This year, we didn’t get to doing a lot of halloweeny crafty things we wanted to do. I picked up the special Halloween issue of Martha Stewart Living, and barely got to look at it — because Ethan and Jocelyn were hogging it! They loved it and wanted to do all sorts of things. Maybe next year.. We did make it to Cox Farms (big slides, rope swings into hay piles, hay wagon rides, more slides, fresh apple cider and apples, baby animals, and free baby pumpkins on exit), which somehow we missed last year, and boy was it a hit. Ethan has a love of apples that he has reaffirmed again and again, and I’m trying to keep a good stock of apples in the house to keep him happy. I showed them both the “apple star” in the middle, and they loved it!

So this year, as you know, Jocelyn switched from a Belle costume to a Sleeping Beauty costume, and to top it off, we used her princess hat we made this past summer.

Ethan had 2 costumes this year. He long ago stated that he wanted to be a storm trooper, and that costume was bought about a month ago. His kindergarten class also had dressing up, but they had to pick a character from a nursery rhyme. Ethan decided to be a mouse, from Hickory Dickory Dock.

James and I put it off until the day before, but luckily it came together beautifully. James bought a hooded gray sweatshirt on his way to class, and I stopped by the fabric store and picked up some felt. Ears and a tummy were cut out and pinned to the clothes, and a tube sock stuffed with polyfill sufficed for the tail. It was SUCH a hit with Ethan, that he has since informed me that he wants to be a mouse for next year too!

Go home-made!! I admire the families that have a “costumes must be homemade” rule, but I would be nervous to commit to it.

Anyway – to the photos! Blurriness ensues!

Mom is making us stand here. What a drag. Can we go already?

First sweet! YES!

Trick or –Ooh! They have a dog!

Next! Next!

And off into the night…

oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy.

What a weekend. Let’s do it in list form, shall we?

Saturday

• 6:45am woke to the sounds of ethan and jocelyn frolicing on the main level. Could not go back to sleep.
• 7:15am ethan & jocelyn walked into the bedroom while i was laying there reading my book. managed to sneak it under the covers and pretend to be asleep and they went back to the play room. SHEW.
• 7:45am finally got up and, you know, parented my children.
• 8:30 woke up james.
• 9:45am jocelyn soccer game in the FREEZING FREEZING COLD EARLY MORNING COLDNESS.
• 1pm ethan soccer game which jocelyn and I skipped and james took him to because THE COLD ALREADY IT FREEZES.
• 1pm amy costco trip with jocelyn
• 3pm amy ikea trip with jocelyn and ethan. (did you see that? I went with the kids A-LONE. NO BACK UP. THIS IS HUGE.)
  managed to get everything PURCHASED and put into the car before the pager buzzed to get teh kids out of smaland. (oh how they love smaland.)

  For the record, we went last weekend too, except that was with james.

• 4pm had ikea ice cream (the main reason the kids love to go to ikea. the ICE CREAM payoff at the end.)
• 8pm kids in bed.
• 8:15pm Jocelyn wandered down the stairs in search of mommy and daddy in order to inform them that she is thirsty.
• 8:17pm Jocelyn pottied (again) and drinked (again) put back into bed, where she thankfully stayed the remainder of the night.

Sunday

• 6:45am woke to the sounds of ethan and jocelyn frolicing on the main level. drowsed until…
• 7:30 .. somebody hit somebody else because somebody took toy a away from somebody else and everyone involved came to bedroom to tattle.
• 7:32 told everyone that i didn’t want to hear it, they need to work it out, and hey, hop up here you, you look chilly!
  7:33 cold feet on warm skin is better than any coffee. sleep gone baby gone.
• 7:45 BED PARTY!
• 9:30am amy put together several trofast toy storage units. Ethan helps and accidently breaks a cross piece. wood glue and clamps come to the rescue. mommy does not raise her voice even once! PARENTING MOTHER OF THE YEAR award somehow does NOT magically fly through the window in recognition of this feat. Go figure!
• 11am carrying of tall trofast units downstairs, general running around in the basement by small people, scrubbing of paint spots on floor by grown ups, entirely too much playing with the glass doors on the new tv console for grownups to stomach before finally abandoning the basement for the upstairs again.
• 12pm lunch and then an attempt at quiet time. grownups discuss the need for another ikea trip.
• 1pm lots of cleaning ensues, with promises of a ikea trip as the carrot at the end of a stick
• 3pm amy, jocelyn and ethan off to ikea! (ALONE! AGAIN! WILL THE SAME LUCK STRIKE TWICE? OR WILL OUR CONTESTANT BE RIGHT IN THE CHECK OUT LINE WHEN THE PAGER BUZZES? TUNE IN BELOW TO FIND OUT!)
• 3:30pm amy checks her children into smaland, and the timer is set. She has 30 minutes to get all her stuff before she is required to get her children again! Can she do it!
• 4:00 BZZZZT! She can’t. She is still picking out bins when the pager buzzes. She is in the warehouse, finishes picking her bins, stashes the cart near the checkout lines, and dashes to retrieve said children.
• 4:10 amy is in the checkout line, PUTTING HER ITEMS ON THE BELT.. when she notices that a piece is missing from one of the kitchen items she wants to buy. Kitchen item. Kitchen department. one floor up and in the MIDDLE of the floor. SHE WAS ALMOST HOME FREE, but now she must RETURN, with TWO KIDS IN TOW, to get the item with all pieces intact.
• 4:25 one would think that by now she’d have that item and be back in the checkout line, but no. she’s not.
• 4:35 letting the kids play in the kids section before heading downstairs.
• 4:45 nope not yet. She has however, started using that hissing mom voice every time a kid clings to the side of the cart and then jumps off, which sends the cart careening to the side into other shoppers.
• 4:55 HAHA – not even close. Every “kid-house” in ikea must be played in, you see.
• 5:05 there are approximately 247 “kid houses” on teh bottom level, even taking the short-cuts (and i know them all, baby).
• 5:15 we’re in the rugs. the end is in site, but mommy is about to lose it and her feet are killing her and she sits both kids on the rugs to give them the rules that will ensure mommy’s brain doesn’t ooze out of her right ear (probably due to the fact that she is shoving something sharp in the left ear). #1: no jumping on the cart. #2: no jumping off the cart. #3 no running ahead. #4 no lagging behind, and #5 no, we can’t buy that. Any infractions will be counted, and if mommy gets to 3, then no ice cream.
• 5:25: finally in the check out line. So many bins to dig through. Gates to swing on. And of course, there’s the cart to jump on and off of. Mommy curses the designers of those damn ikea carts where the back wheels which swivel in all directions instead of staying forward like any normal cart for fuck’s sake
• 5:35 check out completed, but now no one is allowed to even TOUCH THE CART OR AS GOD IS MY WITNESS WILL BE NO ICE CREAM. EVER. IN THE WHOLE WORLD.
• 5:40 nearby man nearly jumps out of his skin from the mommy bark of the above order at both children.
• 5:45 ice cream obtained.
• 6:00 safely in the car. oh my lord the relief. SWEET RELIEF. MOMMY IS NO LONGER IN IKEA WITH THOSE DAMN CARTS AND 2 SMALL CHILDREN THANK GOD!
• 6:30 home sweet home! and look, james has laundered and put away every single dirty item in the house. amy knew there was a reason she married him.

The rest of the evening is a blur, but you get the jist. Will I attempt Ikea alone in the future? Probably. That smaland russian pager roulette is just to scary good to not try again. I will probably wear better shoes though.

The basement is shaping up nicely. Hopefully if i get the camera on a tripod the lack of good lighting will be ok and I’ll have some pictures to show. All major pieces have been purchased, and now I’ll be getting into the smaller details. The only problem is now I have no budget left for any smaller details 🙂 Ah well.

Hope you all had a nice weekend!

First of all, let me clarify my earlier soccer mom remarks. (earlier = weeks? months? ago)

I was not saying being a stereotypical soccer mom is bad. I was having a hard time with the idea of ME being a stereotypical soccer mom, because you know, I have issues with being “grown up.” Soccer moms have to be organized with jersey colors, and game times, and fields and all that sort of stuff and as you know, we can drop the ball on that kind of stuff around here in the Panders household. Trying to be a “together” soccer mom was scary to me. And hello! I then had to embark on being a Team Manager! Those guys HAVE to be “together”!

However, I’m happy to report that I got over it all pretty early on – actually probably because of your comments, Ann & Anna. Soccer moms and dads ARE great, dad gummit! And I’m great too, warts and untogetherness and all!

I stopped trying to be something I wasn’t, and got into the Team Manager role. I write reminder emails every friday to let everyone know where/when/colors etc., and I’ve kind of let myself go in writing them. I worry every time I hit send, that I’m just cracking myself up, and everyone else just rolls their eyes, but oh well!

So I thought today, I’d favor you with this week’s soccer email, for both picture day, and game day tomorrow. I crack myself up, and you can feel free to roll your eyes 🙂 (times, places and names deleted.)

OK people, huddle up, we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Let me give you the run-down. FOCUS!

* Why blue? Because I’m the team manager, and I am making an executive decision here. OH THE POWER! I’M SO GIDDY!
** Anyone else notice that I always send these things out as if if WE are the ones wearing the jersey/playing the soccer/getting our pictures taken? Psychologically, this probably says something about me. I bet it’s not good.
*** What? No one said I couldn’t give myself fancy titles.

-amy knows you wish YOU were on her soccer team…

(look at me! getting photos up in a TIMELY manner! huzzah!)

Ethan’s picture day was yesterday.

Jocelyn’s picture day was today. (Ethan of course, had to jump in after the first few pictures.)

Than seeing your newly hair cut 5 year old son dressed up in a coat and tie for picture day.

I have to admit, I cried a little bit.

I think all the “DISGUSTING! YUCK!” business kind of wore off, because even though I told him he could put his coat and tie on at school, right before pictures, he had them on when he left for school.

James took them in today.

I only wish I could have seen his whole class running around all dressed up.

Tomorrow: Jocelyn!

The question: Should I put her in pig tails? She’ll only be 3 once!

The next question: If yes, then how do I get her to let me?

-amy will have to be a tricksy mumsy, yes she will.

updates:

Fred has ALMOST left the building. It feels like there’s a tiny bump under the skin now. Smaller than a BB, but still there.

Jocelyn has finished her 2nd round of antibiotics, but 2 days into it, suddenly took a turn for the worse in snottiness. Since she was on antibiotics, I think it’s safe to assume that this is viral. The coughing and hacking at night, however, is MUCH improved. Her lips have been chapped a lot lately, and so now she’s in this bad habit of reaching up her lip with her bottom teeth and vice versa on the bottom lip, and so now even when we get all the chappiness cleared up, she manages to chap herself again with all the saliva/biting habit. Grrr. School pictures are on Wednesday. We may have pictures of our little girl looking like a clown.

Ethan ran a temperature off and on all weekend, a trip to urgent care pronounced him with “viral tonsilitis”. I stayed home with him MOnday just to be on the safe side, and since there was a dentist appointment in the afternoon, kept Jocelyn home too. The dentist’s appointment went fine, except for the part where Ethan threw up. It was truly disgusting. I was (and still am) amazed at the blase attitude of the dental assistant. I guess lots of kids throw up at the dentist.

Everyone’s teeth are good, and the dentist even said she was perfectly fine with Jocelyn sucking her thumb only at night. Yay. Due to the vomit encrusting Ethan’s hair, they took baths when we got back home and I let them wear jammies the rest of the day until bedtime. Boy do those kids love their jammies!

As you saw from yesterday’s post, I made some progress on my chairs, though I’ve run into a bit of a roadblock. The back supports (the top part) had double piping running around the entire thing, and I think in my mind I just kind of assumed I’d be able to sew that.. somehow.. but now.. that I think about it, and investigate the old piping, well, I don’t think I can. It’s not a matter of ability, it’s a matter of equipment. So I may take a swatch of cloth to an upholstery and beg them to cover some double piping for me. If anyone has any better ideas, I’m all ears.

I’m hoping to be done with the chairs by the weekend, which I hope will be spent in painting the basement. If not, then piecing a quilt for Jocelyn.

Today it was back to work and it was very hum-drum-y.

And now, I have to run find Ethan a blue blazer and dress shoes for picture day tomorrow. I got one for him that turned out to be too big, and the only words out of his mouth the entire time from when his eyes lit on the jacket, white shirt, and tie til when I put the jacket back in the bag (too big), was “I HATE it. Yuck. DISGUSTING.” I told him that Daddy felt the same way whenever HE wore a tie, and then on a whim, loaded up our wedding pictures to show them. Ethan was not impressed with the guy’s outfits, but was quite impressed with my wedding dress, and told me I was the most beautiful lady in the world. And then turned back to the bag his jacket was in, and said, “I do NOT LIKE THAT.” Fun fun. I promised him he could take a change of shirt to school and change right after pictures.

Jocelyn is enamored with the cute “picture day” dress I got her, which was a 4T, and was WAY TOO SHORT when she put it on !! My girl is only THREE YEARS OLD, and it looks like I am going to have to start looking in the GIRLS DEPARTMENT FOR HER!!! She loves the “dress” so much, I told her she could wear it for pictures with a pair of pants underneath. It is a awesome retro pattern of red, pink & white daisies on a black background which although I love now, will probably cause her to turn to me when she’s 18 and say, “Mom, HOW could you PUT me in that thing??” and I’ll shrug and say, “It’s just what they wore back then” and then I’ll add, “and YOU LOVED THAT SHIRT.”

No real ending to this post, except to say,

THE END.

We needed some test swatches on the wall downstairs.

First things first — Volunteers. Luckily, I had two.

Secondly, smocks. Luckily, Daddy had plenty of old tshirts he didn’t mind donating to the cause.

Thirdly… well, there is no thirdly, they just got right down to it!

The colors don’t look anything like this. Just letting you know.

We have narrowed it down (it’s like the a lighter version of the 3rd box), and purchased paint. Taping is finished, spackling and sanding is next.

um…. I guess I am giving myself another hole in the head.

Because I wanna make a quilt for Jocelyn! Wheeee!! It all started because Ethan has a very thick, flannel blanket, that he calls his “warm blankey.” It’s very simple, just 2 pieces of flanel sewn together with a very very thick batting in between, not even quilted, just tied off with yarn.

Jocelyn is not so good with keeping the blankies on her. She just seems to run a little hot (gets hot easily), while Ethan runs cool and loves to be WARM (this is the boy who wanted to wear long sleeves in JULY). So she often kicks off the blankets in the night, and while that was fine in the summer, it’s getting colder now, and this morning when she climbed into bed with us her poor little limbs were so chilly.

I’ve tried to teach her how to sit up and pull her blankets over her in the night if she’s cold, but whenever I check on her, she is always curled up into a little ball with nary a blankey in sight.

So I thought I’d make her a big warm blanket similar to Ethan’s, only bigger, so that it falls over the sides of her bed (harder for her to wiggle out of!)

She requested “Pink, mommy. Pink.”

So I must oblige! I had a fabric in my stash that I just love love love and bought with the intention of making a blanket for her with “someday” .. well, today seems to be someday! Hmm.. but it’s not flannel.

Well, no matter, I’ll just make it nice and thick and warm, doesn’t have to be flannel for that, right? I got to thinking how to use this fabric and thought that a simple quilt with square blocks would be just the thing, maybe some more pinks and a couple greens to set it off – what could be sweeter than pink and green?

Here are the fabrics I bought today, along with the one I already had (the first one), piled onto my scanner. The top two are making me crazy with love. All of them really, but those two especially:

I mapped a sample out just to get an idea of what it would look like — the squares aren’t super representative of what it would look in an actual quilt, since in the picture, the fabric squares are actually only about 2 inches of fabric when in actuality the squares would be double or triple that, so the pattern is kind of missing … but it’s enough to give you the idea.

I’m loving the pink and green. Maybe a white fabric to toss in very sparsely as well would look good?

So I was thinking about the finished product, and I am not pre-washing any of the fabrics, as I am hoping it will shrink up and give it that nice, puckered vintage feel — but to get that, it will have to be quilted, not tied off (like Ethan’s is) and will need a thinner batting (rather than the super thick warm batting Ethan’s has)…

Wait a second here..

original idea:

• quick,
• tied off,
• thick,
• warm,
• flannel,
• big.

Um… project has morphed into:

• quick pieced squares,
• tied off quilted, maybe even machine quilted,
• thick, thin and puckery/vintagey
• warm — thin can still be warm!,
• flannel quilting cotten,
• big.

Ahem.

Well, I don’t care. It’s going to be fabulous!

Ethan’s soccer team’s name is, “LIGHTNING”.

Jocelyn’s soccer team is the “POWER RANGERS”.*

We spend about half of each saturday cheering on these two teams. Even when it’s Jocelyn’s game, she is not on the field at all times. and thus, she is also cheering on her own team at times, and ditto for Ethan.

Yesterday on our way home from school:

Jocelyn: “I’m on team GO POWER RANGERS and Ethan is on team GO LIGHTNING!”

*I changed the “is” in that sentence to “are” and then back again about 10 times. And I’m still not sure I got it right. Fairly sure. But not certain. The noun is singular. So the verb is singular. Right? Right.

Right?

I *knew* you were saying to yourself, “Amy, you haven’t posted any photos in a long long time!”

So I took a blurry camera phone picture.

JUST FOR YOU.

BECAUSE I CARE.