Mother’s Day Kiss

The day before Mother’s Day, I was “reading” Ike Museum ABC. Really, there’s very little reading involved. I turn the pages and Ike gets excited (or not) about what’s on each page. His favorites are “C is for cat” and “M is for monster” (rawr!). He’s also pretty partial to “W is for window,” probably because there’s a cat there, too.

We got to “K is for kiss.” “Kiss,” he said excitedly.

“Yes, that’s a mommy kissing a baby.” I pointed to a Marie Cassatt.

“Kiss!” I, of course, kissed him.

“Ike do you want to kiss me?” He did, but he doesn’t really know how to kiss anyone. Instead, he mashed his little toddler face against my check.

My mommy heart melted, and I kissed him again, then asked him if he wanted to try again. Solemnly, he put his hands on my cheeks, leaned in…

and bit my nose.

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Ike’s Second Birthday

We started off with homemade waffles and pears canned by Grandma.

Then Ike got to open his first present: one from Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa.

He was pretty excited.

We went to visit the Calder Dairy. Besides the obvious cows, they have ducks, geese, goats and chickens. Ike was thrilled by all the animals.

Later, Ike tried out his new tricycle.

Pizza for dinner!

And birthday cupcakes!

Make a wish!

Mmmm…

I want to go to IKEA

My closet re-org hit a road bump, and as with so many home decorating road bumps, it can be solved by going to IKEA.

In brief: I want to use curtains as a closet door.  My closet is fairly wide, so the curtain rod will need multiple supports.  With traditional curtain rods, multiple supports mean the middle curtain panels are “stuck” between supports and can’t slide off to the sides.

I believe this curtain rod from IKEA will solve that problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you’ve decided to go to IKEA, you might as well go wild.  Ike likes our neighbor’s Junior Chair from IKEA, so I think I’ll get him one.  (Bonus: we’ll have four adult chairs again for when people come over.)

I plan on making a wall of picture frames, so these are a “yes!”.

I pretty much love the whole ANNAMOA line of fabric.

And if you’re going to IKEA, you’ve got to get some toys for your wee one.

Crocuses

It’s official.  Spring is here. We’re setting the clocks forward and the first crocuses are up.

So far I can see the very tips of the daffodils in front of the house starting to poke up.  Whether the daffodils I planted along the back fence will come up remains to be seen.

It might be that the front of the house is warmer with the sun reflecting off the brick.  Or it might be that Juno dug up the daffodils I planted in the backyard.  Here’s a tip, boys and girls: don’t fertilize your bulbs with bone meal when you have a dog. It turns out that dogs like to dig up things that smell like bones.  I know.  I was surprised too.

The photo above isn’t mine; it’s from richardthelandlord on Flickr.  I’m in Reno and I forgot to upload my crocus photo before I left.  But honestly, my crocus photos look like this.  As Tolstoy said, “All midsummer gardens are colorful in their own way, but March gardens all look the same.”  At least, I’m pretty sure Tolstoy said that.

Closet Progress

Try as I did, I didn’t finish my closet reorganization by Friday.  I think that’s partly because I had/have farther to go than most people and partly because I work a desk job during the day.  Still, I’m pretty hopeful that I’ll finish by Monday.

What have I done so far?

• I decided to donate my wedding dress to charity.
• Hand washed all of my wool sweaters to store them for the summer.
• I found a dozen items in my closet that I no longer wear that are in resale condition, and I made an appointment to take them to a local consignment shop.
• I found another dozen items that are reusable but aren’t upscale enough for a consignment shop.  They’ll be headed for the Kiwanis Thrift Sale.
• I bought and hemmed curtains that will serve as my closet door.  (When we moved into our house, most of the closet doors had been removed.)

What’s left to do?

• Finish putting away the clothes I like and still wear.
• Hang the curtains.
• Drop off the clothes that will be sold or donated.
• I have a handful of nice winter clothes.  I need to decide whether to keep them to sell this fall or donate them now.

And as a reminder, this is what it looked like on Monday:

I know.  Nowhere to go but up.

I donated my wedding dress

I donated my wedding dress.  As I write this, my wedding dress is making it’s way by snail mail to Brides Against Cancer.

Was I sad to see it go?  A little, maybe.  But it’s a polyester David’s Bridal dress.  It’s not heirloom quality.  Even if some as-yet-unconceived daughter wanted to wear a dress exactly the style mine was, it wouldn’t be worth wearing.

Donating a cheap wedding dress to charity involves a certain amount of suspended disbelief.  I pretend that my dress will be treasured and worn again by some other starry-eyed bride.  Not eventually turned into a Halloween costume.

Who would do that, you ask?  I’ll tell you who.

The theme of the costume party was “Lyric.”  From left to right: “It’s a nice day for a white wedding” (me), “Goody two shoes” and “My angel is the centerfold.”

Wedding photography by Julia MacInnis Photography.

I’ve got a ways to go

The next 5 weeks are Project Simplify on Simple Mom.  This week is “your wardrobe.”

To say that I need this is a gross understatement.  If they’re handing out a prize for “worst before picture,” it’s in the bag.

This time of year

This is the worst time of year.  Winter, which began as a Christmassy celebration in December and became a blustry adventure in January, is just a drag now in March.  The snow on the ground is heavy and dirty.  Every day it melts a teeny, tiny bit more.  What’s the delay?  Why not melt all at once and give us some crocuses already?

And yet, it’s the best time of year.  March is like the Thursday night of the year.  The entire spring and summer are full of potential.  This summer, we say, this summer we’ll grow all our vegetables and we’ll go to the zoo and we’ll go camping like we always mean to.  I’ll get great abs by bathing suit season.  We’ll finish all the home improvement projects we meant to finish last summer.  Etc, etc.

This time of year, everything is on the way up.  Including the temperature.

On Chocolate

I’ve been on a chocolate kick lately.  It began with a flour-less chocolate cake mix I got for Christmas.  I actually haven’t used the mix, but the idea of making a flour-less chocolate cake from scratch grew on me.  I sprang for $10 worth of unsweetened chocolate from Whole Foods, and, well, here you go.

I love to cook but, oddly, I’ve never made pudding.  But I decided to cut down on processed food, so I thought: why not try it from scratch?  It was really easy and wow, was it a hit.

 

Groundhog Day Blizzard

To get Ike ready to go outside you must:

1. Find mittens.
2. Wrestle mittens onto toddler singing “thumb in the thumb place, fingers all together.”
3. Accept that the thumb will not be in the thumb place.
4. Find snow suit.
5. Wrestle toddler into snow suit.
6. Find boots.
7. Wrestle toddler into boots.

To get Juno ready to go outside you must:

1. Utter the word “outside” in any tone of voice, at any volume, even a whisper.