It's Love...

Me and my sewing machine. We're past the flirting now. We're on to the long walks and moonlit talks. Soon it'll be the bottle of wine and the sloppily delivered professions of adoration phase.

Anyway, we've made some things together.


I got the pattern/guideline for this burp cloth from Handmade by Jill. This is the first one I made, flannel on both sides with some batting in between. I've made another with more traditionally boyish colors, and after I make several more these will go out in small stacks to people reproducing.





I'm really excited about the book I just got: Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol, the same woman with the great Angry Chicken blog.

I took her pattern for a vintage apron and modified it to fit smaller persons. It's just some cotton fabric embellished with a pocket and some hand done embroidery. I used some vintage buttons from the big mason jar full of them I got from my great grandmother's house to hide the somewhat ugly seaming where the bias tape is on the pocket and for the embroidered flowers.





A close-up of the very much winged flowers.


I sat down with this about 1pm this afternoon and, no lie, finally foggily resurfaced about 4pm, just in time to go pick Sophia up from the bus stop.



Happily, Sophia was delighted with the gift I laboured on for an entire afternoon.

I am only further encouraged. As if my new machine and I needed more.

Oops

There went all my resolution to post more frequently than once a month. I mean to write often, it's just that...I'm boring, ok?

This week Sophia has been on "winter break" from school, so we drove to visit our very dear friends in Rochester for two days. Sarah always manages to work some voodoo magic on me so that I am more cheerful when I leave than when I came. Except for the missing her part.



The kids had a blast, it pretty much goes without saying. I feel lucky to have such a close friend whose parenting style is also close to my own, so our respective children can run wild together and it's normal for everyone involved.

This is an older picture, from last year, but it makes me smile.


Other than that, we've been puttering around the house, watching some movies, reading books, knitting, and continuing to make the house look like ours.

I have to say, I hate all the neutral colors. Beige carpet (yuck, I loathe carpet anyway!), white walls, cream cabinets, white trim. The soul yearns for some color, ya know? My eyes feel assaulted when I have to look at white walls for too long. Alas, I am lazy and Clint is unenthusiastic about painting.So I've been hanging all our stuff up on the walls and I'm looking out for that perfect fabric to put on the large window in the living room to brighten things up.

I've been combining a lot of the old photos and things I have from my great grandmother with newer, more modern pieces including art prints, a blue tile I got at the market in Charleston, SC, and a great wooden bird with metal wings I got from Art For Your Soul in Fairmont, WV.

I got some great prints from Yumi Yumi's Etsy shop, and I am so very pleased with them. I have two already in frames and on the wall. Here are some close-ups:







And...um, I made little cakes for Valentine's Day? I really wanted to make my newest obsession, cake in a jar but apparently, bizarrely, good ol' mason jars are hard to find up here. So I was excited to see Michael's had little heart-shaped ramekins for $1 a piece.

These are oatmeal cake, but I also made some chocolate ones (vegan recipe from Sarah!) and iced them, then sent one along in Sophia's lunch bag.

So my next Big Thing is to set up my sewing/craft table, figure out my new machine, and get to work on a couple of cool patterns I found for baby bibs, burpies, and shoes. There are several people we know having babies, so I hope they turn out well enough to gift with a free conscience. I love getting handmade items...I just hope they will, too!

The "North Country"

They call the area where we're living "the North Country," and when you realize that we're 30 minutes from Canada, it makes a lot of sense.


We lucked out and got a great house on post. Now, housing at Ft. Drum is a very tricky thing. The military has moved such large numbers of troops and their families here so quickly that there is no where near enough housing to go around. Our unusual good luck went like this: The housing department backdated our application to when Clint arrived in the US from his Korea tour. That would be last February, almost a year ago. Then, the fourteen people ahead of us all had something missing from their application. So we got this house. A friend of Clint's was just told that the waiting list he's on is up to 690+ days. Plus, we're in a section that was until a few months ago field officers' housing, which means commanders lived here. Which means we got a great house.

There are three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a half one downstairs, a one car garage, fenced yard, laundry/mud room, and we got all new appliances. Why am I gloating in this way? Because I am so damned shocked that we tripped into this good luck. This is not how it usually goes for us! Clint is also happy with the post they gave him when he arrived, which is another huge blessing.


The kids have adjusted really well so far. Its been a bit hard for them; we've moved from Fairmont to Missouri, then back to West Virginia to stay with my parents for over a month, and now to New York. But both kids have made a friend on our street, friends that invite them over. (!!) Sophia loves her new teacher and school, and she's very excited to join Girl Scouts here. Benjamin is over the moon because I broke one of my Big Rules and we got cable. I've always been anti-cable, and we've never had it in any home we've lived in. I love movies too much to have ever gone TV-Free, but man, I was pretty hardcore about the no-cable. Of course, over a month at Nana and Papa's got Benjamin addicted to Noggin, which has all his favorite shows like Franklin and Little Bear and Max & Ruby. And for once, Clint wanted it. And (do you sense how I feel the need to make excuses?) we're indoors so much of the time here that I broke down and it was installed today. Benjamin is right this minute watching his beloved Noggin.

I think those early years of not having it have been years well spent, though. The kids will still happily turn off the tube to read a book. This makes Mama very, very happy.

(Let's not talk about that other Big Rule of No-Game Systems that got broken with the Nintendo DS's. It's like T.S. Eliot said in a quote that is near and dear to my heart: "The only wisdom we can hope to achieve is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless". Well, the longer I am a parent the more humble I become and also the more leery about making Big, Idealistic Rules.)


This North Country gets a lot of snow, which the kids are loving. Over the weekend we went and got some cheap sleds and some snowpants for the kids. And needless to say, their snow boots are getting a LOT of wear.

It's taking us awhile to settle in, both in the house and the new base/town. I find this post confusing, and although I normally have a really good sense of direction it took me over a week to make it to the Commissary without getting lost. It hasn't helped that they've changed the street names since I arrived. Who is in charge of that, I'd like to know? And who gets to name them? I'd like to volunteer for that job, if only I could find my way around. But we're getting there. The kids' rooms are done. Clint found a pizza place to love and make his own. I found a little Korean grocery to make me ridiculously happy. Sophia found purple earmuffs and Benjamin found the hat in the picture above, which he calls his "goblin hat" and wears everywhere, including the living room couch. So we're getting there, and I think we'll be just fine in our new home.

Halloween Hooligans

For Halloween, Sophia decided to be the tweener-rock-Disney-princess Hannah Montana, who she adores. Go figure.

*is puzzled*

Benjamin, on the other hand, went in the other direction and decided to be a ninja.


These costume choices turned out to be happily painless, in both the logistics and the price tag, which made for a happy Mama.




For the Hannah Montana costume, we just picked random clothing already in Sophia's closet -you know, stuff with sparklies on it, and a denim jacket because apparently there is a picture of the ever-advertised icon in which she is wearing just that- bought a wig for $4, gave her some metallic blue eyeshadow, and stuffed a black sock onto a wooden spoon, applied electrical tape, and lo there was a microphone.

(That was Clint's addition, Mr. Crafty would like it known.)




Benjamin got a black fleece outfit from Old Navy, which has gotten a ton of wear on its own, and we picked up the black ski mask and mittens for about $3. His numchucks (I'm not sure if that's the correct spelling for numchucks, but I don't quite care enough to look it up) were made of paper towel rolls stuffed with grocery bags and then shoved into black dress socks, then more electrical tape was added. The transformation was then complete, and he became...Ninjamin!

Really, I didn't realize I had married MacGyver until the Halloween accessories had begun in earnest.

We ended up going to the party thrown by the USO here on post, for a few reasons. We weren't feeling the door-to-door this year because Benjamin was just a little ill and we didn't know the neighborhoods. We also knew a few people going to the USO thing, so we went and it was really well done. There were adults sitting around for the kids to go trick-or-treat, and they gave us cookies and popcorn and sodas. There were two movies playing, coloring tables set up, and it was all free and safe and warm and, well...contained.

It's like my parenting tip to a tired mom...take your kid to Barnes & Noble and let them play with the trains and look around, because the entire section is enclosed by a wall, with only one gap you have to monitor. Entrapment. That's the key to a successful day of parenting sometimes.


This last picture is here simply because it cracks me up so much. Hannah Montana has no idea, but she about to be attacked by that lurking Ninja with all his fancy kung-fu moves!

If that happened on the Disney show, I might watch it.

The Great Pumpkin Outing

Yes, I know I have neglected this blog terribly. I don't have a good excuse. But look! Look at the picture! Pay no mind to the witless, lazy woman who finally posted it!

Last month (hangs head) we went in search of the perfect pumpkins at Meyer's Tree and Berry Farm, where they had a pumpkin patch, corn maze, ubiquitous big bouncy thing for kids, animals to pet, and pumpkin butter.

Ok, maybe the pumpkin butter was for me.

As a side note, when we parked and were getting out of the car, I asked Clint what had happened to the $20 bill he'd had the day before. He had $9 left, and when further queried on what he'd done with the other $11, he admitted he had spent it in the snack machine at work. Half impressed, half horrified, I exclaimed, "How do you spend $11 in a snack machine?!" And Benjamin, my four-year-old sweetheart, said, "Yeah, Dad, that's bullshit."

Oh eat your heart out, Martha Stewart! I win the parenting award!


In any case, my sailor-mouthed children enjoyed petting goats, climbing a huge bale of hay, sitting in a feed trough filled with grain, and operating these old water pumps.

Of course, it wasn't all fun and games, because we did come to hunt down and capture the elusive Perfect Pumpkin (tm).

So a short hay ride later, we approached the hunting grounds, which were refered to as "the pumpkin patch" by everyone else. Naive fools.



Here you can see Benjamin running away after he has skillfully snatched what might be his Perfect Pumpkin from the small boy who had his eye on it.

I think all that time spent besotted with Dora and learning the art of being sneaky from Swiper the Fox has paid off.




Sophia was also satisfyingly successful, as you can see by her big, cheesy grin.

Oh, the joy of beating all the smaller, slower kids to grab the best gourds from the thinning "pumpkin patch"!!!

So, flushed with the success of our pumpkin hunt, we felt sufficiently awesome enough to attempt the Corn Maze.



It was tough. The kids had to wrestle several times for dominance in leading the mission, or in other words, who got to walk in front with the tall orange flag, and once or twice I thought I saw them sizing me up for a food possibility if we should find ourselves stranded in the winding labyrinth for days on end, but we made it.

Uneaten.

Triumphant.

So when we returned home, the only thing left to do was carve the prize(s). The kids settled on "scary Halloween faces, please" while I went a little crazy and tried my hand at a cat. Clint scooped, if you were wondering.






Mission complete.

Puppy of Doom

She's also known as the "beastly Bess," and if I tell you that when I see this particular picture of her or even simply think of the dog in context with the house in general, I hear that particular theme from horror movies --you know the one, the triple, high-pitched string notes when a sea creature is about to attack or someone is about to be stabbed violently-- well, if I tell you this perhaps you will have an inkling of the last few weeks here.

The dog has been on a chewing rampage. If there was a twelve step program for dogs with a chewing addiction, I would enroll dear Bess. Unfortunately, there's not (or, I haven't found one) and I know, oh I know, that this is A Puppy Thing. So we'll take all our lessons and put things away properly and protect others with plastic or steel or something very, very durable.

The first casualty was underwear. Lots and lots of underwear. Which she will climb into the big plastic hamper just to get, and maul. Then it was a variety of small toys, such as finding Benjamin's small Papo knight incapacitated and...dare I say, stripped of his manhood?...with three quarters of his jousting spear gnawed off.


Well, this IS a puppy we're talking about, right? This is completely normal, absolutely to be expected. This small being is a bundle of explodable energy, a tiny tornado of unquenchable enthusiasm for everything, including the taste of knights and underpants. Yes, yes of course, so when I found tooth marks in the tip of a wooden knitting needle, I reminded myself of this very thing, and cleansed myself of irritation and resentment.

But then...the real carnage began. My glasses, left on the night table, were stealthily stolen and the leg, the part that rests above the ear, was reduced to an unsightly mass of plastic. The lenses were undamaged though, and the munched part was hidden when I put them on! So I got over it, and put my glasses in the hall closet at night. Then the real blow, the sucker-punch to an internet-addicted stomach. A tiny tooth puncture, probably unintentional (you'd better hope so, Bess!) rendered the power adaptor to my laptop useless. And, since I have a MacBook, this power adaptor could not be found in a store anywhere near here. In fact, even the Apple store in St. Louis did not have any in stock. This power adaptor is apparently the only crappy thing Apple does! So I had to order one and was without The Internets for about a week.


Well, I survived obviously. And we really love this dog. As she chases a tennis ball around the back yard or latches on to Benjamin's pants leg for a good wrassle we can laugh about the Trouble she is. When her entire body convulses in wiggles of excitement as she greets us returning home or she burrows under the quilt against me in the early morning, only a small, wet, black nose poking out, I can almost...almost...say with total sincerity that I am over the cost of a new power adaptor.

I guess that's a sign another family member has cemented themselves into our household.

The Fabulous Destiny of a New Reader

Sophia is actually reading now. It takes a lot of effort and she still needs to spend a lot of time sounding words out (because her list of sight words is pretty small when you think of all the different words that make up a story!) but she's doing it. It's exhilarating and exciting to watch her discover this new world all for herself. We've always done a lot of reading around here, but there is really a huge difference between only knowing books from being read to, and being able to explore them all on your own. She's not quite there yet, but she's so close we can both taste it.

I've also started reading bigger chapter books to the kids, and with Autumn approaching it puts all of us in the mood to cuddle up and read. I love that; the DVD player goes off and the Leapsters are put away and I know that those quiet hours are the ones that will stay with them like a shadow as they progress through their own adventures with knowledge and learning and the entire wide world that is open to them.


On a different tangent, what do you suppose the walls of a house would look like when the family who lives there brought next to nothing to it while they lived there? Would you think they would be bare? Well, not our walls! We are sporting our own, very special art gallery here. The artists are quite young, but very promising. Might be collector pieces one day.