bag the second
I did make another bag for Bag Month and I think I'll actually end up using this one.  Brown and blue are just about my favorite color combination these days, and I like the modified handles a lot more than the pattern's In Town (Amy Butler) handles.  Just so you know, leaving out the pocket and shortening (and widening) the handles made this a 1/4 yard exterior, 1/4 yard interior (skinny quarter yards) bag.  I think the pattern calls for a 1/2 yard of each!  Kristin wrote up a nice little post on "Staff Bags" over at Sew, Mama, Sew and also changed the blog.  What do you think?!

Play dough
Since this is a completely random post, fitting my completely random thought patterns lately, I'll just add that we tried a simple play dough recipe the other day and it was disgusting.  The boy had this "Uh, what are we doin' here, Mama?" look on his face the entire time and I just kept thinking "Thank goodness this is failing miserably with just me and my little guy and not with 25 first graders and three parent volunteers."  So, we made more of a mess with this recipe (the first one) and it was fantastic.  Name-brand play dough-like fantastic.  The link to bubbles looks like great fun too...

I like the dots.

Muumuu, maternity or me?

When I was pregnant I was surprised to discover that most of my clothes fit most of the way through.  I have a tendency to buy things way too big.  Anyhow I made a deal with myself that I'd try to buy things from there on out that actually fit me, and I've done a fairly good job with it (I don't remember what the deal involved other than the You must buy clothes that fit part).  Here's the thing though: I love this dress, modified from Built By Wendy 3835 out of one of my favorite, new-to-me prints.  The pattern is super-easy and modifying the shirt into dress length is practically on the pattern itself (someone had done this... Can't remember who, but it gave me the idea).  I'm such a clothing sewing novice and this was no problem at all, with hilarious (to me and me alone) inner dialogue going: "Oh, I see..." and "Eh? Oh! Wow..." and "There's no way this is gonna... Cool!"   It's a nice, easy pattern and I made a dress.  This picture is pre-darts.  I'd forgotten about the brilliance of darts.  It's got a smidge more shape to it now (good) and I can whip out darts like nothing (Eh? Oh! Cool...).  I'm a little concerned that it could easily take someone through at least the first half of a pregnancy (and rather than buy maternity clothing next time I would so just whip out half a dozen of these tops), and I really didn't want the muumuu look (T said, "What's a muumuu?").  I've been assured that it doesn't look like I'm wearing wallpaper and the boy said, "Aaaahhhhh" when he saw me in it.  It's light, summery, happy...   

I'm so super-cheap, you know, and I would often see how much it costs to make a certain clothing item yourself and think: Um, why?!  The other night I had about forty-five minutes free to whisk off to peruse patterns.  The next day I had fifteen minutes to sit down and catch up with catalogs (specifically Boden and the Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale catalog).  Then last night I had a free hour (I fled the house) and looked through The Loft sale racks.  I know... Where are all of these extra moments coming from?!  Anyhow, sewing epiphany hit.  This dress is made of absolutely beautiful, I-fell-in-love-with-it fabric.  I made it exactly to suit what I wanted (hemline, elastic tension... all of it).  It's so the look of things right now and I made it for under $20.  With almost no clothing experience I think I could make most of the looks in those catalogs for myself, in fabrics I love, without much trouble.  It's empowering.  Will I do that?  No.  But I could, and I can infuse a stagnant, yuck wardrobe with some nice things on our budget.  I just did.

Harry, one bag + rain (and that's about as creative as I can get in the funk of all this weather)

Harry- T's been reading the Harry books aloud in the evenings for months now.  I do formatting work on the computer, cut projects out or knit or some such thing and listen.  We both read all of the books but thought it'd be sort-of fun to finish them all up again together before the last book.  T finished reading the last word at 11:56 on Friday night and headed out to get the next one.  Big Book Seller One had a two hour wait.  Big Book Seller Two had a three hour wait and while T tried to figure out what he wanted to do someone grabbed one of the books and ran through the parking lot, security chasing him as best they could.  On the way home sans book T thought to try the little independent bookseller I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: wizard costumes, hot coffee, stacks o' books and a 12 minute wait.  Score one more for independent book stores.  So we'll be s-l-o-w reading this thing because life nowadays doesn't include a lot of time to sit down and read aloud in our house (well, things other than nursery rhymes and books about trains).  The main thing about all of this is an incredibly warm and happy feeling I get any time I think about how many, many people were lined up and excited by and thrilled about... A book.  There's so much I find completely sucky and overwhelming about the world these days (brilliant word choices this morning, eh?), and I get all giddy when I think about people waiting for hours (and years) for a book, then sitting down at one a.m. on a curb outside a bookstore to start reading.  Oh, and I have a giganto stack of cut out, just need to do the actual sewing stuff here because I can't do the actual sewing while T reads.  Some day I'll be very productive.

The bag- I finally completed two bags, joining in the Bag Month excitement...  This is one I actually dreamed up one day, sketched out and worked through to make it exactly like I'd envisioned it.  I didn't know I could do that.  The buttons are little, vintage French buttons and I love a bit "boxier" version of a tote bottom.  I like it floppy, with just a lightweight interfacing to give it a bit of shape.  I love this AH fabric but am not really a carry-around-a-pink -purse sort-of gal.  I finished it all up and was happy with it, showed T and said, "But it's really pink."  He said, "Um, well... You used pink fabric to make it."   

Rain- The rain has mercilessly stopped this morning though it's still wet, wet.  Seven rainy days in a row with warm weather and I've decided I'm a weather wuss.  How do you people do it in "sticky" locales?  It's been like Hawaii without the good stuff, Minnesota mosquito birds flying around trying to turn us inside out.  A bit of a fall funk fell around the house and all I want to do is sleep, leaving my wonderful early morning coffee/blog routine to suffer while I catch a few more winks.  In the fall you know it's coming and can prepare for that wintery, rainy funk-- sign-up for Baby Gym, buy lots of brighter light bulbs and the like... 

That is all: Harry, one bag and rain.  The forecast calls for a little sun this week and I have my Built By Wendy dress to complete.  I think a trip to the zoo is in order, rain or no rain, and an outdoor concert as well (no rain for that one though, please).

Floppy.

Car "box"

Here's one of those "been wanting to make it for ages"-type projects.  I finally got some Peltex (should've used Timtex, I suppose, but I'm Cheap-o with a capital C these days-- T would say all days) and just cut five squares out of it.  Five squares of the exterior fabric, five of the interior (had it lying around-- all cut to same dimensions) and scraps became handles.  Fun, easy and satisfying.

Before.

Here's the after.

My patient model just stared at me going (I could tell), "There she goes again.  She's wacko."  Luckily he also tends to shrug me off with a, "Well, I know she loves me"-type sentiment.  We're spinning around in here.  After unseasonably high temps (upper-90's) last week we've had torrential rain for five straight days in town.  It's kinda warm and just DAMP.  The plants can't believe their luck and the boy and I don't know what to do with ourselves.  Frivolous summertime activities like picnics outside, zoo trips, splashing in the wading pool and taking lazy walks have all gone by the wayside in favor of...  I don't know.  I'm eating too much cheese, worrying about scratches in the floor and the boy has placed colored pasta in every nook and cranny in the house.  Need a band aid?  Have a noodle instead.  Coffee?  The coffee jar and cups are full of noodles.  Think you're heading out with some shoes on?  Dump the noodles out first.

Spinning.

You don't know what you're in for

I feel bad because I thought that, and then I repeated it here... A couple of people mentioned that they "don't know what they're in for" yet too and then I felt triply-bad!  When you haven't been out alone with your guy for half a year or so cynicism can seep in just a little, teeny-tiny bit and I don't like that.  Don't get me wrong, I'm full of cynicism; it just never really enters the picture when I think about this little guy.  That moment was about balance and me not doing a good job with it.  Really and truly the "you don't know what you're in for" thought is about how dramatically life shifts when you have a child.  We'd been hoping and planning and Little Researcher Me had been reading everything I could find for years before the boy came.  We felt pretty darn prepared!  Now almost (time flies) two years after we first met the little guy I find myself thinking that absolutely nothing about me is the same aside from my clothes.  Becoming a family of three was pretty easy (aside from the initial lack of sleep... I should have asked for more help and I should have pumped for some midnight Daddy bottle feeding) but I didn't realize how much I would change.

Physical changes, yes.  I mean, everything you wish was small is bigger and everything you wish was bigger is smaller but there's nothing about that a little more exercise and a better bra couldn't fix.  In my family growing up somehow we coined the phrase "midlife readjustment period" instead of a "midlife crisis."  I feel like I've had an ongoing early-life readjustment period since becoming a mama.  Maybe the stop to the wheel running of school to career, always with an overachiever bent, helped me stop and think about who I really want to be. 

I think it's that with the boy here it's so important to make the most of everything.  You can easily shuffle off fun to work in the classroom 'til midnight when your sweetie is there, cutting and gluing and stapling with you.  You can't shuffle off fun with a toddler though, or life is miserable.  You have to stop for cookies.  When you see something beautiful or fascinating or different you have to stop running errands and explore.  You want more than anything for them to be happy so you become more flexible and fun and you whittle down what really matters to you so you can share that with them too.  At least that's how it's been for me.  I always thought that Gerber ad line was brilliant: Having a baby changes everything.  Because it does.  It changed me. 

Now, some of the things it changed have to wind their way back in.  There doesn't need to be such a huge disconnect.  Other things I'm happy to have let go of, and new experiences and possibilities and dreams have all entered the picture.  I've written about it here before and sometimes I worry I'll chance becoming a broken record.  Being a mama is exhilarating, exhausting, confusing... I'm always looking to improve, to find balance.  It's always a new challenge.  In short, the best gig ever.  So broken record or not, this place helps me to go "AAAaaak!" or "Aaahhh" or "Look" or "Oh, crud" about the gig when I need to and that's important.  It's important because I didn't know what I was in for and I don't know where I'm going, and it's the best thing ever.

Oh, and the noodles: We bought the biggest rigatoni noodles we could find, divided them up into resealable baggies and dropped food coloring and a little water in the bags.  Shake them up, lay them out in the sun to dry and you have hours and hours of sorting, stringing, "cooking" fun.

Things I've forgotten to write about recently

Time to catch-up a bit with my busy brain:

• Alrighty, Mix Tape Zine has sold out in the pre-order so more have been made available.  It's so very exciting to be a part of it and I can't wait to see the first copy.

• I've been working on bibs, bibs, bibs lately and the oranges one is my favorite yet.

• Blurb vs. Lulu: We interviewed my grandparents for hours and wrote the story of their courtship and marriage in a book before the party.  T designed it all and I will ask permission from my grandparents to show some of the content... It's absolutely beautiful and I'm really very proud of it.  The book was designed with the intention of using a local print company to make the final book, but at nearly the last moment we learned that they wouldn't be able to do what we wanted.  Enter Blurb and Lulu and hours upon hours of redesign (cementing T's status as graphic designer/grandson-in-law/husband -extraordinaire).  Both companies make books with different dimensions; we ordered paperback copies of the 8.5" x 8.5" book from Lulu and a hardback (10" x 8") from Blurb.  Here's the skinny: Both companies printed and shipped earlier than expected.  Blurb has a better looking site and a better name (in my opinion).  If you design your own book and want it to look just so you must go with Lulu (in my opinion).  Blurb, however, has a step-by-step system to help you create your design which is probably nice if you don't know what you want (but truly a pain and hassle if you have a design already).  The quality of the Lulu books was FANTASTIC, and you needn't have any of their marketing gunk on your book (the Lulu logo, etc.).  Blurb forces you to spend much more to eliminate their logo, etc., and we weren't as happy with the printing (images weren't as crisp, etc.).  Both had great paper.  If you want to make the archives of your blog into a book, Blurb can transfer all of the data quite easily (I plan to do this with the boy's blog soon via Blurb).  I didn't have a great customer service experience with Blurb.   In short: Blurb is spiffier, nice if you want to transfer a blog and guides you in design... Lulu has excellent quality printing, gives you freedom to design and publishes your book without advertising for their company... Both offer great pricing and marketing tools.

• Does anyone know of a knitting pattern to make some booties like these?

• Another thing from the party that I forgot to mention: Taking a tip from Martha Stewart (I've seen her do this for parties in her magazines) I took a photo of guests as they came to the party.  You know, if a couple came up the walk they had to stop for a photo... A family...  They were all in the same location and it was such a fantastic thing.  Brilliant.  I think it would be really fun to do for lots of types of parties (a fun tradition for children's birthday parties, etc.). 

Update: Aaakk... How long were the wrong pictures up here?  The bibs disappeared!  Here they are again.  What's up, Typepad?!

Our first efforts at...

...Mama/boy parallel play.

Bib-bity bobbity

Aaahh... The day was saved by a sis/aunt who provided companionship/iced coffee/limitless energy for play/adoration for the boy.  Then our little family headed off to a picnic dinner in the park with a jazz concert to entertain us.  We happened to sit behind the band in the shade next to some people practicing juggling and a big, friendly golden retriever.  I think it was the ultimate toddler picnic spot.

I'm finishing up a (late) order and have had so much fun crafting some "girly" items.  I'm closing up the little shop as soon as I'm done with this set, going on summer hiatus from crafting for a "profit."  This is the Summer of Crafty Stuff for Family Life, after all, and I need to get to work start to play.

Not the favorite

Oh, dear.  I forgot how dreadfully boring and wrong I am after vacation with Daddy home.  I've been wrong about which diaper, sticker, cup, bowl, muffin, pair of shorts, shirt, towel, etc. to choose.  I had the wrong breakfast ideas and I got our play all wrong.  I'm unsure about when to hold him and when to let the boy just sob independently (sobbing because of my wrongs) because I keep getting my decisions about that wrong too.  Daddy surely would have let the boy eat cookies for breakfast (he wouldn't have, but the boy was adamant in his conviction).  If I suggest sandals, only boots will do.  I have to wear smiley face stickers on my thigh or all hell breaks loose.  Things are made more difficult by the fact that "sticker," "cookie" and "chicken" all sound the same to me right now ("icka") so I'm confusing it all.  No, you can't eat the sticker for breakfast and I don't want a chicken stuck to my leg. 

Yes, I wish Daddy was home too.

Luckily rocks continue to hold amazing powers of redirection, fascination and imagination.  Rocks for the boy, bibs for me (photos, if you're interested in my dabbles in redirection, fascination and imagination, tomorrow).   

All in a morning's work

We're picking peas and raspberries.  He much prefers the "ink"-colored berries while I go for the reds. 

I get to eat all of the berries while my clean-picker boy prefers the peas.

After picking for ages and ages (five minutes) it's time for a break.

Berries, buckets, ducking between walls of peas, dirt in your toes, eating all you pick and enjoying the garden's first sunflower of the season under blue, blue skies...  It's what I remember from the past and what I hope for the future.  Presently, it's magical (and a bit hot too, frankly).

Back in the groove of things

Lunch is bagged, clothes ironed, coffee sent off with T in the travel mug and we're going to get back in the groove of things this week.  We had a perfectly lovely, hanging out sort of vacation and thought we hadn't done much 'til we started listing it all out last night at dinner: the beach, neighborhood walks, movies with wine for T and me, lots of T reading to me while I puttered with crafty-type things (like these burp cloths for baby gifts), a new sandbox, a big party, a parade, a concert, lunch in the park, dinner in the park, standing three together barefoot in the wading pool on a hot day, building, playing, laughing...  I'm so happy T has a good job to head back to this morning and I want to incorporate more "vacation" into our every day.  We work too hard which makes us fairly productive, but there's also something about us that can turn even the fun stuff into a job that needs to be checked off the list.  I don't want to pass that on to the boy, if I can help it.  Sure, I think it's important to work hard.  It's the playing thing I've never really done well.

So the breaking news is that T and I went to a book store last week, just the two of us, and we browsed.  It's never, ever worked to take the boy to a book or shoe store.  He gets so fantastically excited about books and shoes (a boy after my own heart, to be sure) and quickly works himself into a tizzy, grabbing every book and shoe for his own.  Other stores are just fine.  We found an obscure hardback related to Murakami, one of our mutual favorites, and bought this Nikki McClure print for the boy's room some day.  The first two books when you walk into this local new/used bookstore were McClure's Collect Raindrops and Lucia Perillo's new book, both local and both amazing.  T and I agreed that even if you can buy the same thing for half the cost on Amazon it's nice to feel you're consciously supporting a local business that consciously supports local artists.  I wish I could support just a little more but I made a wish list for the future and also a long list of books to reserve at the library.  Then we got coffee.  It was fabulous.  On the way we discovered that the city fixed the sidewalk, so babies and mamas are safe once again to walk the streets of Olympia (at least on that block).  I'm still a little shocked that they fixed it.

Anyhow, what does any of this matter?  We saw this very, very pregnant (I mean, either you are or you aren't but Baby was imminent) woman and partner walking into a pizza joint and I had this "Oh, boy... You don't know what you're in for" thought.  It bugged me that I thought that, and then I realized that's why we need more of a vacation mentality around here.  With young kids I think you can't help but shift the focus onto the kid(s).  It's such a short time in your life and their life and a family's life, and it can be hard.  I miss T.  I mean, he's around here lots and we talk and do things all together and it's great, but I miss the him and me.  We also need to blow off the family shoulds (meaning laundry, dishes, making sure we have various food groups before dessert, etc.) for some hilarity more often than not.  We tried to get the boy to eat ice cream and popsicles all week.  We really, really tried and he was having none of it.  We need more of a popsicles before lunch, "playing" mentality, and T and I just need to get away sometimes.  I suppose that's why vacation is so nice... It reminds you about what's really important.

I'm so happy to be sitting here, coffee in hand, blathering on about things in the early morning again.  There's something to be said for a little routine too, I suppose.  It's all the art of balance again: vacation/routine, ice cream/vegetables, T/me/the Boy/us. 

Geometric soft "blocks"

I'm a little weary of making baby presents at the moment which is a problem.  By my calculations I have approximately 1,892 future baby gifts to create in years to come, many of which have to be made in upcoming months.  I love making things for little ones and I usually can't bear spending loads of money on most of the stuff out there marketed towards new parents and new babies.  There are just so many, many babies lately and my old standbys are getting a little, well, old.  So...  I tried some geometric soft "blocks," moving beyond your standard cube just a little.  I think in order to make these legitimately cool baby gifts you'd need to incorporate some bells in baby-proof containers inside the shapes or something.  I also think I probably need more shapes to round it all out (oh-- a sphere... definitely a sphere).  The cones are way fun to make (and illicited the biggest "Ooooh!" and throw across the room from the boy).

These are impossible to get a good picture of, by the way, or maybe my photography efforts are slipping like everything else around here (dirty dishes: piled, clean laundry: laughable, to do stack: under the bed).  When you actually consciously forgo the natural light photos for a cruddy bulb indoors you've probably got a problem with the actual craft product.  Actually, I'm sure of it. 

I think we're in the "10 days 'off' is coming to an end" transition period which lasts, I believe, three days.  With three days of transition at the beginning of the vacation we're lucky to have a few days of relaxation in the middle.  I think we had that.

This new sandbox

This is the sandbox the street fair built.  I suppose I should say T mostly built it, the street fair paid for it and Bob Vila provided some instruction.  I like to be the motivation (toning down the cheerleader bits of, "Go, Daddy, GO!  Only eight more screws to go and then we can hammer!  This is great!  It's so sturdy!  Wow!" when T's glances get too weary).  I also like the glory jobs which, for me, involve power tools.  I like wielding the skill saw, safety goggles on of course, and I get totally impatient when T insists on things like actually planning out what we're going to do or talking about how we're going to do it.  I jump in and get frustrated when it doesn't turn out right.  T takes forever and it looks fantastic. 

The boy insists that it's full of "Drrrt," we think because "s" sounds are just hard to say.  We had a nice conversation about how sand is really many, many, many little rocks and pieces of shells and he seemed to warm up to the whole idea.

I used Dad's tools for this last project so our skill saw hadn't been used since we moved last year.  When I pulled it out glittery silver stars and pink dots fell out of the safety guard covering the blade.  It's way fun to be a girl with a skill saw.

   
I'm not sure what color to paint it yet...

It's already the Fourth of July

On vacation

Exploring close to home, happy to be three together.

A beautiful celebration

Downpours on Friday filled the rain drain and left us worried.


We had lots of help setting the tents up though.

By morning the sun was shining.

Flowers arrived.

Chairs waited for conversation.

The food came early.

Everyone knew where to go.

Step inside the little writing cabin for a peek at some memories.

60+ years of wonderful memories.

The books arrived in time.  Isn't that a beautiful wedding dress?

Glenn Miller's "The Nearness of You" was playing on that slide show of memories and at the party on the lawn.  I drove home at midnightish after helping with clean-up, a full moon (or near) lighting the solitary drive.  A red fox stopped in the middle of the road and then jogged off, and then when I got home the house was dark.  Both boys were sound asleep and as I checked on T "The Nearness of You" was playing on our little radio by the bed, the last song of the evening's set from "The Swing Years and Beyond."  It was wonderful.

It was a beautiful, sunny and happy day.