APB: Blue Striped Hat

Woe is me!! How can something as trivial as a hat make me so sad? Harry and I have lost his new chapeau, on third wearing, no less, at preschool. I scoured the lost and found, I walked the playground. Nothing. So I put in an all-point with the school list-serve today. An someone indeed saw my lovely knitted topper sitting on the stairs on Friday. But so far, it remains lost. I'm positively weepy.

China Syndrome

Big victories are hard fought with little kids. So you take the small ones and pat yourself on the back, with gusto, when something goes right. Like today after the preschool pickup. The kids were really having fun playing with each other by the train table, giggling, totally engaged with each other. So I stole away to the kitchen to fill out the form for next year's preschool admittance. And at that moment, as I inked Harry's name into the blank fields, I really felt proud. What a great mom I am, I reflected. And that's when I heard it, the faint tinkling of fairy wings.

Funny, I mused, we don't keep fairies in the house. But we do keep crystal.... In the cabinet.... Right next to the train table. HOLY S***! screamed my brain. Racing into the dining room I found my brilliant toddlers on the floor, still playing with each other, and their great-grandmother Charlotte's gold-leaf crystal sherry glasses, stacked one upon the other. Charlotte, who clearly has a future with Cirque du Soleil's plate spinners, was doing all the work. Harry was watching, laughing, as he eyed my mother's Ginori coffee cups, which he was already digging out. Aside from grabbing everything I could as fast as I could, I simply could not believe they didn't break anything. The above photo is an exact replica of my 15-month-old's building skills (sorry Lego, but crystal is clearly more fun). It is my fervent hope that the cabinet will be as impenetrable as Fort Knox by the time I upload another post.

Slumber Party

Yesterday we had overnight guests in the form of our friends Dinah and Sabrina who were camped out with us while some work was being done to their home. The kids turned the cushion-less sofa into an indoor moon bounce and then we all decamped in our jammies to the TV after dinner for a showing of "Cars." While the movie does not include princesses or mermaids, Sabrina agreed to suffer through most of it with her buddy.

She has taken to telling the nanny "Harry is not listening to me!" That's OK Sabrina, he doesn't listen to me either. But they did have an awful lot of fun.

Potty Training

Yes, we've used the potty in 2010. As a hat.

Day of Decadence

My girlfriend Cathy and I have a long, long, long standing tradition on New Year's Day, it goes back more than a decade. It involves really bad-for-you food, the Rose Bowl and, well...really bad-for-you food. Not Cheetos. We dive into Champagne, smelly cheeses, pate and Caviar. Just us and assorted hangers-on, which this year included the kids, the grandparents and Cynthia. It is a very good tradition, I recommend it to everyone before the Year of Dieting commences.

Knit Happens*

While I did not achieve my goal of four custom-designed, hand-knit Christmas stockings by the time Santa arrived, I have finished one of them....just in time for the Rose Bowl. Harry is the first recipient, followed next year, I pray, by a stocking for Charlotte and Paul. They'll all be argyle, with different colors (Charlotte's will incorporate hues of purple and pink..so original for a girl, I know, but the yarn spoke to me).

I also (to my feeble credit) whipped up a new hat for Harry -- to make up for the stocking debacle. It's a copy of the hat I made him a year ago (being modeled by Baby Charlotte). Little bugger's head grew. Now I'm making a matching hat for Paul and another one for Paba. Damn these Barneses and their huge heads. They have promised to model them when we visit in February.

*This blogpost headline brought to you, in part, by my dear friend Kristine, who opened the store "Knit Happens" in Old Town Alexandria years back. I still recall her going before a perturbed City Council committee to defend the store's name...she is such a brilliant B-S artist...and somehow convinced a room full of dubious listeners that Knit Happens was not a play on an uncouth expression, no...it's "a feeling......something magical that happens when knitters come together to make...fiber." Ha.

Thank God for Godparents

A final note before we launch digitally into a new decade - I don't know how we'd have coped in 2009 without our friends Cynthia and Al, who bring so much joy (and pie) into our world on a regular basis. Not only has Cynthia taken on the role as my adopted Godmother, but she is a huge source of love and handknits for the kids (and most of you know the value I put on handknits). If I've have a model for good behavior since the passing of my mother, it is surely Cynthia, who still juggles enviable travel, artistic endeavors, whipping up scrumptious meals for weary parents and always being available to help a frenzied mom with both imbecilic and fun tasks, including but not limited to wielding a paint brush during home improvement jags, reading to the kids while splayed out on the floor, always picking just the right toys (Hess trucks, anyone?), or just being a good ear when I want to poke everyone's eyes out with a fork (my children excluded).

We were so happy to share Christmas (and our lives) with them.