A few weeks ago I experimented with dying card stock with shaving cream and food coloring. It was a thoroughly fun and messy experience. I put a piece of it to use in this drawing.
Art Every Day Month – Day 3
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Art Every Day Month – Day 2
I was playing with stencils in this one. I wanted to keep things clean and simple. I was in the mood for green, because I am still waiting for the mountains to turn into that gorgeous winter emerald color, if the rains ever come consistently. The word “listen” came to mind, because there is so much to hear in the natural world. I’m try to bring Claire to as many natural spaces as I can, and give her the chance to move and get messy and hear what the world has to say.
Art Every Day Month – Day 1
This is my fifth year participating in the monthlong event. I’ve been ambivalent about it this year; every year I feel a butterfly rush in my gut, but this year I’ve waffled about doing it at all. What stymied me is my personal requirement that I create one complete piece every day. AEDM is not structured this way — Leah (the originator of AEDM) particularly encourages rule-breaking — but I don’t want to relinquish this one goal. However, with travel in late November, how will I create and upload daily? Well, I decided to break one rule. Since I will be gone the last 8 days of the month, I’ve spent the last 8 days of October making art for those dates. This way, I will have made art for 30 days and still have work to share for the month.
I decided to work in a very small format — 2.5 x 3.5 inches, also known as Artist Trading Cards or Art In Your Pocket. These mini canvases call for simplicity, and one would think they would be quick to make, but they aren’t for me. Just as writing a short, concise document requires careful thought and editing (and therefore time), working with space constraints presents challenges that take time to work on. As Leah said,
“A lot of people have mentioned being a little nervous, a little jittery. Me too. It happens every year. And I think it’s interesting, but also telling because I think those things that give us a bit of the jitters are also those things that are very important to us. So notice if you feel those jitters and know you’re on the right track. And then go create.”
Without further ado, here’s my first piece.
Princess Claire
We went out and covered a few blocks. Claire had fun and got lots of comments about how cute she is. She was a little shy about saying “trick-or-treat” at first but soon got the hang of it. People were very generous! She became obsessed with a giant spider decoration. We had to walk back two blocks to see it a second time; she named it Mike.
Happy Halloween
I ended up carving a pumpkin after all. Claire named it Wendy because it is winking — Winkie Wendy. Claire is doing much, much better. Her fever broke yesterday. She’s still tired and has a cough, but she is well enough to say she wants to go trick-or-treating, even though I suspect she really doesn’t know what that means. I’m not sure we will go, but if we do, it will be for a very brief outing. She doesn’t really want to wear a costume. Perhaps we’ll don her in one of my blouses (long enough to be a dress) and costume jewelry, and she can go as a “lady.”
She has been waking at 5 and 5:30 a.m., so we’ll see how early she gets up tomorrow after we fall back an hour on the clock! (Please please please sleep; don’t wake up at 4 a.m.!)
New Voice
This guy is new to me. I posted this on my Facebook account, but it’s too good not to share here. It put a spring in my step when I heard it. If the embedded video doesn’t show, go here to see it.
A Rite of Passage
For the last 10 months, each morning Claire sits with her Dad on the sofa, watching PBS shows while he works from home for an hour, giving me a break to shower and prep for the day. One of her first and favorite shows has been Between the Lions. It’s a show with a muppet-style lion family that runs a library. Many stories are read, and vowels and consonants are explored. It’s a really creative show. (The pun between the lions refers to “reading between the lines” and to walking between the lions at the entrance of the New York City public library.)
On the show they talk about getting a library card; for the past couple of months, if you ask Claire, “What do you do with a library card?” She answers, “You bring the books to the lady and she lets you take them home.” In recent months she’s been talking more about going to the library. (We had not gone to story hour since she turned 1, because the librarian who runs the story hour for ages 1-2 is a stickler for making the children sit still, and has been known to chastise mothers if their children don’t follow the rules. So we haven’t been.)
Today, because we stayed out of preschool so as not to share any lingering germs, we went to the library to get Claire her very own library card. She was very proud of it and told her Dad all about it when he got home from work. She picked three books for herself, and we’ve read them each about a dozen times already. I’m sure we’ll be making regular trips from now on.
A First Step
Husband and I are homebodies. We aren’t big travelers, and we particularly don’t like to fly. We haven’t flown since 2006. In fact, we have never flown anywhere with Claire, and have only had one overnight away from home with her — in Monterey, in August. She was not the type of baby who slept in the stroller if I hauled her all over town. If she was out, she was awake and stimulated. She is inquisitive and curious.
We think about flying east to see my folks, but the length of the trip and the three-hour time shift daunts us. So we decided to try a shorter jaunt, to see Claire’s aunt and uncle in Austin at Thanksgiving.
We just booked our tickets. We actually found flights that were reasonably priced, although we’ll still have a layover in Colorado, and it will be a long day of travel. But it’s done! So this will be an adventure.
So now I need to know: What do you pack for a two-year-old on the plane (total travel including layover is 9 hours) that doesn’t offer meal service either? What do you pack for an eight-day stay somewhere? Any suggestions are welcome.
Creative Frugality
Once you have a child (or children), you find yourself going to a lot of birthday parties. Buying gifts can get pricey, so I want to conserve a bit where I can. Starting with 2010, to keep track of who gets what and keep from going insane, I’ve decided to select a “book of the year” as the birthday gift for every child we celebrate. I’ll choose a book that is less common than some so as to (hopefully) not give a duplicate. Then I’ll buy the books in bulk and save some money. I like that idea very much.
When I was pregnant, I bought a huge roll of butcher paper for future crafts. I assumed I’d be going through a lot of paper in the next five years. I was right. Now, what does a mom do with the swaths of painted and colored paper? I decided they would make excellent gift wrap, thus saving me money on wrapping paper. Until Claire is actually painting a picture of something that she might want to keep, we’ll make use of her creative endeavors this way. (Except for Christmas, in part because I have a ton of holiday paper, and in part because I don’t want Claire to receive gifts in paper she wrapped; it seems a little Oliver Twist to me.) Here’s a photo of just-wrapped gifts:
On Beginnings
Someone recently said to me that they haven’t heard much about our house search and assumed we’d stopped trying. That’s not the case, actually. But trying to find and buy the right house is, I’m finding, very similar to my experience of trying to get pregnant. The first time I was pregnant I told everyone right away, and then I lost the baby. The second time I got pregnant I also miscarried, and I hadn’t told anyone yet because I really didn’t want to go through the explanation. The third time we kept our mouths sealed until we were well into the second trimester and then announced our news, and later joyfully announced Claire’s debut.
And so it goes with house-hunting. Husband still looks and goes to open houses. He researches MLS listings. If there is one he visits that looks viable, he will ask me to go see it too. We have been looking for a home to buy for almost nine months. Maybe we’ll find one; maybe not. It just gets tiresome to talk about after awhile. I’ll not likely talk about the search until we’ve made an offer that is accepted. In fact, because Things Can Go Wrong, I’ll probably keep my mouth shut until we sign all the papers.
In other news, though, Claire and I were on a waiting list for a nursery school that a friend will attend. The school follows the philosophy espoused by the National Institute for Play (who knew there was such a thing?). I was content to wait and assumed I would not hear until next year. But on Labor Day I got a call that a spot opened, and I accepted. Claire and I will attend together on Wednesday mornings starting this week. I think she will enjoy it a lot.
We will have three busy mornings in a row, which concerns me a little because it can feel intense, but I think it’ll be okay. Tuesday is Music Together, Wednesday is school, and Thursday will be Little Gym. Other mornings and afternoons will be for parks, playdates, errands, and fun stuff at home, such as the painting we did today.
Outrageous
A woman was shopping in a Walmart with a screaming child. A man approached and threatened the mother to shut her child up or he’d do it. A few moments later, the toddler was still screaming, and the man returned and slapped the child about four times. The incident makes me see red. I am careful to go out with my toddler only when she is well, fed, and rested, but sometimes toddlers throw tantrums regardless. They are learning and growing and have primitive emotional regulation. I guess I am lucky it didn’t happen to us. We just got a dirty look. And I got out of there, apologizing to everyone near us, just as soon as I’d completed our transaction.
Give Cheeks A Chance!
I’m spreading the word about a local diaper drive. If you live in the Bay Area, take note!
Give Cheeks a Chance!
Kickoff @ Baby Buzz Café
09.09.09 from 3 – 6 PM
Our Goal
Help us collect over 3000 diapers on September 9th so that we can break our single-day San Jose collection record!
Where Is It?
1314 Lincoln Avenue
San Jose, CA 95126
Questions?
Call 408.885.9870
http://www.babybuzzcafe.com
Gift bags for the first 30 people to arrive with diapers! Goodies include products from: Little Lamb Design, Baby Legs, Sketchers Kids, Puma Kids, OSH eco shopping bags & more!
Plus TWO GRAND PRIZE gift baskets!
Can’t make it to the event? Please contact us if you’d like to host a diaper drive during September for one of our local-area partners. Email: info@helpamotherout.org.
What is Help a Mother Out?
To learn more about the Help a Mother Out Campaign, find us on the web at: http://www.helpamotherout.org.
The Joy of Discovery
Today we took Claire to the Children’s Discovery Museum, and she had a grand time. She played with water, climbed ramps, painted, crawled, turned things over, looked in mirrors, climbed inside boxes, danced, painted her face, and generally filled her brain through all her senses. We bought a family membership, and we’ll be going frequently from now on, especially with rainy season coming.
Claire likes to play the beep-beep nose game (sometimes Mommy just needs to have her nose beeped). She’s getting more vocal about things she doesn’t want; “Mommy won’t make that noise!” She named her stuffed doggie animals (previously known as black doggy and brown doggy) “Pepper” and “Puff” respectively. Everything is mommy, daddy, and baby: buses, pieces of food, stuffed animal toys, cutlery. She needs everything to be in threes like that. She sings many songs, some of which she hasn’t heard in months (the persistence of memory!) and often is nearly on-key.
Claire is two weeks away from turning two, and it’s been an amazing journey so far. I’ll be posting more in the future about the fun projects we do and the resources and ideas I discover on the way.
Moment By Moment
Silence
I’m feeling quieter and quieter on the blog these days. It’s probably evident to anyone who regularly reads it. My hands are busy with knitting, my days are full with activity. We went to the zoo on Sunday; each time we go Claire is more entranced. My mother-in-law is visiting in early September, and my eldest sister is coming for a visit in late September. In just seven weeks Claire will turn two! The photo below was taken by a friend when we visited her last Friday. Claire reveled in the garden and sandbox.
