present idea: craft kit for kids

A while back, I put together a craft kit for Otis that was filled with all kinds of crafting knick-knacks. It was a great way to organize and contain all the tiny little pieces that were becoming hard to keep track of. Happily, it was a big hit. He loves to pull it out to string together necklaces or to find that special something to add to his artwork, and it’s even better when he gets to do it with friends. It wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that perhaps this would make a good present for other kids as well.

We got to test it out this past weekend when we celebrated our friend Amelia’s 3rd birthday. We bought a small plastic organizer (the kind with the compartments that you can change as you wish) and filled it with goodies. It was fun to search for materials, and Otis is pleased as punch to get a fresh infusion of supplies. Along with dyed pasta that we made for Otis’s birthday party (great tutorial here — the rubbing alcohol really helps!) and sparkly lanyard for necklace/bracelet making, we also included feathers, pompoms, pipe cleaners (cut down to fit), colored popsicle sticks, googly eyes, and sparkly and self-sticking foam shapes. Finding the perfect glue was a challenge – it needed to be liquid glue for the materials I bought, but it also needed to fit in the box! The piece de resistance would’ve been a pair of folding scissors, but I had no luck in that department. I love how self-contained the kit is. Hopefully, things are open-ended enough to provide lots of creative fun.

The birthday girl loved it and I was really happy to hear the news, since I was suffering from one of my usual bouts of self-doubt over yet another homemade present. I can’t wait to see her new creations. I’ve been making lots of sticker books for our friends, but I think I see a few craft kits in our future.

 

baking bread

Can you believe that F has baked bread every weekend since Mother’s Day? If you’re in the market, by the way, I would highly recommend a spouse who wants to bake bread every weekend. If, say, you find someone and they’re on a no-carb diet? I would strongly steer you towards therapy, separation, even divorce. Definitely the silent treatment.

This weekend, F baked a couple of old-fashioned white loaves and Otis insisted on helping out. F showed him how to knead his own piece of dough, though he mostly just pinched at it – though in his own immortal words, with accompanying hand gestures, “I punched it! I pinched it! I punched it!” Finally, F shaped it into a tiny little loaf and baked it for him. He was quite pleased with himself.

I personally believe that there is no better way to treat a fresh baked loaf of bread than to cut off a thick slice and slather it with peanut butter and really good honey, and Otis has come to believe the same. It’s become a ritual in our house to usher in the day after bread baking day with our own thick slices, and this past weekend, Otis had the pleasure of eating 4 tiny slices from his miniature loaf of bread, 2 with peanut butter and honey, 2 with peanut butter and jelly. He giggled with pleasure and really, who can blame him?

 

learning to read

The animals are still going strong in Otis’s life. Although he doesn’t spend much time playing with his small, plastic animals anymore, our lives, and especially our mealtimes, are consumed by animals. The kid can’t remember what he ate for lunch 5 minutes ago, but he can remember the minutiae of the lives and loves of all animal beings and he loves to discuss those facts at length. But I guess I shouldn’t complain, since the animals have propelled him to learn new things. He never really doodled much, and only started drawing once he really became immersed in the animals. And now the animals are his tools for learning to read and write words.

For some time now, he’s been copying animal names out of his books. We find pages and pages filled with lists of animals like this:

Sometimes they’ll say things like “Dinosaurs. Fun Facts! Did you know?” since he’s copying from his animals books and magazines. And slowly but surely, he’s moved on to sounding out written words and spelling or asking us to spell spoken words. We’ve discovered that it can be difficult to define hard and fast rules, and we sigh dramatically and roll our eyes towards the heavens whenever the blasted schwa comes up. But it’s fun for a couple of nerds like F and me, and we love to think about Otis reading as much as we did as kids, resorting to the classic tricks like Reading In Bed Until Your Mom Comes In To Yell At You For Ruining Your Eyes By Reading While Lying Down, closely followed by Reading Under The Covers With A Flashlight.

 

skirts!

I’ve made my latest lazy sewer’s discovery: elastic-waist skirts. I came across a free pattern from Oliver + S, who makes really adorable kids’ patterns. It’s not a pattern, exactly, but more like rough guidelines for how to make an elastic band skirt from a simple length of fabric. It was really fast and easy.

Here is it is with a Etsuko Furuya fabric that I love:

I think I used maybe 1/2 yard? It’s a great way to use a small amount of pricey fabric. Their directions call for using ribbon on the hem, which makes things fast, but I used my serger and a blind hem stitch instead.

I also made a variation:

Instead of sewing the entire width of fabric into the skirt, I first cut out strips to sew straps. This makes for a dress that is a less full. I used a longer piece of fabric (I happened to find a 7/8 yard remnant for $1.80!) and used a wider width of elastic. I added buttons and the straps to make it a jumper. The straps have a few different buttonholes so hopefully we’ll be able to use it as Bee gets taller.

 

getting back into sewing

Thank you for your supportive comments and emails about my hair. Since I’ve cut my hair, I’ve exchanged hair stories with just about every woman I’ve encountered, and I’ve heard many sympathetic comments that were just so right, in the vein of It looks great, but I know how you feel. It’s interesting how our identities are so closely tied to our hair, and how we express ourselves through our hairstyles.

Anyways, a change of subject. I’ve actually been spending some time in my studio, which you may be surprised to hear since I’ve been quiet about it. A couple of days a week, I wake up with Bee and then head right to studio, leaving F to get the kids ready for the day. I love the quiet couple of hours that I get and it feels like a productive time. In the beginning, though, I found that I just sat here and looked around, not sure what to do. I think the collages, for now, are done. I don’t feel inspired to pick up my scissors and paper, and I just need to take some time away from it. It might be a short time, it might be a long time, I don’t know. It feels sad, like breaking up with an old friend, but maybe I’ll feel more inspired when I return to it.

Instead, I’ve been sewing. My lovely new sewing machine had been glaring at me accusingly for some time, its optional functions glowering uselessly, and I was staring back blankly and guiltily. Finally, I just had to make something, anything. I started with this:

Kind of silly, but it was extremely satisfying to make something fast and easy, that I finished in a couple of hours. I used a tidbit of a piece of fabric that I’ve been hoarding forever, and I love seeing that little splash of color every time I reach for my scissors. There’s definitely something to be said for making things that serve to personalize and beautify a space. It got things moving, and I felt inspired to make more. Next I moved on to this:

Another silly and extremely easy project. Have you ever heard that you can tell a lot about a woman by looking at her purse? I hate to think the conclusions one would come to by looking through mine — it’s usually filled with crumpled receipts and napkins, scattered bits of money, multiple snacks and occasionally, an old New Yorker. Sometimes, my wallet isn’t even in there because I took it out to do something and forgot to put it back in. This cinched snack bag is one attempt to tackle my little purse problem. At least I know where to look for wipes and pretzels now.

Now I’ve been sewing as much as I can. I’m having fun figuring out some of the different functions on my sewing machine and serger, and projects are actually getting finished. I’m using some store-bought patterns, but also trying out some variations. I took a pattern-making class a million years ago, and I’d really love to get back some of those skills. But for now, I’m concentrating on the sewing part.

I’ve been thinking about how getting into the practice of sewing was, for me, like the process I went through when I first started making collages. It took me a while to get into it, felt slow and unnatural in the beginning, and then things started to feel good, and more creative. I’ll share more projects soon.

 

what we’re up to

Bee:

Trying out a babysitting share with her best (and only) friend. They are too cute together.
She’s started using a little bit of sign language and perhaps only amusing to me, when I ask her a question, she’ll often respond with a brief little nod to mark her assent.

Otis:

Wants to be a zookeeper. He talked relentlessly about going to the zoo to see the alligator feeding. We fought the crowds on Memorial Day, waited and waited, and finally witnessed the grand event, only to find out that the alligators eat pellets of food. Otis walked away and said, in a rather accusing tone, “You told me they feed them chickens!” In a return to grade school mentality, I exclaimed, “It wasn’t me!! It was Fifth Aunt Grandma K!” After finding out the truth, I’ll also point a guilty finger at F. I don’t know what they were thinking.

I don’t know if you can see the sizable scab on his lip and nose where he fell down while racing with F. I guess it’s about time that he discover the exquisite torture of picking a scab. I know this is totally gross, but there are members of my family (who shall remain anonymous) who loved picking at my scabs when I was a kid.

me:

wah.
In recent months, my hair has started to gray. Since I don’t want to dye my hair nor become one of those crazy Asian ladies that holds onto their long hair way past an appropriate age, I thought it might be time for a change. The hairdresser, who was somewhat nervous, was pretty cautious until the very end, when she declared I needed some “texture” and proceeded to cut a bunch of hair off the top. So instead of the long layers on top, she changed the shape of the haircut and I ended up with somewhat of a helmet head. I came home, felt crummy, and told myself that I’d feel better after a good cry but I couldn’t even cry! What’s up with that?? I cry during commercials, I positively wept when I watched The Notebook (on the airplane, even!) and I can’t even cry over a bad haircut? It’s not bad, I guess, but rather just not what I expected. And as the hairdresser kept saying as she finished up, “Short hair grows really fast!” and “Just put some cream on it and it’ll be fine!”

 

a year of bee

2 days old

one month

two months

three months

four months

five months

six months

seven months

eight months

nine months

ten months

eleven months

today: one year

If Otis weren’t giving her some sort of strange head massage, you’d see how pretty her hair looks. For her birthday present, we gave her a beautiful boar bristle hairbrush which I hope she’ll keep for a long, long time. I derived an obscene amount of pleasure from brushing her hair this morning.

 

mother’s day

Boy, I really dislike looking at pictures of myself. And this picture is not helping things, since when I look at it, I can definitely see that my kids have been cursed/blessed with my family nose.

I know you’ve probably all forgotten about Mother’s Day by now. It’s been a whole work week, after all. I’ve been spending the whole week mourning the fact that every day is not Mother’s Day. I mean, when else do you get to sleep in and wake up to the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls? It was such a lovely way to (re)wake up, and it got even better because then I took a leisurely shower and stepped out of the mist to be greeted anew by that lovely cinnamon-y smell. I think what was so wonderful about Mother’s Day was not the handmade card and thoughtful present, nor was it the hugs and kisses or yummy food that I did not cook. But I think what made the day a little more special for me was the fact that I made the conscious decision to not feel guilty about letting my family pamper me, which is usually a challenge. I let go of all those things that I usually take care of, and it felt good.

I think that often, we mothers get used to doing certain things for our families. We take on a lot and I, for one, feel guilty when I can’t do it all. I also feel guilty when I take time for myself. As F and I were debriefing about the day, I talked what a perfect day it was in many respects, and he told me, as he tells me often, that it’s important to just let go and give some of it to him and let other things go completely. He’s right, of course. It’ll be challenging, but I think it will make me a happier person, which will make me a better wife and mother. I’ll just need some reminding every now and again.

 

the great debate

bath-induced wrinkles

There has been a great debate raging in our household, and there seems to be no resolution in sight. Voices have been raised, though no plates have been shattered…. yet. Now you ask me, what in the world is the source of all this conflict? It is this: I assert that Bee’s feet smell like crusty little sourdough rolls. I believe that it is pure coincidence that these are two of my favorite things in the whole wide world. F refuses to acknowledge this olfactory fact. Even uglier, he has occasionally accused me of spreading sourdough starter between her perfect little toes. Such as on the day when I rushed Bee down the stairs after her nap and insisted that he take a deep whiff. I will admit, though, that her feet do not always smell like crusty little sourdough rolls. There are occasionally days when they smell like chocolate – not milk chocolate, but the deepest, darkest, bittersweet chocolate.  Tell me, how can the man argue with me?

 

a visit from grandparents

Last week, we had a visit from Vaba and Granddad (F’s parents). We don’t have the chance to visit with them very often, so this was a great treat. They’ve been to the area before, so we didn’t do anything too touristy – the men went to see an A’s baseball game, we went to the big Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in SF, and attended a garden show – low key fun with very Californian activities. I personally feel like I ate non-stop for a solid week. Does that ever happen to you when you have visitors?

Vaba and Granddad say blessings before every meal, and this was something new for Otis. I noticed him watching everyone very carefully at the beginning of each meal, and it took him a few days to finally ask Granddad why they say blessings. His very simple answer was that he wanted to talk about the things that he was thankful for, which I think is a great answer for a pre-schooler. A couple of days after they left, as we sat down and prepared to eat, Otis looked at me and said, “Mama, thank you for this dinner.” It was such a surprise, and rather touching. Unfortunately, it didn’t last – the next night, Otis looked forlornly at his meal of spring vegetable risotto and said, “(sigh.) I wish this dinner had meat in it. (sigh.)”

Hopefully, they have recovered from their visit. They had a good time, but I don’t think it would be a stretch to guess that Otis might be the most energetic of their grandchildren. I wouldn’t even think it a stretch to mumble something about Otis torturing them with his persistent chatter or boundless energy. Which would explain why they taught Otis how to play “Squish the kid!” and that old classic game, “Still as a mouse.” Hmmm, do you think it’s for the same reason that Fifth Aunt Grandma K keeps trying to teach Otis how to play “Pretend to sleep”?