jb and me

Butterfly in the Sky

2010-09-26T22:34:00.001-04:00

Take a look! It's in a book!

I read books to Olivia every day. Olivia reads books to Olivia every day. Olivia quite often tries to read a book to Lucy or one of her stuffed animals every day. Or at least to show them the pictures.

And while I am getting extremely sick of "One Fish, Two Fish," and a few others, I do my best to read them in an enchanting fashion. I usually ask myself, "How would LeVar read it?" He definitely would not use a monotone style. (I was very surprised a few months ago when I overheard JB reading this way to Olivia. JB, king of sound effects and silly faces and voices! Perhaps he was just tired. Or perhaps he wanted to make One Fish, Two Fish so dreadfully boring to Olivia that she would never request it again--which unfortunately didn't work.)

Today was my turn to read scripture at church. The text was Daniel 6: Daniel in the Lion's Den!!! One of my favorite stories. Apparently I got a little caught up in the tale, because when I sat down after I read, JB leaned over to me and whispered,

"I can tell you've been reading a lot of stories to Olivia. You used a lot of inflection in your reading."

It takes a lot to embarrass me. I have had several snafus while doing the Scripture reading. Like discovering afterward that my fly was open the whole time. Or walking up and trying to read at the wrong pulpit while the worship leader is whispering loudly at me to move, which everyone else hears and understands, but me. Or walking up and almost starting to read (because the order of service said that I was next) only to be told to sit down again because there was some added thing that I didn't know about that had to happen first.

These things did not embarrass me.

But "children's story hour" left me feeling a little mortified. I never wanted to be one of those Moms who got stuck in kid mode when trying to interact with adults. Yet here I am.

Oh well.

Too bad LeVar wasn't there. He would have understood.

Weekend Update

2010-09-26T22:08:00.000-04:00

In a galaxy long ago and far away,

my husband promised that JBandMe would be a JOINT blog. That he wasn't just luring me to join his blog because I was a more faithful poster.

I think he posts like once or twice a year.

And I can't always post, as evidenced recently by our faithful readers.
So I apologize for the long absence, but really, if you have a bone to pick over this, call my husband.

He wasn't the one living in agony for the past 3 months because of a foreign organism growing within me.

No. It isn't cancer.

But he sure is being mean like cancer.

Most of you already know this, but for the 1 or 2 who do not, I'm pregnant again.

Yes. Again. The first pregnancy with my daughter about killed me (but not in any sort of interesting or noteworthy way--just boring old pregnancy crap), and yet I still agreed to go through it again. And we both want more than two kids. Adoption is looking pretty good to me right about now...

This week starts the middle 3 months of the pregnancy, which was my grace period the first time around. A time when life is relatively unhindered by being pregnant. So I may post a little more on this. But no guarantees. Unemployment runs out in October and I've got a job to find!

There's work to be done! Quilting to do! A baby to grow! A girl who's turning 2!

Where did that come from?

2010-09-12T17:54:00.002-04:00

It's funny how children sudden have full blown personalities and conversational skill. Maybe not funny, more startling than funny. Case in point...

This Sunday morning April had a migraine on top of pregnancy sickness and something I had eaten was reeking havoc on my digestive track. Result? No church for us.

*Friends/family without children, you have no idea what a luxury it is to be able to rest and recuperate from an illness without a (nearly) two year old, bouncing up on down and demanding one's attention. You never know how good you it is until it's gone...*

April took the lion's share of child duties this morning and on my turn O continued to demand April's presence making it nearly impossible for her to rest.

In a last ditch effort I asked, "Do you want to watch a show?"

"No thanks. -pause-I can watch show. I guess."

I swear she wasn't expressing herself like this a week ago. Hard to believe she'll be two in a month...

Oh, NO! Wha HAPPENED??

2010-07-14T14:18:00.000-04:00

Tea Party

2010-06-18T13:01:00.001-04:00

I was "checking my websites" right before Olivia's naptime. Usually I cannot get online during her waking moments, as she wants me to play YoGabbaGabba videos for her on youtube or something or other.

So I was grateful but curious about whatever was occupying her so much that she'd let me go online.

I kept hearing little feet running back and forth behind me.

Little feet padding closer and CLOSER...silently standing behind me for a few seconds...and then little feet going farther and farther...silence...steps coming closer and CLOSER...

When I looked I saw that she had brought her entire tea set into the office, piece by piece, and set it on the floor for a Tea Party. She also brought Eeyore and her dolly Pipi to join in the fun.

I forget that she always does that. Wherever I am, she hurries to bring in her toys so that we can play together. Oh, here she comes with Alphabet Caterpillar, her third guest of the tea party.

Guess I should go have that delicious cup of invisible tea now...

Polkadot Sparrow is FOR REALS!

2010-06-09T22:37:00.004-04:00

Well faithful readers, I have some special news for you!

Polkadot Sparrow, my quilting blog, is REAL. It exists. And not just in the fantastical recesses of my mind. It's floating around in cyberspace, too!

I am excited for this new adventure. And also grateful to all of you who have supported me in my endeavor (Tommy for snagging my site and giving me technical advice; Aunt Helen, Sarah, and HeatherN for rooting me on; and all you others who thought that this was a good idea).

I'm hoping it's a smashing success! And if not, I'm still pretty darn proud of myself for crafting my blog banner in Photoshop. JB and I were actually wondering about paying someone to make a professional-looking one when the Lord inspired me to make this baby:

No, I am not a professional web designer. This was just a pretty little divine accident.

Feel free to comment on it all you want if you'd like. I love comments! :)

Farewell Maggie

2010-06-07T17:08:00.000-04:00

Maggie, my in-laws forever faithful dog, has taken her final bow.

She was 14 and just done with this world, so last weekend I took her in to the vet and said my final farewell.

We were watching her and Lexi while M&M were in Tennessee. Maggie could barely walk outside to take a leak, and even if she could get out there without being carried, she could barely squat. She wasn't eating. Or even moving other than to waddle to the water bowl.

So JB carried her out to the car in his arms one last time. A big ball of fur and bones.

"I used to carry you like this when you were a puppy," he said. And he set her gently on the front seat.

On the way to the vet I reminded Maggie what a great dog she was and what a great run she had. She was mostly deaf so I spoke loudly so that she could hear me. I commended her on her great faithfulness and obedience. And her varmint catching abilities. I told her that she would run again in heaven.

"I like to think that there aren't squirrels in heaven though, so you'll have to find something else to chase," I told her.

I couldn't carry on too much conversation because it wasn't safe to drive with tears flooding my eyes. It felt right to take her in; she was miserable. But it's still sad to say goodbye to an old friend.

I waited in the room at the vet's office for at least a half hour, stroking Maggie's fur and telling her how wonderful and good she was. I was able to keep it together for the whole procedure. I shed tears at the very end, but didn't sob.

And I was able to keep my sadness at bay until Friday, when I was taking Olivia to M&M's. "We're going to see Grandma Marian and Grandpa Mark," I told her.

O was silent and then said, "Maggie!!..."

"No baby, Maggie is not there anymore. She went to heaven."

"Yexi?... Maggie!! MAGGIE!!"

"Stop talking about Maggie, O," I squeaked out between my tears.

It was official. I was going to M&M's and for the first time Maggie would not be there.

Good-bye, Waggum McTaggums. You were a GREAT dog.

2010-06-03T19:21:00.001-04:00

April goes to Washington

2010-06-02T21:29:00.004-04:00

_________________________________________

A couple of weeks ago JB and I went to Washington D.C. to visit his bro Austin and our new(er) SIL Lauren. I had never been to D.C. before, and as someone who likes America and History and Family, I was set to have a good time.

And I did! (So did JB!)

Here's our Top 10, chosen by me (you'll be able to identify the usual suspects in most photos, but Lauren is the ghost in the long shot of the Lincoln Memorial):

10.) Went to a fabric shop in Fairfax, VA. Fail. The place was nice, but all the fabric was sorted by color. Which defeats the purpose of buying matching fabrics from a particular line! Which is what people like to do! The fabrics are spread all over the place and you cannot find what you're looking for. I got a few things. But it wasn't as exciting an experience as I hoped it would be.

9.) Watched the series finale of LOST with JB. We cried and cried and cried. It was a great finale.

8.) Went to the MegaMall in Tyson's Corner. Money, money, money. They had stores there that I've only seen in magazines. Like United Colors of Benetton. Naartjie. L.L. Bean. Shopping there really hammered home how downtrodden the Michigan economy is right now. This mall had big name stores, little to no sales or clearance racks, bright lights, and even brighter, happier shoppers. Michigan malls seem so funeral-like compared to that place. However, I still scored a megadeal at L.L.Bean. There was one lone sweater on the sale rack. One lone red cashmere sweater originally $100. I got it for $25. My first cashmere sweater. Or part-cashmere. I don't care. Even 10% cashmere would make me feel glamorous!

7.) Lost all four games of Ticket To Ride (Europe) that we played. I tried and tried and lost and lost! But you can't go wrong with building your own trains through Europe so it was fun anyway.

6.) PUPPIES!! Puppies, puppies, puppies!! Took a harrowing car ride in and around curves, up and down mountainous road, to see Austin and Lauren's future black lab puppy (and 9 others). By the time we got there JB, Lauren and I were about to vomit. Austin was perplexed at our sickness. JB explained to him it was because he was the driver and was not subjected to the chaotic ride. He drove as carefully as he could on the way home. We all felt much better. Though perhaps we were just riding in on our puppy euphoria.

5.) Smithsonian! There are a ton of Smithsonians. We hit up the American History one. Most of the exhibits were not as impressive as I had thought. Perhaps the hundreds of people milling about everywhere were the problem. JB and I dug seeing the Julia Childs kitchen and now he has agreed to do our next kitchen with all wood cuttingboard countertops. I am thrilled. My other huge memory from there was the Vietnam War exhibit. I saw an actual helicopter that had to fly in and out of the warzone chaos, picking up dead and wounded. It wasn't like the big helicopters that rich people buzz around in. It was dinky. Like smaller than my kitchen. Vietnam vets are some brave mother f'ers.

4.) Went to the Holocaust Museum. A great experience. Very disturbing, though. Why didn't more Jews or good Germans revolt??? How did that much mass murder happen in modern day?? I held it together until I walked through the boxcar that had taken Jews to one of the concentration camps. I thought of all the babies and little kids who had to squish in there and who died by the time they reached their destination. Imagined being a mom and a.) watching your child die in front of you, and then b.) having to hold that dead baby for days in a cramped car. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

(Did you know that Denmark refused to play the Nazi's game? They resisted till the end. Go Danes!)

3.) Walked through Arlington. I don't care what the liberals say: God Bless the U.S.A.

2.) Saw WWII and Vietnam Memorials at night, as well as the Lincoln Memorial. If that don't make you proud to be an American, nothing will.

1.) Rode to the top of the Washington Monument: AT NIGHT. Tours are closed to the public at night. Unless you flirt with the security guard like Austin did. :) The view was amazing. Unfortunately the windows were clouded over on the outside, so I didn't get a stellar shot, but I'm sharing what I did get anyway.

Fowl-mouthed Bird

2010-05-19T14:14:00.000-04:00

I'm not a big cusser. Compared to some of my siblings I barely cuss. And compared to my Great-Grandma Minnie and Great-Grandpa Don, I am probably a saint. My mom said that those two used to cuss each other up and down so much that it would put sailors to shame (or something like that). Ironically, both of their sons served in the Navy. Perhaps it's because it's what they knew.

So while I do not cuss a lot, I do say, "shit" a lot. I tired of saying "crap." Shit just sounds better to me.

JB has warned me about cursing in front of the Bird. I agreed that it is not good to teach children to swear. That's a lesson better learned from their peers, leaving Mom and Dad to tell you that it's wrong. Even if Mom and Dad used to curse, too.

So I decided that the first time Olivia repeated a curse word would be the last time that I swear around her. Why didn't I stop sooner? I wasn't very motivated to find a replacement word to express my feelings. None of the other ones felt right. In short, I was lazy.

Olivia has been mimicking us for a while now, so I was surprised that she hadn't picked up on "shit." Then Saturday came. With it came Aunt Annie for a visit, and a desire for Olivia to try out her new saying, "Oh shit." She first said it when we were getting breakfast ready. Something caused her to say, "Oh no! Shit!"

Yes, it was very funny.

But then she kept saying it! And we kept trying not to laugh.

I thought that she'd try it out a couple of times and then move onto another saying. This little girl tries out lots of words these days, often abandoning them after a few tries. But apparently Shit just felt right. Because she said it again and again and again.

All weekend.

"Oh no! ...Happened? (meaning, 'What Happened?')... "Shit!"

Annie and I were able to keep the secret from JB until Sunday. Then he and Annie saw Olivia trip and fall to her knees.

"Ohh, SHIT!"

Oh shit is right.

She said it probably a dozen times on Saturday and nearly as many on Sunday. I've started to encourage her to say, "Rats!" instead, which she's trying out. I thought we getting in the clear until last night she yells the S-word out in front of our dinner company Joel, a college student at Calvin.

Now even though he goes to a Reformed Church college, he still thought it was funny.

But I don't think that everyone will.

And unfortunately, she is also learning about utensils and likes to say, "fork," randomly. Which she pronounces "foke" in her little baby voice.Which can sound like the f-word if you don't know what she's referring to.

Fokes, we could be up $&^* creek without a paddle...

A Day in the Life of an 18-month-old

2010-05-05T23:05:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking about doing a post on what a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom)'s day looks like. After a long day, JB likes to joke, "What? I thought you just laid on the couch and ate bon-bons all day while I went to work." har har.

But I realized that listing off the six loads of laundry that I did or the rooms that I dusted and vacuumed isn't really that interesting. Not even to me. And I love to vacuum.

Then I began to ponder a day looks like to Olivia. The busiest girl in America....

(All of these things are TRUE and she did all but 1 of them in the last two days alone.)

7:45: OMG, I am AWAKE! I've got so many things to do today! While I wait for Mama I must keep busy. Cannot be still. Will read my board book aloud. Or play with my stuffed friends Pooh, Brownie, or Ba. Will unzip my jams down to my waist so that I look like a creepy 70's pimp. Or maybe I can stand up in the crib and wait. Maybe, like that one time, I can drape my white blanket over my head and wait, standing perfectly still and silent, so that Mama thinks that I am a ghost. Making her heart stop in fear is so fun!

7:55: Mama is here! I will ardently request my teapot as she lifts me from my crib. TeaPOT! TeaPOT! Must. Have. Teapot.

8:10: Time to play downstairs while Mama makes breakfast that I won't eat. Better collect any stray remote controls and furiously pound their buttons. V. important business. Wait! I see crayons! Better put them to use. If I can't find my coloring book, I will use any other book I find laying around. Well, Mama is in the kitchen. I'll go in there. I'll climb up on the chair while her back is turned. And color on the table. I couldn't find any paper.

8:45:I am back in my room! Lucy is with me! We will PLAY. TeaPOT TeaPOT TeaPOT. Princesses! Puzzles! BLOCKS!!! Must amass every toy in my room and pile it in the middle of the floor.

9:15 Mama gets me dressed. This dismays me because it takes away from play time. Then we go to the library. Mama gives me her license and debit card to play with while she looks up a book on the computer. Then we walk to the giant library shelves and she looks for her book. She turns the corner to look at more books. I quickly insert her license and debit card into the stacks. I pull out a random book. Mama comes and stops me from pulling out two more books. She picks me up and goes to the counter with her book. Then she starts to mutter, "Where is my license? Where did you put my cards, Olivia?"

I do not speak good English, so I do not answer her.

She gets more and more upset. She eventually finds the cards.

Drive to another store for errands. "Book! Book! Book!" I cry. Mama hands me all the books in the car. I do not want those books! I want to go back to ALL the books at the library. Mama is not very smart at understanding. So I guess I'll just keep crying out "Book!" until I tire. Which is never.

10:30: ELMO!!!! We are home and Mama turns on Sesame Street and ELMO!!! Sit quietly in princess chair. Until I get bored. Find something else to do. Mama is doing dishes. AGAIN. How boring. How can anyone like doing dishes that much? I find my green rainboots and try to put them on. Mama has to stop what she's doing to help me. Then I stomp around in my boots. Mama leaves kitchen to get something, and I find the butter dish. I've never noticed it before, but there it is, on the counter, and I can reach it! Woah, this stuff is sticky. I'll try to wipe the butter off the dish and onto my high chair. Mama comes back. "I was gone 3 seconds! What are you DOING??"

I do not speak good English, so I do not answer her.

11:00: I get to go OUTSIDE. I love "side!" Love. Love. Love. Side. Side. Side. When Mama tries to put me in the stroller to go on a walk, I rebel. I make it hard for her to put me in the stroller. Mama wins. Mama is strong.

11:45. We're back from walk and Mama lets me play SIDE! She gets out her shovel to dig weeds. I need that shovel. I need that shovel and I need to use it while I sit in Mama's lap. Mama is elusive though and keeps getting away to "weed." Whatever that is. She's pulling up plants. I can do that. I can dig up the ground with ~~Mama's~~ my shovel. I can even step on the plants. Why doesn't Mama want me to help her?

Ooh. Now she's getting out the hose to water the plants. I can help! But first I have to thrust both hands under the water. Cold! My hands and arms are soaked. And then I remember what my Daddy taught me to do at bathtime. I put my head under the water and get it nice and wet. Cold! I want to do it again but Mama doesn't let me.

12:00: Watch Miss Spider while Mama makes lunch.

12:20: Eat ~~lunch~~ chips.

1:00-1:30: I am in my room again! Oh crap. It's just naptime. Boo. I protest. Mama puts me in bed and I eventually collapse like a boxer who just got TKO'd.

3:30: AWAKE!!!! Mama doesn't look too good now. She isn't moving very quickly. But I feel GREAT!!

4:00: Get in car to see NanaPapa. I love going to see NanaPapa. I get to wear Pack. (Pack is a bear I wear on my back. I love Pack. Except for his tail that Mama holds. She says she holds it so that I don't get away from her. I think she holds it so that she can rain on my parade.) I walk proudly with Pack on my back, insisting that we stop for each staircase so that I can practice, though Mama doesn't always listen. Say HI! to every stranger we walk by.

Nana's room is fun because there are TONS of buttons to push. And things to look at. And things to start to touch until Mama yells at me. I will talk to Nana or Papa if it doesn't take too much time. Must. Keep. Exploring.

Snatch kleenex out of box. Put to mouth and cough twice. It's what I see grownups do.

Casually walk to the panel at end of Nana's bed. Mama and Papa always point to words on the panel and say, "For Hospital Staff Use Only." Whatever that means. Pretend to wipe down the panel with my coughed-on Kleenex. Mama says that it's nice that I clean. Then, when they are distracted by my tidiness, I flip open the panel quick as lightning and try to push every button.

"No!!!!"

Why does everyone yell at me so much??

5:00: Home from NanaPapa's. Mama is looking very tired. I see my wagon in the garage and request a ride. Mama concedes. While she opens the house door to get the dog's leash, I open the gate and start to leave toward the street with the wagon. Mama screams NO! DANGER!

I do not speak good English, so I ignore her.

I try again as she's grabbing her keys off of the hook next to the door.

NO! DANGER!

Good Lord, woman, I just want to go on a stinking wagon ride and you are taking for-ev-er.

I get bored on wagon ride and swing my legs over the side to get out while Mama is still pulling. That sly cat--she happens to look back right as I'm about to escape and run into the street. She makes me hold her hand while we walk. I escape and run into a neighbor's yard.

5:20: We are home and Mama turns on TV for me, but I get bored and come into the kitchen where she is making dinner. I request a seat on the counter. If I don't get to be on the counter, I will pull open drawers and cupboards until I find something ~~breakable~~ exciting to play with.

5:30: Daddy's home!!! Daddy goes upstairs to change and read email. I continue to make life exciting for Mama.

6:00: Mmmm, dinner. Maybe. Maybe I will eat dinner.

6:30: Dancey Dance time! Mama turns on the stereo and we dance to fun songs. Like Def Leppard, Black Eyed Peas, Diana Ross, and AC/DC. I insist that Mama wears giant white sunglasses while she dances. It makes it harder for her to dance, which she wants to do to lose weight. I wonder why she hasn't lost 50 lbs from chasing me around all day. So does Mama.

7:00: Back in my room with Lucy! Time to drop a deuce. Once the smell hits Mama's nostrils in another room, she comes to clean me up. Daddy comes by and says, "That smells like an adult turd!" What do you know--I AM becoming like a big kid! I wiggle around while Mama tries to clean me. She keeps repeating, "Shit." Must remember to repeat after her sometime. It's a new word that Mama seems to like a lot.

8:00: I get my Jammers on and Mama and Daddy pick up my toys. I follow them and get them out again. Mama makes me sit in the chair to read stories. I rebel. Not enough movement involved. I concede. After 3 books Mama turns out the light. "More!" I demand. "More!" Cry when Mama does not read more books. "Why can't you just go to bed?" Mama asks.

I do not speak good English, so I do not answer her.

8:15: Collapse into bed after several renditions of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which I like to try to sing along to, the ABC song, Jesus Loves Me, and night time prayers. Mama is making very slow movements and appears to have bags under her eyes. She blows me a kiss anyway and says she loves me.

I cannot WAIT for tomorrow.

Diving into Blogland

2010-04-29T09:51:00.030-04:00

Remember how I was going to start a quilting blog?

Well, I really AM!!!

And that's why I haven't been burning up the pages of this blog. I've been busy sewing and scheming.

The blog is not ready to hit the presses yet, but the gears are in motion. Since you guys have been so supportive of me, I thought I'd share my current banner design. I am not proficient with design stuff. I get ideas in my head but don't know how to make them in real life. So this isn't exactly what I had in mind, but what do you think?

You can be honest. You can even make me your own banner if you're that motivated. haha. Though I know that you guys are like me and can only dream of being that web-design proficient. JB actually could have studied this in college and become really successful, if you ask me. Where is that dang time machine of ours when we need it???

Here are four quilting blogs that I follow, to give you an idea of what a successful blog is. One of these women have only been blogging for a year and they already have like 1,000 followers. Woah!

Film in the Fridge (yes, people with film in the fridge are awesome)

Jaybird Quilts (no, I don't just read this one because "bird" is in the name!)

Red Pepper Quilts (this Aussie puts out more product in a month than I will in a lifetime)

Oh Fransson! (pattern and idea maven)

My blog will be a bit different since I will focus on current, modern stuff, but also antique quilts and patterns. And I will write stories about things that have a quilting angle in them. There are hundreds of sewing/quilting blogs out there. Mine will be the best. There. I said it. I know you were thinking the same thing. haha.

All the cool kids are buying it

2010-04-19T20:56:00.000-04:00

I am going to shamelessly promote Grandma and Grandpa Hunt's latest book, "I Do."

BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT

Those of you who know me know that I am very skeptical of devotionals and books on "Christian Living."

It is very hard to find ones that have solid information that seems relevant to me. Too often I have picked up a book that I quickly closed because it was obvious that the author was trying to stretch 50 pages to 150 pages and threw in a lot of senseless repetition and extra words. Maybe it's the journalist in me, but I like when authors make their point once. Not make their point. Then to explain the point with another sentence. Then repeat that point, perhaps with italics. Then repeat it again, this time with a sentence starting with, "It's like," in an effort to further explain the point that we got 4 sentences ago!!

There are only a handful of Christian novels that I can tolerate (thanks Mrs. E!) and about zero devotionals.

Okay, so C.S. Lewis' stuff kicks ass, but I've never finished anything beyond the Narnia series. (I just now decided to try ScrewTape Letters again.) And I've tried Mr. Stott's stuff several times. But he would never use a word like "stuff" so I have to work really hard to understand what his great mind is saying. It's like reading the KJV (actually I find the KJV easier than John Stott--haha!). It's really good, and totally worth it, but it takes a lot of brainpower and will to get through it. And by the end I am so pleased with myself for finally getting it, only to realize that I've just deciphered the first sentence. Maybe one day when I'm smarter I'll try again.

All this to say,

"I Do," is a cool book, and I don't put the cool stamp on many Christian publications.

And it's not just cool because my Grandparent-in-laws penned it. Or because JB and I have the very first, best ever edition (sorry, Austin and Lauren--I am naming yours 2nd edition, so mine is better!), made especially for us before any publisher decided to take it on. Or because it's less than $10, so totally affordable to give as wedding gifts (hint, hint!).

It is cool because it is a great, non-fluff, devotional for any married person, whether a newlywed, or hitched for over 60 years, like the book's authors.

(It JUST came out, but you can get it on Amazon or from the publisher, Discovery House. Or if you're cool like Harry Potter, you can wave your wand and have your owl deliver it to you.)

Recovered from Bad Day

2010-04-17T11:08:00.001-04:00

Thanks for your sympathies over my bad day. The ended up being better overall, which included:

1.) Finished piecing the top of Krystal's quilt, planned the backing, and got as far as I can on it before having to spend more money on materials. Yay!

2.) Kept to my new workout routine. It's nothing as intensive as Biggest Loser, but it's something that I can maintain. Though I'm still a little bewildered that I didn't lose like 30 lbs in the first week. Whaa? I have to workout continuously for the rest of my life in order to be healthy?? I can't eat 5 brownies a day anymore?? Agh!

3.) Tom Turkey visited us this week. He liked our yard, as he hung out in the garage and yard for 2 hours before I let Lucy out to chase him off. I had laundry to hang. And I didn't trust him not to peck Olivia's eyes out. And you can bet that Olivia would have tried to pet him. When she saw him out the window she cried, "Ducko, ducko!" over and over again (she now knows it's a turkey). She loves animals. Last week at my parents she kept trying to pet the band of wild calico cats that my Dad keeps. They'd come up on the porch and she'd yell, "Kitty!!!" and try to go out to pet them. She didn't understand why they kept running away. To be honest, I think even a tame cat would run away from such exuberant yelling. Poor Olivia. I guess we'll have to take her to a petting zoo some day.

4.) O got her teaset for her unbirthday (though there was a theftery fiasco involved in that, but this will be a positive blog post). Every morning when she gets up she remembers her new toy and cries, "TEApot! TEApot!!"

5.) A regular activity with O is to make tall towers that she can knock down. Today we built the tallest one yet, with our imposing and impressive Teapot topper. It lasted about 1 minute.

Anatomy of a Bad Day

2010-04-14T23:07:00.002-04:00

I'm not complaining. Really, I'm not. But today was just one of those days where things just kept going wrong.

1.) I find dog pee on my freshly laundered jeans that I laid on the bed.

2.) Discover dog has peed all over the bed again. (Yes, she should probably be put down for this, but I'm a dog lover, so she stays.) I always keep our bedroom door shut because of Lucy's incredible naughtiness. She likes to mark the bed when we change blankets each season. We've probably gone a year without incident. Today was one of those days where I forgot to shut the door.

3.) Dog pee has infiltrated my down comforter throw. The quilt. The top sheet, fitted sheet, and even the mattress pad.

4.) Cannot murder dog because child is still sleeping. Dog slinks around, aware of her evil actions.

5.) Spend day cleaning LOTS of bedding. Spend other part of day scheming dog's demise.

6.) Child sleeps late so I miss going to MOPS.

7.) Reason that child sleeps later is because child declines daily nap. Child turns into monster at around 4:30 p.m. every day.

8.) Today was not different. Child declines nap, and this time CRIES after being in her crib for less than an hour.

9.) Drive Jeckyl and Hyde child to pick up dogs for dog sitting stint. Have to carry Granny dog out of house. Then Granny dog hides under porch. Have to drag poor Granny dog out from under porch so that I can carry her to the car. Feel terrible dragging a dog by her scruff, but she offers no assistance.

10.) Drive a car full of 3 panting dogs, one little girl, and a load of dog food, a pen, leashes, etc.

11.) Rear end man in rush hour traffic, because I am a dippy do.

12.) Granny dog slides off of backseat in crash, landing on the floor. Her hips are too weak to lift her back onto the seat, so she rides home backwards, her butt on the floor and her front paws on the seat.

13.) Cars, K-9's, and people unharmed, mostly. Minor body damage. Major shame. Man in the Beamer was kind. But I am a bad girl nonetheless.

14.) Let dogs out at home to do business. Call them in. Yell at Lexi for her shit breath, as the side entry reaks of it.

15.) Realize that my child has lots of fresh dog poo on both shoes.

16.) Feel bad for blaming Lexi.

17.) Accident causes me to get home late and to be frazzled, so I cannot make dinner. Resort to McDonald's. Boo.

18.) Spray Newmans' own Ranch Dressing on myself and bag while trying to open it.

19.) Realize that it is 11:00 p.m. and I left laundry out on the line.

Agh!

Hopefully this post helped you feel good about yourself today. Compared to me, I'm sure you're trouble free. :)

Dare to Repair

2010-03-26T00:01:00.070-04:00

When I was in elementary school I was enrolled in the T.A.G. program. It stood for Talented and Gifted.

Now, before you start thinking very highly of me, this Dippy Do had to call the refrigerator repairman earlier this week to ask him how to turn the fridge on. (Fortunately, I discovered the "on" switch before he called me back.) So I'm not that Talented and Gifted.

I'll never forget one of my TAG sessions. We were taken to this garage-type room of the school and asked to dismantle an entire push lawnmower. We quickly got to work taking all the parts off of it. When we were done the instructor said, "Okay, now put it back together."

Apparently it was their belief that smart people learn about things by taking them apart and putting them back together.

I was not impressed.

I was 10. Besides, my Dad used a riding lawnmower at home. I had no use for learning how a push lawnmower worked.

Though I was miffed at being asked to put an unimportant machine back together, that idea stuck with me for the rest of my life. All those times I saw my Dad fixing something or building something at our house suddenly made sense. So THAT'S how my Dad figured stuff out! I remember he always had a book in one hand, and a tool in another, whether he was fixing a car or the dishwasher or rewiring the house.

My Dad is a self-taught man. He can fix cars like you wouldn't believe, yet he never took a single auto mechanics class. He learned how to wire the house he built by reading a book. He learned plumbing the same way. He hooked up furnaces, our wood burning stoves, everything, by reading and figuring it out for himself. Right now he's teaching himself how to do body work and paint jobs on cars.

So today when the part arrived for my refrigerator it occurred to me that I could probably figure it out myself, instead of paying the repairman $100 for labor. He was set to come tomorrow. So I got out my tools while Olivia played in her room, pretending to give her dolly PiPi drinks of tea from her random toys. She does not have a teaset, but I'm totally getting her this one for her unBirthday (half birthday--why not?):

Nice plastic teasets are hard to find. Often they have garish cartoon characters on them or something. Not necessary. As a bonus, this one is made in the USA from recycled milk jugs. Well done, Pottery Barn Kids!

Anyway, back to the fridge. I looked online to find out how to get to the part to replace it. Apparently there is a panel at the back of the freezer that I had never noticed before. So I opened it up and found the part that I had to replace, and replaced it. I had never seen the inside of a fridge before, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was pretty straight forward. And as long as you remember where everything goes, you can put it back together (without having any extra screws!!).

Then plugged in the fridge, sat back, and was thankful for my TAG pushmower experience and for my Dad's example.

Orange Juice and Grass

2010-03-25T10:06:00.001-04:00

I am a clutsy person.

I know. Those of you who know me are saying to yourselves, "Whaaa? April, a clutz? I had no idea!"

It's not possible, I know. My whole life I've found the old adage, "Tuesday's child is full of grace," to be quite ironic.

In the last two days I've had two incidents. I find it truly amazing that I have not subjected Olivia to any major harm since she's been born. I'm sure that God assigned an extra portion of angels to watch over that little girl: not because of herself, but because of her close proximity to me.

The first accident was a result of our fridge breaking down. We ended up losing four gallons of milk (they kept curdling) and numerous other freezer and fridge items. We called the fixit man on Friday, who couldn't come until Monday. He then had to order a part and can't fix the fridge until this Friday. He told us that we could get our fridge going until he came back if we turned it off and let it defrost.

In the midst of this fiasco I ended up driving our frozen meat to our in-laws' freezer; putting any unspoiled cold things in our cooler, filling it with ice, and leaving it in our open garage for two days; dealing with a fridge that leaked all this water all over the floor when it defrosted; and more.

It seemed like I was never going to get an opportunity to clean the fridge, which I was excited to do since it was completely empty. I finally got to work on it during Olivia's non-nap. (She non-naps now, did you know? Some days she just sits in her ~~pen~~ crib and talks and sings and pulls on the bars for 2 hours. If hearing that for 2 hours does not fray one's last nerve, I do not know what does.)

I was rushing, trying to complete the job before I had to get Olivia. Since hearing her fooling around like that drives me crazy, I listened to my iPod while I washed. And apparently listening to music impedes one's sense of hearing, as I did not hear, therefore did not realize, that one of the shelves sitting on the counter had started to fall, crashing the orange juice container (which wasn't in the fridge! argh!) to the floor. OJ everywhere. All over the cupboards, all over the rug, floor, me, everywhere. So I had to stop cleaning the fridge to manage that mess.

It turns out that the OJ ran under the stove, and upon pulling out the stove's drawer, I discovered the oven's grody underbelly. It was about a 1/2" pile of red fibers from our old red rugs, interwoven with white Lucy hairs. So really it was more like a 1/2" gray carpet.

Yum.

Now I had to spend my fridge-cleaning time on operation "oven underbelly." The fridge eventually got cleaned. So did my jeans and the kitchen floor and the cupboards...

Yesterday I actually caused bodily harm to myself while I was working in the yard. Olivia loves playing in the yard. She mostly wanders around, leans over to pretend to smell the dead flowers from last year (she leans over, sniffs, and goes, "mmmmm!!!"), pats the tree, etc. Since she is so happy in the yard, I decided to do some pruning of said dead flowers, etc.

I couldn't find our actual yard clippers, so I was using this really crappy pair of "grass" cutters to cut our ornamental grass down. Apparently the grass cutters are for trimming simple lawn grass blades. I was desperately trying to snip the thick grass stalks in one hand, and pull away the clipped grass with the other. I guess I grabbed a clump that was not successfully cut, so when I forcefully yanked at it, the grass stayed put, and my finger somehow, in sliding along the blades, suffered a huge gash.

And that my friends, is how you cut your hand open using only grass.

It was one of those cuts that is so deep that it doesn't bleed right away. Then it started oozing out of my hand. I couldn't just run in to take care of it because I didn't want to leave O in the yard alone. So I had to snatch her up in one hand while cupping a hand of blood in the other. Then I saw her beautiful blue and white polka dot hat laying on the ground (that girl loves wearing her hats!). I couldn't leave that out there!

To make a longer story shorter, I somehow managed to get the dog in the house (sans gate to keep her in the yard), the child, and the hat. I had to to this all without letting on that there was a problem, or else O might become upset and hinder my bandaging efforts. At one point I was trying to turn on the TV to pacify her and blood was running through my fingers onto the back of my hand. It was about to splash onto the floor, which would have caught her interest and caused even more problems as she tried to play with it.

I eventually got the mischief managed, thanks to Neosporin and a big Spiderman bandaid.

And now I'm leary about what today will bring. Don't things always happen in threes? I'm about to unload the dishwasher and mop the kitchen floor. Wish me luck...

Grandma Hunt is sick

2010-03-22T20:34:00.002-04:00

Update on the following: last night I posted this blog and heard via emails that you were praying. And guess what? I got a call from Marian just now that Grandma turned a corner in the night and is doing much better today. One of the things she was suffering yesterday was kidney failure--and they started working in the night. And two other major things have righted themselves, too.

THANK YOU to those of you who prayed. THANK YOU...

________________________

Well readers, it's about time that I let you know that Grandma Gladys Hunt (JB's grandma) is sick.

I have put off posting on this because, while I am a very open person who will share anything with the public, this is Grandma's business, and it's not my place to blab.

Not that it's blabbing. I will keep the details simple. But I still feel weird broadcasting about someone else's problems. Though many of you either know Grandma, or know of her, and know what an amazing person she is, and would like to know what's happening with her.

Grandma is sick.

On February 22 she underwent surgery to replace the main aortic valve in her heart. (The put a cow's valve in there-isn't that amazing??) The surgery part went well, but her old lady body is giving her hell right now. It's not recovering like it should. She had anticipated being home within a week of surgery. That was probably being a little hopeful on her part, but still, it's been four weeks and she is not going home any time soon.

For those of you who pray, please pray for her and Grandpa. Grandpa is by her side all day, every day. He goes home at supper and returns every morning. He stands by her side, holding her hand a lot. Those of you who know him know that he's a tough, strong man. So he can do this. But even after I get home from visiting Grandma for just a couple of hours, I'm usually exhausted. It's just a tiring experience.

And Grandma, well, she's been on a rollercoaster ride, getting better one day, then taking two steps back the next. Grandma is a courageous woman, and has always been able to overcome whatever life has thrown at her by simply putting her mind to it. But this is different. She has to put her body to it, and it's not listening.

Today was a very tough day. Her body is backfiring in several places, she's in crazy pain, and to top it off, she can't communicate with us because she had a tracheotomy done (a breathing tube inserted in her throat). So she cannot talk. So a simple request like, "I'd like to lay on my side," takes several minutes to interpret.

When Olivia first visited Nana in the hospital several weeks ago, Nana was sitting in a chair. O walked over to her and patted her lap. She didn't know that Nana couldn't hold her. Now that Nana has been bedridden, Olivia likes to sit quietly next to her on her bed and look at all the tubes and observe Nana. Today O kept requesting to sit by Nana like usual, but it wasn't a good day for that. She couldn't understand why.

Olivia wants Nana to get better so that she can sit in Nana's lap again.

We'd all like to see that.

And your prayers can help.

Because Chuck Norris says so

2010-03-17T13:02:00.004-04:00

Directive
Originally uploaded by BAD BAB

My friend Beth took this shot on MSU's campus last week.

Chuck's birthday is March 10. According to my friend Heather (aka Michigan Girl),

"Chuck Norris would be turning 70, but time is afraid of him."

(Yes, Michigan Girl, I saw that quote on FB because I had to check something, and it made me laugh and laugh!)

The Mother-lode

2010-03-15T21:15:00.003-04:00

After seeing Olivia's new wardrobe today, JB said, "Aunt Rhonda made it in just under the buzzer!"

Olivia received a package from Great Aunt Rhonda on Saturday, containing what Rhonda hoped would be Olivia's first purse:

1.) It IS her 1st purse!

2.) Isn't it the cat's meow?? I love it! (And not just because the purse reads, "My Mother, My Friend." haha.) It's the perfect size for her, and as she loves containers, she's going to put some major miles on this thing. Thank you, Great Aunt Rhonda!! :)

3.) The reason JB commented on Rhonda's timing was that today Grandma Marian brought back The Mother-lode of clothes for Olivia, after her recent shopping sprees in Florida. She and her friend Lizzy (aka Nanny Liz) are shopping professionals. They hit all the right stores and know all the right ways to find deals, etc. And they never tire of walking the malls. When I spoke with Marian yesterday she said that she bought so many things for Olivia that she to pack O her own bag for the flight. When I got to her house today, I saw that it was an Adidas duffle bag full. Not, say, a plastic shopping bag. But an entire duffle bag. (Okay, so there were some pretty shirts in there for me, too, but it was mostly O's!) Included was another beautiful toddler's bag. Marian pointed out that this is a beach bag, though, so Rhonda's is still O's only purse.

Here is a shot of most of the clothes. I am amazed at and grateful for Mark and Marian's generosity. I won't have to buy O anything for Spring/Summer except for rainboots. Isn't that incredible?? The beach bag is in the top left corner, with a matching blue polka dot sunhat and polka dot outfit. There are polka dot sunglasses, too. I wish that half these things came in my size.

There is an outfit, a sunhat, and sunglasses missing in the above shot. But don't worry, you still get to see them, just on the model. O was so enamored with the pink sunhat that she insisted on wearing it at naptime:

Agh! I can't resist! Here's her in the polka dot hat. I wish they made this in MY size!

I Remember Daddy

2010-03-10T22:23:00.007-05:00

My Mom emailed me this article written by my Dad's cousin, Betty Jerrell, about her father, my great uncle. Betty's mom, Great Aunt Gladys, and my Grandpa Carl Teague (Dad's dad), were siblings.

It's a story of farming in Alabama during WWII. And Betty has a way with words, if you ask me.

My Grandpa Teague didn't get married until he was 25, which was "old maid" age back then--especially in the South (Alabama). And Grandma was an old maid, too, even though she was just 20.Today we gasp when we hear about 20-year-olds getting married, because they're so young, but back then they gasped because they thought they already had one foot in the grave.

Grandpa's sister, Gladys, Betty's mom, beat her brother to the altar by a decade, getting married when she was 15. When I visited her back in 2002, Great Aunt Gladys told me that she never had to learn how to drive because she was didn't need her drivers license when she was 15, and then she got married so her husband carted her around. Her brother, my Grandpa, died in 1979, but Gladys is still kicking around to this day. She lives with her daughter Betty, who is only 16 years younger than she is. Her other two children have passed on before her.

Betty's article recalls when she was 11, so her mother (Gladys) was only 26 at the time, and "Daddy" was 31.

The same age as I am today.

Two different worlds. They had so much responsibility back then. They had to be so grown up so quickly. Not only the parents, but the children. Eleven-year-old Betty worked the fields all day with her Daddy, and her 7-year-old sister joined them after lunch. Amazing.

(You'll probably have to click on the image below to be able to read it.)

Name that Blog!!

2010-03-04T20:56:00.005-05:00

Thank you for all of your kind words and support regarding my job search. In addition to making a new freelance contact (thank you, brother!), I got word today that I get a 3-week extension on unemployment! Aaagghh!!! :)

During my job search I have learned something startling about myself: I am not a risk taker.

Gasp!

Not being a risk taker is like being a stick in the mud, isn't it? It always annoyed me to have to deal with someone who was afraid to try something new--whether it be an ethnic dish, an unusual outfit, a new haircut, etc.

And now I've realized I'm one of them!!! Please don't judge me world! I didn't KNOW!!

Okay, so I do take some risks. In fact, I'll take just about any risk that doesn't involve money. (...or dining on animal brains...come on, people--that's disgusting!). I never took an unpaid internship in college. I never took a job that couldn't pay the bills, but that might advance me professionally. In college I never claimed a major (of the 4 or 5 that I chose) that didn't have a relevant job attached to it (no English major for me! "English" isn't a job. But Journalism, well, produces Journalists! And ironically, journalism is now a dying profession, too. Boo.) I have wanted to take photography classes but since a photography profession is extremely risky, since everyone does it, I didn't want to make an investment that wouldn't pay me back.

But life is SHORT. And I don't want to be a wimp.

So I am starting out on a venture that could fall flat on its face. Because of that, sometimes I do not want to start it. I want everything that I touch to turn into gold, and it's easier if you only touch sure things. Yet, I am going to make myself do this.

I am starting a quilting blog.

I have done a lot of research on making money blogging. I believe that I have all the necessary skills: writing, photography, a passion for my subject, interest in good website layout, etc. One question potential bloggers need to ask themselves is: would I do this, even if I didn't get paid?

The answer for me is YES!!!!

It takes about 2 years before you start making $$ on a blog, and I am willing to invest that kind of time.

But I need help picking out a name! If you want to be a part of quilting history (as this is going to be the most fabulous, amazing, quilting blog EVER), give me your two cents! I am also open to suggestions. What do you think?

I personally wanted SassySewNSew, but it's already taken. Many sites are. And there is already a popular site, "Crazy Mom Quilts," so I should avoid "crazylady" names.

Name that Job!

2010-03-01T10:27:00.005-05:00

Oh, beloved readers.

I need a job!

Just over a year ago I was laid off from my job. I was very fortunate to be able to collect unemployment compensation since then. It has paid our mortgage.

However, the money train is going to run out in a couple of weeks and my prospects are still bleak. Now, my aim is not for you to feel sorry for me. My life is fantastic, except for the "no money" part. Lots of people have it way worse than me. But I do want to be honest about what's going on in my life.

Finding a job in any part of our country right now is difficult, I would imagine. But finding a job in Michigan is near impossible. Especially if you are me, and your skills are extremely common. I can write, proofread, take photographs, and be an administrative assistant, to name a few. None of these skills are very lucrative, and the workforce is flooded with people with the same qualifications. Right now being a hiring manager is like a being fisherman looking into the ocean and trying to pick out the best tuna fish, when they all look THE SAME on the outside.

My job situation is also complicated, as I need to either work from home, or work 2nd shift, when JB is home and can care for Olivia. I am not against daycare. But I am against paying at least $800 a month for it. (I priced it before I lost my job. This amount is not an exaggeration--in fact, it's on the low end.)

I have learned that networking is what gets people most of their jobs. It's what got me my last two jobs, and what landed JB his. Networking makes me uncomfortable, but I have been doing it. Dead ends so far. But it feels good to practice it, anyway. However, I have not tried my blog friends. Perhaps YOU know of something that I can do!

Here are my dream scenarios:

I can become a full-time blogger. Lots of people do this. It does take some initial investment though (like buying blog editing software), and I am not one to take risks and spend $$ on something that isn't a guarantee. I have started a quilting blog, though, and it would be awesome if that takes off. It usually takes about 2 years to start making $$ on a blog, though, and I have a long way to go to have a site even remotely as cool as my these two fabulous and useful quilting sites: Red Pepper Quilts, and Oh Frannson!

I can work from home as a freelance proofreader. I have been exploring this option, though, and there are more proofreaders than there is work, it seems.

A wealthy person paying me to raise the most beautiful, special little girl in the entire world. The one person to do that would be JB. Oh, JB, why can't you be a Sugar Daddy???

Here are my realistic options:

Working retail after hours and weekends.
Working at Meijer 2nd shift.

Here is what I will NOT do:

Sales.
Work in a nursing home.

Finding a job right now is very stressful for me. I know that God will provide, so that's good. But I have lots of questions:

Why should I be subject to jobs that don't utilize all my skills? Why did God give me these skills if I am to be relegated to scanning someone's baked beans at the register at 1 a.m. every weeknight?
Why did I bother to pay thousands of dollars for a f&^%ing degree that isn't paying me back???
What is my CALLING???

So, if you have a great idea for a job, let me know. Or, you can just pray for me. And while you're at it, please pray for the thousands of other men and women in my great state who have even bleaker prospects than I. Some families even have BOTH parents out of work.

Oh Lord, save Michigan!

Our Dream House

2010-02-23T09:21:00.003-05:00

Though we love our home, JB and I have been talking about our dream home for years. I don't really want to move, and if I could have my way, I'd have this house airlifted to some acreage in the country and call it good. But technology has not advanced that much. And since our yard is very, very small, our driveway even smaller (I have ripped off the side mirrors of JB's car 3 or 4 times now), and the area of yard that gets enough sun to grow vegetables even smaller, we are aspiring to a better place. Or, well, for a better yard.

I often daydream about our driveway neighbors moving away, and their house burning down or something, and us getting to just add on an extra city plot of yard. Yes, I know. Dreaming of someone's house burning down is evil. But it's not like they would be living there! And no one would be harmed in the making of our new yard. The neighbors would get insurance money exceeding what they would sell the house for, we'd get a yard, the city would get an inimpressive house turned into a beautiful garden, we'd save money on sideview mirrors.

But since God is more clever than I, I don't think the house will burn down. A housefire is probably not in everyone's best interests, contrary to what I imagine.

One thing I appreciate about JB is that he has similar interests to me. We both would love to live on acreage in the country in a cool old home. My dream home is a bungalow, which has garnered JB's interest too. Unfortunately, bungalows were a revolution of city neighborhoods in the 20's, so if we want one in the country, we have to build.

Here is our current pick.

It's called "The Winslow."

I'm not a fan of the size: 2,500 square feet. Our current house is 1,850 and that's plenty of space for me to have to dust and vacuum. BUT, the extra square footage results in a living room AND a den, meaning that I can have my own quiet place in the living room full of books, and JB and the kids can watch the TV drone on for hours in the den. Or they can play nerf tag. Or whatever. I don't care. Just don't come in the living room unless you are going to do a quiet activity.

Here are some example interior shots from the Winslow's company:

Looks pretty fancy-pants to me. A little too new looking for my interests, but I'm sure we could break it in in no time.

So on cold dreary days when the sun has gone off to play somewhere else, and the sounds of Modern Warfare 2 are wafting through the house, this is what I think about.

We'll see what God's got up his sleeve for us. Even if it's not The Winslow, hopefully it'll be a place with more yard, lots of sun, and some dreamy shade trees.

Baby Casanova

2010-02-16T14:01:00.003-05:00

Olivia got her first kiss the other day.

Sister Annie responded that "she gets more action than me!" Sorry, sister. If you want to come to the library with us the next time you visit, perhaps you'd have some luck, too. ;)

Olivia and I were at our weekly visit to the EGR library, a land filled with toys and fun. There were 10-15 little kids playing around at the various stations. Olivia likes to just walk around it all a lot, stopping momentarily to talk to a child who interests her, or to try to take an interesting toy from that interesting child. So I spend my time walking closely behind her so that I may teach her that it's not okay to take toys from others, etc.

O had tried playing with a girl her same size (and perhaps age) with bright red hair. She first started chattering to her when they were near the fishtank. O just strode right up to her and strung off a mouthful of jibberjabber. The girl was nonplussed. She gave O a blank stare, so O shrugged her off and moved on. Poor O! She was trying to make a friend!

Later O spotted her again and tried to strike up some fun. But upon Olivia's arrival at the girl's table, the redhead scooped up all the toys within reach and hoarded them to herself, giving Olivia a meanish look. She didn't like sharing, I guess.

My girl got up and was walking by the ice cream stand when a little boy (about 3ish, who I later heard addressed as Jack) said to his mom, "Look, a beebee!" (Even though there were a few other little beebees there, too, but perhaps they weren't in his peripheral.)

The Bird kept cruising until she stopped at a little table with a wooden puzzle on it. She has three of these at home and really enjoys them. Immediately the little boy comes over to see the puzzle, too.

I had crouched down to help O identify the animals on it. The boy named every animal I pointed to, such as the alligator and giraffe. Another girl came over to be part of the fun, too. I think I was the only adult interacting with the children. Parents of older toddlers were sitting on comfy chairs and reading, trusting their children to practice the manners they had been taught. Parents of little kids were hovering in the background in various parts of the library, but not as closely as I was to O. Maybe I'm just anal about my kid treating others nicely. So I think when the kids saw a grownup talking and playing with THEM, it looked pretty exciting.

As we were playing with the wooden puzzle, O tried to pick up some puzzle pieces to check out. The little boy started talking to her and suddenly smiled and said, "Nice beebee! I'm going to give her a kiss!" I wasn't sure whether to let him or not, for fear of the communicable diseases they could share, such as INFLUENZA and wretched COLDS. Fortunately he kissed her forehead, and not her lips.

Olivia didn't think it was a very big deal, as everyone she knows kisses her all the time. Right after he did that, the redheaded girl comes out of nowhere and snatches the elephant puzzle piece right from under them and runs for it. The boy took off to regain the lost toy, and that was the last we saw of him.

I don't know what his fascination with Olivia was, though considering the surly nature of the redheaded "beebee," perhaps Olivia's general happiness was like a breath of fresh air to that kid. Or, perhaps he kisses ALL the beebees he sees, and O is just another forehead on his list.

Pants on the Ground

2010-02-11T20:57:00.004-05:00

Today I was sitting on the Can (aka The Throne) when I heard a loud crash come from Olivia's room. A loud crash that sounded a lot like her bookcase tipping over.

Then I heard O cry out for me for about two seconds. "Aaaaggghh!!"

I hurriedly tried to finish what I was doing so I could come to her rescue. As I was trying to make myself decent, there was silence. I thought it was one of those baby screams where the kid is holding their breath before they let out an ear curdling wail. But no cry came, so this made me wonder if she got knocked out or something.

I dashed across the hall to her room to see the bookcase fallen on its face, toys strewn around it and sticking out from under it hapharzadly, and the yellow lamp crashed on the floor. I was wondering where Olivia was when I noticed a little baby leg and shoe-clad foot, sticking out from under the bookcase.

It wasn't moving.

It was like that famous scene from Munchkin-land. I was half expecting the foot to curl up and pull itself under the bookcase, leaving the little polkadot shoe behind.

"Was she unconscious?" I wondered.

Turns out she was just waiting patiently for me to come help her.

"I'm sorry, Olivia!" I said as I pulled the bookcase off of her.

As soon as the case was lifted, the little girl sat up and looked at me very calmly and a little dazed. I scanned her for blood or wooden puzzle pieces embedded in her skull, and as there didn't seem to be any major damage, I told her that I had to return to the bathroom to wash my hands and then I'd come see her. (Afterall, a little girl who has an accident like that would need lots of cuddling and rocking, I would imagine.)

She came to her gated doorway and voiced her protest as I soaped my hands. She soon shrugged me off as a lost cause and returned to the room to continue playing.

Excuse me, baby, but you just pulled a bookcase onto yourself that is taller than you, and you aren't even scared? Upset? Nervous about going near it again?

You're just gonna go back to playing???

Yes, apparently the lamp on the floor needed investigating, and crying and carrying on got in the way of such serious play.

I'm thinking about entering her in a Baby Toughman Contest...

Bird Update

2010-01-25T20:20:00.007-05:00

Baby Olivia saw Dr. Hofman today for her 15-month checkup, so I thought I'd post a little update.

Dr. Hofman said that, "She's the best one out there!" and said that I could share that.

So there. He DOES think she's the best baby ever (but probably after his own kids and grandkids, naturally--though he didn't clarify that...).

She's taller than the average 2-year-old. And not quite that heavy, but close enough. He gave her a clean bill of health.

On the home front, she has become a very busy girl: walking, almost-running, playing with her toys, playing with Daddy, playing with the doggie, dancing, trying to talk, etc.

Here's what she's been up to.

Hanging with JB:

Channeling her inner Axl Rose:

Reading (she dons all these headpieces on her own):

And shaking' her booty (she prefers to dance w/o audiences, so I had to sneak up on her):

My Mom says she gets those moves from her, and I believe her. Because I didn't teach her any of this, and she's never seen it on TV.

Haiti

2010-01-17T09:21:00.005-05:00

When I got on the internets this morning (in lieu of going to church, as O has a cold and I cannot let her share her germs and snot with the other babies at church) I had intended to post about my sewing endeavors.

But then CNN and a few of my fellow bloggers have dissuaded me.

I am very, very sad about the situation in Haiti.

Yes, catastrophes happen all the time, all over the world. The world is FULL of suffering EVERY DAY.

But Haiti was already full of people who were suffering, and now they've got a double serving. And what really makes me sad is the children and orphans who are there. The children and orphans who do not even have clean water to drink. An adult who finds himself without water can at least understand why, and maybe even take steps to get water. But kids don't understand. They just know that they're thirsty and hungry and they don't feel good. They did not ask to be born into such abject poverty or uncleanliness. They were just happily playing in their scrappy surroundings when one day the earth shakes, and now they have nothing.

Then this morning I read about 10 children still trapped in the rubble of a home as of Saturday. Kids! Trapped underneath rubble for DAYS. The workers could still hear their voices in there, faint as they were getting.

Yesterday NPR aired an interview with a man who was trapped with his colleagues under a collapsed building for 50 hours. I thought to myself, "50 hours??? I would have lost my mind by then." But 50 hours is lucky compared to those kids in the house.

And then there are the families in the U.S. who are adopting children from Haiti. Some of them do not know if their children are still alive. What if baby Olivia had been born and living in Haiti, and we finally got to pick her out for our own and just had to wait, and then the earth shakes and we have no idea if she's alive? Or worse yet, we hear from the orphanage that she is alive, but there is no food or water. And she's hungry and thirsty and sad. And we can't do anything to help her. She's just walking around that orphanage listlessly, looking for a drink, when there is none.

So any of you big-rollers, please give cashola to help the Haitians. Red Cross is a good place. Or pick from this list.

And you praying types, pray for Haiti and those kids. Well, pray however the Spirit leads you. But I feel really sad for all the baby Olivia's over there right now.

Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world.

(Please pray for my baby friends in Haiti!)

Guess who?

2010-01-08T21:11:00.005-05:00

Tonight as I was searching for something else I stumbled upon this photo:

Holy crap! Either my Mom got some botox done, or Olivia went back in time to 1979! I look so cute I want to hug me! It is sooo weird to see my likeness in someone else.

Here is an actual photo of Mom and Olivia. Yep, O has my hair (and my Mom's)--sorry, O!

And Marian and Olivia, where you can see the side profile likeness.

On a related note, my mom saw this photo in an album that my cousin Bonnie made for Granny for Christmas. Mom said, "How did you get that photo of me and April??"

(To give her credit, back in the day she did have a shirt exactly like this one...)

Wool Felt Goodness

2010-01-04T19:41:00.005-05:00

As I've already posted, I made a lot of stuff to give as Christmas presents this year.

Two things I made that I now have photographs of are a Spring table runner for Marian, and a felt tea cosy for Marian's birthday on New Year's Eve.

The table runner was designed by JB, so I'm very proud to showcase it here, because I think that JB is very talented and was thrilled that he was inspired to do this. It took two months from start to finish, and it felt good to complete it. It is all handsewn and creating the pattern with proper dimensions took some time. The flower stems themselves took three hours to sew, if you want an idea of how long it took. So no, I will not make one for you, no matter who you are! :) It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing (famous last words), but I may make the pattern printable/sharable. I may even try to sell the pattern, but really, who wants to spend nearly two months sewing a runner?? It's worth a try:

We even got really creative and made the tongues be the dirt, with the bulb flowers having bulbs, and the other flowers having roots:

Earlier this year Marian saw a cool wool Jan Constantine tea cosy in a British magazine (love that British style!) and I tore that magazine page out, thinking I could make her one. I mean, I could have bought her one: for $164!!! No, not sixty four. ONE HUNDRED and sixty four dollars. But that's a little out of my price range.

I checked out her website and JB was really interested in her Americana ones, so we did a hybrid version of two of hers and came up with this (we didn't use pure wool, because that's where part of the $164 comes from):

which Marian loved.

And then demonstrated how it is not a hat, contrary to the popular story!

So now I'm kicking around making things to sell on Etsy, such as cool felt tea cosies. But not this one. Because it's probably considered a Jan Constantine rip off and if she can charge $164 for one tea cosy, she probably has enough bankroll to fly her lawyer across the ocean to pay me a visit.

I have one original pattern idea up my sleeve. However, I have also declared this year to take my "crafting sabbatical." Not Quilting sabbatical (because who in their right mind would give that up?) but Crafting. So the only sewing I wish to do this year will revolve around quilts. This means no homemade Christmas presents. Sorry, guys. Mama's tired.

This means that I'm not sure when I'll make these tea cosies for Etsy. But one day, when my faithful unemployment runs out, it may just happen...

Christmas Part III

2010-01-04T19:38:00.001-05:00

After our Berkley Bonanza we hiked north to Mayberry for our part of Teague Christmas. I was pumped to give my family all my homemade gifts. JB was tired. Olivia was FLIPPED.

We got there ahead of the other car of Teagues, so it was just Aunt Annie and us for a little bit. Which was perfect for Olivia, who loves Aunt Annie, and who also needed some quiet times. So Annie changed O and put her in her jams and the little girl started to feel a little better.

Then we opened presents. I made something for everyone this year except for Dad, who got fishing gear. I cannot make fishing gear. Though I did give him and Mom a copy of the Les Cheneaux calendar that I'm in. So that was kind of homemade.

Anyway, I did not take photos of everything, but here are some of the things that I made:

Okay, so I didn't make the French drawing on the left that Annie got. But I did dig it out of a pile of art at an estate sale and took the time to go back the next day when everything was 50% off. I think my favorite thing I made for Teagues was Tommy's MSU Vernor's picture in the middle there. I self-matted a double mat for that sucker. And I like it so much I'm going to make one for myself! I also made Mom an upholstered cushion for her kitchen bench, and matted for Krystal a photo I took of our beloved pet, Reba.

Present breakdown: Again, too much to name, but most memorable gifts were a mega-giftcard from Tommy to my favorite quilting shop, Smith-Owen. He was sneaky and picked it up when he was in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago. I had no idea he did that. V. cool! K embroidered each of us a pillowcase that she (er, MOM) made. K does beautiful embroidery. And since my old purse was dead (I bought it over six years ago when I was in Nashville for cousin Sarah's wedding!), JB and Annie put their dollars (and Anne's Macy's discount) together and got me this:

(Note also the new MSU shirt, and the cool Christmas tree that we picked out of Mom and Dad's front yard a few weeks ago. I think it was a Norwegan Pine. Very good branches for hanging ornaments.)

After presents were opened and Olivia went to bed, it was game time. Our last game of the night was Apples to Apples, which by that time, our Czechoslavakian maid, Rachel, was there to play.

Some quotes:

Krystal : "I think Abraham Lincoln was ugly!"
Tommy, looking at K: "People have told me that I look like Abraham Lincoln."

"If you pick Broadway, the terrorists win!"

"I did not tie a couch to my back!! It was a (upholstered) chair!" (True Story.)

And of course, as many family conversations tend to do, the talk came around to bodily functions. Don't everyone's family conversations do this?

So a few hilarious stories were told, causing tears to come to our eyes.

Then it was my turn to pull out a card for people to choose a definition for: Nasty.

The entries were thrown into the middle of the table and I picked them up and flipped them over, revealing two "fill-in-the-blank" cards. Anne shouted out, "FECES!" for her entry. Tommy couldn't top that one, I thought. But I didn't give him enough credit, as he said, "Dad's horseshoe-shaped turd!"

No contest.

"Tommy's feces wins!" I said.

Hope you all had a wonderful, horseshoe-shaped-turdless Christmas!

Bye!

2009-12-29T09:41:00.004-05:00

This morning I walked into Olivia's room to check on her and get a Kleenex. She had been playing by herself (well, with Lucy, too) for a while and usually if she doesn't see me for a while she starts calling for me. So I thought I'd anticipate her needs and say Hi.

When I came in she was busy trying to climb into her little wooden rocking chair that had belonged to her Grandpa Mark when he was little. I watched as she climbed into the little rocker all by herself, holding a thick boardbook the whole time. It was a difficult ordeal, not dropping the book and maneuvering into a rocking chair while wearing slippery fleece pajamas. There was a bit of grunting and heavy breathing involved, but she managed it.

As she leaned back in the chair (very chill looking), with book in hand, and looking pleased with herself, I clapped and praised her. Ignoring this, she grabbed my pant leg and pushed it toward the door, saying in her sweet but firm baby voice, "Bye!... Bye!" I was nonplussed but she maintained her stance until I got the clue and started to leave.

Apparently reading time is a solitary activity.

AMENDMENT: I just returned from her room and apparently doing business is a solitary activity.

Christmas Part II

2009-12-28T22:42:00.005-05:00

We put a lot of miles on my Grand Prix in order to celebrate Christmas Parts II and III. Olivia was not pleased. She broke down in the car twice, sobbing so hard that she was choking. JB thought she really was choking on something, but I told him that she was just that upset. Poor bird! We had subjected her to several days of parties with no down time. I don't think we should do that anymore.

On our way to Berkley, we stopped at MSU to exchange the sweatshirt that I had gotten, as it was too small. Are college students shrinking or something? I do appreciate that the women's clothing is slim fitting, as to look feminine, but we do need room to fit our bodies into the clothes, people!

So we ended up buying more MSU gear. Our old stuff was 10 years old and ratty.

But even more exciting than that was having lunch at Pancheros.

Best. Burritos. Ever.

JB and I love burritos and have gone to several burrito restaurants. None compare to Pancheros.

Then we hit the road for Berkley, where my Aunt Carol was hosting a Fraser get-together. There were seven people 6-years-old and under there, and it was quite entertaining watching the kids open their presents. But the best moment did not come until Granny was opening her giant gift that everyone went in on.

A little background on Granny: She saves everything. And she loves cardinals.

And her mega-gift was covered in cardinal wrapping paper.

Each piece of tape was carefully pulled away, so that she could keep the glorious paper. The Frasers are used to this. That's why Granny opens her gifts last. My brother has often said that any gifts for Granny should be wrapped using one piece of tape, so that when she removes that one piece, the paper will fall down around the present and her work will be done. No one has perfected that strategy yet.

Well, my cousin's daughter Pepper, who is a few months older than Olivia, was feeling sad about something. As she walked by Granny and the cardinal paper, my Mom suggested, "Hey Pepper, why don't you help Granny open her present?" in an effort to cheer her up. But Pepper was not interested. The two boys, Rex and Ivan, did not hear the part where Mom was addressing Pepper. All they heard was "...why don't you help Granny open her present?"

They roared with excitement and pounced upon the present. We were all laughing our butts off except for Granny, who was not having it. Here is a breakdown:

Ivan and Rex, roaring, roaring, grabbing at the paper: "Aaaggghhh!! Raaaaah Raaaaah!!"

Granny, swatting, "No! Stop! That's MY present!"

Audience members: "Ivan, Rex, stop! Granny wants to open it herself!"

Other audience members: "Go on, help her! You can do it!"

Aunt Carol: "Mom, I'll give you the roll of cardinal paper!"

Granny won the battle in the end (has Granny ever NOT won a battle?), and resumed careful unwrapping of her new large flat screen HDTV.

I think this is her first new TV since the Carter era. Seriously. Her TV is one of those old floor models without a remote control. Uncle TJ said they were taking bets on whether Granny will get a new TV stand or just set the new TV on top of the old one. I gathered that they got her the new TV because she was having trouble with the digital conversion. Aunt Carol told Granny that she won't have to throw her converter through the cable company's window now, but Granny said that she's still gonna do it. Granny kicks ass.

And I didn't take a single photo because I was too busy visiting with people. So you'll just have to take my word for it!

Christmas Part I

2009-12-28T22:09:00.009-05:00

Since we did so much over the Christmas holiday, I'm blogging about it in a few parts.

Part I is what we did first: Hunt Christmas.

It started on the Sunday before Christmas, with Grandma and Grandpa's annual Carol Sing party. There were around 24 people there, including some talented musicians to accompany our singing. There were a handful of children there, but the one I remember best is a little boy from our church named John. Well, he's not really little. He's like 9 or 10. He was very sweet and really enamored with Olivia. Every time Olivia started to fall as she practiced walking, he would try to catch her and keep her safe. I told her that it was okay if she fell, but he didn't believe me.

John and his brother Lars were shooting a nerf gun type thing and laughing as Olivia laughed when all the balls shot out. John said many entertaining things, best of which were, "Olivia is an awesome baby. Most babies don't like me, but she plays with me." And, looking at me, "Olivia looks like you," and then, turning to JB, "But she doesn't look like you." Pause. "Except for her red eyebrows." (Out of the mouth of babes--she's going to have red hair!! :) )

On Christmas Eve we were back at G&G's for dinner. I wasn't sure we were going to make it because freezing rain had been coming down all afternoon. Many many churches had canceled their evening services and the cars were covered in ice. But we made it! After dinner we hung out while we waited to go the church's midnight service. Olivia provided some entertainment:

The midnight service is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. The chapel is filled with candles and we sing all the good hymns with our awesome choir. We have a great new worship leader at Thornapple and apparently the service this year was excellent, according to Grandma and Marian. I cannot vouch for this because JB, O, and I did not go.

...please pardon me while I wipe the tears from my eyes...

JB and I had to admit to ourselves that we cannot do everything we used to do, now that Olivia is in our lives. She was not doing well by 10:15, even after I had tried to get her to go to bed until we had to leave for church. She was too riled up to sleep in a new place. On top of that I was feeling like crud (I got better!) and JB was exhausted. So we went back to the Hilton and went to bed. We were really bummed about missing the service.

But THEN, we woke up, and it was CHRISTMAS! Jesus had been born in the night and it was time to celebrate.

We celebrated with a hot fire in the woodstove, Mark's famous delicious eggnog, a cute baby in her green velour leisure suit, egg souffle, family, happy dogs, and by singing Joy to the World.

Oh, and with PRESENTS.

Here is the tree. It looked larger when it didn't have presents under it. Then it got dwarfed as we started putting boxes under it.

I love giving presents more than getting. I love taking several months to think of the perfect gift for someone and then making it happen, which often involves me making it. I did a lot of making this Christmas but foolishly forgot to photograph my creations.

I made Austin some recipe cards. For Grandma's birthday earlier this year I had self-matted (double mat with two openings--hard!) a fringed gentian photo of mine and included a gentian poem that someone had written out for Grandma. For Christmas we got it framed and it turned out beautifully. Then JB and I put our creative heads together and made a Spring felt table runner for Marian. It has flowers on it with bunnies jumping over the flowers. And it has a sun. And the flowers have roots and bulbs. Lots of sewing. It's folk-art-looking. JB created the pattern, and then I sewed it. It took 2 months from start to finish. Eee! But it was fun. Maybe one day I'll remember to take a picture of it.

Olivia, JB, and I were blessed with many wonderful gifts. Here is Olivia on her Rody horse from Austin and Lauren, wearing the hat that Grandma Hunt knit for her. I got a matching hat. We're totally stylin'.

Okay, so I'll name some of my presents. MSU hooded sweatshirt (I've never had a nice one!). Custom shades for our front living room windows. Friendly Village pattern tea set. Turquoise earrings. Folksy vase from Colonial Williamsburg. iTunes. L.L. Bean cardigan. Lotto tickets (not winners, but I had fun scratching them!)

JB, O, and I enjoyed ourselves. We went home and packed our bags for rounds 2 and 3 of Christmas, which I'll publish later... :)

(The driveway on Christmas morning:

We were very concerned about Grandma and Grandpa making it into the house safely, so Austin went out to assist. Our elders made it in just fine, but Austin's feet slipped out from under him and he bit it hard. But he's okay.)

Birthday Goodness

2009-12-06T21:54:00.009-05:00

Saturday was my birthday.

I love looking forward to my birthday, and it's not because of presents! When we were little my Mom said that we couldn't start decorating for Christmas until my birthday came (even though this did not mean that we would be getting a tree that soon. Trees were reserved for the last minute of Dec 23 or 24). So for me, celebrating my birthday symbolizes the approach of Christmas.

Then when I married my part-Dutch husband, I learned that for the Dutch, my birthday IS Christmas! Aka Sinterklaas Day. Children put their wooden shoes by the fireplace in hopes that Sinterklaas will leave them a present for being good. Ambitious children leave hay and carrots in their shoes for Sinterklaas' horses, which results in a thank-you treat being left.

(If you want a humorous take on this Dutch holiday and Sinterklaas' strange habits (like summering in Spain) listen to David Sedaris' essay, "Six to Eight Black Men". I promise you'll laugh out loud at least once. There's also a humorous bit on Michigan hunters in there.)

So on this Sinterklaas Day, we went to Meijer Gardens to see the Holidays Around the World exhibit, which includes several Christmas trees decorated the way different nations do it. While they had an England and Ireland tree, there is no Scotland tree. Fail, MG!

Mark and Marian treated us to lunch at the Gardens, where I had never dined before. Who wouldn't enjoy mushroom and artichoke salad? Weirdos. Oh, and JB. So he got something else.

Then JB made me a FAB dinner of a favorite I share with Garfield: lasagna. JB made Emeril's lasagna. BAM! The Hunts came over to help celebrate, and Marian brought me a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Oh, and did I mention that I didn't have to manage Olivia while I ate dinner? Mega bonus.

And the birthday fun just kept continuing.

For there were presents (in addition to the dozens of texts, phone calls, and FB messages wishing me a happy day)!

Top presents:

Membership renewal at Meijer Gardens for JB and I (one adult admission is $12, so a membership to get in for free anytime is awesome!)

Art-deco topaz earrings

Money

Toppest present:

Yes, there is a toppest present.

JB said he was going overboard on a Christmas/Birthday present, which totally blows the budget.

Wanna know?

Here are some clues:

I'M GOING TO SEE MIRANDA LAMBERT AND BRAD PAISLEY IN CONCERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love going to concerts and haven't been to see a lot of my favorite acts because it is so expensive. Each summer I cry and cry when the wonderful concerts come to the county fairs, etc., and leave again, while I stay at home.

Then when I learned that my two faves (after Keith Urban and Alison Krauss), Brad Paisley and MIRANDA LAMBERT were coming to town for a show in January, I was quite dejected. They will come and rock out without me.

But not any more! I am v. v. excited.

Thank you, JB!!!!!

Olive and the Prickly Pear

2009-12-02T12:17:00.006-05:00

Those of you who have interacted with Olivia know that she doesn’t cry. Ever.

She fell down the side entry stairs the other day (okay, so it’s only 4 steps!) and let out a cry/yell until I came to her rescue; then she was fine. She stepped off the bench in Mom’s kitchen and hit the hard tile floor. No crying. She climbs onto the dogs while they maniacally wrestle with each other, snarling teeth bared. No fear.

So last weekend when she cried on and off for over and hour, even breaking out in hives, I knew that something was wrong.

We were in Mayville the Friday after Thanksgiving. Dad and JB were fixing my car in the barn. (THANK YOU, Dad!!—I had needed a new pump for my windshield wiper fluid. He just happened to have a spare laying around. Who does that?? My Dad. He’s awesome. Well, it also helps to drive the same kind of car as the rest of the family, too.)

Mom, K, Annie, O and I were in the kitchen. O was standing at the sliding doors, watching the birds, etc. Then she cruises (yes, she’s cruising now!) quietly over to the table on which sits Dad's giant blooming Christmas cactus and a pair of binoculars. She was interested in the binoculars, and as the Christmas cactus isn't that sharp, us girls let her continue to play while we talked. We failed to notice the prickly pear cactus living in the pot, too, which Liv did NOT fail to notice. So she grabbed it with her pudgy little left hand.

A million little fiberglass-like splinters embedded themselves into her hand. In the palm. Between her fingers. All over her thumb. Everywhere.

Sad, sad bird.

She cried and cried. We tried all sorts of remedies. She tried so hard to be brave. She would stop crying, and then reach her hand out for a toy, and it would hurt again and she would cry again. After trying lip wax (getting some of the pokers out) and soaking her hand in warm water (fail—baby uncooperative), I took her to the barn to get some duct tape from Dad at Mom’s suggestion. Dad agreed on the remedy and said to make little balls for her to grab in her hands that would pull the pickers out.

So we did that. A few times. And got most, if not all, out..

Unfortunately her hand was still sore from the poking of the needles. So she still cried some more.

But then Grandpa got out the spinning top and all woes were forgotten. Who can cry when there’s fun to be had in Toptown??

Weekend Update

2009-11-30T22:54:00.006-05:00

We had a fun Thanksgiving weekend! Well, I did. JB had a horrible cold and lost his voice. Olivia had a run-in with a cactus. Lucy and I made out all right, though. :)

We spent Thursday-Friday in Mayberry.

Mom got to do what she loves best: play with her grandbabies:

Ten people came to Thanksgiving. We had 5 pies. That's a half pie each. Friday morning there was 1.25 pies left. We did our duty!

We did a Christmas photoshoot with baby Lilian, who is not accustomed to the camera like Liv:

O tried on her first pair of high heels:

Then when nightfall came Mom plugged in her lightshow. Tommy asked if she had called Consumer's Electric to see if they had enough ampage to power her display. She did not, but no power outages were reported as a result of her Christmas spirit. She lit up the whole front of her wraparound porch. And then a LARGE evergreen tree for each of her kids: she has 7 (I didn't count the trees, but it seemed like that many). And then the massive pine tree. And she had run out of time to do her MSU tree with the green and white lights that were sitting on the kitchen counter.

It wasn't until after she lit them all up that she decided she should redo the lights on the massive pine. She reflected that perhaps standing 20 feet off the ground in the bucket loader with a long pool-cleaning stick in one hand and a string of lights in the other, calling down instructions to a deaf old man who was driving the machine and had been drinking his share of spirits, would result more in a Drunkard's Tree than in a Christmas Tree. I am sorry that I did not get photos of this. I do not have a good tripod (it's on my Christmas list, hint, hint!) so it would not have worked anyway.

After returning home, we put up THREE Christmas trees (one for us, one for Olivia, and then we helped G&G set up their decorations). And outside lights. And I enjoyed a great Advent service at church while JB lay in bed, miserable.

We are officially in the Christmas spirit, yo!

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T23:38:00.008-05:00

Real chefs don't make this just for Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving, all, and may you truly be thankful for all of your blessings.

God DOES bless America, our home sweet home!

Read with Me!

2009-11-25T11:39:00.004-05:00

Back in 2003 the BBC conducted a poll on reader's favourite books. This list, the BBC Big Read Top 100, has been circulating the internets since it's inception in 2003. As the poll was conducted in Britain, it's no surprise that about 60 of the books are Brittish.

There are scads of "best book" lists out there, but this one had the most titles that I am honestly interested in. Maybe it's because I like British tales.

Apparently the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of these 100 books. When I first received the list, I had read only 14 or 15. I shared the list with JB, who ticked off 35 titles himself. Goody two-shoes!

I am an avid reader but when I tried to read classics in high school, I was BORED. I preferred my detective novels, thank you. So I never gave them another try. I didn't really believe that many people actually liked these stories and that they just raved about them so that they'd look smart and trendy. You know, like people who rave about "classic" black and white movies that in reality have light plotlines and so-so acting (Gone With the Wind excluded!!).

In 7th grade I did read all 1036 pages of Gone With the Wind of my own choosing. I loved it. My English teacher, Mr. Coopes, then assigned me to read To Kill a Mockingbird, believing I'd enjoy another Southern tale. After page 3 I was dreadfully bored and refused to read it. I took an E on the assignment. Nobody tells ME what to read! After that I left everyone else to their classics while I read REAL books, like Nancy Drew.

Then when JB and I were living with Grandma and Grandpa Hunt (during the Calvin restoration) I saw To Kill a Mockingbird on one of their bookshelves. It had a cool cover and I was itching to read, so I cracked it open.

And couldn't put it down.

How had I ever thought that this book was BORING??? Probably because I was a child. I don't think that teenagers can really get most classics.

Ever since then I've been interested in classic books but as there are so many, I never knew where to start.

JB and I are working our way through this BBC list together. Only I'm the only one that has started. Then again, maybe he's just waiting for me to catch up to him.

My sister Annie has graciously lent me several of her classics from this list, dubbing it my "winter reading." Annie, I won't let you down!

Here's the full list, for any of you fellow readers who care to see where you stack up and perhaps even read along with me! (I've bolded the ones I've read. I've started several others, but they don't count until I read the last page!)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (JB has read this, but I shall not)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Mitch is too self-important, so I'm not reading this one, either.)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Peacemaker

2009-11-19T09:46:00.004-05:00

In celebration of JB's new job, I made him a sweet dinner when he got home from his first day. Well, I often make a sweet dinner, because I'm cool like that, but as we had just seen the movie Julie and Julia last Saturday, I was inspired to channel my inner Julia Child and make something super good.

So I donned my pearl necklace and raided my butter stores.

And made Chicken Archduke, with carrots and mashed potatoes on the side. For dessert, I made Chocolate Cream Pie (not Julia's recipe, though--didn't find it).

After a flurry of preparations (because my pie recipe did not include cooking times so I had no idea how long it would take, causing me to make dessert and dinner at the same time), we sat down to eat.

Woah.

That was the best chicken I have ever eaten.

I licked every bit of sauce off of my plate. It was so tasty that I have dubbed it The Peacemaker.

If you have someone in your life who you just can't seem to get along with, or who is unwilling to forgive you a wrong, make this meal for them. I guarantee that they'll fall in love with you and completely forget what they were mad at you about.

Conversely, if you have someone you'd like to see dead, but are concerned that the presence of arsenic or other poisonous substances found in their bloodstream would cast unwelcome suspicion on you, make this meal for them. Every day. For a week. It's that rich. (And if you're lucky, on about day 2 or 3 of your plan, your target will be so enamored with you that they will rewrite their will to give you EVERYTHING and will tell the whole world how AMAZING you are, thus giving authorities no reason to suspect you whatsoever in the untimely death.)

BTW, any chocolate cream pie recipe will do. I had never had chocolate cream pie before, and I loved it so much that I ate the last piece for breakfast the next morning. I didn't mean to. I meant to just have one bite. Until there were no bites left. I love it so much I'm making it for Thanksgiving.

Without further ado, may I present The Peacemaker (it's not as difficult to make as you may think):

CHICKEN BREASTS ARCHDUKE

4 T butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 T paprika
4 - 6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1/4 cup chicken stock (broth)
1/4 cup dry vermouth or white wine
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish

Heat the butter in a skillet large enough to hold the chicken in a single layer. Sauté the onions until tender but not brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in the paprika. Lightly brown the chicken in the butter mixture, about 2 minutes per side. Place the skillet in a preheated 400° F. oven until the chicken is firm to the touch, about 6 to 8 minutes. Remove the chicken and keep warm. Add the chicken broth and vermouth or wine to the skillet and reduce over high heat until the liquid is almost evaporated. Add the cream and reduce until the sauce has thickened slightly. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and garnish with chopped parsley. Serves 4 to 6.

From Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1), by Julia Child et al, Random House, 1989

Happy Birthday Tommy!

2009-11-13T09:03:00.008-05:00

It's my brother's birthday today. Every few years it falls on Friday the 13th. Ooooh! Spooky!

I remember when we were living in the Lapeer house and our cat ran away from home. It was an outdoors cat, so I don't know why we were so surprised when he took off. I was sooo sad about it! For days I waited for that cat to come home.

Then Tommy's birthday came. On Friday the 13th. And we were all getting ready for his birthday party when the neighbor calls to say he found our cat. Or something like that. I was little. I just remember that after Mom got off the phone with someone, she said that our cat was found. So that Friday the 13th was actually a LUCKY day.

Hopefully this was another lucky one for you, brother!

In honor of his birthday, I did a Mohawk photo shoot with Olivia and Lucy for his birthday card. Unfortuately Lucy's 'hawk did not translate well onto film. Oh well!

As soon as I gave my name to the girl at the photo counter at Walgreens, where I was picking up my prints, she said, "I LOVE the mohawk photos! They are so cool!" Then she went on to tell me that she did the same thing with her son (who is same age as O) and how her fiance went bananas over them. He insisted that they be made into 8x10's and framed.

What can I say? Mohawks are awesome.

And mohawks on babies are priceless.

Here are some gems from the photo shoot. I hope you got your card already, brother, so that this doesn't spoil the surprise. But I couldn't wait any longer to post!!:

Getting started:

"Mother, are we doing ANOTHER photo shoot? Seriously. If you make me do another one of these I swear I'm going to feed Piglet to the dog."
"You shall put the camera down and stack blocks with me instead!"

The one baby and dog shot. Lucy was kind of nervous about sitting in a rocking chair. She had been even more nervous at the sound of hairspray being dispensed into her fur. She is so obedient!

Reflections in being a caged baby...

Oh, crap. Now that I've busted all my friends out of jail, who's gonna get ME out??

You know it's hard out here for a punk...

Best Parents Ever

2009-11-10T10:01:00.005-05:00

I know that all of my blogs these days are about Olivia. And for those of you without children, it's probably a drag. I am sorry. You can judge me. I'd judge you if you did the same. :)

But, well, Olivia is entertaining to me. And I'm not in a writing season right now. I'm in a "crafting for Christmas" season, which means that witty stories are collecting dust in the recesses of my mind, while I am busy sewing and gluing. There's always something to keep me from writing, isn't there?

So last night was Bath Night for the Bird. JB is the appointed bather, so I can have a break from that silly girl. I brought O upstairs while JB checked his internets. I closed the shades in her room. I picked up her toys. I got out her pajamas. I got out her towel. Then I came into the office to tell JB that everything was ready.

However, JB wasn't ready. So he did not take up watching duties right away. And I had mentally checked out, so I assumed that JB would watch her and I forgot all about her.

Everything was quiet until we heard wimpering in the bathroom. Olivia does not cry. Even when she fell down the side entry stairs last week, she barely cried. Instead, she wimpers. I can't exactly spell out the sound, but it was "Uhh...help, please...uhhh...I'm stuck and I don't know what to do...uhhhh..."

JB sprung up from his chair and raced to the bathroom, and upon arrival, hollered for me to make haste. I was quick on my feet, with my camera in tow.

This is what we saw:

Yes, Olivia had gotten stuck half-in, half-out of the bathtub.

Yes, that is the toilet brush next to her foot, and the brush's holder in the tub.

Yes, those were her toys until she half-fell into the tub.

Yes, JB and I are the best parents ever.

I can't stop laughing...

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T21:58:00.005-04:00

How'd this puppy get in our house?

...and make friends with Lucy!?

Wait, I know who that is! It's an Olivia-puppy!

(Look at those molars! More are on the way...)

Get Well Card

2009-10-21T22:18:00.002-04:00

Get Well Card
Originally uploaded by fire starter 100

For all my Mayvillian readers. May you have better luck with the rats...

Putting things In

2009-10-13T17:00:00.003-04:00

One of Olivia’s new pastimes is to put things into something else. Placing her graduated plastic cups into one another, collecting her alphabet magnets into a pot to make alphabet soup, putting shapes into the Tupperware Shape-O Toy at Mark and Marian’s house, etc. Until I realized how much she did this, I had some trouble locating some of her toys. I had begun to think I was losing my mind one night, as I was certain that I brought her Weebles into the kitchen for her to play with. But they were nowhere. I eventually found them in my large dutch oven pot. In the lazy susan.

This afternoon I was trying to get some craft time in. I usually do it in the morning during O’s 40 minutes of Sesame Street, but was too busy today.

My goal was to cut one rectangle out of a piece of material. ONE RECTANGLE, people.

In that very short period of time, Olivia covered a lot of ground. She read a few books aloud in the living room. Then she crawled over to the large crock that sits by the fireplace. It looked like just the kind of thing to put things in to. So she crawled back to her pile of toys, and brought over a few things that went into the crock. (Note to self: when I can’t find a certain toy of Olivia’s, look in crock.)

Then she came into the dining room where I was working. She tried reaching a ceramic chicken on a shelf (she's pulling herself up now). Realizing that it was too high, she set her sights on the red ceramic pot of mums. Too high again. Take THAT, curious baby! Then she crawled under the dining room table to do her daily grunting alone, where I couldn't see her. (Do anyone else’s kids do that? Go to a quiet place to take a crap?)

Once that was done, she was off again. I had finished cutting the third side of the rectangle when I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting in the kitchen, next to the dog bowl. She was waving her hand at me. Her shiny wet hand.

I have been teaching her NOT to splash the dog’s water or eat the dog’s food. So she knows better, and that was why she was looking at me with her hand in the air like that. As if to say, “yes, I put my hands in the water, but you didn’t SEE me doing it, so I’m not in trouble.” I came over and told her no, and that was when I noticed it. The two pink baby socks chilling in Lucy’s water bowl. Olivia had deemed the water bowl worthy of “putting something in” and pulled off her socks, since she didn’t have any toys at hand.

I admire her intelligence, for realizing that you can put something into something, even if something (like water) is already in it.

But I’d really appreciate it if she could wait until craft time is over. My gimpy rectangle is still laying on the table, waiting…

Extreme Dining Room Makeover

2009-10-12T10:05:00.011-04:00

Before I post pics from Olivia's birthday (you'll just have to wait, heh heh heh!), I wanted to share the "Birthday Surprise" that JB and I worked on in preparation for Olivia's and Dad's birthday party. I was motivated to do this after seeing photos of other parties in our dining room, and realizing the sheer ugliness of that room. A dining room should be a focal point, but ours was more of a "try to ignore it" point.

Evidence:

Now, before you start judging me or the previous owners for the stellar color choice, please note that it was a group effort. The purply-mauve trim was from the previous owners, but I picked the blue. Called "animation blue" and it makes me think of Disney. The intent was to strip the oak woodwork at some point. But we never got around to that, and just let the blue walls clash with the purply trim. And neither of those paint jobs were done very nicely to begin with. It was just one big garish blob.

Here it is before I got a hold of Animation Blue. Don't you love the plastic chandelier?:

This was the heat vent. For one thing, 2 wrong vents do not make a right! Secondly, if you're going to have a hole for a heat duct, you might as well have an actual heat duct hooked up to it, and not have a hole that drops straight to the basement. I believe that it was these owners (and not someone before them) who redirected this duct to go somewhere else. WHY????

So, firstly, Mark and Marian got us a lovely register cover for Christmas one year, after we had the heat duct restored:

And THEN, here is the room that Olivia and my Dad got to party in on Saturday! We think it's much better. We painted that lovely green as we listened to MSU school Michigan in our annual football showdown. It felt good to be a Spartan that day. Go Green!

I consider our work to be a small feat, as we did this while dog/house sitting for the in-laws for 2 weeks. So we balanced living at their place and living/painting at ours. Lots of long days, but it's worth it!

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-22T21:45:00.008-04:00

We spent Labor Day weekend up at the cabin. We had vacationed there in July, when it was cold and rainy. When we returned in September, it was bright and sunny and the water was 70 degrees! Weird!

Day 1:

Mark kept throwing a ball far into the bay for Lexi to chase, and then another ball near to the shore for Lucy, who doesn't like going into the water if she can't touch the bottom (she usually just jumps from rock to rock). Most of the time she did not feel that the ball was well-placed enough for her preferences, and would just stand on a rock, staring alternately between the ball and us, as if to say, "You'll have to do better than that."

...and she would do that until Lexi, having fetched her own ball out in the bay, swam back to snatch Lucy's ball, too. Of course, no water is deep enough to keep Lucy from besting Lexi.

O played with Grandma:

and read with Nana:

I took photos of pretty things. Surprised?

That night JB, Grandpa, Mark, Marty Feldhake and I went salmon fishing. Well, I did not fish; I was the staff photographer. No fish were injured in the making of this trip, much probably to PETA's pleasure, but our dismay.

Grandpa and Mark fished from Pooh Bear. The lake was smooth as glass!

JB and I took to the waters in Marty's boat.

Us girls also went shopping in Detour, where Olivia wowed the shoppers and shopkeeper with her love of jewelry. Marian would put a bracelet on Olivia's wrist and Olivia would hold out her arm to admire it. She's a girl through and through!

We also stopped at my favorite jeweler's: Dave's Up North. He seems to have erratic hours, so it was a treat to see him open. Oh, the treasures! There were 3 pendants that I loved, totaling $375. That's affordable, right? :)

All in all, it was a fun first day!

Confessions of a Picky Eater

2009-09-18T19:18:00.003-04:00

My entire life I have been picky. I prefer to call it texture conscious.

As far back as I can recall I've suffered from this affliction. It used to be so extreme that I wouldn't eat bread crust and I would scrap EVERYTHING off of my slice of pizza. While my brother called dibs on crust, I sulked when my food demands were not met. It made my culinary life difficult and as I've aged it has made my diet somewhat less healthy than it should be.

Routinely April comments that she would like me to be around as long as possible while she plies me with a salad. Begrudgingly I've come around to her point of view - if I want to get in better shape, I need to eat better. This means battling my food neuroses. God help me...

I've been attempting to incorporate the strive for five approach suggest by my friend Jessica. And it's rough. I'm actually not too bad with the veggies, it's fruit I've got issues with. Sure the idea of an apple sounds great, but when I get down to it...

A plate of peels and a halfheartedly gnawed core. It's never as easy as I'd like it to be, and apples aren't a especially exotic fruit. The peel isn't enjoyable. It's waxy and gums up when you chew it. The flesh is what I'm interested in, but the above example didn't live up to my expectations. Too crisp. Yeah this is going to be a long journey...

I'll keep you posted.

Extreme Bedroom Makeover

2009-09-11T14:30:00.010-04:00

The latest room in our 1924 that I consider completely finished is our bedroom. It's actually been pretty much finished for a while now, but I wanted to wait until we hung our handmade drapes for a finishing touch.

(To anyone who wants to make their own drapes: BEWARE. Sure, making curtains for a normal window is probably easy and fun. But drapes, which are lined, and drapes for large windows are no easy task. Just ask Marian and I, who, in this 1924 non-air-conditioned home, sweat over massive panels of fabric in the hot August of 2008. I was so pregnant and so about to pass out the whole time. And despite our maniacal efforts, we still only finished two panels, out of six. I finally finished the rest a few months ago.)

Here are some before shots. Notice the stylish light fixture with exposed wiring. It had been like that for YEARS. No one bothered to fix it.

You can't see, but the door didn't have a doorknob either. Not even a trashy, painted-smeared dollar store one that the other doors had. And I don't think the closet had been painted since the 60's. And the floor was gross. And the trim was gross.

OH, and the windows had not been cleaned since the 70's. For real. Which explains why every window had the shades pulled on them. I will not bore you with my research on discovering that. Just trust me. We used razor blades to clean the grime and smeared paint off. And the SMELL while we cleaned the windows! I could not get the scent off of my hands for days.

Here is the room during the fixing phase. Lots of awesome guys (Mr. Reimbold, Austin, Mark, Neil, JB) helped with rewiring the whole house. See all the white? That was the patching job (thank you Mark!) after they ripped out all that area for rewiring. Knob and tube, good bye!

And now, ladies and gents, the finished product!

JB made the headboard. We like it quite a bit.

The botanical prints you see following were found at an estate sale. For 50 cents each! I had them matted and framed and they are my favorite thing to look at. Every night I admire my sunflower print before I go to bed.

The quilt on the rack was hand pieced by my Grandma Teague. I quilted it a few years ago by hand. My first quilt!

See how shiny the floors are? Thanks, Mark and Marian, for the gift of refinished floors!

A full view of the drapes:

I rocked my baby tonight

2009-09-07T21:59:00.003-04:00

I rocked my baby tonight.

I really wanted to read more of Dick Francis’ The Edge.

and to shop for vintage books online.

I wanted to research Alfred Meakin’s Denmark china pattern, circa 1891

or sew Olivia’s windmill quilt and to fancy different ways to quilt the final product.

But I rocked my baby instead.

I should have unpacked from our Labor Day trip to the cabin,

or emailed a woman about starting a Book Club.

Perhaps paid some bills

and put a clean handtowel up in the bathroom.

But I rocked my baby instead.

I rocked her because every time I rock her in her light blue room,

I look at her half-open doorway with faint light spilling in from the hall

and see a 20-year-old girl standing there,

looking at me, saying,

“Mom, have you seen my book?” or “Mom, can you drive me back to college tomorrow?”

And I realize that one day

I will never rock my baby again.

My Big Girl

2009-08-29T09:11:00.005-04:00

Olivia crawls now.

Everywhere.

It's really cute. Especially when she sees something new to explore across the room and she squeals with delight and then takes off after it.

We've been working on her fall/winter wardrobe a little bit. Marian was at Kohl's the other week and asked what size to get O for pants. We decided she would need 24-months. When I hung the new pants up in her closet next to her summer capris, the pants looked ENORMOUS. Super long. I was a little disappointed because I wanted her to start wearing the cute striped pants now instead of late in the winter. But then, all of a sudden, she shot up like a beanstalk, and those 24-month pants weren't so big anymore!

Then I tried putting the 18-month capris on her and they're waaay too short. Seriously, that happened in like a 1-2 week span!

And she also got her first pair of shoes. We got them a week ago. At the store, her feet were swimming in the shoes, even with socks on. But we finally went with the bigger size, because I want these to last forever. Or at least through the winter. I swear her feet grew, too, because now the shoes stay on her feet, instead of falling off.

She saw Dr. Hofman for her 10-month checkup on Thursday. At her 6-month she was 29 inches. I had been measuring her since then, and the longest she got was 29.5. Well, on Thursday, she was

31.5 inches!!!

And here's her in her 24-month pants to prove it!

(Please don't mind the blurriness.)

I looked at JB's baby book and he was about that height when he was her age, so don't worry, folks, it looks like she won't get any taller than 6'3"!

2.) The Magical Life Jacket

2009-08-17T11:36:00.004-04:00

Before we left Grand Rapids for our U.P. vacation, Mark pulled the boy’s old baby life jacket out of the attic. It had “JB Hunt” written in black marker on it. Mark said that Austin used it too. But what he failed to mention was that it is magical.

On the day JB and I went to the Soo, Mark and Marian put the life jacket on Olivia and took her for a ride to Hessel on Grandpa’s boat, Pooh Bear. As soon as she got on the boat, Olivia was out like a light, and slept the entire one-hour ride.

The Sunday before we left JB, Austin, Lauren, Chris, O, and I rode Pooh Bear to Cedar Campus to catch the morning sermon. We didn’t have much time to get there, so when Uncle Austin took the helm we got a choppy 45-mile-an-hour ride to Cedar. As soon as we got into the boat, Olivia was lethargic. I mean, it was like she had taken a tranquilizer or something. No normal human could have slept a wink on that choppy, windy, cold ride, but it was as though the life jacket made Olivia oblivious to the elements. Her eyes sometimes fluttered a little, but she pretty much was out the whole time.

She didn’t cry or fuss at all about being jostled about on the boat. But then during the service JB noticed a bright orange substance on his shirt and Olivia’s. We think she got a little seasick and barfed a while after we had landed.

After church we boarded the boat again, and took a calmer trip back to the cabin. No sooner than I sat down with her, she was fast asleep. I thought that perhaps it was the hum of the engine, though she doesn’t quickly fall asleep in cars all the time. Not only did she sleep for the whole boat ride, but also as she was handed off the boat onto the dock, was walked through the marshy grasses to the car, rode the short distance in the car back to the cabin, and came inside and was laid on the living room floor. Fast asleep.

Those who know Olivia know that this is STRANGE behavior for her. She does not sleep. She especially does not asleep when she’s away from home and is surrounded by people. But apparently none can resist the drowsy power of the life jacket!

I lay her down on the floor, with the life jacket securely around her, and there she slept, with cabin activities going on all around her, for some time.

Bird Update III

2009-08-11T20:10:00.007-04:00

Tonight I was trying to give Olivia dinner while making my own, and the casserole I was making needed a little more attention than I had bargained for. As a result, I kept giving Olivia more and more food in order to keep her at bay while I cooked. I was also curious just how much she would eat as I am always wondering if I feed her enough.

When I put her in the bathtub I realized that she indeed got enough to eat. I really wanted to get a photo of it, but I couldn't convince Lucy to spot Olivia in the tub while I ran downstairs to fetch my camera. Laying in the tub, she looked just like the Saggy Baggy Elephant did when he floated in the water. My baby had a big belly!

Today the Bird is 10 months old and is changing right before my eyes.

She is way more curious, and has discovered the treasures lying behind cupboard doors and in boxes, bins, etc. While her curiosity is strong, it is not intense enough to warrant crawling to such things. She will occasionally do the "wounded soldier" crawl, but mostly just does her precision rolling.

Her first word is "dog." She says Mama and Dada, but not to us. She will point at a dog though and say, "dah!" She jabbers more, especially while "reading" her books. Watching her read her books is one of my favorite things. She points her chubby fingers at a picture on a page and talks to it.

Lucy and Olivia can play together more now. Favorite games: lick the baby on the face and watch the baby laugh; tug-of war; laying near baby to get pets; and one of their favorites: before the Mom yells at the baby, eating baby snacks that baby offers to dog.

The Bird has also gone swimming! The first time was with Daddy, and she wasn't very excited about it. Annie and I took her in the Hunts' pool again on Monday, and she liked it much better. I let her slowly dip into the water, and to get used to it before letting her go down farther. We also let her sit on a floating board and play with some bath toys. She was happy in there for an hour! She even floated on her belly and her back. Here is a shot of her first dip:

Olivia has also started to have baby nightmares. I had nightmares when I was little too, and so did some of JB's family. Last night JB heard her cry out and he went to her. She was still frantic as he held her, but eventually he rocked her back to sleep. Maybe she was having dreams about having to wear this shirt again:

Sorry, guys, I just had to go there! You all should know that I'm not really anti-Michigan, but as a Spartan, I feel it is my duty to put this photo into cyberspace. :)

Gender Bender

2009-08-07T17:22:00.008-04:00

Dear Reader,

If you were to see this little baby on the street, what gender do you think the baby is? (I had to include the reading picture because it cracks me up. "Just sittin' back with my legs crossed, learnin' my numbers!")

Wherever I go with my baby, people think she is a boy. Today she was wearing the pictured outfit, which if you'll notice has a BOW on it. I took her to an estate sale where the people there all thought he was sooo cute. Some were wise, and just said, "What a cute baby you have!" "Your baby is so nice!", avoiding the gender assignment. Other, more confident folks, said, "He's so cute!" or "You are SUCH a good boy! You are SUCH a good boy!" One man said, "He's so cute. How old is he? 7 1/2 months?" (try nearly 10, guy!)

I don't really care what people guess about my baby because Lord knows that I'm not a good judge of gender or age, either. But everybody thinks she's a boy! Do YOU think this baby looks like a boy? And if so, is it because she has no hair? I mean, a man at McDonald's last week saw her in all her pink glory, and asked how old he was. Yes, it was at a McDonald's out in hicktown Middleville, but still. She can be wearing a dress and will still be considered a boy.

When the lady at the estate sale raved about what a good boy Olivia was being (we were waiting in a long line and O was content to ride in the Bjorn and play with my keys), I considered telling the woman that her name was Oliver if she asked.

I'm getting sick of correcting people, so why not have some fun pretending to have a son? Ladies and gentleman, meet Oliver, my cross-dressing baby boy.

3.) Bats!

2009-08-06T22:55:00.003-04:00

JB and I are big fans of This American Life. We’ve listened to almost all of its shows, including a segment titled “The Hills Have Eyes.” It is a true story about a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon and her near-disaster experience with trying to get a rabies vaccine (which costs thousands of dollars, by the way). At one part of the show (14:35 minutes in), the interviewer took an aside with the audience and said that rabies is REAL and DANGEROUS and if you ever find a bat in a room where someone was sleeping, you need to have that bat and/or person checked for rabies, as they may not have known that they were bitten.

That, coupled with Michael Scott's Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run for the Cure, has made me very serious about rabies.

So when I learned that the squeaking I heard in my bedroom in the cabin was a bat and not a mouse, I was a little unnerved.

But just a little, as it was apparently in the walls, and not actually in my room.

We heard them for two nights, scratching and squeaking in the walls, and in what sounded like the heat ducts, right by my side of the bed. Marian said she’s heard them in the cabin for years.

The next day, as Mark fetched something from the cubby hole/attic space right next to Olivia’s bed, he discovered a dead bat and showed it to us.

Aha! Mischief managed, I thought. I didn’t know that bats live in droves.

A few hours later I take Olivia to our room to nurse her and take a nap. I grabbed the blanket out of her bed (it was chilly the whole time we were up there!) and threw it on my bed and sat down next to it. As soon as I got situated with her, I reached out to grab the blanket to pull it over us. Then I noticed that my hand wasn’t about to grab the off-white blanket, but something black and sinister instead.

A bat! In the blanket, 7 inches from Olivia’s head!

Eeee!

Then it started squeaking.

Eeeee!

I actually wasn’t as frightened as I would have been if it was a mouse or, God forbid, a snake. I probably would have cried if it had been one of those. The bat didn’t disturb me, but the idea of rabies did.

So I summoned Mark and JB for help, and they removed the bat, which was fortunately stuck in the blanket, and not able to fly around and get stuck in my hair. Or bite Olivia.

That night Marian and Austin counted 38 bats flying out of the roof, on a hunting expedition. Mark speculated that there were probably 100 in there in total.

Eee again!

Grandma and Grandpa found one flying around in their bedroom the next morning. They opened a window and it flew out. Grandma commented that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about over these bats. I should have pointed out my rabies concern to her, but I did not. I was trying to be brave, I guess.

Mark and Marian found a guy who took care of the problem. This man rigged a sort of tube and flap in the hole that the bats flew in and out of. They could fly out at night to hunt, but upon return, could not go back in past the flap.

The in-laws said they counted over 100 bats leaving the joint.

Good riddance, you blind creatures of the night! Christian Bale may make bats seem sexy, but I know better. You can’t fool me, and you can’t come back into the family cabin and give us rabies!

4.) Narnia

2009-08-02T20:14:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday of our vacation a group of us took a hike to Narnia. Narnia is a magical place near Cedar Campus that makes you feel like you’ve stepped out of the wardrobe and into C.S. Lewis’ imagination. After a quiet and picturesque journey through the woods you find yourself walking in between massive moss-covered boulders and in and out of more trees. Keep walking and you’ll eventually come to the turquoise waters of Lake Huron. Narnia was discovered by Cedar Campus (perhaps even Grandma and Grandpa Hunt, though I’m not sure), on part of protected state lands next to its property. They have since received permission for their campers to enjoy the place, as long as no one wrecks anything.

I have always loved walking to Narnia (well, hiking in the woods IS one of my favorite things) and enjoyed taking Olivia to one of my favorite places.

I wish I had taken photos of the paths between the boulders. Another time…

They recently replaced the old Narnia lamp and sign with this. Tacky. I checked eBay for a better one. No dice. Someone may have to go to England and get a real one to bring back.

Austin jumping off of a boulder into the shallow bay. Very safe. Correction: very safe if you’re crazy like Austin.

A pair of swans visited us in a little inlet. The one in front was hissing at us a lot. Probably because three of us were pointing cameras at them and trying to get close. But still. We were there first! They just floated on up to us and then copped an attitude. Rude swans. But still pretty. Someone pointed out how perfectly clean their bodies are, but how their necks are dirty because they can’t reach them to clean them. Interesting.

Treasures

2009-07-30T08:31:00.006-04:00

Well, the Top Ten list is on hold until JB completes the entry for #5, as it is about adventures he had without me, so I cannot write about them. If he does not complete #5 by the weekend, I will pick up with #4, and you may never know what #5 is! Mu-ha-ha!

So this week I got 3 unexpected treasures. Well, one man's trash...

1.) Steamer Trunk
My mom stores all her sewing stuff in an old steamer trunk. I thought that was a pretty clever idea and wanted to do the same myself. For my birthday last year JB got me a steamer trunk for $20. After we got it home we realized how badly it smelled inside. We can't get the smell out. So my sewing stuff has remained in this clear plastic tote, which looks kind of tacky in our dining room.

But this weekend, Marian gave me her old steamer trunk! She had gotten different furniture for a guest bedroom and the trunk was kind of off in the corner, all lonely. It's in much better shape than the other one, and it doesn't stink badly. YAY! Thank you Marian!

2.) We hit up the Allegan Antiques fair on Sunday. There I got this vintage quilt top that the seller had picked up at an Estate Sale. I'm not sure where to put it on my list of quilts to do, but I'll find a place for it. This quilt must have taken someone HOURS to complete (it's a "trip around the world" pattern).

3.) I had admired this serving platter when it Williams Sonoma first advertised it. For $54! A little out of my price range. But on Tuesday when Lizzy and I were shopping the mall, there it was, marked down to $16.99! Agh! I decided to buy it, but before I could get the lady to ring it up, Lizzy bought it for me as a present for taking her shopping. Lizzy is Chris's wife (Top Ten #9) and as a Brit, she isn't used to driving on the right side of the road (well, and it's fun to have a shopping buddy). Thank you Lizzy!

6.) RAMBO

2009-07-27T22:09:00.001-04:00

As a police officer, JB’s brother gets out of a lot of traffic tickets. I guess there’s this “fellow police officer buddy buddy” code that they get to share with each other, letting each other off the hook in their jurisdictions.

Shortly after arriving in the U.P., Austin got pulled over for going 80 in a 55. He of course did not get a ticket, but had a nice chat with Officer Rambo (okay, that’s got to be one of the coolest names you could have if you’re a cop).

A few days later JB, Olivia and I head down M-134 enroute to #4 on our Top Ten list. We just get down the road when JB spots the cop car coming the opposite way. JB lets off the gas, unaware that he was going 70. Too late. The cop does the “hit the brakes and turn around” thing that I’ve seen too many times to count.

“He got me,” JB said. He was already annoyed that his brother, who was going 80, got out of a ticket, but that he himself would get one for going 70. Then he realized that he didn’t have his license with him. It was in his wallet sitting on his nightstand back at the cabin. When he told me that I knew it was over. It’s one thing to speed, but if you don’t have your license you’re toast.

(Though I do have to say that one time, when I didn’t have my proof of insurance in the car, I did get out of a speeding ticket in favor of a “no insurance card” ticket. It was $30 and no points. A bit easier to take than the $80 ticket and 2 points.)

As JB pulled to the side of the road, I started praying that God would have mercy. His Mom, who passed us on her way to our destination, was also praying that God would have mercy.

The officer walked up to the car. I braced myself for an insensitive interaction, as is what always happens to me when I get pulled over.

Instead, a friendly voice said, “Hello! How are you today? Can I have your license and registration?”

JB explained his missing license. So the man asked for his full name and date of birth. After hearing JB’s full name he asked him if he got teased in school about it. And things just got nicer after that.

It was so weird!

He informed us that we were going 71 in a 55 and asked if JB was aware of it, noting the baby in the car. After noticing the tinted windows in the back, he asked JB to roll up the front one, because it’s illegal to have your front windows tinted. I explained that they were not, because I knew better.

“You get those tinted for the baby?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I told him (back in 2003!).

(Hey, they are important for the baby! I am ever grateful that we don’t have to drive around with one of those cheesy “baby on board” sunblockers in our windows. Those things block the driver’s visibility anyway. Very dangerous, if you ask me.)

Then he bid us a good day.

OMG!

1.) 16 miles over the speed limit; 2.) with a vulnerable baby in the car; 3.) no license; 4.) limo-black tinted windows. These are all things that annoy cops.

But Rambo isn’t just any cop.

The Lord had mercy!

Thank you, Lord, for Officer Rambo. Coolest cop I know (besides Austin).

7.) Calendar Girl

2009-07-25T16:11:00.005-04:00

Remember that one time, when I learned that my photo was picked to be in the Les Cheneaux 2010 calendar?

I saw said calendar at Safe Harbor Books in Cedarville last week. I got excited and flipped to the month of August, where I expected to see my photo. Instead I saw this lame photo of wooden boats. (I typically would like this photo, but since it was replacing mine, it was lame.)

Dismayed, I relayed this to JB. He then pointed out that my photo wasn’t there because it was the COVER photo.

Der! No wonder the front of the calendar looked so familiar!

8.) Hearing Chris speak at SLT

2009-07-24T20:09:00.003-04:00

My favorite kind of preaching is Bible Exposition. For those of you who aren’t hip to the Believer community, Bible Exposition is taking a specific text of the Bible and breaking it down. It is not topical preaching. It is not preaching that pulls verses from here and there, with the verses sometimes being taken out of context. It is what I consider a pretty pure look at the Bible.

However, a lot of churches these days don’t do Exposition. The mega-churches of today seem to draw crowds by speaking on topics. Some churches even thrive on the “prosperity” gospel. Which is just a man standing in front of a group of people each Sunday telling them that God wants to bless them, and that if they stick with Jesus, their lives will be happy and shiny. It seems as if these guys haven’t heard of this thing called the BIBLE. Jesus’ life was not happy shiny. People were mean to him. People constantly pestered him to heal them. He had no privacy. In the end, he was nailed to a tree and left to suffocate to death. If being a Christian meant that all your troubles would go away, everyone would be clammering to do it, even if Jesus meant nothing to them. That’s not how God rolls. He promises peace and rest and contentment. Not eternal sunshine and $$$.

Anyway, my life is deprived of good exposition, so I was thrilled to hear Chris speak at what was originally the School of Leadership Training (SLT) at Cedar Campus. InterVarsity apparently has changed the name to Leadership Institute. Lame. “Hey man, you going to LI this summer?” “Oh, yeah, LI is so awesome!” Sorry guys, but SLT sounds way cooler. Fail.

Chris spoke on Acts 19 and 20. Olivia let me listen to the Acts 19 part. That was nice of her. Grandma Marian had to miss that, though, while she walked her around outside. Then I had to take her. I sat with the Bird in a nice Adirondack chair on the backporch outside the meeting place and tried to listen to the Acts 20 part while I nursed the baby. While sitting there, two beautiful swans swam up to the shore that was about 30 feet away. Nice. (They paid us another visit in the Vacation Top Ten’s number 4.)

Fortunately, Chris had a handout for everyone, so I could piece together parts that I had missed.

Chris and his wife Liz are also good friends with the Hunt family, so we saw them more than on that Sunday morning. He is also the man who married Austin and Lauren. He is a lover of the water, and the Hunts have dubbed him “swims with loons” after he did just that. It seems that no water is too cold for Chris, who took a dip on our Narnia walk and enjoyed the canoe at the cabin. He also sat next to me for the Top Ten’s #2, which I was grateful for because of his swimming abilities.

9.) Lucille and the Beach

2009-07-22T21:36:00.011-04:00

One of my favorite parts of going to the cabin is watching Lucy run the beach. The first time she went up she wowed Grandma by running and running and running in circles on the beach at a breakneck pace, repetitively. Grandma was unaware of Lucy's dedication to aimless carefree running and was quite entertained by it.

This year proved no different, but with the added bonus of her bff Lexi accompanying her. Over the course of the week the dogs had several different people throw tennis balls for them. Most memorable were the Schreimer girls and their cousin. They marveled at how high Lucy can jump and how fast she can run. (A random couple who were walking the beach also marveled at Lucy's abilities--apparently it's legal to walk the beachfront along the lake, even on private property, and these people were not shy about walking through our yard. The man said that I should enter Lucy in races.)

Typical Chewba beach routine:

Run.
Run.
Run.
Watch tennis ball get launched into water.
Consider racing Lexi for it. (Only like going in cold water if there are enough rocks to hop in order to get to my destination.)
Let Lexi chase ball while I bark at the human's feet.
Jump up very high in attempt to steal human's other tennis ball.
While Lexi swims back with her ball, watch other tennis ball fly down the beach, not in water.
Tear up sand chasing ball and barking madly.
If Lexi is out of water by then and chasing new ball, will easily outrun her.
Bring ball back, shaking it in mouth in very fierce, vigorous fashion. I am to be feared!
Listen to human tell me to drop it.
Or, I mean, DON'T listen to human's command to drop it.
Prance around with ball in mouth, wanting it to be thrown again.
Realize it won't get thrown until I drop it.
Concede.
Watch tennis ball get launched into water...

U.P. top ten: 10. Soo Trip

2009-07-21T19:18:00.006-04:00

JB and I have decided to do an "Upper Peninsula" top ten, counting down the 10 most exciting/memorable parts of our vacation at the family cabin on Lake Huron.

So our number 10 memory was our trip to "the big city." Read: Sault Ste Marie. No, there isn't a mall here. There isn't Starbucks or Jimmy John's. You won't find a big museum or art gallery. Or a hot music scene.

But they've got a Wal-Mart and TSC, which I bet is big city enough, if you ask any Yooper.

JB, I, Austin, and Lauren first hit up Karl's Cuisine, our favorite Soo restaurant. While we are partial to this man who catered our wedding and made our wedding cheesecakes, Karl really is a great chef. We met friends and fellow Spartan alumni Mike and Cassie Panik there for lunch. The last time I ate at Karl's, I had this amazing chef salad. I wanted it so badly yet again, but also wanted to branch out and try something new. So I got something new. And a side chef salad. Which really was more like a regular-sized salad. Plus a large piece of our wedding cake: turtle cheesecake. I ate all of it. Then we got a massive stromboli and two pasties to go. A trip to the U.P. really isn't complete without pasties, ya know.

After lunch we went to the super awesome Soo movie theatre, where they take American Express, but they don't take Visa. Who doesn't take Visa??? Hicktown movie theater. Who doesn't have a Chase ATM within a 50 mile radius? Hicktown Soo. (AND Hicktown Nashville, I learned. Definitely can't move to Tennessee now!)

We saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I enjoyed it.

While there, we saw giant movie posters advertising Tim Burton's latest adaptation: Alice in Wonderland. Has anyone else seen the scary Johnny Depp rendition of the Mad Hatter? It's even freakier in bigger-than-life movie poster size and you're minding your own business at the theater when BAM! there it is. This happened to me at a Grand Rapids theater. Celebration Cinema is lucky I didn't have a full bladder because they might have had a mess to clean up.

I love Alice in Wonderland and also Johnny Depp, but seriously, I don't like his Mad Hatter. CREEPERS. He looks sort of like Madonna here, if you ask me. However, the colorfulness of the other posters won me over, so I want to see it. Just not the part with Johnny Depp. Then again, I was fearful about watching Transformers, and ended up loving it. We'll find out March 2010 if I pee my pants in the theater or not.

We're Baa-aack!

2009-07-19T22:47:00.003-04:00

I couldn't resist. I just started to look through the 631 photos I took on vacation in the U.P. last week (yes, I may have a problem) and one of the first shots was this stellar catch of dogs at play. Yes, Lexi is completely in air, like Lucy. JB and I have talked about doing a vacation top 10, so I will post more photos as we post our list, but I just had to share one...

(the girl in the photo is JB's second cousin, Clara. Or first cousin once removed. Something like that. A nice girl.)

Oh my gosh. I just found more "dogs having fun." Agh. Will have to do "dogs having fun" post.

Oh, yeah, and we humans had fun, too. :)

Pretty Baby 2009

2009-07-07T22:21:00.005-04:00

Last weekend I was in Mayberry for my parents' annual Fourth of July party.

Mom and I ran to the infamous Wingerts for groceries, and there I ran into my old friend Connie. She alerted me to the Pretty Baby contest that the Mayville Sunflower Festival is holding, as she thinks that O could be a contender.

So we're entering her. The rules do not state that you have to be a resident, and since O's grandma and grandpa still live there, I figure it's fair game.

The only problem is picking a photo! We did a baby photo shoot today, which turned out to be difficult because O kept looking off at Lucy, who was patrolling the yard. She is a little too obsessed with dogs, if you ask me.

This one was not in the photo shoot, but she's just so cute when she has her "reading time." Every day she pulls all the board books off of her bottom shelf and reads all by herself. It's quite entertaining to watch/listen to:

This is actually my current favorite photo, but I doubt it would garner a win. I call it "Highway Patrol Baby":

And this one just made me laugh, so I'm sharing it. Who are you yelling at, Bird?