We're Not Gonna Take It (To The Potluck) Anymore

I usually knock myself out for potlucks.

Pies made from scratch 100% - not even so much as a pre-made crust. Crisp, cheesy Crock-Pot potato recipes that start the day before. Chicken fajita dip that requires warming and mixing just before you set it out so it will be at its yummiest. Cookies that take all day; layer cakes threatening to cover my car interior with homemade buttercream on the drive over; fruit crisps taken out milliseconds before departure so that they are served at a still-bubbling temperature. Complicated transport rigs involving cardboard boxes, silicone potholders, aluminum foil, kitchen towels, and bungee cords. Presentation in my best ceramic or glassware, with hand-lettered signs and decorative ribbon. Big chunks of the grocery budget taken up with quality butter, goat cheese, red wine, white chocolate, imported sugars, organic flour.

For a long time, I did it because I loved to cook, I loved to show off my kitchen skills, and I got satisfaction from knowing that I'd used top-quality ingredients and put my heart and soul into it.

But that was before.  Before this past holiday season wore me down.  It wasn't a horrible, stressful Halloween-to-New Year's run; no more than usual, anyway.  But somewhere in there was the straw that broke the camel's back.

This year was just one too many.  One too many times I'd stood by a long, extra-leaves-added table in someone's dining room, watching as people inhaled Minute Rice and Velveeta while giving my lovingly-made food a wide berth. Too many years of work potlucks where people passed up the pie I'd made from scratch in my tiny, hot-as-Hades kitchen while fighting over the last grocery-store doughnut. One too many times all those expensive, quality ingredients sat getting soggier and sadder in my fridge as I struggled to consume the leftovers I'd had to bring home.  Schelpping my beautiful glass bakeware in its own insulated carryalls home at the end of the night, their weight only marginally less than when I'd taken them out the door a few hours earlier - this had become my own personal walk of shame.

This year, it felt like I spent more time than usual working my ass off on food nobody wanted to eat.  Maybe, if I'm being honest, the seeds were planted last March, when I made, per a friend's request, a chocolate-bourbon-pecan pie (again, from scratch) for his birthday.  He forgot about our plans and failed to show up to eat it (my husband polished it off for him). We re-scheduled and I made my friend another pie...which he also didn't show up to eat (though this time at least it wasn't because he forgot). I made a third one - the third one of these in less than a week - and he finally showed up to eat it, but with just a brush off "Oh, thanks." Three rounds of pecans and bourbon and crust and toiling in a hot kitchen, all in less than a week, and all I get is "Oh, thanks"?

This same friend completely forgot about my birthday a few months later.  He (and his wife) didn't even give me an after-the-fact courtesy "happy birthday" when he asked about my new phone and I said "Oh, it was a present, for my birthday last week." Not a word. Disappointed didn't quite cover what I felt.

Fast-forward to this Thanksgiving, when I was visiting my parents' place and made seven pies in one day.  First there was some whining because I'd only made one pecan, and that was the only pie some of the non-family guests wanted to eat; then, two of my beautiful pies had to be thrown out after a couple of days because nobody thought to refrigerate them.  They were both untouched, the sweet potato's delicate asiago crust uncompromised and the pumpkin's smooth surface unbroken. 

As Christmas time rolled around, I got invited to a cookie exchange.  I figured I'd better bring my A-game, so I got my mom to give me the recipe for a family favorite, small butter thumbprint cookies with a creamcheese & candy-cane filling.  They were a real pain in the ass to make, but delicious.  I also made a pan full of these, a clone recipe for Starbucks White Chocolate Cranberry Bliss Bars. I figured if my fellow exchangers didn't like one, they'd like the other.

When I got to the cookie exchange, I discovered that not everyone thought a cookie-exchange party meant "bring something really cool." There were plywood-tasting slice n' bake cookies, break n' bakes that had been baked in their original squarish shapes, and at least 1/4 of the entries were plain old chocolate chip. One or two people brought bakery cookies, and at least 1/3 of the participants left without taking anything home. I pushed some of my peppermint & cream cheese drops on people as we were filling containers at the end of the night, because even though I knew I'd have no problem eating up the leftovers, I couldn't bear to take a box full of my own cookies home. I already had to take home the cranberry white chocolate bars, which had turned out too crumbly to dish up, not that it mattered because I and the hostess were the only ones who tried them anyway.

Dejected, I soldiered on, readying myself for a friend's Christmas-Eve potluck.  This would be our second year attending, and I think we were the only non-family people on the guest list both years.  I decided not to do anything too elaborate, but I knew that my friend adored both sweet potatoes and goat cheese, so Heidi Swanson's Sweet Potato Spoon Bread (from Super Natural Cooking, the book that changed my life in the kitchen life) seemed like a slam-dunk.  I also brought an apple crisp, for which it was no picnic finding decent out-of-season apples. Both items were made the day of the potluck, and transported fresh from the oven, so they would still be warm for serving.

Which would've been great, had anybody actually eaten them.

Since this crew is all family, everybody pretty much brings the same thing year after year, and I overheard a lot of "Oh, you brought your rice! I'm so glad" or "Did you bring that mac & cheese?  I was hoping you would!" I have no problem with this...but they don't even try anything else. As I filled my own Chinet plate with items I could easily feed to Piper, I watched as spoonful after spoonful of fluorescent yellow macaroni and cheese or greasy Lil Smokies disappeared, while the perfect golden-brown, cheese-flecked surface of my spoon bread remained untouched.  I eventually grabbed a spoonful for myself, since it is delicious, and my friend said later that she did try it and liked it. But we were the only ones who even gave it a second glance.

My apple crisp fared only slightly better. When I went in for a round of desserts, I at least found I wasn't the first person to broach its crispy surface with the spoon (although I'd wager I was the second, and only other person that night who did). At the end of the evening, as I packed up my dishes and my now-cranky child, I felt like crying. I had a moment of deja vu, and realized that this was the second year in a row I'd left feeling disappointed in this way.  The previous year, I had made an apple pie and, because I know there are people like my husband who don't like fruit pies, I had bought a frozen Oreo pie from the store.  All night I'd watched as the store-bought one disappeared, its peaks of chemically-solidified whipped cream being cut into again and again. Meanwhile, my hand-made love letter to Washington apples sat in its glass dish, with only one piece gone. I had apple pie for breakfast for the next week.

I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to do it anymore. No more pies for people who wouldn't eat them, no more food-from-scratch for work potlucks or places where it hadn't been appreciated.  From now on, I will bring plates and cups as my contribution.  I will bring drinks, or napkins, or help clean up afterward.  But I'm not going to break my back cooking for people who don't appreciate it anymore.  If they'd rather have Velveeta on Minute Rice...well, let them. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. 

Light Source

I took this (with my phone) when we were outside playing.  At first, I thought it was a throwaway photo, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it.

Mark it With an "H"

Piper got invited to her first-ever birthday party of a classmate last weekend, and we were both psyched for her and nervous.

She's only been at this school for a couple of months (less than, actually), so we didn't know the birthday boy well.  I think it was one of those "invite everyone in the class" things.  Still, we were excited, as much for the opportunity to hang around other adults and possibly make friends as for Piper to have a social outing.

The party got re-scheduled; it was supposed to be on a Saturday afternoon at 3:30, but the birthday boy took ill and it was re-scheduled to the following Sunday.  At 10:30 in the morning.  While this sounds like a weird time to have a party, once I thought about it, it actually seemed better than the middle-of-the day times I'm used to seeing. Most of the under-5's I know still nap, and nap right after lunch, somewhere in the 1:00 to 3:00 range.  The party was at a Bounce U, and I couldn't think of a better way to wear my kid out than pumping her full of birthday cake and turning her loose in a variety of bouncy structures and obstacle courses.  About the time everyone is getting sick of each other and ready to drop in their tracks, taa-daa! Party's over, time for a nap.

Anyway, we didn't know the kid well but figured books were a good bet - all the parents I know get sick of reading the same ones over and over and welcome a change in the roster - so we got him a collection of Stuart Little adventures and Syd Hoff's The Horse In Harry's Room. I was going to craft some sort of fabulous stenciled hoodie or...something...but didn't get to it (and wasn't sure if these were the sort of people to appreciate handmade gifts), so I figured I'd better bring my A-game to the wrapping table:

The birthday boy's name started with "H," so I ran with it. The brown paper is kraft paper that was used as padding in some shipping package; the brown ribbon was saved from a friend's sweet cupcake-box decorations at her son's party; the "H" letters I traced from my own home-made templates and cut out of double-sided scrapbook paper. I glued down both the ribbons and the H's.

(Please excuse blurry phone photos, I only remembered to snap a couple shots as we were zooming out the door) 

They looked cute, but the paper was a little thin and I double-layered the (sturdier and hardcover) Stuart Little book.  This plus the glued-on ribbon and letters created a nearly-impenetrable fortress of gift wrap. It took the poor kid several minutes of struggling to get it open. He had similar trouble with the second one (although it was only single-layer-wrapped) and his mom helped him because she was afraid he was going to tear the softcover book.  Whoops.

But he seemed to like the books, and forgot all about his other presents once he cracked open the Stuart Little. His mom thanked me, saying "We always need more books, we get so tired of the ones we have at home." So that made me feel good, even if my fancy wrapping job was kind of a fail.

I was really glad we went, because (due to the re-scheduled time, I think), it was just the birthday boy, his older brother, a friend of the older brother, and Piper.  The other parents (birthday boy & brother's mom and dad, friend's mom) all agreed that maybe it was better this way, because four kids under age 5 was totally manageable, whereas 12 kids...maybe not so much.

The kids got to visit two different rooms in the bounce place, and there were different activities and structures in each room.  It was pretty cool, because by the time they got bored in one room, it was time to move on, and then when they started to wind down in the second room, it was time for pizza and cake. The cake was this huge squashed-face Elmo cupcake-cake which the other parents thought was cute but we found a little disturbing.  I find cupcake-cakes a little disturbing in general. Most of the kids just ate the two inches of technicolor frosting off the top of their cupcakes and left the rest.  A good time was had by all, and an excellent nap was taken shortly after the end of the party. 

Grosgrain: Pillow Factory Guest Giveaway

Super-cute pillow with appliqued alphabet letters. Click link below for pics and info. 


Pillow Factory Alphabet Down Filled Pillow GUEST GIVEAWAY

Friday Fashion: Insert Clever Title About Cowls Here

Seriously, go ahead. I tried all manner of puns on the word "cowl," and they all made me groan.

I used to hate cowls.  I thought they were silly; why not just wear a scarf, for crying out loud?  Then at least you wouldn't have to yank it over your head to get it off.

This was before the first time I accidentally dipped the end of one of my long, skinny scarves into a public toilet.  Oh, yes, I say the first time.  I am a slow learner.

What with all the snow and unreasonably-cold-for-the-south temperatures around here this winter, I have become an even bigger scarf addict.  This has created a few logistical problems (see sentence above re: public toilets and then picture that going on while screaming at your 2.5-year-old to stop poking her hands in the 'sanitary napkin disposal' box).  I have decided that perhaps cowls aren't so silly after all.  

If you knit (or can bribe a knitter into making you one), here's a lovely cashmere one by Isabelle at The Purl Bee.

Or you can just buy someone else's handmade stuff - Vicki has a nice variety.

If you want more of an all-seasons thing, try a Necklush.  Or make your own*.  I would like to do this, as I have about 576 sad, stretched-out and holey t-shirts which I should stop wearing and which would find newer, prettier lives hanging around my neck rather than keeping vanilla latte out of my cleavage. Although I suppose they could still do that, just in a more stylish way.  You know, a way that allows me to appear in public without looking like I just rolled out of bed.

*I will tell you that the Cut Out + Keep website made Firefox crash on me three times, so be warned.  The very best Necklush tutorial used to be found at This Old Dress, but Connie had to remove it for legal reasons.  You should go check out her blog anyway, because it's awesome.  She does things with t-shirts that leave me in awe.

Boys and Girls

Rae and Dana are having a "Celebrate the Boy" month, to spotlight crafty endeavors that focus on making things for boys.  I think it's a good idea, because they are right, boys often get overlooked when it comes time for a craft-o-rama.  Mostly, I think, because it's easier to sew up a tube of fabric and slap in some elastic for a skirt than it is to make a well-fitting nicely finished pair of pants or a button-up shirt (I get queasy just thinking about collars).

They've showcased some really cute and creative ideas, and I have to say I am mostly relieved.  While I have some misgivings about designating certain colors, fabrics, or motifs as "BOY" or "GIRL," the projects they've shown off (their own work and that of others) go far beyond the "It's blue! It has sports on it! It must be for boys!" mentality that seems to permeate children's clothing (and toys).

I have seen a couple of "oh, I'm so tired of pink and ruffles, thanks for doing a BOY feature!"-type comments in articles and around the web, at which I sigh and roll my eyes. I want to shake those people and say "You know girls aren't limited to pink and ruffles, right?  And you do realize that 'boy' doesn't just mean the opposite of those things either?" It's such a simple concept, but so many people just don't seem to get it.  And worse, they (sometimes very consciously) push their kids into these pre-determined roles of 'girl' and 'boy.'  It makes me sad to watch a parent snatch a doll from their sons arm's and say "No, dolls are for GIRLS. You can't play with that." As though learning to be empathetic and care for others is a bad thing.  Conversely, these same sort of people will automatically hand truckloads of dolls to their girls, bury them in pink play kitchens and call them 'little Mommy.'  As though taking care of others is all they should learn.

A friend came over with his four-year-old son recently, and the boy asked where Piper was.  I told him she was taking her nap at the moment, but I'd be happy to play with him until she woke up.  My husband and the friend immediately started talking (and then playing) video-game stuff, so I took the son into the playroom and we played.  He made a beeline for the box of crocheted play food Piper's grandma made for her, and got out the toy dishes.  We cooked up some apple-hot dog-sushi pancake sandwiches and some egg & sardine soup.  We baked some pizza-taco-corn on the cob casserole. Then he spied Piper's little toy shopping cart and said "We need to go to the store! You be the mommy and I'll be the daddy. We gotta go to the grocery store." So he pushed the cart, with one of Piper's dolls in the front seat, and we did a lap around the house together.  As soon as we got into the living room, our friend said "I bring my son over here, and you make him do girl stuff." He was only half-joking.  Maybe not even half.  It clearly made him uncomfortable that his son was pretending to grocery-shop. The boy wanted to join the video game they were playing, but his dad told him he could have a turn when they were done, so we continued to play.  We cooked some more and he served lunch to the doll ("The baby is hungry, she wants some apples," he explained to me). The dad poked his head in every few minutes, still looking uncomfortable. Eventually the play food gave way to things like the wooden ball run and, finally a game of "these two stuffed dinosaurs will chase each other and try to bite each other's heads off."  As we ran around the house, stuffed dinosaurs in hand, growling and roaring (quietly, since Piper was still asleep), the dad looked relieved.

"Don't worry," I said to him as we dashed through. "We're not doing 'girly' things anymore, we're playing fighting dinosaurs. His is winning right now because it bit the head off the other dinosaur and then ate a dog."
"Now THAT sounds like my son," he answered. 

They continued to play video games, Piper continued to sleep, and we continued to play.  I got the definite impression that this kid did not get a lot of one-on-one play time without a TV screen involved.  He'd go and check on the game the dads were playing every once in a while (Wii bowling), and sometimes take a turn, but he always came back and picked up our game again.  If the TV had been off, I don't think he would've given it a second thought.

Eventually he cycled back around to the doll in the shopping cart, and wheeled it out to Piper's small table, next to our dining-room table.  "Let's have lunch," he announced, and had me put the doll at the table.  He brought out a stack of play dishes and pretended to make lunch.  "The baby wants some food," he proclaimed. "She wants to sit right there and have something to eat."

His dad glanced over and made another crack about "doing girl stuff." He then started to hang around the little table, hovering closely over his son and saying over and over that it was time to go, or didn't he want to play the video game again?  The boy said no, he was busy. The dad insisted it was time to go. 

I could not keep my mouth shut. "Oh, are you making her a good healthy lunch, just like your dad makes for you?" I said pointedly.  The dad backed off and went to play his game again.

They left a little while later, shortly after Piper woke up from her nap.  I felt saddened and annoyed by the whole experience.  Ryan tried to defend his friend, saying it's just the culture down here and he doesn't know any better, but I think that justification only made me more annoyed.

"He's a single dad," I answered.  "Yeah, his wife has the kid much of the time, but that's not by his choice.  And he did a lot of heavy lifting even before they were divorced.  He loves his son, and he tries to be a good dad.  Why get upset when his son tries to be a good dad too?  Why do people find that so disturbing?"

Truth be told, this was best interaction I've ever had with this kid. Normally we groan when we have to spend any amount of time with him, because he's always snatching toys out of Piper's hands or stuffing his face full of something he doesn't want to share or shoving over store displays or pitching a fit because he wants to play video games or taking food off other kids' plates or demanding to leave somewhere after five minutes because he's bored or whining enough to make your head explode. This time it was really fun to play with him, and think I got a glimpse of how things could be if he got a little more interaction and a lot less screen time.

And I was really, really annoyed that his dad saw what we did as "girly stuff."  You need to eat.  Your kid needs to eat.  Sometimes you are going to have to obtain and cook food for your child.  That's not "girly," that's basic survival, for Pete's sake! And you'd think more people would encourage their sons to take up an interest in food and cooking, since it can make you a lot of money if you do it well.

One of Those Days

Yesterday was one of those days, the kind that pop up and make you wish you'd followed your muse in college and now spent time chain-smoking on SoHo balconies, participating in performance art and living in charming Bohemian poverty while writing The Great American Novel, instead of cleaning up cat barf and finding creative ways to re-use leftover mashed potatoes.

It was just one of those miserable days where nothing goes right.  It all started the night before, with another charming round of cough-and-sinus-yuckiness, a continuation of the Parade of Sickness that has run through our house for months. This one came on almost overnight, knocking out both Ryan and I. It's one of those awful things where you feel generally horrible and want to sleep for days, but the body aches and restlessness won't allow it. So I was tired and feeling like crap but unable to sleep it off, and Piper woke up at 3:00 in the morning and didn't settle back down until 6:00.  She got back up at 8:00, and Ryan got up with her so I could catch at least a little sleep. This meant that I did not get the ball rolling to take Piper to storytime at 10:00 like I wanted to, so I tried for the 10:45 storytime and she was being a real pill about getting ready. I must've told her at least five times to get dressed, and eventually Ryan had to go hover over her while she did it to make sure she saw the task through. Then it took ten minutes to get her to put her shoes and coat on, so we finally left the house with five minutes to make the fifteen-minute drive to the library.

We got 1/4 of the way there and discovered the railroad crossing was closed, so I had to turn around and go back.  The next crossing was closed, too, so I had to drive 15 minutes out of my way and it didn't occur to me until a phone call from Ryan that I should've taken the freeway.  When we finally arrived at the library, storytime was half-over and the door to the room was shut so we just played in the kids' section for a while.  Piper ignored my requests to stop jumping and climbing all over the chairs, until she finally fell off and bonked her head.  We'd already gotten a few looks from the librarians because my daughter seems to think that "Piper, please, please be quiet, please please please stop yelling and use your inside voice" means "scream as loud as you can and generally make as much noise as possible." Now that she was howling about her head-bonk, I figured we should make a hasty path for the door.

At the grocery store, the bad day continued, with Piper refusing to sit in the cart and instead attempting to push it around, which meant crashing into things and finally running over my foot.  It was the kid-cart, with the giant plastic car attached to the front, so it was not a light load. I scooped her up and deposited her in the basket among the groceries, then barreled up to the checkouts.  The self-checkout was uncooperative and hated TWO of the cards I tried to use, and after almost ten minutes of the robot-voice repeating "please put the item back in the bag" and "would you like to try another form of payment?" while Piper giggled and climbed in and out of the cart (twice climbing up on TOP of the plastic car and trying to stand up, thus giving me a heart attack), I was ready to either start crying or start smashing things.

We somehow managed to make it home, where Piper refused to sit still long enough to eat more than two bites of her lunch.  I finally sent her in for a nap, which she did not take.  She instead chose to spend those two hours completely and totally trashing her bedroom.  She took all the blankets off her bed.  She took the clothes out of her drawers.  She took all the books out of her bookshelf and piled them on the floor. When the hours usually designated for afternoon rest had elapsed without so much as a drooping eyelid on her part, I made her clean up the mess(es) and took her outside to play.

She wandered out of my sight constantly and refused to come when I called her back. I tried to clean the knee-deep pile of junk out of the back of the car while she played in the driveway, but she climbed into the car and treated its interior like a jungle gym.  We went into the field behind the house so she could splash in some mud puddles, and she picked up a discarded basketball and dropped it on my camera case.  I tried to take some pictures of her and she ran away from me. I looked up from changing lenses to find her running towards me, waving one of her boots in the air, yelling "My boot! My boot!" Her formerly-white sock was now red from the muddy field. She stripped it off the muddy, soggy bit of fabric and handed it to me. "Here, could you hold this, Mom?"

I had to talk her into putting her boot back on and then escorted her inside, fixed her a dinner she refused to eat, and spent the rest of the evening following her around trying to get her to clean up the rather spectacular messes she made. Every time I turned away for even five minutes, she had dragged out something else and made it as disarranged as possible.  I finally sent her to bed early, without a bath or so much as a bedtime story, because I'd had enough.

She gave me a good-night kiss and hugged me.  "See you tomorrow, Mom!" she called out as I shut her bedroom door.

Yeah, kiddo see you tomorrow.  Whew. 

Playing outside

Snapshots: Mid-February 2010

Last week I had an astonishing day of kitchen clumsiness that started with a case of the dropsies and ended with me accidentally dumping macaroni and cheese into a potted plant. No kidding.

It wasn't an entire pan of macaroni and cheese or anything, but still. A potted plant.

***
I am into the Olympics right now.  I sat raptly watching the opening ceremonies while my husband brought me snacks and told me the intensity of my joy made me "incredibly cute."  Piper woke up to go potty (oh, yeah, she wakes up and takes herself to the potty bathroom at night now, with little to no supervision) so we let her sit on the couch and watch for a while, until she got tired and asked to go back to bed. She was out cold before a lot of the really cool stuff (like the giant bear made of lights), but she was dancing right along with the First Nations dancers and making comments on all the flags during the Parade of the Nations. She was so delighted with the dancing and music, in fact, that I'm now hunting for video footage on YouTube and wishing this area had an annual pow-wow to take her to.  The town Ryan and I went to college in had a big one every year and I'd love to take Piper if one of our Michigan visits ever falls at the right time.

But back to the Olympics.  I've been watching a little of everything.  Ryan has been schlepping off to bed early, so I have the TV to myself for a couple hours each night, and I'll plop down with some knitting or the computer and a stack of paperwork and multi-task.  I find some of the interview bits hokey (Montage! We need a mon-tage!) and they seem to play "The Funeral" by Band of Horses under every piece, but I guess that's to be expected.

***
Text conversation with a friend on Sunday:
A: Ahh Valentine's Day.  The 15-year-old inside me gets her little hopes up every year.  And unfortunately gets disappointed almost every year.
Me: I am almost-ironically into the kitsch of it all now, mostly as an excuse to do silly craft projects with my kid. But I wouldn't say no to a hotel room, a hot tub, and champagne.
A: Exactly. It's hard to feel romantic in my dog-hair-covered bed, toys strewn all over the floor bedroom. Hmph.

I didn't "get my hopes up" this year.  I don't, about Valentine's Day, ever, really, because I don't like heart-shaped things and detest pink so it wasn't my holiday for a long time. Then I spent a number of years with someone whose birthday was February 14th and who hated chocolate in all its forms, so it wasn't like he was going to be going all-out on the day o' love. Ryan is a romantic but our budget is small and we are pretty easy to please - an awesome night for us is getting pizza delivered and watching as many DVD episodes of Mad Men as we can stay awake for. But this year I found myself making decorations, buying valentines to give to the kids in Piper's preschool class, creating a centerpiece for our table, and generally getting into the spirit of things.  A lot of holidays that sort of dropped off the radar are more fun with a kid, and I've started to remember all the silly things my mom used to do for Valentine's Day that we loved so much - heart-shaped pancakes, a small gift, class valentines, sewing us new outfits or putting out a dish of candies.  That kind of stuff is fun again, now that Piper is old enough to join in.

***
My Valentine's Day was vastly better than my mother's this year, from what I gathered.  She apparently worked on Sunday, and came home at 9:30 pm exhausted (she's a nurse) to find the first words out of my dad's mouth were not "How was your day?" or "Happy Valentine's Day!" but "You didn't bring home any food?" She replied that since he had been "sick" and lounging around the house all day, she should be asking that question of him. My dad, in true my-dad fashion, stopped at Costco the next day and bought a huge pork loin, an even bigger pork roast, and a ham.  "I brought you some food," he cheerfully as he set them in front of my mom. It's true; he basically bought her a giant pork roast for Valentine's Day.

***

Reading: Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine"
Knitting: Another Milo for P, handwarmers for R, brown linen/cotton wrap for my mom, hat for a friend's little boy, hat for R (to match handwarmers).
Cooking: Well, I wish I was cooking these Cinnamon Bun Pancakes...maybe tomorrow.

Halfway There

During our walk in the Vine Street neighborhood in Kalamazoo, Nov. 2009.

All You Need Is Love

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

P.S. The hearts she is holding are these Martha Stewart crayon hearts. We made them together, and it was kinda fun, but for future reference, it is not a good project to do with a 2.5-year-old. She didn't have the dexterity to twist the crayons in the pencil sharpener, and I must've said "HOT IRON DON'T TOUCH NO NO HOT HOT DON'T TOUCH BE PATIENT NOT YET BACK UP NO NO NOOOOO!" about fifty times.

But she loved them when they were done ("It's a heart! We make a heart shape!"), enough that I put them up in the windows and she asked to have them back about an hour later. She carried them around for days, and also for future reference: melted crayon shavings are not meant to be loved on. Unless the edges of the hearts are sealed with tape, you will have wisps of crayon-crumble all over your house, in your car, in your bed, and melded to the interior of your vacuum canister.

P.P.S. "All You Need Is Love" is pretty much Piper's favorite song in the world right now. We watch Yellow Submarine every day (yeah, I do actually mean EVERY SINGLE DAY, I have the entire movie memorized now) and that's her favorite part. This song came on when were in the car, and she was clutching those hearts, and she started giggling, and...well, my heart just about burst.

Friday Fashion: Your Mama Dresses You Funny

Am I the only one out there who thinks it's fun to dress your kids in old clothes? Part of the fun of having a kid has been to dress her like a baby of 50 or even 100 years ago. Example number one:
Piper, quite pleased with herself at about nine months old.

The dress was mine when I was a baby; the bonnet I made (I love bonnets, for both boys and girls); the shoes I found on clearance somewhere; the legwarmers are of course Babylegs.

A friend of mine said "she looks like a 1950's baby" when I showed up for lunch with Piper dressed like this.

To that end, meet Belle Heir. Authentic vintage childrens' clothing. It's marvelous. The outerwear section alone makes me squee. And their prices don't seem out of this world, unlike a lot of "vintage" or "retro" children's clothing places. 

Valentine's centerpiece

I got this dish from Ikea some time ago, and so far all it has done is collect dust and random household items. We already have an overflowing junk drawer, I did not want a junk stand to add to the mess. I cleaned it off, filled it with pink & red apples, and tried to make a very tiny one of these tissue poofs. Everything went fine until the part where you separate the layers to make it look all poofy, and then it all started to rip apart. I did the best I could, and tied it to the top of the stand to hid the less-than-poofy bald spot.


Apples seem to be a hit with the wee one lately, so I like having healthy snacks that she can grab any time AND a cute display that I don't have to worry about packing away in a couple of weeks.

P.S. - The white & red candle is also from Ikea; they were on sale for $1.49 and I can't say enough good things about it. I went back and got three more in different patterns. They burn clean, are cute without being too froofy, and smell like apple-cinnamon muffins. YUM.

Knitting Pattern Giveaway

Trish is giving away one of Karen's lovely patterns, so go check out Trish's blog for details on how to enter. You have until Thursday the 11th.

P.S. If you are a commenter on this blog, you will notice I have enabled word verification. This is because I was tired of comments from Russian robots who want to get me Viagra for cheap, porn promoters, and weird nonsensical gobbledygook that had something to do with buying acai berry juice. Happy commenting!

Xmas 2008: The Thought Didn't Count For Much

I have been digging around in my own archives a bit lately and was surprised to discover a number of half-finished posts. I thought I'd work on finishing them up and share them with you, just for fun. This particular one tells the story of our Christmas last year, involving a well-meaning gift that totally missed the mark. Piper was about 18 months old, and this was our first Christmas with her that didn't involve hordes of family trying to get a piece of the baby action.



It looks like an idyllic Christmas scene, right? Stockings, presents, everything waiting for our eager little cherub come Christmas morn. Little did we know the terror that was about to ensue.

We told the grandparents not to get Piper anything for Christmas, because she already has enough crap to outfit a daycare. They asked if they could send small things, stuff she actually needs. I requested plain white socks, solid-color yoga pants, and board books. I got some of those, but of course it didn't stop there. My in-laws sent a multi-piece music ensemble that includes a drum, rattles of various sorts, a recorder and a kazoo; my mom sent some really awesome play food she crocheted herself. It's totally amazing - an entire hamburger assemblage: Bun, meat patty, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and onions; a hot dog with ketchup and mustard on it and its own accompanying bun; an apple, a pear, and corn in a husk. She even made sushi! I think we were more excited over the play food than Piper was.

We saved our gift for last, since we have been looking forward to giving it to her for months. She was so into Halloween this year, when we saw this Fisher-Price playset online, it seemed like the perfect gift. It has a doorbell sound and when you move the bat, a ghost pops up with an "Oooooo!" Since she runs around the house with a blanket on her head going "Scary ghost? Oooo!" we figured she would love it. I ordered it in November and it had been sitting in the closet for weeks, while we congratulated ourselves on being awesome parents.

Once she had opened evvvverything else (not least of all this monster shirt, which she insisted on wearing immediately, over her pajamas - which also had monsters on them), we brought the carefully-wrapped box out from its position behind our tiny tree. She opened it and was excited to play with the "ghoss" and "punkin" and "weetch." Everything seemed to be going well, so we decided to put the batteries in.
We showed her how to push the buttons and make all the noises - spooky music, kids saying "trick or treat!", a doorbell, and the ghost that said "oooooh!" She played with it and asked us to make the noises "More? More? Ghoss more?"
Then this happened.

She would cry, play with it, cry, play with it, and cry again. Finally, after another round of the pop-up ghost, she started to scream in earnest. We tried to get her to play with it sans batteries again, but it freaked her out so much we had to put it back in its box and stuff it under our bed, because she could not even look at the plain brown shipping box without sobbing. Our totally awesome present, the thing we were most excited to give her, was a total FAIL.

*Ed. Note: We left it in its box under the bed for many months. I tried a few times to get her interested in it again, but each time the mere appearance of the its plain square box was cause for shrieking. Eventually she realized that there were little figurines and a trike to play with, and then she warmed to it. I think it took a good solid six months before she would even let me take it out of the box. Now it lives - without batteries - on a shelf in the playroom. She plays with it, but it is by no means a cherished object. C'est la vie, I guess.