Write, Mama. Write.

We're all mixed up

I just got all of the shorts folded into the bottom dresser drawer and it's snowing.  It's so rare for us to have snow any time in March and it's sticking.  The potted plants are doing a little "now we're out of the shed-now we're close to the house"-dance and our last several days have been full of bad cold accoutrements.  We have Pedialyte and Christmas tissues (because he chose the shiniest, fanciest tissue box he could find), the steamer, our little hot water bottle, orange juice and nothing is working to make it better. 

This stuck-at-home/lack-o'-sleep-thing is making our world a little hazy and off-kilter.  He looked at me yesterday, giant tears rolling down his cheeks, orange popsicle juice mixing with gunk between his nose and lips, and said, "Happy, Mama. I'm happy."  I'm averaging one moment of comfort for every 80 thousand moments of little boy sobs and it's so hard, you know?  It's so hard to know you can't just fix everything and Vick's rub-a-dub-dub away the crud.  We're trying all of the snuggles and stories and special pillowcases and made up songs that we can.  Essential lesson in parenting number 823: You can't always make it better but you try but you can't always make it better but you try but...  I don't imagine that feeling ever goes away, any time life throws things off a bit for your child. 

I do know the snow will melt, the nose will dry and we'll clean the tissues from the floor before heading out the door.  I also know he knows I'm trying. 

7. Or, enough already

I was tagged to share seven things: some weird, some random.  This whole little virtual parking lot for my thoughts on parenting and doing stuff is just me, me, me 24/7 so I can't imagine there's much more to share.  Meg and Malka are so crazy-talented I'd bake them a cake if they asked me to though... The least I can do is come up with seven weird and/or random things about myself.

1. I was elected Fire Goddess in Japanese Junior High camp.  It was my one and only election and I'm still relieved my sky-high bangs didn't go up in flames as I carried in the torch for the campfire.  Hairspray and torches aren't a good combo.
2. I was interviewed live on a popular French radio station.  About Kurt Cobain.
3. I was, at various points in my teens and twenties, a: full-time nanny, tutor, foreign exchange program assistant, frozen yogurt pusher and first grade teacher.
4. My favorite thing to eat is Greek Rice Salad and I don't much care for chocolate.
5. I had a bodyguard follow my school bus on field trips one year.  The guy was looking out for one of my students, not me, but it was still kind-of odd.
6. I designed a house for a teacher in high school (back when my dreams of being an architect weren't tempered by calculus and a pesky urge to teach).  It's still standing (phew) and he paid me with $100 and a bracelet (I thought the bracelet addition was sexist, got rid of it and saved the money for college).
7. I helped a cow give birth.

Hey!  Lucky us.  As this list sat languishing in Typepad draft Melissa from bridgman pottery tagged me.  I'm sorry this is the opposite of random creativity, Melissa, but I'll show some of that soon too.  More 7's...

Things bought quite recently:
1. Dr. Bronner's Organic Castile Soap in peppermint
2. Nature Cut-outs in red
3. California Baby Super-Sensitive Shampoo & Body Wash (super worried about phthalates lately, for some reason)
4. Nature Cut-outs in blue
5. A house (cross your fingers, inspection Monday)
6. New CD player (we're on replacement #4 in less than a year... We are cursed in the CD/DVD player realm, evidently)
7. Fire engine pajamas, size 5 (he's huge!)

We're diggin' these books lately (age 2+):
1. Ask Mr. Bear, Marjorie Flack
2. A Very Special House, Krauss, illustrated by Sendak
3. A Hole is to Dig, Krauss, illustrated by Sendak (I think Amy from angry chicken mentioned this one not too long ago-- really quirky kid language, prime fodder for kid writing inspiration)
4. The Happy Day, Krauss, illustrated by Simont
5. Mother Earth and her Children, Olfers, illustrated by Schoen-Smith, translation by Zipes (again with the angry chicken mention, I think, and given to us to love... It's beautiful)
6. One Moose, Twenty Mice, Beaton (illustrator of one of my favorite nursery rhyme books, Mother Goose Remembers-- If you like to sew/appreciate fiber arts you'll love her children's books)

Bonus-- Not yet evaluated but I'm in love (found in the Friends of the Library sale section today):
7. Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and The Red Shoes, Lindman (I remember the parallel Swedish girls Flicka, Ricka and Dicka)
+1 in Just-spring, e.e. cummings, illustrated by Heidi Goennel

You're it (if you want to be)... Show us your seven (or 22, as the case may be).

 

How it goes: painting

Yep, it's OK to mash the brush a little like that.
Paint gets on clothes... That's no problem.
Sure!  Try it. 
What happens if you mix the water colors and the tempera?
We can wipe it up later.
What happens if you mix the yellow and the blue?
Two brushes at a time is A-OK.
Yes.
Go for it.
It is fun, isn't it?

Happy day!

Sights: Eggs abound, throughout the breezeway.  Buttoned shirts and bunny ears.

Sounds: Family laughter, running steps when he spots something bright. 

I give up

Can you see all of those birds?  If you click on the picture I think it will look better.  There's something important about the cacophony of that moment and the joy on my boy's face when he runs with abandon... Energy rising, moment fully realized.  I need to let go a bit.

Have a happy bunny celebration if you do happy bunny celebrations.  In the meantime we'll: embrace spring, cut paper, avoid the computer, sort, bake and create our own cacophony with abandon.

Who wanted my money yesterday?

• The customer service representative from Group Health
• Target (three freakin' times, two locations)
• Top Foods
• The car (holy-moly we've reached a new high with our tank)
• Community Parks & Rec (pilates)
• The utility company
• Starbucks (drowning our sorrows with water for the boy and an iced Americano for me-- from last year's Mother's Day gift card-- Ritz crackers for us both)
• The phone company
• Typepad
• Little plastic Easter eggs

One Square Window

I'm spring cleaning the blog with a new look.  You don't notice anything?  Right.  Well...  I'm working on it and it's s-l-o-w because the boy wants me to play with trucks, people still insist on eating around here and I don't really know what I'm doing.  I was waiting for the new space to write about another new space but this is just getting silly, this waiting, so:

Megan (from the scent of water) and I are writing on One Square Window... just to write.  When you love to write but aren't _____ (all alone, independently wealthy, living in seclusion with a laptop and a publisher waiting with bated breath for your manuscript), I think the trick might be to _____ (create opportunities for yourself to write, rope someone in from around the world to write with you).  It strengthens your writing muscles and it helps you breathe.  I think the space will grow and change; it's organic.  One Square Window.  All of the windows around here are totally dirty, by the way, so I'm going to test out the vinegar/water/newspaper approach and spring clean my real world too.

Bad blogger

I just am.  People write nice things and they slip on down my inbox until they're on the second page and, in my toddler-filled/time warp universe, gone.  I bought these hearts after writing about them on SMS (I've never done that... Bu-bye very last bit of Etsy funds) and they are so absolutely beautiful and intricate.  She's really such a talented woman.  Also, Emily from Shining Egg sent us a wonderful CD with brownies.  The CD has enriched many a car ride since, accompanied by my exuberant singing (I'm pretty sure everyone else likes it too), and the brownies enriched our life for a quick day or two (when we realized they were mysteriously gone somehow, with only crumbs remaining).  I can definitively attest that Emily has great taste in music, is a fabulous baker and a good neighbor.  My thank you package back met a sad fate when, still open at the top, it engaged with eager little hands.  Tomorrow, Emily-- It's newly fixed up and heading out tomorrow and I'm sorry!  Then I "won" a wonderful bunch o' books from Pixiegenné (E).  I have yet to send my little thank you card (see... Bad, bad).  The books were devoured on a happy Saturday afternoon and have helped in our never-ending quest for more to read ever since.  Ages ago I also received a Jimmy Pickles wristlet which has given me, roughly, two extra hours of my life to enjoy thus far.  I no longer rummage in my bottomless bag for keys... It's so great and well made.

We just passed our Valentines out at playgroup yesterday.  On St. Patrick's Day.  So, you see, this is an all-encompassing issue of disorganization that spreads throughout my life and is in no way limited to my blogging world.  Thank you for your kind comments even when this becomes a "We can't find a stinkin' house"-zone.  Thank you for visiting and sharing things, and for making me feel like the world is both bigger and smaller than it sometimes feels while I'm home with a preschooler.  Does that make any sense?  Anyhow... Thank you.

(The photo relates to nothing here, but I tried to take a picture of the pretty daffodils in my window to add and it didn't work.  You get rocks!)

Little orange agate of an adventure

Picture our 700 square foot home awash in the smell of boiling cabbage.  Nope, we're not full o' Irish... Just trying to make natural egg dyes as the cumin tea cup boils over in the microwave.  Add the several day old mystery pee spot (where IS it?) in the boy's room (because the tub won't drain and he waited far too long without a diaper for that bath) and you get one stinky house.  This was the state of things when the hope of our back-up house love, complete with playroom and double lot potential garden space, died via the phone last week.  Whenever another viewing, offer, or online house match-up failed we always had our never-ending short sale dream.  Then it ended (We strung you along so long the market picked up and now we think we can get ever so much more for it!).  This weekend my sewing machine died; I can't find a pulse.  It's just been stinky and sorta blah around here.

The boy gets totally behind any suggestion of a plan though: "Yets DO IT!" ("Let's...", fists pumping air).  He jumps all over everything (our coffee spills on the couch) and it's decided we must salvage our weekend, leave three piles of laundry on the Morris chair and have an adventure.  A ferry adventure. 

The captain surely wasn't the captain because he wasn't wearing a cap.  On the return trip three painters, two life-vest-wearin' ferry workers and a priest walked through the cabin door, in succession, and we readied ourselves for a cosmic joke.  A train wound it's way through our island views (LOUD!) and we threw pebbles on the beach.  The boy found an little, orange agate.

The cosmic joke, of course, is how your house can stink, your sewing machine can die alongside home dreams, luck can fritz out a bit and life is still fully beautiful.

Bird mobile

I've had this idea for at least six months (it was even on the list!).  I wanted to jump on the mobile swap bandwagon but I thought it might add a little self-induced stress and I'm plumb full o' stress.  Also, I wondered how I would box it up to send it.  I was worried the reality of this would be so far from the idea in my head, but I think it worked just fine.  Jewelry wire for the bird legs was so perfect ($1 for a big package at the local craft store, easy to bend/twist/poke into fabric).  Now I have a mobile but nowhere to actually hang a mobile.  I used more wire twisted at the top of the branch for hanging which is nice because you can move it around to hang on anything.  Close ups of two birds here and here (favorite vintage feedsack fabric for the underbelly and wings).  I loved this one in the mobile pool, and really liked the ideas behind this one and this one too.

Browse about Friday

Friday morning playground rain.  Hanging out.

Last Friday the boy accidentally head butted me in the nose.  I was sure my nose was inverted but it's not... It's still just really sore.  The whole week was kinda like that: sucker punches.  Left, right, dead center.  I haven't showered, I want to sew and I need a little more caffeine, really.  I keep sitting down with coffee here to "chat" and it becomes dreary (the posts, not the sitting). 

So, rather than blather on about bad banks and short sales I browse around wasting time.  Now you can too:

Crafting Heroes interview with Kristin by Lisa Lam,  site where you can download (free) paper everythings (check out the kitchen), make your own puffy paint, favorite new blog gateway to all sorts of great parenting/literary sites (a great site in itself, of course), make your own font (would it work?), natural egg dyes (more to come), I want these (probably because of this) and these (you have to click "Posable Mice" under "view photos" to see them... For the boy, of course), 33 unheralded children's classics (via Crooked House), love these curtains (I love everything in that particular feature), and I'm enjoying finslippy (you might too).

Oh, also, if the internet isn't enough: Margot at the Wedding (zero stars-- I thought it was a comedy when we put it on the queue, believe it or not), Death at a Funeral (I actually liked it.  It's silly.), The Riches (got sucked in), Books?... dreadful drought.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

Spread a little awe

I left early for pilates last night and stopped by the thrift store first.  There's this weird thing I get where I'll be dying to "get away" and then when I'm away I always miss my guys quite a bit.  (It makes me impatient with myself.)  Anyhow, I'm always finely tuned into kids when I'm out.  There were children everywhere in this shop, one crawling alone in a corner mouthing a ball as he pushed it along.  One in the toy aisle with an electronic book.  Two in carts trying to escape while their parents held conference calls on speaker phone through their head sets.  One kid was touching things from his seat in the cart (just like his mother was) and she kept screaming at him.  I won't repeat it all but he was referred to with, as my boy would say, a "poop"-related word.  He was just about the age of my little guy.

So it all just made me sad.  I wanted to tell the woman that the kid had better taste than she did, in what he was grabbing.  I want all of the cell phones gone and TVs off, whenever the kids are around.  I want to turn the people talking about how rotten their children are so their faces look at the child watching and listening down at their feet.  Obviously I'm living in the lap of parental luxury to escape in the early evening to something just for me while my husband takes care of the boy.  I don't want to be a judgmental jerk.  I know it's exhausting and kids can push your buttons like nothing else and I have times when I'm stuck inside reading 'The Little People Busy Town' flap book for the 100th time in a week and I'm just moaning a bit in my head. 

But, also, these kids are so absolutely amazing.  It's incredible what a child can do with just two years in the world.  The fact that they know how to push your buttons, when they were recently so utterly helpless, is astonishing to me.  Two is so much fun.  We get up in the morning and make smoothies together and run to watch the recycling truck out the front door ("Up, up, up wih da arm on da truck, Mama!").  I consider red saltwater sandals because if he's decked out in orange all the time ("ORAN! ORAN!"-- 24/7 color love for "ORAN!"), I could definitely use a splash of color too this summer.  He's so full of passion and excitement and energy and determination; it spreads to everything.  He shares it all with me and it seems to get more miraculous the older they get.  That kid we met months back who wasn't walking?-- Listen to him sing the "ABC's" now, while he runs!  The little one who was a cooing baby when we met?-- Using the big girl potty like it's no big deal.  It's a big deal!  I watch children we saw tucked away in a sling what seems like just yesterday fly down the big slide at the playground and I'm so filled with wonder and excitement every time.  Look at what they can do!  Did you see that?! 

Last night I wanted to ameliorate the sadness by spreading a little of that wonder everywhere.

Just for kicks I'll share the current house standings

• Months looking, quite seriously: 5+

• Offers: 4

• True loves (old red, with an acre in the city, sun porch, crazy perfect): 1

• Disappointments, with a dash of mental anguish: 2.5

• # of weeks we've waited for our offer on a short-sale home: 10 (hence the .5 above... Who really knows what to think about that?)

• Counter-offers: 3

• Counter-counter offers: 2

• Pages signed and/or initialed: 70+

• # of times the boy has asked (as we look through someone's house) to get "Na, plees" or, "Down, please": roughly 80

• Average daily search effort in minutes: 30

• Points lowered (yippee!) and risen (gasp) since our search (drat those pesky lenders): too many to reasonably keep track of without another sobbing breakdown (see below)

• Sobbing breakdowns (me, of course): 2 or so

• Packing tape rolls bought in blind faith for our future: 8, yesterday (totally on sale at Costco)

• All it will take: 1

Edited to add 3/11: Disappointments are now at 3.5... Oy.

Edited to add 3/13: Disappointments = 4 because you have to be friggin' kidding me with this crap...  The "short sale" people decided, after stringing us along for 2 1/2 months, that the market is picking up again so they're offering it to anyone at a much higher price now.  I have lots and lots and lots of bad thoughts about you, Countrywide Home Loans. 

What-ta doin', Mama?

If it's not "What-ta doin', Mama?" it's "What-ta doin' now?"  Or, after it's been discussed ad nauseum ("I'm still driving the car, Kiddo...") it's "Wheahr is it here?" ("Downtown")... "Wheahr in downtown?  What by?"  It is so thrilling to be at this stage and justalittlebiteversoslighlty annoying.  Also on the linguistic front he decided one day to (more often than not) call me "Mommy" and I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Um... I have a blog, Little One, that clearly says I'm the "Mama."  He secures his drama department hand-me-down to the tripod and click-click-clicks his way quite seriously through our day, documenting everything at a macro level (as in, camera to object: click).  Pencil to paper he writes a bit "A-B-LMNAZP-O-O" and declares we need "MEAT" at the store and it's top on our shopping list with "GUM" (two things we don't buy at the store, I might add).

He puts his slippers on by himself, moves the bar to the sliding door and slips out into the night to look for the moon.  Running back after inching away as far as we let him into the black he yells, "I don see da moon.  I see STAR an STAR an STAR!"  He insists on helping make the bed, make the coffee, make our day in his vision and suddenly he calms enough now to snuggle in the covers in the early morning with me, which he has never, ever done (from his gymnastic in utero tumbling to two, he hasn't slowed down much for a cuddly quiet moment).  We can lay there after the moon goes and watch the sun come up through the trees.  We talk about how the fog makes things look different and how we dreamed in the night.  I thought, when I looked at him as he was first greeting the world, that I loved him with everything; now I realize that my love grows, somehow, with every little thing I learn about who he is and who he wants to be and who he will be someday. 

 

Big barn

Little boy.

Great, sunny weekend, made some bibs, parenting is tough and fun

We've had the most beautiful run of days, full of blue skies chased by an occasional sprinkle.  Things just seem lighter with windows cracked open and finger nails dirty from tending outdoor beds.  Driver, buff (plastic) arms doing the heavy lifting, navigates the dump truck from pile to pile outside (two year old providing true muscle).  We stomp in little puddles and our hippo umbrella tries to take to the skies.  A beautiful rainbow arched over the town yesterday and the boy couldn't quite see it.  We tried to show him.  We pulled over to show him.  We had to settle for rainbows in books though, which weren't half bad.  When your eyes aren't used to looking for something it can be difficult to see, even when it arches over you and encompasses your living space and lightens moods.  Spring is creeping in just like that.      

---
I knocked out bib after bib after bib this weekend, orange for the boy and stripes for others.  I think our fabric bib lifespan is one year in this household.  It seems silly to make new bibs for this big, big boy just like it seemed ridiculous to buy a new diaper pail when our old one failed.  Then again, we still spill, we're still in the diaper phase and everything happens at a different pace for different people.  After a stretch of ease I'm a bit startled at the whole comparison thing popping up again.  You know how, when they're babies, everyone has an opinion or a glance or a question about what a child can and should do at any given time?  After they turned one it felt like people settled down.  I know I did.  There weren't as many mental milestones to tick off and well-child visits even spread out to two a year.  Since this second birthday I've noticed a gradual increase in the opinions or glances or questions.  There's an increase in comparisons and even, ever so slightly, in my doubts.  Now it's preschool and potty training and how much independence versus how much togetherness and how in the world does this all work when I don't really know what I'm doing? sprouting up again.  There are hard forehead bonks, tough negotiations, there's letting go and holding tight.  It's that parenting dance, making me dizzy, tossing me around with my head back laughing.  I remember a parent telling me first grade was going to make or break their child's chance at Harvard, and I remember my inner teacher reaction (something like: Oh my goodness!-- Chill out... They're six).  I want to remain very confident in my belief that we have the ingredients for raising a happy little boy.  We have puddle jumping, dirty fingernails, rainbows in books and our dizzy dance of give and take.  Oh my goodness!... He's two.

Somehow that little update all boils down to: Great, sunny weekend... Made some bibs... Parenting is tough and fun...

Weekend blues

Granny square secret

I discovered the secret to granny squares.  I can't crochet, but I wish I could.  The answer, for me, is not in this 1983 Women's Weekly Granny Square special edition (though milk glass crochet patterns are... Picture this made out of yarn).  I found the magazine in the free section at the library on my way to pilates the other night.  I stopped off at the thrift store on my way home and found the blanket.  That's my granny square secret: thrifting.  I look at it as my reward for exercising and a not so subtle reminder that I think it would be nice to have a little girl some day.