… but not really.

Remember all the big talk about making Jocelyn a Belle costume for halloween?

Well, I read the directions, washed the fabric, read the directions, ironed the fabric, read the directions, read the directions, read the directions, cut out the pattern pieces, ironed the pattern pieces, read the directions, pulled out the leaf in my kitchen table, and then read the directions, before I tried to cut this sucker out…

And really felt crappy when I put 2 pieces together that were supposed to be exactly identical, and were SO SO NOT.

This fabric is super slippery and the damn stuff must have STRETCHED and I thought about the 137 more pieces I still had to go and … well..

.. I pitched in the towel.

I suck.

Honestly, I think I just bit off way more than I can chew – I have never made an article of clothing from a pattern before, and it was pretty foolish of me to pick this one to start with.

I broke the news to Jocelyn and she wasn’t happy. (It was not smart of me to do this as she was recovering from an “owie” in my lap, and was already in the grump mode, but she came around when I said we could go and pick out a costume this very evening, after we cleaned up.

Normally, I’m not exactly speedy on following through on these sorts of things, but I made sure we did. The kids cleaned up the toy room, and then by god I got us to Costco, where she selected a costume. She has spent the half hour before dinner prancing around in her new Sleeping Beauty costume, cried when she had to take it off for dinner. Ethan has had his Clone Trooper outfit for a while now, and he joined in the costumey fun as well. After dinner, Jocelyn promptly stripped off all her clothes and donned her new costume anew.

I think she’ll survive not having a costume her mommy made.

So yeah, I am disappointed that I had to give up my delusions of grandeur, and that I have SIX YARDS of this shiny polyester yellow fabric (in case you don’t sew, THAT’S 18 FEET LONG, 45″ in width.) It didn’t cost too much, and I have plans to at LEAST make her a simple dress up twirly skirt out of it, but that will still probably leave me 4 yards left.

I’m sure we’ll think of something.

Anyway.. at least this means I can move forward on some of my other projects – like painting the basement and recovering my chairs.

I have more to say about this Belle and Sleeping Beauty and Disnification stuff at a later date. (preview: The additional de-disnefication tactics that have been taken in our house. Or rather, my car.)

But for now, this is enough to write on a Sunday evening. It’s been a lovely weekend.

Except for the fact that I suck 🙂

-amy

It has come to my attention that I have been writing on this here blog about 2 years. I am not sure exactly when the first post was, because somewhere around 4-5 months in, our server crashed and I lost everything. I retrieved much of it through the miracle of google and it’s cached pages, but I know I started blogging after I went back to work (which was in September) and before Halloween. So I hereby declare today my blogiversary.

When I was up really late the other night, I started looking back through my archives and found some stuff that I had totally forgotten. Some stuff made me go, ‘Awwwww’, and some stuff made me laugh so loud I was afraid I was going to wake people up. Who were upstairs. With their doors shut. Yeah. That loud.

So I’m going to start a new thingee, which I’m calling Recycle Friday, but really, I think that’s kind of a dopey name, so if you can think of a better one, I’m all ears. See, it’s really a trick to not have to write, and yet still have a regular post! I find something I wrote PREVIOUSLY… and link to that! Brilliant, huh! I mean, I have all that content back there, why not just recycle? See, I’m saving my typing fingers from having to type something new, AND SAVING OUR MOTHER EARTH. Whee-ha!

So today’s is a look back is super short. And it made me spit out my diet coke when I read it. Again. Even though I read it a few nights ago at 1am and it made me laugh then too. Now that I’ve built it all up, here you go:

From this year, January 25, 2007: Funny HA HA

Have a loverly weekend!

-amy is a bill. just a bill. and she’s standing here on capital hill.

It’s five minutes til midnight and I’ve decided to post instead of heading up to bed. LUCKY YOU!

So, yesterday I took Jocelyn to the doctor, because she’s had this damn cold for over THREE WEEKS NOW. I usually have to kind of waffle and think this over, but I’ve been paying attention! She was congested when we went on our Labor Day Not Really Camping Trip, which was well over three weeks ago.

Our doctor looked her over showed me how to feel for her glands, and wrote out a prescription for antibiotics. Of course, one doesn’t want to do the antibiotics, but we’ve had a pretty decent spell of well ness in the household, and if you had been here the night before and heard my poor baby coughing and hacking, you would have throttled the doctor until she gave you something, ANYTHING to make your baby feel better too. Ahem.

I’m kidding of course, I did no such thing, and I was TERRIBLY saddened to hear from our pediatrician that she will be dropping our health insurance carrier in march. I was SO SAD. Our doctor is the best. she really is. She once stayed in her office for an hour because I was delayed in getting the kids from school and then getting from the school to her office (damn rock concert traffic) and she still smiled when we came in. The woman is a saint. I told her that maybe we could switch insurance (because now we use james’ and we could switch to mine) and she almost cried at the thought that we’d switch insurance just to stay with her. If it doesn’t happen, we will miss her so much!

Um, what was I talking about? Oh yes. Jocelyn. See, this is the other downside of writing in the wee smas. So she has had 3 doses of antibiotics now, and she’s still hacking pretty good at night. And we’re trying to give her lots of liquids, which means an increase in nighttime accidents, which has only been a recent accomplishment anyway.

So when James checked on her an hour ago, she had wet her bed, so I went up to change her while James pulled off the sheets, and the poor sweetie did fine, until I tried to pull her Disney Princess jammie shirt off of her, when she wailed and cried and said, “Noooo!”

She really likes that set of jammies.

I’ve been trying really hard to remember the cute Jocelyn things, because I think I write more funny Ethan stories than Jocelyn stories and heaven knows Jocelyn does super cute things too!

So here’s one:

She and I were alone in the car, going to do some errand. It was quiet, except for my ipod going on shuffle. A few songs came on, until The Beatles popped up, Yellow Submarine.

All of a sudden she hollers, “YES!”

Just like you would if you were playing your older brother in air hockey at your grandma’s house and he always beats you because he’s older and better and it’s grandma’s so you don’t get a lot of practice time in, and you try and you try and you try and still that bugger gets it past you and then FINALLY you smack that puck super hard and his reflexes just aren’t quite fast enough, and IN IT GOES! It doesn’t matter that you’re still going to lose the game, YOU GOT IT PAST HIM AT LEAST ONCE, EAT ON THAT, SUCKER! (BTW, Happy Birthday Joseph. You old geezer.)

“YES!” Jocelyn said, exactly like that. Surprised, and delighted, I glance back to look at her, and she’s grinning at me. “I wanted this song, Mommy!” I guess she really wanted that song!!

Today after soccer practice, me and Jocelyn got in the car, leaving Ethan and daddy to come home in Daddy’s car after Ethan’s practice was over. We climbed in, buckled in, and drove away, and Jocelyn said to me, “We have it all to ourselves, Mommy!”

When we got home, we settled down for a nice game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. We played for a while, alternating between popping one marble in at a time and going after it, and piling the whole lot of them in and working 2 hippos each to gobble up the veritable smorgasbord of marbles.

We dug out the marbles and plopped them into the middle, preparing to gorge our little hippos on their marble feast, and just as I was about to begin, she said, “NO! We have to sing God Our Father!”

We’re not a religious household, but our kids’ school does sing a little blessing before the noon meal, and this is the song she was talking about.

“Go ahead,” I said, laughing, and she did. (To the tune of ‘Frere Jocke/Brother John)

“God our father, God our father, we thank you! we thank you! For our many blessings, for our many blessings, aahhhhh-men! ahhhhh-men!”

And with that out of the way, she grinned, leaned down, and the pink hippo could start his marble gobbling!

It’s too bad someone finally corrected her old way of singing “Aw man!” in lieu of the “Amen.”

-amy is a procrastinator.

Ethan loves us. He likes to tell us this in a variety of ways. His favorite, is the measuring of love. There are a variety of measurements.

By bigness,

“I love you bigger than a HOUSE! I love you bigger than the WHOLE WORLD!”

By speed,

“I love you THIS FAST!” (He takes off running.)

Comparatively,

“I love you! I love you even more than the SANDBOX!”
“Even more than legos?”
(he has to think this one over, but only for a teeny second.
“Even more than LEGOS!”

And on a scale of one to ten,

“I love you TEN!”

I love the comparative and scale of one to ten ways, because you can kind of mess with his head a little bit:

“What about Daddy?”
“I love Daddy TEN TOO!”
“How about Pookie Bear?”

See, now he’s torn. Because Pookie Bear is his most beloved object in all the world. (even more than the sandbox. Even more than legos. Even more than *gasp* GARBAGE TRUCKS!)

“I love Pookie Bear a 10 too!”
“How about the sandbox.”

Now he’ll start to get all introspective and thoughtful. It’s terribly amusing.

“I think I like the sandbox an eight. And legos too.”

And as he gets all introspective he’ll lose track of where certain things rate.

“And I love garbage trucks ALL THE WAY TO TWENTY!!”
“But hey, I thought you loved me to ten!?”
“Well, I can love you to A HUNDRED!”

One last way he likes to show his love is to run at you with roughly the speed of a bullet newly escaped from the chamber and plow into you like a linebacker. You see, in his mind, speed is equivalent to his love. So it doesn’t matter how much I tell him to slow down and be gentle with his mommy lest she fall backwards and smack her head on the pavement, he is unable to slow down. Because that would mean he loves me less. And he just couldn’t have that, now could he?

The very cute thing about Ethan is these eloquent profusions of his love, which can come at any time, right in the middle of any conversation.

So it was especially cute when we sat down to Papa John’s pizza on Sunday night.

“I LOVE PAPA JOHN’S PIZZA! I LOVE IT A TEN!!”
“What do you love us?”
“Oh, you’re a 9.”

(James and I had to try to control the cracking up.)

“Only a NINE?”
“Yes! Because PAPA JOHN’S is the BEST PIZZA IN THE WOOOOORRRRLD!”

A minute later,

“You know what makes me grow?”
“What?”
“Pizza.”

Ahh, to be five.

(I wrote this yesterday. I’m too lazy to change any of the tenses. So here you go:)

Not only a soccer mom, but the TEAM MANAGER of our team.

When I registered the kids in soccer late last spring, there was a checkbox for if you’re interested in being a team manager. I hovered over the checkbox, and I swear to GOD I did not check it, but I did think about checking it. In the end, I’m pretty sure I left it unchecked and said to myself, “If they need team managers, they’ll send out an email, and maybe THEN I’ll volunteer.”

So I was shocked & stunned when the weekend before soccer started (we’re on week 2 now), an email came from Jocelyn’s team coach saying hi and mentioned that I’m the team manager.

I emailed him back and said there must have been a mistake.

There wasn’t any, and it certainly wasn’t his fault if there was, so after he reassured me that yes, my name was listed on teh list they gave him, I just went with it.

I mean, all I have to do is organize the snack schedule, right? And plan the end of season party (very low key, bring donuts, head to a pavillion, take up a collection for the coaches, no big deal).. and hand out the picture packets to the parents the week before pictures.

This is easy. I can totally do this, I thought. Sure, I totally wandered around the field last spring searching for the field for Ethan’s first soccer game like an EEDIOT, but that was then. This is now. I can do it. I can be a soccer mom.

Fast forward (or backwards i guess) to the first soccer practice last week.

Unfortunately for us, Ethan’s practice is at a different school then Jocelyn’s. They are both at 6pm, but in different places. So we arranged for James to take Ethan to his, and I would take Jocelyn to hers. I was going to pick them up from school, get them home, fed, changed, and ready to go.

At about 5:37 as I was still en route to home, both kids in the car, and James called me to ask where the hell I was, I replied that he’d better get all their stuff and meet us at the school where Ethan’s practice was being held (closer to me than Jocelyn’s.) He did, and we did, and it wasn’t until 5:55 that I pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the school where Jocelyn’s practice was being held. We arrived at about 6:02 and I hurriedly changed her out of her school clothes and into her soccer gear (including cleats!) and then headed off to find her field.

Now this field is nothing like the game day field. That field is huge, and has like.. oh, 117 fields on it. The school practice fields only had 5ish fields, and it was the same field that Ethan had practiced on in the spring, so I was pretty confident that we’d find her field easily.

Which did not happen. I had a vivid flashback of Ethan’s first game in the spring, as I walked up to the various groups and asked, “which field is this? What team are you? Who’s your coach’s name?” and drew a blank for each one. Time was ticking along and I was still in my nice work clothes, trotting around a school field feeling like an idiot. Someone finally filled me in that our field was on the OTHER SIDE OF THE SCHOOL… a fact that our coach had actually emailed the entire team and I ignored, thinking, “oh i know that field, i’ll know where to go.”

So finally, we trot off across the field, backt hrough the parking lot across another field to the backside of teh school where finally we arrived at our team’s practice. at 6:15.

Some soccer mom/team manager I am, eh? 🙂

Ahh well. Today I’m leaving in plenty of time, and I’ve dutifully printed out schedules with each week’s game time, what side our kids’ jersey’s are supposed to be on (blue or gold), who’s in charge of the snack, and what field we’ll be playing on.

It only takes away some of the stupid.

I always feel odd being a “soccer mom,” (and I obviously like to make fun of myself as such,) but the truth is, when you’re at soccer practice or a game and you’re watching your kid run around trying to kick the ball, you forget all about the surburban soccer mom stereotypes that caused you to want to dye your hair pink in the first place just to FEEL A LITTLE DIFFERENT OH MY GOD WTFBBQ… (ahem) and you just watch your kid having fun…

and you start to have fun to 🙂

– amy (you’ll still never see me with a soccer mom bumper sticker)

Ethan came home from kindergarten one day last week and confided in me,

“Mommy, we’re not allowed to kiss other people.”

I thought that over, and how when kids are very young, hugs and kisses are wonderful, of course, but as they get older, they need to learn to respect other people’s personal space. Kindergarten is probably the right time for this sort of rule.. though I do remember the “kissing” games played when I was in K and 1st grades on the playground.

I was thinking all this over and remembering my “first kiss” and my little “boyfriend” from 1st grade as I started telling Ethan how kisses are personal and it’s a good rule because as you get older, some people might not want to be kissed, when Ethan interupted my thoughts.

“But I kiss Jeni sometimes.”

This took me off guard a bit.

“You do?”

“Yes. In the sandbox. Sometimes we get married.”

“You do.”

“Yup.”

James also wrote about these glad tidings over on his blog.

the summation:

• we left thursday for jellystone park, a campground (with cabins! that have AC! and showers! they also have tent campsites too. But guess which one we picked!) with all sorts of fun things to do like a humgous waterslide, 2 pools, mini golf, paddle boats (on a very small, and somewhat swampy pond) and a huge field and play ground. Oh, and it’s by Luray, with all that has to offer. We camped (cabin-style!) swam, golfed, swam, went underground to gaze at huge stalactites/malagnicryptonitites, mini golfed, wandered and got lost in hedge mazes*, saw animals, petted animals, swam, ate ice cream, mini golfed and swam. And went on a wagon ride with Boo Boo. We left for home on Sunday.

*ok there was just one, and i was the only one to get lost, but i got out eventually. see? here i am, writing this. proof.

• swam at our own pool
• lost my wallet. AGAIN. Those of you who have been following our heroine for some time will know that she is notorious for this activity. Usually, she confines it to wallets. But she has been known to lose her keys as well (if you’re going to just read one of those links, choose the keys one, because it’s funny. the wallet one is just depressing). She has been known to take Losing Things to epic proportions. She also seems to think that talking about herself in the third person will somehow take away the shame of the latest loss, which is STILL ONGOING. That’s right folks. It’s still lost. Constant monitoring of the bank activity is ongoing, but other than ordering a replacement driver’s license (which can be done online, thank GOD) and carrying her husband’s credit card around, the wait to see if it turns up continues. Please cross your fingers for her. And your toes. And by the way, go look around manassass for it would you please because our heroine is looking at imminent divorce for this “habit” of hers and despite her insistence that “it ALWAYS TURNS UP!” her husband is not buying it and is growing quite bored distraught shrill interested in divorce lawyers… let’s just say he’s not happy.
• took the kids to their first day of school. not too big a deal for jocelyn, as she moves across the hall from her old class, and her old teacher was in the classroom when we arrived. Much bigger deal to Ethan, who….

  STARTED KINDERGARTEN TODAY.

  I actually wondered if he realized if this was a big deal, as he is still at the same school he’s always been for the last 2 years, just in their private kindergarten now. I was a big dumb dumb, because he has pointed out the ways he knows this is a big difference in several ways this morning:

  “Daddy, I’m going to learn how to READ and WRITE AND SPELL!”
  “Mommy, Kindergarteners go on FIELD TRIPS! I’M GOING TO GO ON FIELD TRIPS!”
  “Mommy I’m five! I’M A KINDERGARTENER! I CAN’T WAIT! I’M FIVE!”

  A couple of kids were naturally squeamish on leaving their parents’ arms to venture into the classroom, but Ethan leaned way back, made a “pweeeeeooohhhhh!” sound, ran in place for a few steps and then took off into the room. That is my son. The epitome of my son. The kindergartener. HE’S FIVE.

• Just in case you missed it, my wallet is out there. Just longing to be returned to me. Do your duty and go find it, would you? I’ve already tried, TRUST ME. I am looking into this keyringer device that may perhaps save my marriage one day, as it is now hanging by a thread.

More pictures of cryptonitites, goats, mini golf, first day of school to come this week. No hedge mazes though. Or wallets.

hey guess what!

I got some pictures off my camera! And even uploaded them to flickr!

So to finish off a previous post, Here are my kids on last month’s story book dress up day at school:

Ethan went as the woodsman/hunter from Little Red Riding Hood, and Jocelyn went as a Princess.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of Ethan straight on – his costume was a simple plain shirt with suspenders and jeans, and his robin hood style hat.

Jocelyn was more than ready to pose, however.

Jocelyn is wearing a princess hat I made for her out of posterboard and ribbon, and one of her dress up dresses. The dress has an upside down V opening on the front that opens to reveal white lacy underskirt. However, Jocelyn doesn’t like this. She likes the purple skirt better and therefore wears this dress backwards so that only the purple shows to her eyes.

Another little project I tackled one Saturday long long ago (probably 3 weeks ago) was a super girl shirt for Jocelyn.

You see, Ethan has these Batman pajamas. Complete with CAPE. He LOVES wearing them, and after he gets them on, will take a running flying leap onto his bed and then instantly turn to me and say, “Did my cape fly?” (He means flutter.) “Did I fly?” Then he does it all again, except he tries to watch his cape as he does so. Unfortunately the cape doesnt’ flutter that well because it’s a flannely type of material that is thin and tends to stick to his jammie shirt. He still loves it.

Well, as soon as Ethan starts “flying” Jocelyn joins in, and I thought how sad it was that there are no super hero jammies in her life. (Says the woman who when she was 6 wore Wonder Woman under-roos until they fell apart!) Target however has batman and superman t-shirts in the boys dept, so I thought I’d get her some of those and then narrow the shirt down a bit. Maybe add a cape!

So that’s what I did.

The first day, she wouldn’t let me touch it. It hung on her and bunched around her hips and generally looked awful. She loved it.

The next day, she finally consented to let me tweak it to fit her better. I turned it inside out, laid one of her shirts over the top, and drew lines up the sides and out off the sleeves for where to sew. I sewed it up, but it was still incredibly long, and the sleeves reached practically to her elbows. I was planning on chopping them off and hemming, until I remembered the fun we used to have with old tshirts when I was young. THey don’t fray, so you can cut strips in it to make fringe, which is what I did with hers.

She was closely supervising my every move, so at first she protested, until I pointed out that this would make the shirt “twirly.” Then she was eager to see the results.

Super girl!

The cape I planned to attach with velcro, so we could take it on and off, but I didn’t have any when I thought I had, so I just sewed the cape on, lest Super Girl be powerless against her foes for the day.

This is her self-proclaimed: “SUPER FACE!”

She posed for quite a few pictures, but when she was done, she looked like this the rest of the day:

Ethan has a super man t-shirt too, which I think I will attach a cape too as well. Then he’ll have a cape he can wear during the day, instead of just at night. I’ll get to it someday. And I should get velcro first.

Tonight: packing for our not-really-camping trip over the long weekend. Fun fun!

-amy

– i suck at getting pictures off the camera.

– i suck at house cleaning.

– actually, i don’t really suck at house cleaning. i suck at keeping the house clean.

– how DO you keep a house clean, anyhow?

– i feel like i’m being a parental hardass to ethan way too often.

– but that kid thinks that he can argue and debate his way out of anything! for once i just wish he would accept a ‘no’ and move on without all the conniving!

– i think i am guilty for letting him get this way.

– i’m not sure i know how to parent older children. toddlers are so much simpler.

– oh my god just think when they’re teenagers.

– can i change my mind about having children? it’s not too late, right??

– i’ve just had a coronary thinking about the teenager thing.

– MOVING ON… think of something else think of soemthing else think of something else..

– i wish i had the design sense to know what to do with my annoying cavernous spaces over my fireplace. and to the side of my fireplace.

– see, wouldn’t a PICTURE of said space be beneficial, for you, the reader, in seeing what i’m talking about?

– once again.. i suck at getting pictures off the camera.

– i do have my phone on me. which i can then email to myself.

– EUREKA!!

– there, now you can see. you can also see that it’s where stuff gets piled up. Maybe some pretty white bulbous vases. Those lower cavernouse spaces though… I’m clueless.

– that’s enough about that..

– next phone i get i’m making sure the camera part is super mac daddy.

– i need some gum.

– i could also use a drink.

– i think i’ll go get one of those. I’ll let you guess which.

– i haven’t done any brain dumping posts in a long while. i think my posting has become kind of boring this summer. i’ll try to remedy that.

– is this any better? maybe a little bit.

– it’s another thing i suck at though, so don’t hold your breath.

– if i could just take some decent pictures and then post them regularly, then it wouldn’t be boring.

– see point….. well, i’d say “a” or whatever, but I haven’t been numbering.. errr.. lettering these do-dads.

– ahh well.

– bye!

Jocelyn has stated she wants to be Ariel for halloween.

I don’t want to buy another $25 cheapo big box store costume. I realize it may cost more in the long run to make it myself (fabric ain’t cheap) but the construction will be so much better, and it will last a lot longer… so… If I’m going to make it myself, I’d better start NOW!

She wants to be Ariel in a dress, not Ariel the mermaid… so I’m purchasing this pattern and I’m going to need to get started ASAP!

I’m kind of hoping that she sees this and decides to be Belle instead – I don’t know why, but I just don’t like the thought of her dressing up in a wedding dress. Besides, I like the Belle dress better!

Ethan has stated he wants to be a storm trooper.

James – you get to handle that!