Terrible/Perfect

A little separation

I caught a vivid glimpse of my own ridiculousness tonight. The younger one, who is at the time of this writing 27 months old, is going through a bout of separation anxiety, which has been hellish, for all of us. I had no idea that children her age could have separation anxiety, but apparently it's not unheard of. Anyway, she wants me to carry her around all day long, and cries when I put her down, and cries when I leave the room, etc. Not all the time, but, you know, at every point in the day when it is critical that I be doing something that is not carrying her around. Like when I need to use the bathroom.

I've been really, really stressed out because of it. So today I basically checked out on my kids. I stepped in for the usual and necessary intervals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, unclogging the toilet, dealing with various poop situations, but otherwise I decided we would stay home all day and I would do some sewing. The girls were told to entertain themselves. It felt radical, delicious and, yet, neglectful, even though I was there, responsive, and taking care of their physical and emotional needs. Even so, tonight I kept on sewing. The little one had a very late nap, and it was shaping up to be a late, late night with her, but I kept at it anyway. Eventually Mr. T took her into the bedroom to try to get her down, and I just let them go do their thing while I kept at the machine. 

I felt so guilty.

And then I realized that I feel guilty for...letting my husband, my partner, my children's father, be the active parent so I can take a break? For real. Ridiculous.

I am insanely available to my children. It is extremely rare for me to be without at least one of them. Last weekend Mr. T took them both out to the park and left me at home, and I realized that it was the first time that had ever happened; each week, I simply escape out of the house here and there to run errands by myself. I finally realized what a dumb arrangement that was, and how much easier it would be for Mr. T to take the kids out someplace they like to be, and so I got this huge expanse (four, five hours?) of time to myself, in my house. That I used the time to clean and organize instead of take a nap and sew like I intended is another matter, but geez. Absurdly overdue.

I wake up with my children fighting over who gets to be closest to my body. I am their sole caregiver from 6:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. I am still their primary caregiver the remainder of the time. I need breaks. I mean good, solid, regular breaks.

I'M NOT GOING TO FEEL BAD ABOUT THAT.

Yes I am.

I believe, though, that this neverending Mommy shift is 99.9% of the cause behind my being a crankier Mommy than I'd like to be. Being unendlingly available is not good for me, it's not good for the kids, and it's not good for Mr. T, who needs some regular, long stretches of being the active duty parent. So if it's between feeling guilty for drawing a line in the sand about getting breaks and feeling guilty about being a bitch to my kids, well. 

Guilt or no guilt, I got some sewing done today.

The big kid listened to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH while Baby bumbled around doing destructive things and I added three, nearly four more quilt blocks to the pile (their centers had already been sewn, I'm not that fast).

Maybe Saturday I'll do a few more.

Octopuses

We had a crazy Easter weekend. I feel like there was something I did on Friday but I can't remember it. Saturday was the animal parade, which is, if you are not a curmudgeon, as I know some of you are, charming. I'll let Wikipedia do the 'splainin, if the drum major dressed up as an octopus frightens, confuses, and/or arouses you. In that photograph it kind of looks like he's wearing tap shoes. I can only dream. Sunday was Easter, and my children became crackheads. They ate chocolate for breakfast and it was downhill from there...just all day madness and then so. much. screaming. at bedtime. I feel bad for being a fascist about sweets and then we have a day like this, when they're eating the same amount as other kids and they get jacked up, can't sleep and then don't fully come back to normalcy for a few days. No more damn chocolate!

CAFFEINE IS THE DEVIL.

But all that is over now. Let's move on.

I feel self conscious posting about bought objects as much as I do, but I really shouldn't. I don't read a ton of blogs but the ones that I do read are about stuff, when it comes right down to it, specifically about crafting and the supplies related to crafting: fabric, yarn, notions, etc. I should just get over it and own the whole thing.

I LIKE FABRIC. A LOT. To a lesser extent I like mid-century pottery.

To be fair the "stash" is fundamental to fiber arts. It's like having the full spectrum of paints. For realz, I'm not making that up.

I stashed it up a bit last week; my JoAnn got the Denyse Schmidt line and I went all the way. Or 1/3 of the way, if we're talking in fractions of yards.

There are two colorways in the full collection, "Picnic" (reds and blues) and "Fairgrounds" (greens and blues), and I love the Picnic fabrics like crazycakes.

The Fairgrounds are less inspiring, but I have an issue with getting so hung up on loving a fabric that I can't decide what to do with it, and it sits unused. So I got the Fairgrounds prints to relax with and actually get quilting.

The bottom fabric is actually "Picnic", and there is a yellow print that is "Fairgrounds" not shown here. Obviously some of the elements are mix and match.

I have a serious log cabin quilting problem. Every time I start pulling fabrics out and plotting for a quilt, I start thinking log cabin. Whenever I say or think "log cabin" I think of Log Cabin Republicans. Anyway, I want Modern Log Cabin Quilting really badly. I think I'd make every one of the projects in that book. And Susan Beal, World of Geekcraft? Say what? We are friends now. I just decided that. I have this dream of a periodic table quilt, and I think she would fully understand that vision. 

So I'm log cabining the DS Quilts fabrics:

Why are you puckering in the middle? I don't care. I'm going to wash you so hard.

I'm going to mix up the blocks between the ten fabrics so they're all a little different (I also have six solids to try and make things pop a bit) and then I think I'm going to do a bento box. A large throw size. I'm stoked. 

I also picked up a bit of this amazing floral, from a line called Botanical Pop:

The baby crunched it all up, but dang! Pow.

I think I've used up all of my creative time this evening writing this groundbreaking piece of prose but I'm fired up for some sewing. I realized I hadn't worked on my Mendocino quilt for many months, and when I pulled it down I was all ahguhguhguhguhguh.

Why did I abandon this project? It had something to do with thread, and a bobbin. I remember that much. How stupid.

DS Quilts Fairgrounds bento box, it has been...satisfactory. But I'm in love with someone else, and I'm leaving you to be with her. I hope you'll understand. She's a freaking mermaid.

The bunny and Blythe

Oh man, Easter. What a weird holiday. I'm really terrible at it, too. Christmas, I've had kind of a slow start with but I think I get it now. I'm pretty sure the big kid has sorted out that I'm Santa Claus and the whole thing is a pleasant ruse she's happy to go along with. That's cool! We roll with that. Christmas mornings are pretty spot-on around here. This past year we added a new word to our private family lexicon, "Christmasface", which is the face that the baby made every time she opened a gift: eyes wide open, mouth hanging agape and staring in total disbelief at the glorious magnificence of a motherf*cking Christmas present! 

But Easter has the whole bizarre Easter Bunny thing and I biffed it right out of the gate. I didn't even give the big kid a basket for the first couple of years and then when I finally did I was all "Here you go! A nice basket from me and your dad!" I have no idea why I suck at these things, I just do.

I'm also kind of perplexed about the scale of Easter gift giving for children. I remember always really wanting one of those store baskets-the big plastic ones wrapped in colored cellophane with off-brand "fashion dolls", plastic jewelry and presumeably tasteless chocolate rabbits inside. I know my folks did up baskets for us that were great (I think they were mostly, if not entirely, candy) and one year we got a kitten (!!) that we named Bunny. Poor Bunny was kind of psychotic.

I don't like giving my kids a bunch of sugar (especially chocolate) because it makes them go crazy, but I don't want to give them plush toys because they have so many, or little plastic doo dads because they end up all over the house and pretty rapidly in the trash can. I had this belief for a long while that if I bought my kids the expensive natural toys they would love and cherish them, but all day long they're alternately peacefully playing with or fighting over Polly Pockets. They really love the Disney Princess ones.

So I'm thinking Easter is...one middling sort of toy? And a chocolate rabbit? A Cadbury egg because those are such a weirdly compelling seasonal horror? That seems pretty sound. A butterfly garden would have been ideal, but I forgot about it and the larvae won't get here in time, and a butterfly habitat with no larvae seems like it might be kind of a bummer.

Like I said, I have no idea why this is so confusing to me. I suppose it's as simple as not wanting to overload my kids, whether it's with toys or sugar or television or whatever. There's a sweet spot with all special, treat-like things, maybe different for every kid, and I feel sad and distressed when we cross the line into too much. Everything just gets really ugly. 

Speaking of things that some people find ugly:

Have you guys heard of Blythe dolls? There's a little more history here but the gist is that Kenner manufactured these big headed, huge-eyed dolls in 1972 that terrified little girls so they stopped making them. Almost three decades later they caught on in Japan with young women and have been manufactured again as collectible fashion dolls for adults. It's this whole huge thing. I had no idea about it until I met Ruth, the woman behind Eurotrash, a clothing line for Blythe dolls. Whether or not you're into the whole collectible thing, her work is gorgeous. And apparently it's a huge passion for some people. There are conventions and everything.

Anyway, I was checking out Ruth's site a couple of years back and big kid caught sight of the dolls. She completely blissed out on them. I spent a long time trying to explain that they're not dolls for little girls; they're extremely expensive, with the new models selling for hundreds of dollars and the original Kenner dolls going for thousands. She's actually exposed to virtually no toy advertising, and chooses how she wants to spend her pocket money based on what's for sale in the toy shop downtown, but Blythe dolls have become pretty visible in the handmade world, to the point that Simplicity has put out some patterns for Blythe clothing. The big kid likes to look through pattern books with me when I go to the fabric store, so the whole Blythe thing comes up now and again...and I have to explain, every time, that they're not like a Barbie. They're expensive; they're for grown-ups. And she's disappointed, every time.

Then lo and behold, we were in the toy aisles of a department store and what did we see?

Blythe.

A little, tiny, she-can-buy-one-with-her-pocket-money Blythe.

Hasbro, which owns Blythe in a post-Kenner world, has linked the dolls up to their Littlest Pet Shop line which, for the record, I hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns. They are brightly colored little plastic bobble-headed "animals" and I think they are weird and creepy. My kids have inherited a bunch and received them as gifts and they like them. Not as much as the Polly that you put in your pocket, but they're definitely played with.

Ostheimer, not so much. We tried.

I guess Blythe dolls have stopped being terrifying? Maybe nothing will be terrifying after Bratz? There's the whole Monster High thing, so I don't know. Kids are different. Frankly I think Blythe looks downright conventional now.

After seeing the dolls and trying to determine whether their eyes opened and closed (they don't) we had another long discussion about the bigger Blythe dolls and exactly how expensive they are. We also discussed their eyes, which do a crazy thing that I needed YouTube to help me explain:

I thought this video was hilarious, but when I turned to look at my daughter she had this look of pure love on her face. We talked about the eye thing and I said something again about them being so expensive. She nodded and said, very quietly, "Oh...oh yes of course. I can see why that would be."

Of course.

I got the girls each one of the little dolls for their Easter baskets, along with the chocolate rabbit and the sugar goop egg. Spring treats that are, hopefully, not too much. And we'll settle into a nice, long five month run of no occasions that involve new toys (those occasions feel very clustered up for our family). Whew.

Somehow I don't think I'm going to be able to go five months without being subjected to Blythe Theater.

Feck it

There was this period a little while ago where the little one kept saying "Fuck it!" really loud in public. It was incredibly embarassing. We don't swear in front of our kids*, so it was impossible that it was something she heard from us ever, or from anyone else enough times that it would seem like something worth repeating.

My firstborn was essentially completely fluent in the English language by two years old, so we never went through the unclear pronunciation thing. It wasn't until the baby and I were standing in line at the JoAnn cutting counter and she started yelling "Fuck it!" and reaching for the stack of FAB-RIC in the cart that I pieced it together. Her sailer mouth had only cropped up in situations where there was fabric.

I was like, oh, yeah...fuck it.

Out loud I was like "Ohhh, you want the FAB-RIC? OKAAAY, sweetie, HEEEERE'S the FAB-RIC," nervously, shamefully grinning at the ladies waiting with us in JoAnn cutting counter purgatory.

Not quite as clear as the toddler who says "Fuck!" instead of "Truck!", but I can see how she'd landed there.

She stopped doing that after a bit. Now she says "faggot".

...

Yup.

I am supposed to not be buying fabric, per my own orders to myself, but I was at JoAnn the other day and saw the Alexander Henry Farmdale fabrics (this is the pink colorway, whatever it's called). I know Alexander Henry has a few other fabrics at JoAnn (and if you know what you're looking for they're all very obvious) but seeing this particular line felt a little bit like looking out of a window up in poor, poor Forks and seeing a gazelle.

I've admired these particular fabrics for a long while now, and at JoAnn sale prices it felt too good to pass up. It's funny...they were just hanging out on the rack, trying to pretend they weren't awesome, but when I got to the cutting counter all the women in line asked me about them and cooed over them. At least three of the women who were after me bought several of the prints. The ladies is crazy about fabric with chickens on it.

My fabric stash is getting a little out of control considering how little I actually quilt right now, so I think I might just bust this out as a strip quilt...something I can piece, quilt and bind in a weekend. Any other suggestions? I've discovered Film in the Fridge and there's a ton of inspiration there. A ton of fabric to admire, too, but I'm trying to keep my eyes on the quilts.

I haven't seen any of the fabled Denyse Schmidt fabrics for JoAnn, so either some inconsiderate entrepreneurial-type person bought all of the bolts when they went out, or my JoAnn hasn't or won't get them in. Which is all for the best, really. I seriously need to bust through a big portion of the stash before I buy into another quilt I may never finish.

Of course I'm obviously I'm full of crap.

I'm buying that fuck it the minute I see it.

*This is a lie. I say "goddamn it" a lot. What can I say? I'm a very flawed human being.

Sleepy

Away

Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of my sister and my brother-in-law, the girls and I are headed to Florida tomorrow night - all the way to the other corner of the continental U.S. The last time I traveled somewhere for fun was before I was married, in September of 2001, when my then-boyfriend and I went on a road trip along the west coast of the U.S. along Highway 101 in his mother's white Chevy Metro, camping and moseying and eventually checking into a couple of five star hotels in central California carrying external frame backpacks and reeking of campfire (another story for another time).That was a lovely trip. I think you know you're going to do fine with someone when you can do a road trip really well, whether you both like a fixed agenda or, like we did, you have a loose idea of what you'd like to see and go where the road takes you every day. We still have a bunch of in-jokes from that trip, and the best, easiest memories. I think we were engaged about a month after we got back. I remember coming home to call my mom to tell her we'd made it back and finding out that the family dog had died quite suddenly and I couldn't stop crying enough on the phone to tell my boyfriend that it was the dog and not, like, my nephew. I loved that dog so much.

We fought a lot in Paris, though...although that was some fierce jet lag and we were only there because his mom was dying.

Anyway.

We've been around a little bit since then, but always to visit family (although admittedly having family in a distant nation and in sunny Phoenix there were distinct "big life experience" and "get some sun" vibes to those visits). At this point travel is not in our budget, at all, so this is huge for us. Huge. I'm going to take my daughters to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, to the white sand beach, and, the really truly real reason for our visit, to introduce my girls to my great aunt and to see her myself again, probably for the last time. She's quite old now, and the memories of her in my childhood are powerful stuff. Comfort and sweet tea and Spanish moss and thick Florida grass. Grapefruit, and love.

I'm terrified of flying, I have a list of things to run around and do tomorrow that makes me tired to think about and I'm leaving Mr. Terrible at home for nine days with the cache of bachelor chow that I bought for him today, so I feel anxious and sad and tired at the same time that I'm feeling thrilled to be actually going somewhere with my kids and my sister and her family.

We're away tomorrow!

The knitting is packed.

Apparently there was a reason why I didn't delete the "Travel" category from my tags.