Spring Awakening

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Can I just start by saying that I must have tempted the blogging gods with my last post because the kids have been nothing short of terrible.  Horrible. The girl throws tantrums at the drop of a hat.  Or the suggestion of a hat, as in “Let’s go pick out your clothes!” This results in a drop-to-the-floor-and-kick-mommy tantrum, screaming at the top of her lungs, and all I can do is walk away until she calms down.  Once I start to walk away, she purposefully PEES ON HERSELF so that I CAN’T walk away and have to go attend to her and then think about how much it’s going to cost to replace our upstairs carpet. Grrr. I guess that’s what the terrible twos and threes are all about.

This post, however, is not supposed to be about the children:

So those are expected, right? I mean, I planted the bulbs on purpose.

What I was excited to see was the stuff that is the result of sheer laziness:

Oregano

Cilantro

Spinach

 

Chives

You may remember that I briefly mentioned the fall crop I tried to plant in this post last year which yielded absolutely nothing.  I intended to mulch them heavily but never got around to it.  Over the winter I figured the few days we had of -10 below weather would have killed them all off, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the little bits of green. The stuff that is growing is hardy–I’ve never seen spinach leaves quite that sturdy before.  The ground around it is dry and barren, so I’m not sure that they’ll do well in the long run, but if these plants have fought to make it through winter they deserve a chance to live…so I can then kill and eat them.

I guess it’s time to start thinking about the garden again, especially the early stuff like peas and such. I need to redo the topsoil and the compost, but I can’t bring myself to kill these little sprouts so I’m going to let them run their course and redo those patches when the next round starts in May.

For the real gardeners out there, are these little guys going to grow at all or should I just turn them over and get new soil now? And do I need to start watering them now or should I wait?

I’ve got some new ideas planned for this year–corn, squash, and more bean varietals. Looking forward to getting started!

 

Marble Jar

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You may remember an incident from October of last year in which the boy was caught carving up his dresser and lying about it. My friend Geoff made a comment in which he described using a Supernanny technique of putting marbles in a jar to reward good behavior, and so we started as well.

It took a bit of parental training until we were doing it right.  I think at one point I had a marble count of -2 and figured that I must be doing something wrong. The boy would, rather cagily, game the system as well. He’d set the table without anyone asking and then ask, “Didn’t I set the table so nicely? Don’t I deserve 2 marbles?”

We also took marbles out for bad behavior, and using the jar as a threat was a good deterrent. Once he had a particularly bad day and had run upstairs and slammed the door in Eric’s face and then proceeded to kick the door. Eric opened the door and told him to come downstairs, NOW. It was the verbal equivalent of dragging him downstairs by holding his ear. Eric picked up the nearly full marble jar and began POURING OUT marbles back into the source jar. The boy started hyperventilating and shaking. He lost about half of the hard won marbles with that.

He never slammed the door again.

Finally, this week, the jar was full. I had at first said that the prize was going to be watching (an edited) “Star Wars,” but the boy rejected this, saying it would give him nightmares. “Well, what do you want?” I asked.

“I know!! I want a real comic book!! Batman!!” and he started to giggle uncontrollably with excitement at the idea.

This seemed fair enough, so I looked up the comic book store (incidentally, their logo is in Comic Sans, which is possibly the only acceptable use for that font) and off we went. I expected the store to have a few random people wandering about that looked like the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

Instead, there was a line out the front door, and I learned that we’d stumbled into a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, whatever that is. The place was packed!

We looked around for the more kid-friendly comics–most of the stuff nowadays is really dark and violent, it seemed to me. The “Family Comic” section was a little TOO lightweight even for the boy. He’s not really interested in Darkwing Duck or Minnie Mouse comics. Browsing around the store, I got a glimpse of what the next 12 years is going to look like.

We eventually found some older Batman comics that were pretty good for him, and he was so, so excited!

Back into the jar went all the marbles, to be earned and redeemed again, hopefully sooner than 5 months this time!

Prost!

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I only buy Bonne Marie jam or jelly only partly because the jam is quite tasty.  The real reason is that I think that those particular jars make nice drinking glasses. As a side benefit, it’s exactly a 4 oz. pour to the top of the bumps.

Now, I have been teased about my use of jam jars as wine glasses(*cough* susan *cough*), so I thought I’d try to dress them up a bit.  I saw a bit on glass etching in a recent issue of ReadyMade, and thought it would be perfect. The hardest part was figuring out exactly what to etch on them–I finally settled for “cheers” in different languages after seeing that done on glasses at cb2.

It took some looking to find letters that  wanted–not too cutesy, curly, or otherwise fancified.  A nice, solid font sticker. The crap that was actually in the glass etching section was all ugly as hell–stupid grape stencils or wedding motifs. Why do people think that “crafty” also means “chintzy”? I ended up using the “remarks” letter stickers in the “jfk neutral” series–a cool bold sans serif. I did feel some embarrassment at buying scrapbooking supplies, and ducked out of the store as quickly as possible.

I followed the instructions as in the article–first I spelled out the words, then bordered them with masking tape, then painted the entire inner area with glass etch.

 

As you can see, I wasn’t terribly particular about getting them exactly straight. This is partly because the children, who had been playing downstairs nicely at first, decided to come inspect what I was doing.  Since there are big letters warning of death if you touch the etching cream with your bare hands, I spent much of the time yelling trying to get them to stay away and also to work as quickly as possible, so precision went by the wayside. The first one I did I only let the etching cream sit on for about 60 seconds and for the rest of them I let it sit on for a good 10 minutes, though I can’t say there’s any discernible difference between the two.  After rinsing them off, they looked like this:

Hmm…I think they look…okay…not amazing or anything.  But they are a bit more fun than plain jam jars and look pretty cool once they’re filled. I really like the idea, though I think it might look better on a smooth sided glass and if I do this again I’d make sure to put a much heavier layer of the etching cream on because these turned out a bit blotchy. Or maybe just do a design of polka dots or something…

The family escaped unscathed from the close encounter with etching cream, and last I checked, the wine is still just as tasty. Cheers!

Gender Identity

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Last night, the family was in a odd configuration in which the boy was in the bathroom, on the toilet, with the door closed and the rest of us were sitting outside. You know that seems to happen sometimes?  Anyway, a conversation ensued which went like this:

Girl: I girl, you (pointing to Eric) boy, mommy girl!

Eric: What about your brother?

Girl: Ummm…boy!

Me: What makes someone a boy or a girl?

Girl: ‘Cause! Just ’cause!

Boy (from inside the bathroom): Hey, girl, let me tell you.  I’m a boy because I have a penis and you’re a girl because you don’t.

Girl: I have penis, too!

Me (yelling through the door): She says she has a penis, too.

Boy (not missing a beat): Well, then, she’s a boy.

Glad that’s been cleared up.

Washcloths

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I am incredibly competitive.  I absolutely hate to lose at anything unless I feel like I have absolutely no skill whatsoever at it.  For example, I wouldn’t really care if I lost a game of Scrabble in Bosnian. I am a somewhat gracious loser outwardly, though internally I fume.  I am a horrific, horrific winner.  I try to come across as humble (aw, shucks, I WON? How did that happen?) but really I gloat mercilessly (YES! I rule! And you suck!).

This extends to almost anything in my life, including, believe it or not, knitting. So peaceful and quiet knitting is, you say, how can she possibly make a competition out of this? (Incidentally, there ARE international knitting competitions, most notably “Sock Wars” and “Iron Knitter,” but that’s not what I’m referring to here.) Really, for me it just means that I don’t think of knitting as hard. I mean, doctoring? That’s hard work. Teaching? Hard. Trying to wrap your mind around gravitational physics? That’s hard, too. But I don’t think that anything involving 2 sticks and a bit of string should be difficult, and I never quite get when people say that they just couldn’t get knitting. Most of these women have raised children, a task considerably more complicated and arduous, but protest that they just couldn’t make it work.

Moving on, what it comes down to is that I had yet to find a project I couldn’t knit successfully. This all changed with a recent pair of mittens.  I was so excited about them. They’re a pair of mittens with the pattern of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the backs-hold both mittens together and you get a complete picture. I purchased the pattern and yarn MONTHS ago but hadn’t been able to get to it until recently. Eagerly, I sat down and began. I got to the first pattern row, and realized that the color floats were too large to work as fair isle, but still I pressed on.  Eventually I had about 6 strands of yarn coming off the needles and had no idea if I was coming or going.  I ripped it out.

No matter, I thought to myself, I am a GOOD KNITTER. I’ll just use another advanced technique and get these things made. I tried intarsia.  Now that was an even bigger mess, and I had at LEAST 12 strands of yarn coming off the needles and everything was all twisted up and I ended up knitting them shut.  I ripped that out, too.

Not one to give up, I tried again and once more, failed miserably. I was defeated by knitting. Pathetic.

I couldn’t even bear to take a picture of the disaster, such was my dismay. Bad blogger now, too!

Dejected, I asked for help on some knitting sites and found that the mittens, as written, are UNKNITTABLE. That’s right–it’s not me, it’s the pattern! Only a bit of relief because, you see, I still failed to recognize that the pattern wasn’t knittable when I purchased it! Quite a blow to the ego, let me tell you.

What was I to do next?

Clearly, the answer was to knit something so mindless that they couldn’t possibly fail.

I dug around in one of my bins of yarn and found a whole bunch of pink and purple cotton I’d picked up on sale a few years ago.  I don’t like cotton much for knitting, so it had just sat there.  But now it seemed perfect to pull it out and just start knitting some random squares.

I tried different patterns and techniques.

The overall effect was very soothing.

And at the end of the day, at bathtime, the kids now clamor for the purple washcloths! They love them!

Yes! I RULE (at knitting)!

Cuteness explosion

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I know I just put up a picture like this on Facebook, but I can’t resist another one.  I love the girl’s sense of style!! This is what happens when you ask her to say, “cheese.”

I knit the legwarmers over the summer and she’s just started to take a liking to them. Made out of a self-striping sock yarn, super easy and fun. Everyone with older girls told me that there’s more outfit craziness to come–I can’t wait to see what she puts together.

Cold Day

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Today DPS cancelled school because it was going to be zero degrees. There was a lot of whining about the school closures on Facebook, especially from people who grew up in Wisconson and such, where they only close schools if the Packers lose and everyone is too depressed to do anything. Me personally, I’m happy to keep my kids out of weather that causes frostbite in 5 minutes.

On snow days, Eric usually stays home with the kids because his college closes as well. This time, they stayed open so I took off my 2nd day of work ever. When I don’t work, other people have to do the work I would have done, so I felt a lot of guilt about not going in, even though it’s not particularly busy right now. Then I felt guilty for feeling guilty about work and not putting my kids first. Do mommies get a guilt break, ever?

During the day so far, I think the girl has averaged about one time out per half hour because she screams when she doesn’t get what she wants. Screams. My ears hurt. I began to wish that school had just stayed open, frostbite be damned, because I just couldn’t take the screaming anymore. I know, I know, I’m terrible.

That all being said, we’ve done some fun crafty things and in some ways it’s been nice to be holed up with them, warm and cozy.

We started by making a paper snowflake garland. I had to look up how to do this, having forgotten from my childhood. It was so much fun! The boy loved doing this, and so did I. The girl did a few but got bored pretty quickly and found other pursuits.

Watching the snowflakes unfold was the most fun part!

These:

Turned into these!

Then we took some dental floss and clear tape and made a garland to hang in front of our fireplace. I think it looks just lovely–you can click to enlarge. (Full disclosure–prior to this picture, I took off of the mantelpiece: An entire deck of Uno, packing tape, 2 pairs of scissors, twine, a small stuffed animal, an old glass of water and and a knitting book.  It doesn’t really look that tidy all the time)

Then we started baking and made some cookies. The girl got sent to rewash her hands about every FIVE MINUTES because she kept licking them. I can’t attest that all cookies are 100% germ free. The baking has to kill most of them, right?

I chose thumbprint cookies thinking that there were a lot of steps they could participate in. Both kids had a lot of fun sifting flour and watching the mixer. They got a bit bored with making the dough into balls, but loved rolling them in coconut and finally thumbprinting. So, so tasty.

It is now, gratefully, naptime.

Now all I need to do is come up with some ideas for the afternoon….

If Only We All…

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Trying out my technique on the boy again:

Me: “Tell me something happy that happened to you at school today.”

Boy (completely serious): “Ummm, being a Zen Buddhist.”

Me (trying to keep the smile out of my voice): “How do you be a Zen Buddhist?”

Boy: “Well, I try to be like Stillwater and am just very peaceful and quiet.”

 
 
 
*As a side note, I highly recommend all the Jon Muth books. “Zen Shorts” is a good place to start.  Great stories that introduce Zen principles and approaches to life problems in a way that kids understand, all illustrated with beautiful watercolor paintings.

The Cowl that Swallowed Me

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For Christmas, my sister gave me a project to knit! At first, when she handed it to me, I thought she was giving me yarn and a pattern to knit a scarf for her, and was like, “Oh…how thoughtful of you for yourself.”  But no, it was for me!

Pattern: Chunky Seeded Cowl

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky Natural

I love this! It’s big and chunky and I feel for a second like I’m a hip Brooklynite walking in Park Slope instead of a Denverite schlepping it on Larimer.

I would never, never have bought this color for myself–am not usually a fan of chartreuse, but I think it looks just lovely all knitted up.

The fabric is lofty  and heavily textured:

And in case of a sudden snowstorm, I can pull it up over my head to protect my coif.

I happen to have a skein left over and think that a slouchy hat would be the perfect companion piece.

Thanks, Sapana!

Fixing Nemo

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[Let me start by saying that I had  a clever idea for this blog post comparing my quest of the perfect Nemo hat to that of Ahab and Moby Dick.  It was funny.  Then, I mentioned this to Eric, who proceeded to tear it apart bit by bit until it was unusable.  Something about how Ishmael isn’t Ahab and how Ahab hated Moby Dick for eating his leg and how nothing really fit and I really don’t care because every time I’ve tried to read Moby Dick all I can think about is how I’m wasting precious minutes of my life being bored out of my mind, but still, it ruined my analogy and I didn’t want to get mocked by other intellectuals so instead you are left with this:]

The girl hates hats.  The girl loves “Finding Nemo.” It is cold in Colorado, and one needs a hat for the winter.  I thought, why not make her a Nemo hat?

While I was making it, she seemed pretty excited–it’s pretty fast and only took me a few days.

Once I added the eyes, though, she backed away slowly, fear in her eyes.  I got the boy to model it:

Pattern: Fish Hat: Dead or Alive

Yarns: Loops and Threads Impeccable Worsted

I guess it might be a little freaky to see friendly little Nemo eating your head. And before someone starts, I know that it’s not an exact replica but it’s close enough for a 2 year old’s hat.

So after much discussion, we figured out that the big felted eyes were scaring her.  She insisted on a change to “puh puh buttons,” or “purple buttons.” Her favorite color is purple.  So we dug up a few buttons from a sewing kit that the boy has, and he insisted on sewing them on himself.

 

 

 

 

After that, it must have been slightly less scary, because she agreed to put it on for a little bit.

Then she wore it to the store, where it kept falling off her head and I realized it was too big, even though I’d sized it down for her head.  I added a messy looking but functional dart in the back, figuring it would be hidden by the floppy tail.

 

And did she love it then?

No. She completely and fully rejects the Nemo hat.  Won’t wear it.

The boy likes it, though, and will wear it.  With one request–“Mom, can we put the big eyes back on again?”