Hopscotch Camis Giveaway

These cute little tops have got me yearning for a sewing machine of my very own: Grosgrain: Hopscotch Camis Giveaway!

I have borrowed a friend's sewing machine, but as it did not come with the cord, I have no way to power it. This, as you can imagine, has been a pretty severe impediment on my road to Crafty Sewing Superstardom.

Twenty minute Simple Skirt Tutorial

An easy way to make cute skirts, great for hot summer days: Twenty minute Simple Skirt Tutorial by Kathleen.

Conversations With Piper: Comprehension

June 25th, 2009: She was trying to pull a sticker off a sheet of paper and it wouldn't come off. She called out to me: "Mom, come take a look at this! It's stuck I think." BAM, just like that. When did she get to be such a PERSON?

She calls me "Mom" more and more these days. "Ha! Dat's my mom!" she says, pointing at me. She puts in her lunch request: "Mom, asking please mac n' cheese? Asking PLEASE!" So far it's just here and there, but I hear it with increasing frequency. It will be weird to hear "Mom! Mom! MOM!" instead of "MOM-EEEE! MOMMY!"

She loves to help. She hands me dishes to put away and knows which drawers her own little bowls and cups belong in. When we're getting ready to go, I tell her to find her shoes and she brings them to me. After we've put them on her feet, she looks at mine and says "Mommy needs shoes too." She goes and gets my shoes and brings them to me. "There!" she says, satisfied when I put them on. "Okay, ready? Let's go to the store!" When we're wrestling around and the little stud I have in my nose comes loose, she straightens it for me. "There. Isn't that better?" she asks.

Better? Yeah. But also crazy.

I saved the best for last:

Piper (points at Ryan): Dat's Daddy!
Ryan: Yep.
Piper (points at me): An dat's Mommy!
Me: Yep.
Piper (points at self): An dat's the baby!
Me: Yes, you are.
Piper (pulls up shirt, slaps belly with glee): An dis baby's NAKED!

Old Switching Station

Taken from the parking lot of Bell's Brewery, Kalamazoo MI.

New Video Obsession

I am suddenly obsessed with the Unkle song "Broken," which was featured in the end credits of last year's The X-Files: I Want To Believe. Ryan found this fantastic fan-art music video, and I wanted to share. It's amazing. Seriously.

I will warn you that if you haven't seen the movie yet, this video contains some spoilers, cartoony as they may be.

Piper Captions LOL Cats

"That kitties has a chicken! Looks like chicken."



"That kitties has a burger. That kitties has fry. It's going to get all the stuff."



"That kitties go outside play! He likes outside."



"That kitties has baby doll." Ed. note: "Baby doll" is what she calls pacifiers.

More Awesome People Who Give Things Away

Are y'all reading Stuff Under Twenty? You should be. I have to hide my credit cards before I pull up their feed in my Reader. So much good stuff! So cheap!

This week they're giving away a pretty awesome t-shirt. WANT.

Conversations With Piper: Birthday Party

Piper: Happy Birthday!
My Mom: Did you have a birthday?
Piper: Yeah. Birthday!
My Mom: Did you have a birthday party?
Piper: Yeah. I did have a party.
My Mom: And was it fun?
Piper: No, it wasn't. It wasn't fun at all.
My Mom: Your birthday party wasn't fun? Why not?
Piper: I had some trouble.
My Mom: What kind of trouble?
Piper: Trouble trouble.

*Just for the record, she did have a party (I am still writing the thank-you notes), and she had a blast.

Sweating.

It is currently a million degrees in here. Well, not that many, but a very high number. Far too many degrees to have a child clambering on me. I am slacking, not working and paying bills and balancing the checkbook and all those other Adult things I am supposed to be doing right now.

My parents are coming for the weekend, and I have already asked them to babysit tomorrow afternoon. I told my husband I want to go see a movie. We've had a pretty crap time of it around here lately, what with cat murder, layoffs (oh yeah, it's official), heat, fighting, and crabby child. So I told him "We have babysitters for FREE this weekend. I want you to take me out. We are going to go to the movies. I want to sit for 90 minutes in ice-cold air conditioning, make myself sick eating buttery popcorn, drink a gallon of full-calorie over-sweet carbonated beverage, and laugh myself stupid at the dumbest movie I can find." I just want to forget all our troubles for an hour or two and enjoy myself.

Conversations With Piper: Humor

Piper seems to love absurdity - she'll look at you with a twinkle in her eyes, say something that we both know is untrue, and then totally crack up. Like this:

Piper (While sitting in our living room): Ready to go home?
Me: You ARE home.
Piper: Bwahahahaha! Ready go home! Hahahaha!
(we repeat the joke for three more minutes)

Piper (pointing at her dad): Have milk? Daddies have milk? Have some Daddy milk?
Us: Daddies don't have milk!
Piper: HAHAHAHA!
(repeat, repeat, repeat)

Those are her two favorite jokes, right there. The knock-knock phase is gonna be F-U-N, I can tell already. Recently she's added a new one:

Piper (out of nowhere one day): Can I drive?
Me: You can't drive, you don't have a license.
Piper: (with a look like 'Holy Shit, Mom Made a Funny'): BWAHAHAHAA! Don't have a license! (looks at me again, eyes twinkling) Can I drive?
Me: No, you can't drive. You don't have a license.
Piper (laughing so hard she nearly falls over): You no have license! You can't drive! HAHAHAAA!

Not having a license is apparently very funny when you're two. Sixteen, not so much.

Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl
Originally uploaded by celticsuncat

It's somebody's birthday today.

Loose Teeth Vintage Inspired Sundress with Petticoat

Another fabulous Grosgrain giveaway. I'd love to win this for my sister. I am getting into the vintage-y style stuff, but my sister is already there. The girl rocks heels and 1950's petticoat skirts like nobody's business. She perpetually looks like she's ready to play Beach Blanket Bingo or have Rock Hudson bust in on her pajama party. This would be right up her alley.

Loose Teeth Vintage Inspired Sundress with Petticoat GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

"Terrible" Doesn't Quite Cover It

We are slowly feeling better over here, although I still find myself holding Piper down ten times a day to wipe her nose and I keep making spicy things for dinner to make my sinuses feel better. We had to miss a friend's barbecue on Sunday due to this oh-God-when-will-it-END sickness. Piper was feeling a bit better that day and starting to run around like usual, but I decided we should probably stay in quarantine. There were going to be other kids there, and I thought about how pissed I would be if somebody brought their coughing, snot-dripping kid to a party and let them hug all over Piper. I also didn't want to be responsible for giving this plague to anyone else.

Piper's birthday is next week. She will be two years old, and some days I wonder where my sweet little baby went. I wonder that most days, actually, because two is shaping up to be pretty challenging. I feel like all I have done for the past few days is scream at her and put her in time-out. She has stopped listening to and obeying our requests; the threat of a time-out or telling her "NO!" is no longer enough to deter her. She's smarter, taller, and has better dexterity than ever before, so her capacity for destruction is huge. So far this week she has:

- Refused to stay dressed on a daily basis. Every day it takes me until noon to talk/bargain/shove her into clothes, and by the time her nap rolls around in the early afternoon, she is always at least half-naked again. The naked little wild thing running around did come in useful when some bible-thumpers rang the doorbell and wanted to talk about Jesus, though.

- Started climbing into the bathroom sink. Two days ago I heard the bathroom fan running and went to investigate. I found Piper sitting in the bathroom sink, gleefully pumping the hand-soap dispenser and rubbing it all over her (naked, of course) body. She'd already uncapped a tube of toothpaste and squeezed half of it onto the counter, in addition to putting generous amounts of soap on my toothbrush.

- Because she is potty-trained (has been for a couple months, whoo!) I can't lock her out of the bathroom. Despite my warnings to stay out of the sink, the very next day I heard her howling and found her sitting in the sink again, this time with her chin covered in blood. She had climbed up there, taken the razor Ryan keeps in the toothbrush cup, and licked it. She was okay, just a small cut on her tongue, but after that I stuck her potty chair in the hallway and shut the bathroom door.

- Pried open the under-sink cabinet in the kitchen to the full extent allowable by the safety latch and rummaged inside. I caught her trying to drag a bottle of hardcore flea spray through the two-inch gap.

- Used the refrigerator handles to try and climb up the fridge. Used the long, flat box that serves as a door to her room first as a slide and then as a ladder to climb to the top of her 6-foot bookshelf. Climbed up on the couch and jumped off. Climbed everything that is climbable and then some.

She throws her clothes into the bathtub as I'm running water for her bath at night. "Sploosh!" she yells, then giggles as miniature My Little Pony underwear and a striped t-shirt disappear under the bubbles. I tell her to stand up, she sits down and looks at me defiantly. I tell her to sit down and she stands up and runs around. I tell her to stop touching the floor lamp in the living room, and she pushes it over. I give her a waffle and tell her to take small bites, and she crams the whole thing in her mouth. I break it up into bites for her, and she stuffs three pieces in at a go. Yesterday she was jumping around on the couch and took a header. Literally, she fell right on her head. Twice.

If I ask her to be quiet, she talks more and louder. I ask her to be careful of my foot (I think I broke my pinky toe...again), she finds a way to stomp on it every time she comes near me. When we're outside, I tell her to be careful of an anthill and she runs right through it. I tell her to stay out of a mud puddle and she grins at me and jumps into it with both feet.

She buckles herself into her jungle-gym swing and then screams when she can't get out. I unbuckle her and tell her not to buckle it again, but she does anyway, and screams for me to come let her out. We repeat this process 20 times every day. She takes the clothes off her dolls, then asks me to put them back on over and over again. She slams doors and howls because she can't get them open again. She asks me to read the same books 10 times in a row, and when I ask her to pick a different book or say I'll read it again later, she screams "Again! Again! Ag-g-g-g-g-ain!" She asks for something and I tell her no, then she spends the next 15 minutes following me around asking for the same thing over and over, until I get mad and yell and send her to her room.

I try not to get mad at her, but lately I haven't done a very good job of it. We are here, together, just us, in the house, every day. There is nobody else for her to scream at and stomp on the toes of; there is nobody else to make the lunch she refuses to eat. Aside from a trip into the back yard or up and down the sidewalk (where I will spend a lot of time telling her to stop putting rocks in her mouth, stop stomping on ant hills, stay out of other people's yards, and stop sitting in mud puddles), there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. There is nobody else to answer her howls and demands or tell her NO! Stop it! Get out of that! Put that down! every thirty seconds. It's hard to form a complete thought, let alone get anything done. I know it's just her age, I know she's just testing boundaries. But you know what? My boundaries are tested enough these days. I'd just like a little peace and quiet.

Bubble Blowing Skirt and Top Giveaway

Kathleen strikes again. This outfit is so cute. Piper is getting way into skirts now, I think because they're easy for her to put on/take off - mostly take off - by herself. She would look adorable in this.

Bubble Blowing Skirt and Top GIVEAWAY!!!!

Sick.

We are sick.

Piper and I are sick, sick, sick. We've been suffering some sort of cold/fever/sinus/cough/headache crap for a week and counting. It just draaaaags on and on and on. No combination of Sudafed and Ibuprofen and herbal tea and orange juice has managed to put a dent in it. Piper's sleep has been crap (crappier than usual, anyway, and that's really saying something) and therefore I am tired and grouchy. She was so tired and sick yesterday she spent a lot of time doing this:



This is totally unheard-of in our house. Even when she is watching Kipper or Yo Gabba Gabba!, she will dance around, roam from room to room, destroy/empty/rearrange things, and generally carry on with what she does. When all she wanted to do was lay on the couch, that's when we knew she was really sick.

This marks the first time she has actually been sick. She's had a cold or two before, including a couple during her first winter that had her wiping silvery snot-trails on the shoulders of all my shirts for a week at a time. She's been grouchy and tired after getting her shots and checkups; she has been overtired and moody. But never this, the rattling cough and intermittent low-grade fever and refusing food and sitting still for long periods of time. I am somewhat at a loss as to how to deal with it. She's woken up two nights in a row coughing and moaning "Owie, owie." There's not much I can do for her, other than keep offering her drinks (which she refuses), give her some medicine (which doesn't help), and cuddle her (which she's been asking for a lot of). We haven't taken her to the doctor yet, because I really don't think there's much they'll be able to do for her either. She seems better today, but we are still watching her warily and putting the pediatrician on speed-dial.