Sunday, November 26, 2006

Teddy Libby

Libby has a strange mind. Lately she has decided she needs to sleep with the stuffed animals at night. Now, I'm not talking about a teddy bear or a baby doll in her bed with her. No, I'm saying she wants to sleep with all of them . . . in their bed.

The stuffed animals at our house sleep in a baby cradle my father made. Since we no longer have babies to put in it, we have set it up for the girls to put their stuffed toys in. Libby thinks this makes a comfortable bed.

I just got tired of fighting her on it. She would throw big toddler sized fits over being refused this wonderful experience, so I let her do it. Every night. Yes, I'm a bad mom. We put her to bed in the cradle, carefully cuddled and supported by twenty stuffed toys and the odd plastic doll. Then after putting her back there fifty times, she eventually falls asleep and we transfer her back to her own bed.

The teddy bears seem to be rubbing off on her though. About three or four times a week, she wakes up at 3 in the morning and comes and finds me. She climbs up in bed with me and cuddles close. She used to wiggle and squirm, keeping me awake, so I would have to take her back to bed. Now she lies still, curled up next to me sleeping, the perfect teddy. I love laying there next to her, smelling her sweet, baby scent, just enjoying my last toddler in a quiet moment.

So if putting her to bed with the teddies means she'll stay my teddy just a bit longer, I'm going to keep doing it. I wanted my oldest to rush through growing, to get to the next stage. I cheered her on. My youngest I want to hold back. Don't rush headlong through life. Toddle. Nice and slow. Stay little. Stay sweet. Stay. Just stay.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Learning to Spell

Bubba: Mom. Mom. Mom. I know how to spell Mom.

Me: really? how do you spell it?

Bubba: A . . . M . . . Y

Me: : )

Monday, November 13, 2006

My Protege

I have a few talents. Things I've worked hard to improve on in my life. I can take pretty good photographs. I make a mean chocolate chip cookie. I can ignore housework like nobody's business. However, the talent that bemuses my husband the most is my ability to stack dishes in a dish drainer.

He and I both grew up in homes without a dishwasher. (Ok, my parents got one when I was a teenager, but that still counts as doing dishes many years without.) You would think he would understand the usefulness of such a skill. Nope. He teases me about my leaning tower of dishes and the pots and pans that bump the bottom of the cabinet (my cabinets sit about two inches lower than average.)

I can see why he's so fascinated with my stacking skills, because the man can not stack at all. He sticks the tall plates in the middle of the drainer and the big bowls in front of the small bowls and can't figure out why nothing wants to stack for him. In other things he's got great spatial perception; he just doesn't use it when standing over a sink of hot soapy water.

Lately, my stacking skillz have been allowed to rest because I have passed the dishes torch onto my oldest. I'm only doing a couple of batches of dishes a week and it's heavenly. Most of the time, she does a decent job. Every once in a while she tries to have her water too cold and we end up with greasy dishes, but other than that, she's not bad.

One area she's managing to excel: stacking. Her dish drainer sculptures make my heart proud. The other day I went to get a dish and almost took a picture. She had carefully stacked a pot on the backing racks, extended them out over the edge of the drainer, and set something else on the other end, perfectly balanced.

She has learned well, my Grasshopper.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Rationalizations

I keep thinking about things I could blog about, but then I remind myself that as a mommy blogger I must report on Halloween. Since I haven't done that yet, I can't talk about anything else. So my Proustian musings must wait for another day.

Halloween was stressful. I did way too much running around and I had too many things I was trying to take care of and not enough time to do it in. It definitely made it hard to enjoy the day. Everyone had costumes this year and we only spent $12 buying a ninja costume for Joshua who was quite happy with his store bought costume and not at all sad I didn't stress myself out more to make something.

Which is good, because Sarah came up with her costume idea at the last minute. She came out her bedroom the evening of the 29th and said, "I know what I want to be for Halloween." finally, thank you. "I want to be a Greek goddess. Maybe Aphrodite or Athena, but Aphrodite is the goddess of love so I don't really want to do that. Maybe Athena. What's she goddess of?" Because of course, we have to choose our dieties carefully, don't want to choose something potentially tease worthy. Athena is the goddess of war, wisdom, and industry, so we were safe with that one. (I think it says something about my daughter and the Greeks that they find those three areas logically connected.)

Monday morning I researched ancient Greek costume so I could historically acurate. We can't put a Greek diety in a Roman toga, after all. Thankfully, the Greeks weren't anymore up on sewing than the Romans were. A Greek dress (called a Chiton) is basically two rectangles sewn in a couple of places and belted. We found an old white bedsheet and cut it up for her dress. I sewed the shoulders with two inch seams so she had the little scarf thingys at the sleeve and we belted it with bronze colored decorator cording. We wrapped the cord at the sleeve too. Then we found some leather strappy sandals on clearance at Walmart for $5. We did her hair with a high bun for half the hair and ringlets for the rest. She looked very pretty.

Rilla was supposed to be Little Red Ridinghood except mommy somehow lost the hood. At the last minute we had to switch to Snow White using a dress that was missing it's yellow ribbon. We did still have the cape. (stressor number three.)

Libby's costume ended up being a last minute thing as well. I basically put her in a onsie and leggings and tied her tutu over it: instant ballerina. She refused to let me put her hair in a bun though. (Stressor number four.)

Matt borrowed his cousin's dragon costume. non stress. I needed that.

We spent the day at my mom's trying to help with doughnut making. I forgot my camera so I don't have good pictures of either the doughnut making or the kids. The plan was to leave Mom's in time to make it back for our church Trunk or Treat. We left late and I misrembered the time by 30 minutes, so we basically missed the entire thing. They got the dregs, but it was cold so they really didn't want to be out much longer than they were anyway.

Next year we will have to make changes in the schedule. It was too hard to do things that way. I know it doesn't sound like much, but there was a lot I'm not saying here. It wasn't a good day for me, but my kids had fun and that's what matters right?