'Free' at last, 'free' at last!

Then.

Now.

*sniff*

Love. Peace. Two.

You see this sign?

It's one of my favorites, and it has three meanings.

Peace. Specifically "Rock Obama say PEACE." Pulled out when mommy gets 'canky'. She learned it from her sister who coined the phrase after one of the presidential-nominee debates last year. Barack Obama did indeed say 'peace' many times in that debate. It's been a year and the phrase - and sign - is still going strong.

It also means "I love you." Hannah and I have always done the actual 'I love you sign' with each other, but Ains' little hands couldn't do it. She tried, and her efforts produced this sign. It has become our own 'I love you'. I love it.

And it means 'two'. As in "I am two." As in "I am wittle, right Momma?" She flashes that sign and a proud "I too-an'-haff" to anyone who asks her name, compliments her hair, or glances in her direction.

Today is the first day of autumn. She was born on the first day of autumn. This year, her birthday falls on the day after the equinox and my little girl is so excited that tomorrow she will be 'free'. Three is so big in her mind. Overnight, sometime in her dreams, she will go from being 'wittle' to big.

Tomorrow that sign will have only two meanings.

It shouldn't be this hard. I was so excited for Hannah to turn three. I don't want Ains to go there. I want to wrap her up in two and hold her there for just a little bit longer.

Farmer's Market Day.

Yesterday was Farmer's Market day. Today I heard Ainsley pretending that her Littlest Pet Shop animals were going to the Farmer's Market with her. They wanted too many vegetables and her basket was overflowing. The bunnies and the pony got into a fight over the carrots. The dog ate her fudge. She was a very frustrated mommy.

A snake in the house.

"Look, Mother! Did you ever think you'd have a naga in your very own house?"

(The naga that we learned about here was a snake with two female human heads. We get a naga in our house about once a month, when the girls wrap up in a towel or blanket and stumble around giggling about being "a snake girl. I mean girls.")

Ainsley says ...

--Today while we were working in the butterfly garden, Hannah asked me to come get Gray out of her flax because he was throwing rocks in it. "Yeah," says Ains, and then, in a very sweet voice "I want to die him." Huh. The words did not match either the tone or her actions - no sibling nastiness going on there at all.

--Ains came running upstairs in one of the masks that she and Hannah make off of Jumpstart. "Hi, Ains!", I said. "I not Ainser, I SOOPUH HEWOH!!!" Huh. As long as she doesn't wear a cape, right?

--Matt sat down next to me on the couch. Not ten seconds later there was a scream and a "GET OUT MY CUDDING SPOT!!!" Apparently he was in her cuddling spot, which I didn't know she had but I'm very glad she does.

Have I ever told you what Ainsley's first word was?

It was 'stuck'.

There be monsters here!

My sister's been here for the last two days to help with a doll making project.

This morning Hannah asked if *she* could do a craft. Because I'm brain-dead from making too many dolls, I asked her if she had any ideas. She suggested painting on wood with acrylic paint. I revived my brain long enough to come up with another idea. I do *not* need to be wrangling acrylic paint while I'm stuffing doll legs, thank you very much.

"Draw a monster," I told her. So she did.

And so did Ainsley.

While they did that, I rounded up some supplies. Felt, the button jars (of course), thread, stuffing, yarn ... And then we set to work 'interpreting' the pictures.

Since we've never done this before, the girls had drawn without picturing their monsters off the paper. Now they got to pick a color, add texture in the form of buttons, embroider expressions, and pick yarn out for hair. It was such a fun process and we have lots of ideas for more texture we can add to future monsters.

I folded a piece of felt in half and cut out the front and back of the monster together. Then I laid out the top piece and had the girls match the fabric up to their drawing/imagination.

When they'd decided how they wanted their monsters to look, we started sewing them. Hannah could do a lot of the work herself - the buttons, the ribbon toes, and the smile - and I did what she couldn't.

Ainsley couldn't do much but explain to me what the different parts of her drawing were ("It's a COWBOY monster, Mommy!"), but every so often, a set of little pudgy hands would try to help me sew a button on here or do some embroidery there.

Once we had all of the embellishments and expressions added, we stuffed them. First we used all of the felt and thread scraps and then we added in stuffing.

Hannah's monster was fairly straightforward and easy to translate from paper to felt. Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project (which is cuddled up to her as she sleeps right now) ...

She had an absolute blast doing this project and has three more monsters (and another one 'just for GrayGray') laying on the counter, drawn up and ready to go.

Ainsley's finished monster is true to Ainsley Style, with a diamond necklace, a bow in her hair (between two of the three eyes), a flower in her hand, and a cowboy hat and boots - most of which I wouldn't have understood without her explanations. I cut the monster out using the outline of her drawing - I thought about embroidering the many circles and then, thanks to my ever-sensible sister, decided not to. I'd still be sewing.

Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project ...

"She so coooot!" was what Ainsley said when she'd inspected the final project.

She wants a ballerina monster next.

Their cousin wanted a monster too. Her drawing was a bit more ambitious.

And her mother, for all of the sense she talked into me over Ainsley's monster, did a heckuva job making a patchwork monster to match the picture.

Think 'monster bird. It's so fun. Very tactile. The ribbon hair (above the black face) is so sweet - little pigtails.

When I was discussing the picture with my niece, trying to decipher heads and tails and legs and eyes (she's got several by the way - some on her head and some on her tail), I pointed to the line on the bottom of the monster and asked "What's that? Is that it's leg?" Because, you know, if it had been Ainsley's monster it would have been a leg. Or possibly a penis. "No, it's PEEING." she said. She seemed irritated that I even had to ask.

So my sister - because she's awesome - put it on the monster. When I was taking the picture of the monster, my niece asked "What's this thread?" pulling on the yellow thread. "That's the pee, of course," I answered. She dissolved into giggles.

I wonder how many more of these monsters we'll make - I have some drawings waiting on the counter, a ballerina monster in another daughter's head, and my sister has another drawing that her daughter made.

Easy, fun craft - and cuddly to boot!

I lived for 30 years without this.

Don't ask me how. I couldn't go back.

The Octopus' Happy Life In His Cottage and Sad Death (which was also in his cottage).

Hannah cut the legs off of one of her pairs of pants to make shorts. I'm not sure why she didn't just wear one of her pairs of shorts, but I wasn't home at the time, so by the time I got home it was a done deal.

She took the legs to her daddy and told him "We need to make something with these." So they made puppets. They used buttons from their button jars and ribbon and sticks from their Creation Station (a box with 'stuff' (scrap ribbons, sticks, game pieces, puzzle pieces, plastic lids, lots o' stuff).

Ainsley's is a ghost. Hannah's is an octopus. And I got a puppet show out of the whole deal.

Introducing Octopus.
(he had stage fright)

"Once upon a time there was an octopus.
He was exploring the ocean and came to an octopus cottage. "How lucky am I?!?" said the octopus. (He was very lucky, by the way, Mother. There aren't very many octopus cottages in the ocean.) So he settled into the cottage and ate all of the food he could find.

Now here's the very scary part, Mother. Don't be scared.
A SHARK found his cottage and it tried to eat him, but he wouldn't let it. He sprayed inky black stuff ALL OVER the shark and he said GO AWAY SHARK!!! and the shark went away."

Ainsley: "AND THEN THE GHOST CAME! Hi, shark!"
Hannah: "I'm not a shark, Ainser, I'm an octopus."

Ainsley: "... ... ... ...BOO!"

Hannah: (trying her best to ignore the ghost stealing the show) "So then the octopus had lots of children in the cottage and they all grew up and he was a Grandpa Octopus."
Ainsley: "A grandpocopuss? What a grandpocopuss?"

Hannah: "No, Ainser, A Grandpa Octo... Oh, you're frustrating me."

Ainsley: "The ghost said goo'bye. Goo'bye ocopuss!" (ghost exits stage right)

Hannah: "Thank goodness. Now, here's the very sad part. He died.

The end."

There was an encore, of course. Several, to be honest. And many more to come, I'm sure.

Errand day.

Today was designated as 'errand day'. You have to have a designated errand day when you live in the country. A day that is filled to the brim with hitting all of the stores 'in town' that you need to hit which takes strategic food/drink/entertainment/allowable treats planning on my part. It's an art and I'm a struggling artist.

It went more smoothly than I thought it would. After the first store we stopped and had a picnic at a really pretty cemetery. Did you know that cemeteries used to be the happenin' place for locals to gather and mingle over picnic lunches? That's just a little historical trivia for you. We go to cemeteries because Hannah absolutely loves reading the stones, finding out how old the people were, and imagining their lives. Sometimes crying over ones she finds especially touching. Her imagination and storytelling go into overdrive at a cemetery.

After lunch, we went to Shannon's Hair Dressing Emporium for Fairies and Princesses and Ainsley got her hair 'finished'. I'm sure some of you noticed her hair in this picture yesterday.


She thought it was time for a new hairstyle. When I asked her why she'd done it (she'd cut off most of the hair in the back of her head - a new one for me), she said "Me look pitty. Me cut off hair, look pitty, now nobody decognize me."

So Shannon did what she could, while reassuring Ains that she wasn't 'fixing' her hair, she was just 'finishing' it for her.

I tried to get a picture of it, but the girl rarely holds still.

It's short - very short - and it accentuates how similar she is to her daddy, but it still is not short enough to cover all of the 'damage'.

Shannon asked "Were you mad?" No, hair doesn't really bother me. If you experiment and it doesn't work, the hair will grow out or grow back or you can cut it again or dye it another color.

Once we'd finished the haircut it was time for my least favorite store to enter with kids - The WalMarts.

After thirty minutes of going up and down aisles, simultaneously trying to check things off my list and keep Grayson from throwing everything from the cart onto the floor, we got done and went to the checkout line. After thirty seconds of loading the contents of the cart onto the belt I realized that Grayson, king of unloading and loading, would happily do it for me so I stuck him in the back of the cart and set him to work.


It was a beautiful thing. For thirty seconds. Then he started throwing them out the other side of the cart onto the floor.

Meanwhile, the cashier saw the toilet brush that Gray had put on the belt and said to the girls "You're getting a toilet wand?" All Ainsley heard was 'wand'. Wand wand wand wand WAND!!! Wand. And so it was that the first Toilet Fairy was born.

I informed her when we got home that she was now the Toilet Fairy and as such was in charge of Toilet Scrubbing and General Bathroom Cleanliness. She informed me that "Me not Toilet Fairy! Me not scrub toilet or .... what you say, mommy?" General Bathroom Cleanliness. "Me not DO DAT!!! Me just fairy with wand." And off she danced.

After WalMart we met with our real estate agent, who I am more in love with every day (if all goes well, we are signing some Very Important Papers tomorrow), went grocery shopping, and bought chicken feed.

When we got home, the pool had warmed up nicely, so there was pool play - it's a daily occurence with this bigger pool.

View from outside the pool:

View from inside the pool:

While we were goofing off in the pool, Matt was mowing the lawn. He stopped the lawn mower right before he was going to run over this little guy:

Remember me telling you how cute these little buggers are (he's a baby Killdeer)? Oh, they're cute.

He found the momma (with a broken wing, natch) in the garden and set the baby down close enough for them to find each other. Ten seconds later, the momma's wing was healed and she had all of her babies herded to safety. I really need to do something about those weeds.

The house won't get cleaned tomorrow - we have plans.

What am I supposed to do with a child like this?

I am alternately bemused,

amused,
(With great power comes great responsibility)

enchanted,
impressed,

twitterpated,bewitched, (hee)

and amused all over again.
Then, when I finally get a handle on her, along comes this one.

Now what am I supposed to do?

The best part of the day.

This is one of those days where I'm afraid your interest will wane because, well, we went to the park.

How many park pictures do you want to look at?

You're probably there with your kids every other day and if you've seen one park, you've seen them all.

But stay tuned, because this little guy made a break-through today.

First, I want to tell you about this girl - we'll call her Ariel.

We were at a park one day and Ainsley - who is notoriously aloof around new kids - and most kids she's met many times - immediately started playing with her. They ran around that playground giggling, holding hands, and jabbering to each other, not seeming to mind that one was jabbering in Spanish and the other in English. When Ariel and her parents started to leave I ran over and gave them my phone number explaining that my daughter really doesn't take to a lot of kids and I would love it if they could call next time they came to the park.

Luckily, they did, and we've been slowly building a friendship. All of us.

When we go back to the town we used to live in (tonight it was for some lawn work at the old house), we call and meet up to play.

Last time they visited our new house, I gave them some banana bread (I was trying a new recipe from A Homemade Life) and it was so good that Ariel's mom asked for the recipe. Today when I handed her the recipe, she handed me a plate with four pieces of 'Mexican custard' on it. Oh, it was so good. Hannah ate one piece, I ate one, Ainsley tried a bite and didn't like the texture. I gave Grayson a few spoonfuls and he seemed to like it ok. I wanted to talk to Ariel's mom, so I gave him the spoon and he started doing this -

Then I got distracted talking and he dropped the spoon - I think it was slowing him down -and started taking handfuls. By the time I regained control of the plate, there was only a quarter of a piece left and his hands and face were very, very sticky.

Now, about Grayson's breakthrough. Do you remember this? The passive-resistance-I-hate-swinging-and-you-can't-swing-me-if-I-just-hang-here pose?

Oh, yes. That was so last week.

This week, with the discovery of big kid swings, the world's looking very, very different.

What a change. He watched the girls climb onto the swings and tried to climb on one himself, so I put him up there and started swinging him. Fifteen minutes he swung there before I tried to take him off. Then he made a noise that made me stick him right back on for another five minutes until he was ready to go. He was in heaven. Explain that to me.



Of course, it could just have been that his hands were so sticky that he couldn't let go.

So the most exciting part of the day for Ains was getting to play with her friend, the most exciting part for Gray was either discovering Mexican custard or discovering that big kid swings are the best things ever, but the most exciting part of the day for Hannah was discovering a real, no kidding, honest-to-Murgatroyd, ain't no one foolin' here fairy ring.

It was on the lawn and it was very unusual. A complete, perfectly shaped circle with mushrooms (maybe toadstools?) all around the edges with none inside or outside the edge of the circle. Fairies certainly danced here last night.

Oh, yes, Magic entered her life today. This was almost as good as seeing a real fairy. She's a believer, my girl.

So it was just another ordinary day at the park.

If you believe in ordinary days, that is.

I'm glad you let me tell you about it.

Sweet dreams.