skirts!

One morning last week, and another morning again this week, I found myself at Fabric Depot with Christie. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just tagging along for moral support.  I left with supplies for four skirts, none of which I was planning on tackling before Christmas.

I probably would have let all the supplies sit there until spring if Christie hadn't taken the initiative to plan a crafting morning, where I was able to just about finish three skirts.  The first two are Christmas gifts for my cousin's daughters in England--perfectly light and packable for Avery to pack.

The third is a just-because skirt for a certain 7-year-old friend of Josie's who happens to love foxes.  When you see super cute fox fabric and your daughter has a friend who loves foxes, there's no way to resist.  I'm a little concerned about how small the skirt turned out, but with a cute pair of leggings I think it will work (assuming she doesn't hate it, of course).

The fourth skirt was going to be a Christmas present for Josie but I'm suddenly feeling like I'm done sewing for a while so it might have to wait until spring.

birthday plans

Avery informed today that she knows what she wants to do for her next birthday (all the way in July): take her friends to see a PG-13 movie.

My response to that?

"But you're to young to see a PG-13......... oh wait."


Gulp.

wordless wednesday: macro cat

back on track

Everyone went back to school today, and the laundry from Sunday is just about wrapped up.  Phew.  I made the most of today, with my new appreciation for these kid-free days, and the acknowledgment that they could be few & far between now that we've entered cold & flu season.

Assuming everyone stays healthy, there are only 10 school days left until Avery leaves on her big trip.  This bag has been at the top of my to-do list for weeks, but I wasn't able to carve out any time to work on it until today. 

Once I got started, it came together pretty quickly, as long as I could just follow the written instructions* instead of attempting to make sense of them.  At some point in time I was sure I had messed the whole thing up and it was destined to be forever inside out, but sure enough, the instructions were actually right all along. 

The bag is fairly simple; it has enough room for a passport, a phone, and iPad, a book, some money, and that's about it.  It should be all she needs for day trips in Edinburgh, St. Andrews and London (with a map of the Tube in the lining, just in case her English cousins get her lost).  Lucky girl. 

*Pattern-free instructions from this book, super-kindly gifted to me my dear friend Amy.

sick day

I decided at about 1am to keep all three kids home.  Whatever this stomach virus is, it comes on fast & furious, and the thought of the third kid getting sick at school was just too awful to imagine.  I emailed all the teachers, called both attendance offices, texted all of our carpool & playdate friends, and called it a day.

So far, no more puking.  There hasn't been much eating either, but we will introduce that slowly. 

I certainly don't mind another day off, but I sure was hoping to get some top-secret Christmas stuff done today.  Oh well, there's always tomorrow.  Hopefully.

sick sick

Good thing we got that relaxing getaway yesterday because we hadn't been home two hours before one kid started puking.  Then a few hours later, another kid started puking.  So far, so good for the third kid.  I've never seen so much laundry in my life (our kids have too much bedding, I've declared).

I used to think our kids had these superb immune systems and it seemed like they never got sick, but now I'm not so sure. 

skamania lodge

 Andrew and I escaped for a brief one-night getaway to Skamania Lodge this weekend, leaving the kids with my in-laws to paint and bowl and eat and watch movies and have a grand time. 

The weather really couldn't have been any more perfect.  The air was crisp, but that's what you'd expect from a late November day.  There was not a drop of rain though, and the sun even made an appearance for a good chunk of the time. It was the perfect way to wrap up a busy holiday week.

Bridge of the Gods

pies

I don't consider myself to be much of a baker so I perplexed even myself when I offered to bring the pies to our belated Thanksgiving dinner tonight.  Three down (two pumpkin and Christie's beloved key lime) and two more (mixed berry) just about done, so far it's a success (of course the true test will be tonight when everyone gets a taste).

today

Today I am thankful for more than I could ever hope to express here.  Most notably right now, I am thankful to have so much family here in town.  No traveling needed to see everyone. 

It does spread the celebrating out over at least two days, which is certainly nothing to complain about.  We hosted my family here tonight and will go to Joe & Julia's tomorrow to celebrate with Andrew's family.

wordless wednesday: parking lot river

sad day on sesame street

First Romney disses Big Bird in a debate, and now Kevin Clash retires as the voice of Elmo because of a(nother) sex scandal.  What is the world coming to?

please allow me to boast for a moment

We are in the smack dab in the middle of parent-teacher conference season (actually, we only have to go to 3 but it feels like they last for a whole season).  When we met with Cayden's teacher this morning, she gave us the biggest compliment I've ever received in my life and my heart just about burst.

"When I have kids, I hope they'll be just like Cayden."

[sniff]

/boast

right now

I'm watching the American Music Awards with Avery & Cayden, feeling very incredibly ancient old. Who are all these youngster musicians?

a poetry reading

college day!

House Divided

Aligned

the curse of the black athletic shorts

I have purchased exactly 30 pairs of black athletic youth shorts since Sunday for Cayden's basketball team.

The quest for nine (soon-to-be-ten) perfect pairs of shorts started when I found some black ones with a blue stripe down the side, which I thought would match their jerseys nicely. The store only had five pairs in the sizes that I needed so I bought those five, sure that I could find four more at another of the chain's locations.

Unfortunately, when I compared the blue in the shorts to the blue on the jerseys, the whole family agreed that it was not good. So, I went to a different store and found some perfectly plain black shorts. Six of them to be exact. Still needing three additional pairs, I went to two other locations with absolutely no luck.

On the last of those two trips, I did manage to find another pair of (barely shorter) black shorts and there were nine of those in the correct sizes. I snatched all of them up and went home. Only to find out later that day that there was an additional player registered. Grr.

My intention this morning was to go back to the store to get one last pair of the slightly shorter shorts but while I was at the grocery store I happened to take a peek at the very limited selection of kids' clothes and lo and behold, there were ten pairs of simple black athletic shorts in the exact sizes that I needed.

Long story short, I have purchased 30 pairs of shorts this week, and need to return 20 of them to two different stores. I consistently take on these simple tasks ("Sure, I'll get shorts for the team, no problem") and they end up eating up so much time & energy.

Next year I'm placing one order online in September and calling it good!

little bits o' nothing

Josie was home for the sixth day in a row today (with the four-day weekend plus two sick days... so far) and Andrew's out of town all week for work, so I'm starting to feel a little nutty.  Aside from the non-stop chatter, I just would so appreciate a few minutes of solitude*.  But, I'm trying to keep things in perspective and realize that this too shall pass.  Someday she'll be off to college and I'll have an empty nest and wonder where all my babes have gone.  Someday.

* * *

Last night I brought all three kids to an important meeting that I didn't feel like I could miss, that just happened to be at a pizza place.  Sure, Josie probably should have been at home getting to bed early, but I tried to just pop in and pop out, and used the locale as a great excuse to skip cooking.  Little did I realize until I climbed into bed (at 9:30, thankyouverymuch), that I had forgotten to eat any dinner myself.  15 hours is apparently too long of a day for me to be expected to retain any brain function.  Tonight is a fundraiser night at a restaurant close to ballet, so I'm using that as another great excuse to skip cooking.  When I'm solo-parenting, I place absolutely no importance on home-cooked meals.  Something's gotta give, and if it's that instead of my sanity, I'm all for it.

* * *

Today I'm trying to focus on some sprucing up in my studio, because nothing is more pleasing to me than a home project.  I took Josie to IKEA to buy some shelves, but figured out that even if I got someone to help me get the boxes into my car, the chances of finding someone to help get them into the house and then down to the basement were slim to none, so I put that off.  I did get some baskets and another lamp and a few other accessories (a clock... finally!) though, so I'm hoping to make bits of progress over the next couple days.  Today's tasks* included going through the boxes full of hand-me-down clothes for Josie and boxes of wrapping paper and ribbon.  I learned two things: I am terrible at remembering that Josie has all these clothes just waiting for her.  I had to send a whole bag of stuff to Goodwill that she's already outgrown.  And if I ever get the urge to buy another roll of wrapping paper or ribbon again in my life, I hope someone will stop me.  Seriously, I should start a gift wrapping service over the holidays; I have so much of it.



*Thanks to my mom, I did get to abandon Josie for a couple hours to lead a lit circle at Avery's school, my new favorite way to spend my Wednesday mornings. 

**Neither of these tasks are directly related to my studio at all, but the stuff was spilling out into my space, so it had to be addressed.

long-distance communication

When either of us is away (me vacationing in Mexico, Andrew some random place for work), we rely heavily on FaceTime to keep in touch with the kiddos.  Josie especially enjoys this form of communication, as you can clearly see.

can't win

Sometimes when your kid is sick with a bad cough, you bring them to the doctor and the doctor says it's just a cough and to bring them back in a few weeks if it's still not better.  Invariably (if that kid is my kid), the cough lingers for a few weeks so you make a follow-up appointment and the kid is coughing & coughing non-stop until the second that you park in the lot and then the cough is gone like some kind of miracle.  You consider your options but decide that it would be silly to cancel the appointment since you drove all the way there already, probably in really bad traffic and probably on a really busy day.  Of course, by that point the kid is fine and the doctor gives you that little look out the corner of her eye like you're crazy and sends you home.

Other times, say when it's your third kid and you're distracted by lots of other things, your kid comes down with a cough five weeks ago but you think it's just a cough.  It gets a little better some days and gets a little worse other days, but pretty much stays a normal old-fashioned cough.  Out of the blue when the kid keeps you up all. night. long. (bold & italicized) with the cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, coughing, you conclude that it's definitely gotten worse (because nothing gets past you) and you decide that you will definitely probably make an appointment to get that cough checked out.

Occasionally, if that day happens to be a day off from school, you meet some friends at the mall for some shopping, and one of the other moms takes one look at your kid and can't figure out why she's not at the doctor right this very second.  Sometimes that gives you pause so you call right then for an appointment, still thinking that the kid will cough until you get to the parking lot, because that's happened so many times before.  You get the latest appointment time possible because you still have a long to-do list for the day, and you go on with your business, noticing that the kid may or may not be getting a fever. In between a pointe shoe fitting for one kid and getting new basketball shoes for the other kid, you see that the sick kid is almost falling asleep on the floor of the store so you decide to go to the doctor a little bit early.

On those days, you wait a little longer than normal for the doctor and you explain the thing about the five weeks of coughing and the doctor listens to the kid's chest and gives you that little look out the corner of her eye like you're crazy because the kid has pneumonia.

"Just sitting there in the lungs for five weeks, this was bound to happen," could be her exact words.  And you might want to scream at her, THE LAST TWENTY THOUSAND TIMES YOU TOLD ME IT WAS JUST A COUGH AND TO COME BACK IN A FEW WEEKS AND THEN IT ALWAYS GOT BETTER LIKE MAGIC.  But you don't do that because that would be rude.  Instead, you probably just take your kid's prescription and go home, and feel pretty crummy the rest of the night.

fall, 12 years later

As I've been driving around and seeing all the leaves littering the streets, I've had two thoughts.  First, I am so thankful we chopped down our maple tree last year.  It was a never-ending job to clean up all the autumnal goodness that thing had to offer.  Second, I think about 12 years ago (today, totally coincidentally!) when we subjected Avery to her first major cold-air photo shoot.  We thought we'd get a shot or two before she became hysterical, but much to our surprise she just sat there (and slowly sank down until she was completely horizontal) happy as can be, in the *huge* pile of leaves in our backyard.  Further attempts with subsequent children weren't nearly as successful.

extraction

Cayden has become somewhat of a neurotic tooth extractor the past few months.  It all started when Josie had her first loose tooth, in the early summer.  Cayden had a loose tooth at the same time and we joked about placing a bet on who would lose the tooth first.  I kid you not, he pulled that thing out 10 minutes later (hers took three months to come out on its own), and he's pulled out at least six more since then.  The process looks something like this:

• Cayden bites into food and notices that he has a barely-loose tooth.
• He complains about the way it feels and starts to wiggle it.
• He becomes obsessed getting the tooth out immediately.
• Hands covered in blood (apologies to those with a weak stomach), he pulls the tooth out.

At the moment, he has two (permanent) molars on his upper right side, just one on his left, and one baby tooth to go.  That kid is on a mission!

post-election

The best quote I heard on election night was from David Axelrod, Obama's campaign strategist.  A reporter asked him what surprised him about the overwhelming victory and his exact words, after a long pause, were: "I really don't mean to sound arrogant here, but nothing surprised me."  He went on to explain that the campaign had worked tirelessly in all the swing states to come up with accurate polling samples, and they trusted the results.  Results that mirrored actual votes on election night.  As many have pointed out since Tuesday, the big winner this go-around was MATH (and Nate Silver).

Thankfully, we didn't have cable TV during this election cycle, so I wasn't privy to the Republican theories that Democrats were being oversampled, or that the liberal media was skewing the polls to make it appear that Obama could possibly win (Megan sums it up well here).  I just sat in my bubble, checking on the polls every once in a while, content that things were looking good for my guy.  In the end it saved me a ton of unnecessary stress.

work in progress

 

Working on a secret little project this week (and probably the next, and the next and...)

most cringe-worthy quote of the night

Reporter, speculating on how Romney was passing the time waiting for election results:

We know he is with his whole family. He has 18 grandchildren and at least 16 of them are there with him tonight at dinner. He has five sons and they have five wives.

[Pause]

Um... I mean they have five wives between them of course.

four more years

24 hours later, we got our wish for four more years of Obama. I was so confident through the campaign, and then felt like throwing up all day today. I was insanely anxious and nervous with so much at stake. And the darned media claiming it was the "closest race in history." Really?

Anyway, I digress.

We watched all the early (pre-8pm) returns with the kids, which was fabulous. They were entranced by the whole thing, wondering how on earth Obama could win with so much red popping up on the map. It really is a strange system, that electoral college.

I digress again.

At 8 we met up with some friends to watch local results and to wait for the big announcement. Sure enough, it didn't take long for the call to be made and much celebrating was done. Such a huge relief and fabulous moment for the nation. Phew.

24 hours to go

This time tomorrow I can rest easy again, knowing the election is over and Obama has won.

Until then, I'm kind of stressing out.

25-hour birthday

Some people (Andrew) luck out and get their birthday on the longest day of the year (today).  Happiest of birthdays to the world's all-around best guy.  You deserve 26 hours to celebrate, but I hope you're happy with 25.

photo-packed weekend

I rented a lens for a class that I was taking today, so, with some friends, I decided to make the most of it and crammed three photo outings into a 36-hour window.  I ended up with well over 500 pictures, and am slowly paring things down.  Below are some of my personal favorites from Friday's trip to the Hoyt Arboretum with Rachele, Christie and Ellen, my Photo Mystery Tour* class from earlier today, and some just-finished nighttime shooting with Christie down by the bridges.  Yes, it's a lot.

 

*The Photo Mystery Tour started out in Sellwood with some on-the-fly street portraiture, then we moved indoors to photograph some businesses.  1859 (Oregon's Magazine) is doing a spread on Sellwood, and each student from the class is submitting a handful of photos for review and possible publication.  I left the class feeling slightly disappointed, and am not holding my breath about the magazine selection process. :)

gratitude

Apparently, when you post a whiny, complainy, had-it-up-to-here post like this one, immediately followed by a post like this one that insinuates that your children aren't being well-fed, it might sound like an SOS call because, I kind you not, I got two offers for dinner this week.  I swear that was not at all my intention, and I was rather embarrassed by it. 

I manged to convince one of the offer-ers that it really wasn't necessary, but the other one wouldn't take no for an answer.  In fact, she delivered a hot homemade dinner along with a (pumpkin cheesecake!) dessert of the month.  It was kind of surreal.  And so above-and-beyond thoughtful.  I could gush and gush, but I'll stop.

Truly though, at the risk of sounding horribly corny in this month of gratitude, I forget sometimes how lucky we are to be surrounded by so many people who often know what we need before we know it ourselves.  Carpool rides, coffee dates, cute little trinkets, even a home-cooked meal every now and again. 

Sometimes I feel like the sense of community has been lost in this fast-paced digital age, but it's still there, just in a different form.  For us, it's not a group of neighbor kids who play each day until dusk, but it's still a core group that I know I can call upon if I need a ride for the kids to school, or someone to vent to about the challenges of the day or week or year.

Apparently I can add dinner delivery to that list now.

dirt baby

As I was doing the daily backpack purge (seriously, so. much. stuff. every. day.) after Josie's field trip last Friday, I came across a clod of dirt stuffed into a piece of a nylon stocking, with a pipe cleaner face glued on the front.  I didn't even think twice before chucking it into the trash (okay, I did pause for a moment to think about whether or not it was compostable as is, and whether or not it was worth the time to take it all apart to compost the dirt) only to be informed by Josie that it was a project, not trash.  She had very clear instructions that it needed to be placed in a cup of water with the tied "tail" side down, and left by a bright window.  I stopped paying attention at that point and forgot all about the thing, until I noticed it today, less than a week later, with a patch of grass "hair."

Could possibly be the cutest thing ever.