WW: Made so far this month

There is just something about working with construction paper and Elmer's glue.

I like to think of Wordless Wednesdays as days with less words. Kind of like the Payless shoe store. We drove by one when I was a kid and I asked my mom how they could afford to run a business giving shoes away. But it turns out you do pay, you just pay less.

I googled and figured out how to sew roses, got in a Valentine's mood, and made this bracelet.

Then I decided to have craft day and make some hearts to hang up like Megan always does. Suzi learned to cut paper hearts (and glued on some I made for her) to make Valentines. This one is for her friend Aiden because his favorite color is blue.

And she got creative and made herself a little bird beak from the scraps.

Ivey mostly made a mess, climbing up on the table and crushing her goldfish crackers (not pictured) with her fat little knees.

But she was really cute doing it. She also enjoys drawing pictures with her "cayns."

And right after it snowed we made chocolate cupcakes from a mix and frosted them with sweet whipped cream. Which the kids mostly licked off and left the cupcakes.

Working in the car and at home, I finally finished these birds for my in-laws. I added a nest and two little eggs, one for Jordan and one for his brother.

And this might be my favorite... A shrug made from a holey cashmere sweater and another red sweater I felted. Both were purchased at the Goodwill clearance center for, I don't know, a couple of bucks total. Roses are fun to make. Post of the process from this one coming soon.

Prom dress --> Superhero cape

Saturday we were planning on going to the Blessingway at Natural Baby and I thought while we were in town we'd visit the Goodwill clearance center and see what they had in the way of wool sweaters. I liked the clearance center, but the problem is that the clothing doesn't hang on racks. It's all wadded up in big bins and you have to dig through it to find what you want, which is exhausting. This is the stuff that wouldn't even sell for 50 cents in the store, so some (at least half?) of it is junk like holey t-shirts, but there's good stuff mixed in and they sell it for $1.19 a pound. I was surprised at the number of people there, and I wonder what they were all looking for. There were so many bins to dig through that I totally lost track of time, and Jordan did too. By the time we got lunch and were able to park and walk to the shop, we were over half an hour late to the Blessingway. Ooops.

Anyway, we spent about $15 at the Goodwill clearance center and left with about 12 wool sweaters and a bunch of other things I thought might make a fun craft project. My favorite was this wrinkled up prom dress in Suzi's favorite color, green.

Once we were home and the girls were asleep, I wanted to make something to prove to myself that I wasn't just aimlessly hoarding. I was really going to use this stuff. Or at least some of it. So I did what I had decided to do with the prom dress earlier, and made a superhero cape out of it for Suzi. I wanted to try the dress on before I cut it, just for fun, but I'm 30 weeks pregnant. It wasn't happening. I felt a little naughty chopping off the front panel of the skirt, which was already shaped vaguely like a cape. I just rounded it up a bit and put a little dip in the top for the neck. If I had it to do over, I'd dip a little deeper. Oh, and I ironed it. I was a little worried the fabric wouldn't like being ironed, but it didn't mind.

To get another piece the same size, I had to cut from the middle of two of the remaining skirt panels. It wasn't a big deal; it just means there's a seam running up the middle of the inside of the cape. I pinned and sewed right sides together, and then turned it right side out and top stitched around the edge. Then I used some snaps I had to fasten it at the neck. I think snaps (or velcro) are a safer choice than a tie around a child's neck if the cape gets caught on something.

So there it is! Not very hard to do, and a cheap shiny prom dress is the perfect material for it. I didn't add any lightning bolts, stars, hearts, or other superhero emblem on the cape. Suzi doesn't like to be labeled. If she asks me to add something to it later, I might, but until then it'll be an open-ended cape. I just hope she doesn't think it looks like something a princess would wear, because then she'll never touch the thing.

I think I'll hang it on her doorknob and see if she notices it in the morning. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of that dress. Let me know if you think of anything.

ETA Sunday morning:

WW: Playing in the freak snow

The date: 1/10/11

Inches of snow: 6

Consecutive snow days in my old school district: 5

Days Jordan got off from work: 2, plus two 2-hour delays

Times this has happened here before: zero, at least during my lifetime!

Mommy's day off

I have the day off today. The girls were supposed to go to my mom and dad's house to spend some time with them, and usually I would wait until 9:00 or so to call and decide on a time for them to go. But yesterday was so awful. I'll spare you the (multiple!) poop stories and sad stressful tales, but long story short, we've been stuck in the house all week long because of snow and ice that is totally freakish for our area. The girls and I were driving each other nuts, especially after Jordan went back to work Wednesday. It all came to a head last night when there was nothing in the house I wanted to eat, and to make matters worse this is the week I'm supposed to be writing everything I eat down for Hypnobabies. My friend and teacher Julie is going to be super impressed by the three slices of pizza and five cookies I finally got my hands on. So anyway, I called my mom and asked if Jordan could PLEASE drop the girls off on his way to work at 8:00 and she kindly agreed. Thanks Mama. And now, at 9:00, I'm sitting here by myself. It's just me and the dog, who is taking a nap on the couch. I think she's as happy as I am to have no ear-pulling, no eye-poking, just some time to herself.

I thought it might be interesting to keep a list of all the things I do during a day without the girls and post it at the end of the day. (Is that live blogging?)

1) Read a pee story on another mom's blog and leave a lengthy comment, commiserating.

2) Go to the bathroom by myself. Doesn't happen that often!

3) Make a fresh pot of coffee and drink a cup. Nope, not decaf.

4) Ponder, for the fiftieth time, the questions: How do some moms have five kids and a deployed military husband and do a better job than me? Why do I have such a hard time when I have just about every advantage and no serious problems? How hard are things REALLY going to be with three kids? What if I can't handle it all? I don't know. I don't know.

5) Eat some yummy Kashi cereal with yogurt to make up for last night, and update my nutrition log.

6) Read my email, without little hands trying to pull me out of the computer chair.

7) Read a positive birth story that I wanted to read last week but didn't have time.

8) Go back to bed and turn on my Hypnobabies Deepening CD. This may be the first time I've been able to do it in the morning.

9) Turn on some music, put away diapers, do laundry and dishes, clean the kitchen.

10) Clean up all the girls' messes from yesterday: toys, stuffed animals, unfolded blankets, books thrown everywhere, half finished snacks brushed into the floor.

11) Sit down in front of the overflowing toy box in the living room and start sorting. I do this about twice a month. Some of the toys need to go to Goodwill, some on "vacation," and some just need to go upstairs. Do the same thing in the girls' room until things are neat again.

12) Take some Christmas stuff upstairs for Jordan to put in the attic later.

13) Take a snack break and try to decide what to do next. It's 1:30. I've got three and a half hours left.

14) Empty the dishwasher and fold and put away the rest of the laundry. Now we won't have to worry about those things over the weekend!

15) Go through some of Jordan's old school papers and pick a few to keep.

16) Make two unattractive but functional draft snakes for under our sliding glass door. Jordan asked me to do it a week or two ago. I only used a raggedy old pair of his pants and a $7 bag of rice, but this should definitely help with our power bill!

17) (Leftover) pizza break!

18) Make an apple crisp to take to my parents' house for dinner tonight.

19) Clean off the dining room table.

20) And now Jordan is home and we're collecting up all the trash to take to the dump and our things to donate at Goodwill.

I am going to have to figure out a way to convince my parents to take the girls every week. Hooray for getting stuff done!

How to make a no-sew, no-glue sweater flower hair clip

I was working on a kind of intense sweater project earlier, one that I'm not even sure is going to work, and decided to take a break and work on something else for a while. I'd been wanting to make flowers, and I hadn't found a tutorial that I was dying to try yet, so I experimented a little and came up with this. I googled and couldn't find where it's been done before, but let me know if I missed something and I'll link up. I'm pretty sure it was inspired by these felt poinsettia napkin rings that my mom taught us to make in Girl Scouts. I didn't look it up beforehand, but the procedure is stuck in the dusty files of my brain.

So all you need for this is an old sweater, some decent scissors, and a hair clip. It'll only take about half an hour, probably less!

1) You will need to felt your sweater first if you don't have a felted one already handy. It's easy and you can do it at home. That part will take longer than half an hour, though.

2) Take your sweater and cut out three circles: big, medium, and small. The big one should be 2-3 inches in diameter. Whatever size you want, really. You could just do two circles if you'd rather make it simpler.

I have to point out that this picture reminds me of a liquor store.

3) Cut some little slits at the quarter marks of your circles. Then round those out to make petals.

They will stack up like this.

This is what Ivey was doing while I made this and took pictures.

"Cheese!"

"No, no no no."

4) Anyway, cut some little slits where I've marked here. You want to alternate the placement of the slits from layer to layer and be sure the top layer has slits in between the petals.

5) Cut two things shaped like this...

6) And feed them through the holes in your layers.

7) When you are finished, it should look like this.

8) Just turn it over and slide it onto a hair clip, and then fluff it. You could trim some of the petals if desired.

9) Then put it in your hair, or make your child wear it! I can't get either one of mine to wear a flower right now. I probably won't wear it either. Well, maybe. It puts me in a Valentine's Day mood. I'm still turning over in my head all the other things I could decorate with these fast little flowers. Headbands, for one. Bags, wrist warmers, stuffed animals? What else?

Why I need to hypnotize myself

I don't have long to write. My goal is to get to the store this morning, but I wanted to share what we did all day yesterday.

Suzi had been having frequent urination urges, on and off, mostly at night, for a few days. We encouraged her to drink lots of water, but that only gets you so far with a three-year-old. No fever, no pain (that she would tell us about), but those oh-so-convincing middle of the night HAFTA PEEPEES had me worried. Monday night she had five or so in half an hour and there was usually a little pee there when she went. It seemed like she must have the beginnings of a UTI. I did a little research and came to the conclusion that I didn't feel comfortable waiting it out and letting it get worse. Had it been me, I may have tried cranberry capsules and lots of water, among other things, but there was no way she would do any of that.

So we took her to the doctor, and he looked at her pee and said it looked fine except for trace amounts of blood, which could be normal--or not. And then he pointed out that, really, it was only happening at night? When she was in her own room? And I felt kind of like an idiot because I'd said no, no, my child wouldn't do that, she really does have to pee. I can tell. But the pieces started to fall together and make sense. Ivey is developing her attention-getting skills. We've been really busy lately. There's a little brother on the way. When she has to pee, we drop what we're doing and take her no matter what time it is.

And then Jordan brought up the fact that one of his kidneys is half the size of the other one and only does 5% of the work (which we discovered after he tried to donate a kidney to a friend), and his grandmother has a similar issue. That's when we got sent for a kidney ultrasound. Which she didn't like, and was expensive. The whole day was quite expensive, actually, and stressful. I hesitated to even dredge the whole thing up again by blogging about it.

But really, we are happy because the ultrasound looked okay (although we will still call our doctor to see what he says) and Suzi is probably fine. Jordan said he didn't even care about the money; after all, it comes and goes. I told him, well, mostly it goes. But you're right. So Suzi probably just needs a little more attention. It's a difficult thing to face because we really do try to do everything right. It's not like Jordan and I have tons of time to ourselves that we could be spending with our kids.

We barely have time to do our Hypnobabies, especially the ones that are best done at a time when you're unlikely to fall asleep. Ha. Ha. Ha. Either getting up at 6 AM or waiting until the kids are in bed after 8:00 at night, that is a probability. Even if you're not lying on the couch trying to hypnotize yourself. I could do the ones that don't require Jordan to read whenever he gets home from work, but we don't get much time together as it is, and anyway, I would hear intermittent screeching from downstairs.

We did finally get to do the script last night, though, and I didn't fall asleep. I think it's going to be easier for me to stay awake when it's Jordan reading and not the lady on the CD. I have to be honest, some of those phrases sounded really funny coming out of his mouth and almost made me want to giggle. But he did a great job taking it seriously and I felt a lot better afterwards. It's like I still remembered all the crap that had happened, but it helped me let it go and relax. I was absolutely right that this class is perfect for me because I get so wound up over things. It's going to be great during this pregnancy and way beyond the birth, and I'm glad we're doing it. I'd highly recommend it to other high-strung mamas.

Now I'm off to look up recipes and do a little grocery shopping. Hoping to have fun with my girls at the grocery store and then come home and cook something with Suzi. Maybe she will like that.

I'm trying to keep the resolutions and stuff to a minimum

First, some pictures.

All the girls at the farm (where my dad's side does Christmas). Next year there will be a little boy propped up in the middle of them!

This is a good time of year for us. Christmas is over. All the hard work of gift-making is done, and now we have a long time to be creative and try things before it's time to start over. I already know what we're going to give a couple of people for next year, because of what they liked this year. Hooray for edible gifts, especially for those pesky people who are so hard to please otherwise. And next year I will be starting early. Making gifts for everyone turned out okay after all!

But other than that, here's what I want to do in 2011:

1) Hypnobabies. I know it may seem strange that we are taking a childbirth class for our third baby (our third class, too), but after hearing Megan's love for this class, and knowing how anxious I can get, I knew it'd be perfect for us. We've already done a few scripts and last night we went to our first class. The hard part for me will be doing the "homeplay" assignments each day. I'm going to have to put it on a calendar or something.

2) Make things. I want to come up with new things, and get better at making the old ones. I am still really into felted wool, and I have quite a stash of sweaters to work with! Lately I am working on birds. Here are two little bird families I recently made. I can't take all the credit for the idea--my cousins asked me to do them as baby gifts for new parents. It's similar to something I made for Christmas, but I love the idea of making a special little set of birds to represent a family.

A set of birds for a family with two mommies, having a little girl

I also do nests

I will have to do a separate post on things I am meaning to make. So many ideas, so little time.

3) Nesting. I have been at the height of my nesting urge and I want to take advantage of that before the baby comes. Jordan and I actually got a lot done over the holidays. We cleaned out our kitchen cabinets (yay!) and stocked up on kitchen staples. And most notably, we cleaned out our bedroom. It still needs a lot of work though, because it's probably going to be Baby Robert's birthplace, and it's the room Jordan, Ivey, Robert and I will share for a while. Yes, Ivey will still be in the room with us. I'm not going to rush her out on account of the baby. We didn't rush Suzi out when Ivey came either. But that brings me to #4.

4) Get Suzi into a bigger bed, and Ivey into the toddler bed. I'd like to get this done before Robert comes. The plan is to do what we did with Suzi, and keep Ivey in our room in the toddler bed until she gets used to that, and then move her in with Suzi when she's ready. This will probably be something we all have to adjust to for the next several months.

She seemed to like the toddler bed at the farm... Or at least she liked playing on it

5) Have Baby Robert! And try my best to tandem nurse, and everything else that goes along with a new baby. It makes me nervous to think what it's going to be like around here, but we will have three wonderful children so it'll be worth it.

This is why I'm not making a bunch of lofty goals and resolutions for the new year. Come April, if I can just get through each day without being a horrible witch of a mother and losing my cool and screeching, I will have accomplished something. Even if the house is a mess, and the kids didn't get bathed and I didn't get a shower. Even if we have to wash a bowl and a spoon every single time we want cereal. Because let's get real. We're going to have three kids and the oldest one will be four. This season of my life is going to be a messy one, but I want to have fun in it. I know I'll miss it when it's gone.

What do you have planned for 2011?