What Is Your Animal Personality?
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This is just a quickie - I'm in head-down, get-ready-for-Mall-Crawl-in-oh-my-God-less-than-a-week mode - but wanted to let you know about a fire on a Marine base in Kuwait. No one was killed or injured (thank the Lord) but a lot of "stuff" was lost. A Marine blogger is taking donations now to help the folks who lost their stuff replace it. Please give if you can.
The Mall Crawl approaches with relentless inevitability. I have things much more in hand this time around - mostly as a result of practice (this is my 5th go-round) and some automation that I put in place during the last two Crawls, but there's still lots more to be done. It doesn't help matters that it's about a billion degrees in the office, and I don't tolerate heat well. I'm just going to have to buckle down and get it done, though.
Yesterday was our fourth anniversary. And they said it wouldn't last! Ha! ;) We didn't do much; just hung out with kids, ate, opened presents, ate, did our annual walk/video around the property, ate, napped, quilted (me), read (him), read to children (both), and ate. It was a foodful kind of day, and the dishes last night proved it. Thursday was Adam's preschool. He didn't get to sleep as early on Wednesday as I would've liked (hell, neither did I!) so getting all of us up on Thursday morning was kind of a pain. He fell asleep just before we arrived at preschool, and protested almost all the way in the door that he didn't want to go. Then he saw "them." Toy dinosaurs in the window of his classroom. He ran to the door at that point, "Open the door, peez!" Kayla's begun playing in the infant's room some, too. This is good for her, and good for me, too; it let me avoid the lecture on "Healthy Body Image" last week and the "Pamper Yourself" craft this week (stinky flowers, stinkier mint extract). I just stay in the infant's room with her, for the most part, as do lots of other mommies. As long as she doesn't see me leave, I can sneak out for a few minutes, which is good for the soul. There are lots of exersaucers and swings and stuff in the room - which I hate - but thankfully no one seems inclined to use them. Almost everyone in the room has a baby on her lap all the time.
Wednesday, I just worked all day. Tuesday was our trip into town. Among other things, I went to a baby shower with Kayla. There were so many babies there! Probably 15 in all. It was a little nerve-racking at times, but I kinda rolled with it. Kayla was, astoundingly, perfectly well-behaved. It may have been that she was just overwhelmed with so many other kids there, but still I had fun. The party was pretty nice, too, if a bit crowded. After that, Mike went to donate blood, and I tried to entertain two children in a church entryway for almost an hour. That was a challenge, but we managed. The receptionist (aka Chatty Cathy) commented on how well-behaved our children were, and what a nice family we were. I was also amused to inadvertently (well, she was sitting right there!) overhear a conversation between her and her boyfriend, where she was obviously coddling him. When she got off the phone, she told me, "They never grow up!" I just smiled and nodded, thinking to myself, "They do if you let them!"
Friday night, Kayla and I went to see the movie Down With Love, with Ewan McGregor and Rene Zellwegger. It's an homage to the old Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies, and it was FANTASTIC. One of the best movies I've seen in years. You definitely MUST go see it. No, really, I insist. *wink* As I was leaving the theatre, one of the other patrons voiced what I had been thinking: "I'm so glad I didn't go see The Matrix!" I also bought myself a secretarial (they call it "task") chair that night, to use while sitting in front of my quilt frame. That's right: the quilt is on the frame! It took me much longer to do this, partly because the dimensions reported in the pattern for the finished quilt were WRONG, both in terms of length and width. This meant I had to buy new backing fabric, piece it, and reposition the top and the back on the frame. It's on there now, and the long process of hand-quilting that monster has begun. It's a BIG project, and will take me a looooong time. My plan is to sit in front of the television, watch endless television shows and movies, and quilt. I have a pretty nice set-up, though I'm still trying various types of quilting needles til I find one I like (ideally, long, strong, and thin), but I'm making progress. Eventually, I'll set up a computer downstairs for chatting, and judging by the heat in this office, may move my work machines down there, too!
Kayla now has three teeth: two lower and one upper. You can occasionally hear her grinding the upper against one of the lowers, which is a grating sound, but what are you gonna do? She's also eating much more solids now (halllllllllllelujah!), and beginning to talk ("uh-oh", "mama", and "numnum"). Adam's.... well.... Adam's two. He's become very difficult to handle, sometimes, especially when he's overtired. He talks back, refuses to comply with even the simplest requests, and just generally ignores us sometimes. This is a tough situation, as punishing him only serves to escalate the situation and piss everyone off a little bit more. Our new tack is to just correct him over and over and over, presumably on the principle that he'll get as sick of hearing us talk as we get of ourselves, and do the right thing just to shut us up. If I have to tell him too many times to do something (last night's battle was "put your books back on the bookshelf"), I then resort to, "if I have to pick them up, I take them away." Still kind of punishing, but a much more direct connection than, "if you don't pick up your books, you have to sit on the bed." It works sometimes. *shrug* I've decided that parenting is this constant game of Clue, trying to figure out what will work in constantly-changing circumstances.
Those are the bad days. On good days, he's an angel. He gives great hugs and kisses, is considerate and attentive to a fault, and even asks his sister to play with him. He's generally a very good boy, I think he's just testing the limits now as a natural part of his development, but man, it's hard to remember that sometimes!
OK, off to work. Pity me!
What Is Your Animal Personality?
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I had a great time on National Scrapbooking Day. The burgers weren't great, but the company was. I got a ton done, too - 24 tags made (for a swap), one layout done, and another started. Speaking of layouts, I've finished (and updated) many more, and decided to share them here. :)
I've started doing some more scrapbooking at home now, too. It's a challenge, keeping everything out of kids' reach, but certainly less work than hauling everything down to the scrapbook store every time I want to work on a page! I still love going to crops, but it's not feasible to go there as much as I'd like. This Friday, the gal who's been babysitting Kayla (my friend Joy) has to take her own kids to a dance recital, so I'm skipping this week. Next Friday is our anniversary, so that's out. I hope I don't go through withdrawal!
Kayla now has three big tricks: she will often wave bye-bye at the appropriate time, she uses "uh-oh" appropriately, and she's finally eating a bit of solid food, mostly Cheetos.
The top of the Neverending Double Wedding Ring Quilt From Hell (its official name) is now done!!! Next step is to clean up the house, so I can work on the quilting part of the project without guilt or filthy floors. My hope is to vacuum, sweep, and mop every other day, to try to keep the place in order. We'll see.
Update: Housework SUCKS. I finished the living room, including the vacuum, as well as most of the laundry, and sweeping the dining room. That's all I'm promising - I'm no longer holding myself to doing all of the housework before I start the quilting. Sue me.
Happy National Scrapbooking Day! In honor of the pseudo-holiday, I'm going to shortly take off for an all-day scrapbooking crop at the Memory Nook. I say "shortly", but how shortly depends on whether I give in and take a nap first or not. I usually sleep in until about now (9:30AM), but this morning we got not one, not two, but THREE phone calls from our ISP, informing us that our frame relay lines were down. Now, this is by request, but I don't know why they had to call three times within a 30-minute period, to tell us about outages on two lines. On the third call, I finally got out of bed, grabbed the phone, and barked into it, "It is five A.M. Someone I am directly related to better be dead. Who is this?" There was no answer. Between that, cats scratching at the door, and the door itself rattling around when Mike moved through the house, I finally gave up and got out of bed. All was not lost, however; I used the extra child-free time to work on the quilt. Yes, that's right - I'm STILL trying to finish that quilt for my niece's wedding. I'm now down to just over a year left to finish it, and I don't even have it on the frame. I am very close, though; another two hours of uninterrupted work in front of the television, and that sucker's done! It's not perfect, but it's almost done. Then the real fun begins. I've decided not to do the math to figure out how much I need to work on it each day to get it done. I'm afraid that if I do, I'll realize it's impossible. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, baby!
We now have a fence around part of our yard. It's great! Adam loves playing out there, and he's safe for the most part, though we will have to do something about the latch on the back gate. For some reason, the contractor put the latch on the inside, and Adam has figured out how to open it. Might require a lock. Even so, it's a great addition to the house.
I haven't been doing much scrapbooking lately. Instead, I've been making my part of several swaps. I was doing shaker boxes for a Dr. Seuss swap, and at first I was trying to make the little Cat in the Hat hats, but they were a bust - if you're ever wondering, Hermafix does not adhere to foam. So instead, I just make square shaker boxes, with a punched-out foot glued to the background, and the first four lines from The Foot Book, along with some pastel-colored beads. I figure even if people don't use it for a Dr. Seuss page, they can use it for a baby page, with a picture of the baby's feet or something. Oh, and for all you The New Homemaker gals - I am NOT addicted! I'm just..... an enthusiast... ;)