little lovelies handmade

This should explain things...

Where I have been, anyway. There is really no explanation for a lot of things about me.

Last week we took a trip down to Southern Cal to welcome my brother home from Iraq. He was on his third tour and to add insult to injury his 7 month tour was extended 90 days to become a 10 month tour. I love how they call them "tours" as if they are boarding a bus full of blue-haireds and are going to be sightsee around the dunes or something.

Since we were going down south anyway, we took the kids to Disneyland one day and the beach another day and made a really exhausting vacation out of the trip. I like to exhaust myself at every opportunity. No wonder I have never carried a kid to full term (both were 3 weeks early). There isn't much to be said about it other than we are really glad to have our bro home. The rest of this post could be devoted to vacation highlights, but frankly that would be boring for everyone, wouldn't it?

For my next entry expect me to wax poetic (or rant like a raving lunatic) about the joys of raising a four year old who apparently knows everything and therefore has no use for his mother's pathetic wisdom. These are good times, people.

Oh Snap. A four year old is cooler than me.

So a few weeks ago the kids and I went to their friend Piper's 4th birthday which according to her mom, Lauren was thrown together the night before. If only my months long planned out get together could be so cool. Granted, by her own admission many of the ideas were Martha Stewart-hacked, but whatever. It was still ridiculously magazine worthy (Um yeah, its Martha so it's gonna be magazine worthy. Duh).

My kids had a blast and freaked out when it was time to go home. I had to get gas so on the way home I stopped to fill 'er up and got the kids a treat to soften the blow. I got them organic milk and gummie worms. I know. But I was thinking milk was a better choice than soda or juice. To highlight my bad nutritional choices both kids puked up said milk about 40 minutes later (at home thankfully) thus causing Aaron to accuse me all week of attempting to poison our kids with Gas Station Milk. Common sense should have told me that purchasing the only two cartons of milk in the mini mart was probably a bad idea. What pissed me off the most was that I paid a buck 45 for each of them(you'd think it was the barfing, huh? But no, it's the lost $2.90. Classic)

 

This post wasn't supposed to be dedicated to my mad parenting skillz, though. I was gonna tell you about the awesome CD that Lauren made for the kids at the party. It was full of Piper's favorite songs and, dude, that kid has some seriously awesome favorite songs. She is way cooler than me. My kids dig it, too, but mostly because they are Piper's faves not because of their musical merits. We'll work on that.

Did you ever see the Gilmore Girls Episode where Lorelai calls her ex on the night of her bachelorette party to tell him she's getting married and he disses on her finance's musical collection of Dave Matthews and Movie Soundtracks? No? It cut deep because they were totally dissing on my musical IQ right there.

Anyway, this got me thinking to what other people's favorite songs might be. This is a poorly disguised attempt to get the 411 on cool music because I am way too lazy to troll itunes for cool stuff. Post your top 5 (or 10 or whatever) favorite songs in my comments. If I can bribe Lauren into giving me an extra of Piper's cd, I'll send one to someone. At some point. Because as other winners of my giveaways can attest, I ain't so great with the mail. Maybe I'll bribe Lauren even more to mail it out for me. She's waaaay more responsible than me.

Life and Death

Our dryer died last night, just as I started a new load of laundry, now leaving two loads of laundry wet and stinky. No worries, just hang it on the clothes line, you say? Well, the last big storm that raged through town killed the clothes line, so that isn't a suitable solution. We debated having someone come out and fix the dryer, but Murphy's Law says that you'll spend 100+ dollars to fix your 200 dollar dyer and then have to buy a new one anyway, so we took our money and gave it to the good folks at Sears instead.

I refuse to let it get me down because there is the promise of days by the pool with the kids this week and the fact that we plopped down the $380 (gotta have that delivery and install fee) right after receiving  the fun news of what little bean is. We had our ultrasound today, or as Aaron calls it "the moment pregnancy becomes real for me". I get the "pleasure" of tap dancing on my bladder, so the reality sinks in a little sooner for me.

In the 3 years since the last time we had an ultrasound they added a lovely viewing monitor for parents, so I didn't have to be a contortionist trying to see the tech's monitor. One interesting fact was that this babe is measuring exactly where it should for it's due date and my other two measured about three weeks ahead of their due dates and they debuted about three weeks ahead of schedule. So I am preparing myself now for a full term (or longer, bah!) baby this time around. Gotta psych myself out early, because around August 1 I may be contemplating suicide at the thought of 28 more days (mom, I'm kidding).

Bean is a modest one, crossing its legs and keeping things very proper. It uncrossed momentarily allowing the technician to say "Weeeell, I can tell you what I don't see." and thus confirming (as best she could under the circumstances) the gut feeling we all had that we are in fact having a girl. Maybe. Most likely. Probably. I asked her if we should just keep it to ourselves and not tell people just in case and she said that while she could never be 100% about these things, she thought we'd be safe telling folks the news.   So there you have it, folks and the same man who was all worried at the prospect of raising one daughter is giddy at the prospect of raising two daughters. I think he is secretly glad to have another little princess in the mix.

Good Weather Can Make Up For Anything

The weather was fabulous and we took full advantage of it this weekend. Which is a good thing because it made up for the disaster that was last week, which began on Monday with a Win-co trip, which if you live in a state with a Win-co you know what I mean, if not think Wal-Mart of food (yes I realize that some Wal-Marts have food, but it was the best comparison I could come up with after 10 pm on a Sunday night). I had to drive 20 minutes to our Winco, spend an hour shopping with a pre-schooler and a toddler who didn't want to be at Winco and then I had to go home and begin cooking for a couple of hours because I have a bunch of friends who had babies this week and I knew I'd be called upon to provide food-stuffs for the new parents when Peanut informs me that she needs a diaper change (I know, sign 185 that your kid is ready to potty train) so I went to get the diapers I got at Win-co, only to realize that I had left the diapers and toilet paper we needed VERY BADLY on the little conveyer at Win-co. And hour and a half later (after wrangling two children who really didn't want to go back to the store into the car and then bribing them with new crayons and coloring books to get into the car, only to find that Winco had neither crayons or coloring books, thus requireing that I make an unplanned stop at Target for crayons and coloring books ) I was back at home.

Later in the week I took the kids to the thrift store and when we got home to have lunch, I dug into my purse to get my house key and noticed the house key was not there. The memory of giving our handyman my house key the day before suddenly flashed in my brain, simultaneously with the vision of my cellphone sitting on the kitchen counter. Damn. I had to load two pissed off hungry kids back into the car and drive all the way to the freakin' State Capitol (where A works), park downtown, take out my children who were dressed in clothing suitable for...say, an outing to a thrift store, but not an outing to a government institution(meaning that they had clothes on, but not that any of it was clean or matching. Or even technically clothes. Peanut was wearing a Belle dress). I'm pretty sure I hadn't brushed my hair and looked like those crazy troll dolls. And I had to march my rag tag children and self into Aaron's office where he just started working a month ago and all his co-workers are chic little 20 somethings in power suits.

All I gotta say is thank the Lord for that Belle dress, because when there is a smiling blue eyed blonde haired princess around, no-one notices that her mother looks like a troll and her brother was playing with a Styrofoam box in the car and was covered in little white Styrofoam balls , that would stick to his hair even more when I tried to brush them out, because, duh, static electricity.

Ok, so I guess it wasn't a monumentally bad week, but  when you are pregnant and perpetually cranky it's a pretty bad week. We were able to enjoy a picnic in the Capitol Park with Aaron on Friday and spend Saturday lounging by the pool at our gym.

Bad week, what bad week? Chlorine and sunscreen will solve all my problems.

A Dickensonian tale of Motherhood

Our house was built in 1955 and still has some of the "features" of that time. No, not the great old stoves people had in those days, or an ironing board in the wall in the kitchen, but a good old wall heater. It actually does a bangin' job of heating our 1090 sg ft castle and doubles as a after bath dryer for the kids. Lauren laughed and said how Dickensian of us to have a heater and little ragamuffins standing around it getting warm. Well I guess Dickens wouldn't have had a heater...whatever.

Anyway, they like to stand there in their towels and heat up a bit before putting their jammies on and going to bed. Last night my peanut had the brilliant idea of standing in front of the heater sans towel and got a little too close, burning her bum. Since she was a little wet still the one second contact with the heater left a nifty 3 inch circle burn. Owwie! As a result she got to spend the evening sitting on an ice pack and watching princess movies. Now there is a little red circle that will likely go away in a day or two, but in the meantime will be a joy to explain to the day care at the gym.

Can I still be in the running for mother of the year?

Macro Bandwagon and a hairball

There is a 30 day macro photo-shooting challenge out there somewhere that I decided to join in on. I am too lazy at this exact moment to look for the links to the blogger who had the brilliant idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of you knew about it or were participating already.

Play Shoe

White Button Jar and Fairy Prince pic

Oh and here is the hairball part. Miss Peanut likes to twirl hr hair as she falls asleep. Because she still hasn't been feeling 100% she has been twirling her hair quite a bit lately and created this in her hair.

Yup, a two inch long hairball.

I couldn't brush it out or condition it out, so I had to break down and cut it out. luckily her hair is just wavy enough you can't tell. but guess what she is doing right now? I better not have to do this again tomorrow.

Glitter and Grunge Update

I love these notebooks. I love making them, I love using them. They are just too much fun. I have these up on my Glitter and Grunge page this month along with a little lovelies handmade grab bag of goodies. Gotta clean out that office for the new baby! There will be many more sale items on Glitter and Grunge in the coming months as I clear out the office. We are moving the whole shebang to our front room where life happens around here.

We'll see how it goes with my craft supplies, sewing machine and computer all out for the kids to see and be tempted by. I think that because the sewing machine will be in the front room I may be able to do more since I won;t have to hole away from everyone when I sew. Though I can't imagine Aaron is going to be thrilled by the whir of the sewing machine during, say, Battlestar Gallactica.