My friend Melanie posted this week about Photobooth as a cold-weather toy. Perfect, because yesterday was pretty blustery around here. The girls’ favorite was the aquarium; mine was the comic book effect. We spent a good half hour making faces at ourselves. Perfect.
Lizzy was down earlier this week with a mean cough/cold. Poor kid. Maren hasn’t caught it yet, and I hope she doesn’t. In the mean time, Lizzy has taken to commandeering Maren’s car seat for her daily dose of Sesame Street.
(Complete with all three blankies and the binky, of course.)
We decided to celebrate Father’s Day a little early this year. Lizzy helped out with part of Richard’s surprise –
– except that it wasn’t much of a surprise in the end. Lizzy kept wanting to eat the candy, so I told her she could have some when Daddy came home. So of course, the second Daddy walked in the door… “DADDY’S HOME!!! CANDY NOW!!!” Some surprise! The idea came from right here — fun, huh? I did it on the back side of the Good Folks quilt, which has now been in daily use for several months, despite the fact that it has yet to be bound. Richard asked me whether he thinks I’ll have it bound by the time he gets back from Afghanistan. Yes, love, probably so.
Last night R and I tried to get a last-minute babysitter, but failed. Then he had just about the best idea ever: “Let’s just lie around and play games and gorge ourselves on junk food.” Word.
It hasn’t been all junk food around here lately, though. Yesterday we blew some Macy’s gift cards we had on a fancypants juicer. I have been wanting a juicer for-ev-ah, but have had a hard time convincing R that we need one (I get an appliance itch every couple of years or so; R’s usual rebuttal is, “But dear, where will we put it?”). So far we have made carrot/apple/ginger juice and carrot/apple/cucumber/ celery/lemon juice, and both were delicious. I also used the juicer to juice the limes for my icebox key lime pie today, which was awesome. Check out that practically dry pulp!
Some more thoughts, in no particular order:
There are no words to describe how much I love Dave Matthews’ solo album, Some Devil. Every time it comes on Pandora, I rush over to the computer to see what on earth this awesome song is. This may need to be my next iTunes purchase.
I hate exercise. Hate. But my sweet friend Diane recommended the Turbo Jam videos, and I absolutely love them. I actually look forward to doing it every morning, and I feel awesome afterwards. It’s not like running or biking or any other number of exercise regimens where every moment I’m thinking to myself, “I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.” Love Turbo Jam. Except that I am a sucky dancer and am therefore can’t do it in front of R, even though he doesn’t care that I have no dance moves.
Have you seen the Swagger Wagon video? Seriously, if you have kids, and especially if you have a minivan (we don’t), you really need to see this. If you don’t pee your pants, you will think about peeing your pants. Here, I will even put it right here so you don’t have to go to another web site.
I leave you with some recent sewing for the Littlest Miss. It won’t fit properly until she starts walking full-time, but she is well on her way!
I used the Molly Peasant pattern with AMH Little Folks voile. I heart.
Op orders and quilting at the kitchen table — kind of a nice marriage, don’t you think?
We briefly considered turning the op order into a quilt for R to present to his class. But then we thought that might not be so good.
Date night was fab, except that the city was virtually SHUT DOWN because there was one inch of snow on the ground (but absolutely none of it on the road). We had to try three restaurants before we found one that was open; Barnes & Noble was closed; luckily, the movie theater was open and The Young Victoria was simply wonderful. See it if you possibly can.
My parents have this amazing collection of vintage Fisher-Price Little People. They are hands-down the most popular toy at Grandma and Grandpa’s house (for the smaller set, that is). Lately Lizzy has taken to assigning family names to select Little People. For one thing, there’s Baby (she won’t say “Maren” — no, it’s Baby).
There’s also Mommy and Lizzy.
Daddy’s identity is a little shakier, but he definitely wears a hat.
We’ll see if she picks out a permanent Daddy after next week. (I should say that she has no trouble identifying her real daddy in pictures, video chats, phone calls, and the like.)
Don’t forget to enter the giveaway below! — If for no other reason than that it will make me feel special. Aaww, warm fuzzies.
One of the things I love about WordPress is that it tells me the search terms people used to find this blog. Search terms involving sewing or babies pop up regularly; “baby room ideas,” for example, has granted me 55 hits, which is really bizarre, because I think I’ve posted about baby room decor like, twice.
Weird stuff comes up, too. Some of these made me snerkle right out loud (the cookie one in particular, for some reason)…
what is diaper obsession
different ways to choke someone
sewing is unhealthy
i’m bored and lazy
can people with hernia get into army?
mcdonalds mcflurries
yipiyuk
hairy men photography
expose her belly button
photo of child eating a big cookie
get that corn outta my face
How’s that for creative search terms?
Two bits of happy news: Richard chooses his branch one week from today! He’s still number one on the list, so he can have whatever he wants. After that, it’s just six more weeks of OCS until we’re together again. The second happy bit: Maren put herself to sleep today — twice! She drifted off while sitting in the stroller at the park, then tonight her eyes were wide open when I put her in her crib — then shut tight when I came back to check on her. Oh, this child is such a blessing…(I mean, Lizzy is, too…it’s just…well…you know what I mean).
Some time ago, Richard and I were driving somewhere and a couple we know saw us in our car. Well, the wife just saw our car — and the husband saw us in our car. Seeing the bumper sticker on our car, the wife said, “Wow, that’s pretty extreme, don’t you think?” To which the husband replied, “Oh. That’s the Fs.” And the wife said, “…Oh. Well that makes sense.”
What’s the sticker? KILL YOUR TELEVISION. It’s been there since high school, and I’m still proud of it.
Except that I’m afraid I’m becoming a walking (driving?) contradiction. For years I have been totally anti-TV but pro-movie, which has always worked for me. But then I found out that you can watch The Office on Netflix. Every show, every season. Instantly. Granted, I only watch it when I’m nursing at night, but dudes, that’s a lot. Like three-maybe-four-episodes-per-night a lot. And I’m only on season two.
So here’s the real question: Do I have to take off my bumper sticker now?
(PS — Nine days and counting till BCT graduation!!!)
6:20 pm. Forty minutes to bedtime. L is in full monster mode. Mommy snaps. Enter Daddy, who utters the sweetest, most beautiful, most poetic, and I dare say, sexiest words a nine-month pregnant woman could possibly hope to hear…
“Come on, Lizzy. We’re going to the store to get Mommy a donut.”
Twenty minutes later: R and L return from the store with two donuts AND a two-liter of Diet Coke (a recently acquired and wicked vice of mine), R puts L in jammies and to bed, R does dishes while A restores equilibrium via a mass infusion of corn-derived junk food.
Happy Mommy.
I’m pretty sure this shirt makes me look like Jabba the Hutt.
I think it’s a pretty sure sign that I’ve been inducted into Utahn society and culture: I can plan my garage sale route really fast, by grid system address, without blowing a brain socket.
We’re hitting the first one in another 45 minutes — one of those wacko sales that starts on Friday — and I say “we” because this one caught Richard’s interest with promises of 60-80 year-old maps…
There is one yearly tradition in this town that I really, truly, seriously loathe, and it’s the annual Easter egg toss down Old Main Hill.
Old Main Hill is the steep slope that leads up to the heart of the USU campus, and it looks like this. Every Easter weekend, families congregate at the top of the hill in order to roll, toss, throw, and lob scores of perfectly good hard-boiled eggs down the hill, resulting in an atrocity of a mess that lasts for weeks and which no one ever cleans up — apart from the seagulls.
The seagulls literally arrive in droves days before Easter weekend. They know it’s coming. One year, I got pooped on as I was walking up the hill to class. Another year, we lived across the street from the hill and had to endure their interminable screeching all day for like a week. This year, since I’m not a student anymore and there’s now an extra city block between our house and the hill, I didn’t think it would be much of an issue. But I was wrong — because now those confounded seagulls’ incessant yammerings are WAKING UP MY CHILD WHEN SHE SHOULD BE SLEEPING.
I know that the Easter egg roll is a fun yearly ritual for lots of local families, but seriously? I vote to outlaw this barbarous tradition, stat.
(Incidentally, all of this reminds me of a fantastic story about sledding on pumpkin goo that I heard on NPR years ago.)
Happy Easter, one and all. May the true meaning of the day shine brightly amid our more — erm — pagan practices.
