It's Wild Here

Window Stars and forced bulbs

embroidery, again

My grandma taught me to embroider when I was very young, and I didn't pick it up again until this month. I'd like to find some iron-on or already-stamped "day of the week" towels to embroider.  There are all sorts of fun embroidery kits online but I'm really not interested in making a wall hanging - I'd like to just embellish things I'm going to use. Or make a pillow, at least.  This particular towel, I don't totally love it, but it was my first try in almost 30 years, so I think I'll improve. Coincidentally, it has some nice February-ish blue for the PS.

whining, naps, art, consonants

1. Kellen is sick with a bad cold. He didn't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time last night, and the more typical amount was about 15 minutes. I'm a zombie. And a grumpy one. My big boys are going to find that the house rules today are very flexible.

2. I'm really tempted to see if Ryan can cut out his naps, at least a few days a week. I'm really craving an earlier bedtime for him, and I know Evan would like it - last night he sat in there with him for 2 hours. Granted, we probably started too early, but dang.

3. Kellen has begun the consonant-babbling; already we're getting bababa, mamama, and galgalgal.

4. Here is the aforementioned craftiness from Ryan last week:

ryan's projects

I've found a couple of pretty easy things to give to Ryan to keep him busy. I'm really feeling the camera shortage... wah!

He's fishing off the side of Evan's chair, like Little Bear, with his homemade fishing pole: yarn, drumstick, fridge magnet/clip.  His fish were hastily cut-out paper with adhesive magnets stuck on... Jeremiah is making them more beautiful right now, adding faces, etc.  Ryan did get a little too enthusiastic with his casting, and he clocked himself in the head with the "hook," which is rather heavy.

Yesterday, I took some round label stickers and colored them various colors - one color per sheet of stickers, so it only took about 15 seconds for 30 stickers. Took several sheets of paper and drew trees, stems, cars, faces - all missing their round parts. He added the stickers to make them complete. The page with the flowers is rather lovely.

Oh Canon, why do you have SO many different cameras? How can I choose the right one? On the bright side, this lack of photos is making me a bit more writerly here on this blog.

Jamie, Ryan and I have colds.

I don't think I talked about Christmas for R this year. (I know a lot of you have heard about this already, but for the record...) He had a wonderful time on the 23rd when everyone came here. He seemed to have a good time on Christmas Eve, visiting my dad (who gave him this very fun and busy truck ) and running around Uncle D's house and touching all the things a toddler shouldn't touch. He had a great time with his cousins and second cousin. Unfortunately, on the drive home he  complained that his tummy hurt, and proceeded to vomit several times before we made it back. Car full of winter clothes and gifts, into the carseat, etc etc. It was pretty awful for everyone, especially him.  His gifts sat under the tree for nearly 3 days - he'd make a half-hearted attempt to open one here and there, and then need to sleep. A pile of untouched gifts for a 2-year old on the 25th is just Very Sad.

Just typing this post is making me queasy, so I'll end it with a very concise summary:  we all caught it, and well, Christmas comes every year so we'll just look forward to the next one.

The highlights in gift-giving:

DS games for the big boys
Lego Creator Mythical Creatures for Evan
Star Wars lego for Jamie
Bionicle for Jeremiah
Climbing dome for Ryan
Giant dinosaur for Ryan
Wrapping paper and ribbon (and lots of socks) for Kellen
((drumroll please))  the #1 gift of the year, resulting in near-weeping from mama and very toasty toes:

handmade slippers for both parents - handmade BY their talented and generous older sons.  I can't wait to get pictures of these slippers up here for you to see. Grammy took J and J on two occasions to visit a special older friend who is a master sewing goddess. She and her daughter and Grammy helped the boys to sew these fleece slippers. It was hard work! They couldn't wait to give them to us, and tell us everything they'd learned. Did you know Mrs. K sewed parachutes in WW2?  Do you know how a serger works? We made all the pieces for these slippers and then we couldn't figure out how to put them together!  Can we have those slippers back now because we have to reinforce the seams for you...

::: love and thanks to all the slipper fairies this year :::

Your daily dose:

did I mention the sewing?

I thought I wrote abut this, but I don't see any pictures. Here is Jamie the night he and Jeremiah  discovered this book .

And Jamie the next morning...

I need to get a good picture of their finished products, still. Neither actually found the need to follow directions in the book - they just read the hilarious descriptions, looked at the pictures, and went with their inspirations. The nice thing about a stupid sock creature is that it doesn't require tidy sewing - quite the opposite, really.

babies to greet visitors

I found the idea for these babies at Kiddley.com - aren't they sweet? This is my first use of my first fabric purchase.

Found some half price ribbon at Michael's and voila! Some little cuties to hang in the front door window.

There are few delicate decorations out in the house. These are among them; I like them so much that I decided to risk it. The candles are beeswax - we bought the trees on ebay last year and decorated them with the colored decorative beeswax.  The girl angel is also a bell. Ryan loves to sit on the sofa and handle these.

Nerd babies

Aw! This is what I want for Kellen and Ryan's room - if we ever get it painted and fixed up. I was thinking about some kind of animal theme but how about a geeky science theme? Science is pretty.

Ryan busy-ness

Ryan made a friend in town, T, who is also 2. They are excited to see each other at the library and playgroup. One week, T brought these foam stickers to share, and they were a hit. The backs are easy to peel off and the foam doesn't tear easily. We now have hundreds of foam stickers, and often Ryan's table looks like this.

He also spends a great deal of time with his animals and dinosaurs. His dollhouse usually looks something like this. Actually, this particular dollhouse was retired last week - donated to an 11 yo girl who wanted to use it to build bigger, better dollhouses. Ryan had broken one floor and a door, and the roof is long gone. So, we freecycled it before it became complete trash. It had many happy years in our house, beginning in 1996 as a home for Jamie's Hot Wheels.