Wishful Thinking

My sister-in-law Jessica gets it. She's a knitter. And while her daughter Sarah hasn't yet embraced the obsession, she's pulling for Charlotte to hop aboard the yarn train. She purchased this adorable little shirt for my baby girl. You probably can't read it, it says: Future Knitter.

Tiny Bubbles

We visited with our friend Luke "R" this morning (he's not in witness protection, but one of two Lukes in Harry's preschool class and that's simply the way Harry and his friends refer to him...with the R, too cute). Our toy of choice after spelunking "the caves" below the playhouse (sure to be the second favorite feature of the new cedar Maison) was our long-unused bubble machine. How nice to welcome back the many delights of spring...particularly the ones that float gently skyward.

What's Old is New Again

Thursday's rainstorm was all the excuse Harry needed to demand his frog slicker and race out back to play in the drops. I went along for the ride only to be totally mesmerized by his plaything of choice: a cement birdbath that was my grandparents' (then my parents', then mine). It's the same fountain I played with as a small child in the rain in our California garden.

Harry considers it a cook-pot of sorts, plucking leaves, which he pretends are salt and pepper. "It's my recipe mommy." His spoon is a stick. Just makes me blubbery, it's so damn cute. You can just see the birdbath to Harry's right.

Harry's 3rd Birthday Bash

Thanks to our super friends (and their super parents), Harry enjoyed a super-fun 3rd birthday party (we got an assist from dry skies and a moon bounce that endured a beating from more than 30 giggly kids).
The kids gorged on a truck cake (complete with "dirt" in the tailgate) and awesome balloon sculptures from Becky the Balloon lady, who arrived with an incredible balloon truck for Harry. While our small backyard at one point resembled a clown car, we managed a bazillion kids, and a bunch of smiles. Mission accomplished.

Boy am I glad we won't have another birthday to contend with for six months. After everyone left, the Smith Barnes family lay down in the moon bounce and pondered the clouds (all dragons and horses, said the Birthday Boy).

If you need us, we'll be in party recovery.

Dye Job

Last night we made 30 tie-dyed tee-shirts for the kids attending Harry's birthday party on Sunday. Lots of work, but great fun (when you don't have a toddler accidentally shoving a box of liquid dyes off the kitchen counter). Three cheers for ugly, indestructible linoleum.

Rather than another round of rainbows, we experimented with two and three-color spiral. They came out great. The smaller the shirt, the harder the effort to get the spirals tight. These are not the Ritt dyes we all grew up with. These are the powdered dyes you activated with TSP, all chemicals that the kids can't play with, at least not yet. All of the work is done wearing gloves. Still, I have an orange thumb.

People have asked how we do it, so here goes:

First we use a surgical clamp affixed to the center of the shirt to twist it into a tight spiral that looks a lot like a tuna can. We secure it with four rubber bands. Then the shirt is soaked in a bucket of water-diluted soda ash (which will help fix the colors). Once squeezed out, we use plastic bottles to apply the dye in pie-like sections. Each shirt is then encased in plastic wrap and left overnight to set. This morning we hand-washed each shirt (think: woman banging clothes against stone at your local riverbank) until the excess color had been diluted. Then each shirt goes through the wash, twice. Sounds more labor-intensive than it is...except for the sheer volume of shirts. All the dyes are available online if you want to give it a go. We favor the cotton in the Hanes tagless tees.

The shirts are fun to wear (so says Harry) and great to have as a parent when you don't want to lose sight of your kid in a crowd. They're also a great alternative to smocks when you go to art class.

A note to the infants who are not reading this blog: if you're not a walker yet, you won't be getting a shirt, sorry. But you will have your sibling's rainbow hand-me-down to help mom and dad spot you at the mall.

(FLUSH) 'You Did a Great Job!' (Applause)

My friend Annie works at The Post and occassionally stumbles upon unclaimed graft, which this time was given to me: A book, which I hope we'll never need, on getting along with others when you're 6-years-old, and a potty training manual for little girls, complete with an applause button that you're supposed to press every time the deed is done. With a voice that sounds eerily like Sigourney Weaver, you hear a toilet flushing and then the words "You did a great job!" Applause. Applause. Applause.

My son, who follows instructions most (some) of the time, was playing with it on Friday. I explained that the baby was sleeping 'so please,' I said to him, 'if you're not going to nap, don't wake her.'

Then Harry vanished.

Upstairs I crept, not wanting to wake the baby myself. Her door was closed. But what did I hear emanating from within? The sound of a flushing toilet. I found Harry in her crib (IN her crib!) entertaining Charlotte with the sound of water being sucked into the porcelain void.

Finito!

Under Construction

A very heavy box arrived yesterday courtesy UPS freight and last night the assembly of our cedar playhouse began. Six thousands parts? Check. Enormous bag of screws? Check.

By nightfall, and after just an hour with a battery-powered screwdriver and drill, Paul had done the near-impossible (according the assembly instructions) and had much of the playhouse upright. We're timing him, just to see with what margin he can beat the "8-hour" assemble time. We still have a way to go. Harry is becoming a pro at handing dad the screws. And couldn't wait to get out of his jammies this morning to give the frame a test-run.

And already the kids are loving it. And already I'm redesigning the house. I think maybe, for now, we'll leave off the front door and I'm not convinced we need the simulated divided lights on the windows. Do we? Anyhow, we'll see. So far so good. What we do need is a "fence" to keep little ones like Charlotte from toppling over the edge of the platform and into the neighbor's yard. Get crackin' dad.

The Hunt Was On

For the second year running we've hosted an intimate egg hunt in our backyard. Lots of eggs, 12 kids, scads of jelly beans and chocolate eggs and smiles. For an hour we enjoyed the company of close-by friends who were kind enough to join us for a romp between church visits and brunches.

The prize for best Easter Bonnet was awarded to Ms. Lilly van Goethem. Were awards given for finest belly buttons, they would have gone to Mariel Carr and Sabrina Paul.

We hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Easter.

Serving-Up God on Easter

Church is difficult with little kids. We have a church nursery at our disposal, but it's not an easy option at Easter. So it was with an expected, heavy sigh that we got up and exited our Easter service just 15 minutes in -- after the stash of sippy bottles and goldfish were no longer doing the the trick -- and went outside to walk the seminary garden.

I might have been embarrassed had a dozen other families with tiny kids in tow not emerged minutes later to do the same thing. So we met some other parents, swapped parenting tales of disciplinary woe and enjoyed a beautiful morning to take some pictures of the kids (thank you Aunty Skippy for the gorgeous outfits).

We returned inside for communion. Paul suggested I "pick my poison"...so I took Harry, who I knew would enjoy another snack, the Host, which he informed Rev. Faith "tastes sweet!" after dipping it in the wine with the finesse of a chicken nugget diving into ketchup.

Then it was on to our church egg hunt.

Easter Morning, Bed Head and Baskets

Harry woke Easter morning, took one look at his basket of treats and asked me if he could bring it into the baby's room -- and get into her crib to open it. One of those mothering-moments when you're so choked-up it makes you forget the thousand thing your toddler did the day before that nearly make you crack.

So Harry clambered into Charlotte's crib, woke her, asked for her basket and the two of them examined exactly what the Easter bunny brought: battery-powered bubble wands, chocolate rabbits and a super-cute bunny doll from Zaza. An excellent start to an excellent, sugar-fueled day.

Detente

Our four-footed friends have reached, at last, an accord. If anything, I think Gnocchi, the cat, has actually asserted himself as the alpha male. Poor Typo, down another rung on the household pecking order.

"You're Motorin'"

Apologies to Night Ranger, or perhaps anyone who remembers Night Ranger. But the smell of AquaNet and the lyrics from the hair band's 80s smash "Sister Christian" ring in my ears when I look at these pictures.

"babe you know you're growing up so fast, and momma's worrying that you won't last, to say, 'let's play,'.....cause you're motorin'....

Warming-Up for the Big Day

Easter is a time of renewal. And candy. Lots and lots of candy. We enjoyed an awesome day of sunshine and green grass and friends at the home of our friends Jack and Will, who hosted the holiday's first of four egg hunts. Charlotte plucked her first plastic egg -- making mom a little weepy.

Cheers!

Sometimes you just have to wet your whistle...en mass.