sweet

Cycle of hell

I sit down to blog, email, pay bills, sew projects, knit, make phone call, stare at wall, etc. and my kids commence on their well practiced "Annoying the Hell Out of Mommy by Annoying the Hell Out of Each Other, Usually Until Tabitha Cries" routine.This provokes me to commence my own equallying annoying, yet surprisingly uneffective counter routine, "Shooting Annoyed looks before Barking at Them Crossly, Then Yelling at Them Wildly Before Sending Them To Their Rooms, To Which They May Or May Not Go". We can wile away the hours this way, alllllllll afternoon long. It would make any and all parenting experts cringe, but from what I hear on the phone in the background of all my friends (when I can hear them over the din at my house), I AM NOT ALONE.

Thank god.

:)

Excuses, excuses, excuses

Please meet Daisy, soon to be international traveler.

Now for the excuses. Yes, she's late, and here's why:

Excuse number 1: Production issues

Daisy is my fourth rendition of backtack 3, and is wearing her third try at an out fit. My first softie was the Better homes and gardens pattern, and I can’t remember the last time something I made came out so shoddy or unsatisfying. I can’t even show you a picture, though it’s funny, because I’m vain. The second try was a wee bunny, and I wanted to use a thrifted sweater. Even felted the thing stretched sideways and not up, so it got rounder and rounder and more and more ridiculous. So scratch that one. Then I tried another sweater with my Twitch pattern, and that had stretching issues too, so I finally panicked back to the wee bunny and a nice, safe piece of felt. I then made a smock (lovely pattern). Then I made another one that actually fit the wee bunny. Even that one just didn’t look right, so I gave up on the smock and in the last 10 minutes of my babysitting time last week, I whipped up the skirt. Whew.

Excuse number 2: Hand, foot, and mouth disease.

No, we don’t have cows. I guess Hand, Foot, and Mouth is a common childhood disease, and not very serious, just a little icky. Poor Tabby had a fever, mouth sores and a rash last week and now Oliver is languishing on the couch too. They haven’t been happy and as a result, I haven’t had as much time as usual to “do stuff”.

Lame excuse number 3: Migraines

I started having migraines while pregnant with tabby, and they go something like this: feel a little off. Off feeling grows until I think I have a stomach virus, or I’m pregnant-not good either way. Off feeling explodes into skull fracture above left eye. Kids become intolerable, as do sunshine and birds. California has a lot of birds. And sunshine. Vomit. Crawl into bed and contemplate dying. Fall asleep, sleep for no less than 3 minutes, but usually no more than 20. Wake up cured. CURED. Jump out of bed so blinkin relieved to feel better it was almost worth having the migraine in the first place (from the back end I should note). This was my afternoon on friday (yes, already late), and I didn’t make it to the post office.

Super lame excuse number 4: Post Office hours

I have no idea when our post office is open, but apparently it isn't when people need to mail stuff. I was there Saturday, Daisy in hand, ready to send off, but they were closed. CLOSED. That meant waiting until this morning. 38 minutes to go.

So Daisy will be a little late, but she will be there by the 10th, even if I have to sell a kidney to afford the expedited shipping.

Now to make up for the pathetic list of patheticisms, here is a glimpse at why I love my life:

:)

Worst post ever

Just to explain the deafening silence. Oliver was sick, now Tabitha is sick. What's worse? A sick 21 month old or a sick 4 year old? Answer-the mother who has to deal with both on spring break. Am not happy camper. Fighting urge to relieve boredom/stress with needless craft expenditures (did I just use the word needles?). Cursing "use what you have month" said in not very nice tone of voice and possibly with mimed quotation marks while under the influence. Oh yeah, turning to wine/whine in off hours.

Blah.

:P

Things we take for granted

Now, I know you're probably expecting a sweet, gooey post about how much I love my husband (I do), or appreicate my mom now I have kids of my own (I do), or even my cat and how she sits on me at night (sort of), but...um...no....I want to talk about my dryer.

My dryer broke. This is my hallway now:

We all have lots of appliances that are very useful, but face it, the dishwasher is a chore in itself. Loading, unloading, loading again. Vacuming? I sweep my carpets unless I have no other choice. But the dryer, it makes a difference in my life. I put wet clothes in and I walk away for 60-90 minutes. When I come back, they are dry, and soft. Nothing like crispy line dried clothes to remind you of that. Not to mention the 20 minutes it takes me to hang them all, perfectly balanced so the junky drying rack I got to tide us over doesn't collapse. Then there's Tabitha un-hanging them and strewing them around the house. Do I sound annoyed? Well, only a few more days before the parts come in and I'll shut up about it already. Just don't your dryer for granted, it's doing more than it gets credit for.

So, just to prove I am not wallowing too deep in my own laundry, here's my latest recycling attempt:

It's a thrifted denim skirt, and I just sewed and mitered the bottom, then sewed on a belt as the handles, and lined it with a courdery shirt:

It's only pinned, and I didn't do such a good job on the handles, and I think I would have been better a little shorter, but I like it, really. And it didn't take me that long to put together. I have a couple more skirts to experiment with, and hopefully I'll figure out a system for the handles that makes them strong, but gives a finished look to them. Since this month I'm working with what I have (2 days down!) and I have spring break with the babysitter, I hope to make quite a few things. I'm even considering diving into my own closet and seeing what I have to cut up!

:)

blowfish moment

So I read once about a study where they raised rhesus monkey babies to think that a stuffed monkey surrogate was their mother, and then randomly, the dummies would expel bumpers that physically pushed off the babies while they held on. They noted that the babies, instead of withdrawing from the mother figures, immediately ran back to the stuffed mommies and held on even tighter.

Sad, isn't it?

Today, I had a lovely afternoon with the kids. We went to the park with Eric-it was perfect LA weather, the reason people live here the rest of the year. He drifted off to work and we spent the evening playing games and being just the right amount of goofy. I even resisted the urge to put on I-Spy while I made dinner (the waldorf gods will be proud) and instead got out the new batch of playdough we made this morning. Red. Oliver was re-enacting the story they tell at school, about the snowman with a carrot nose and the rabbit (it involves theft) and we were singing together.

Then Oliver got a little too close to the stove, where dinner was heating up. I instantly went from playful mommy into stern mommy mode, and I scared him, hurt his feelings, made him cry. Making Oliver cry means making Tabitha cry and the next thing I knew, our lovely afternoon was washed away in tears, courtesy of me. It made me think of those fake monkeys. I felt like a blowfish that suddenly inflated and poked him with my poisonous spines.

I know, academically, that the fake monkeys didn't hug their babies afterwards and explain their actions, or tell them that they love them, but I can't get the look on his face out of my head. I salvaged the evening somewhat, but we all stayed a little edgy and emotional-amazing what one off moment can do.

I thought if I wrote it down, maybe I would feel better. It's not the post I wanted to make, but I'll do that later. If I haven't eaten my children by then.

:P

Gritting my teeth..

...over reading the same book over and over again. Oliver is at this very moment entoning, "read this please, read this please" in the other room. I guess I should be thankful he is saying please, but there are bits of organic cereal stuck to my socks and there's no counter space in my kitchen because of all the dirty dishes, and all I want to do is retreat to my disaster of a craft cave and make something, anything, but even there I have hit a wall and can't seem to get started on any idea. My husband's response to my bad mood is to go to work early, not exactly a pick me up, and have I mentioned he's working nights? That means dinner time, bath time, bed time, getting up in the morning time, all my time. I'm finding the daily grind of spending so much time with my kids is wearing me thin.

I guess I'm in a bit of a funk.

Tabitha is now crying because Oliver pushed her, so I guess I should go.

:P