the bean turns five

this has been a big few weeks for us. the bean not only started kindergarten (gulp), but she also marked the fifth anniversary of her arrival into our world. we had a few things planned to end our very busy summer, and one of them was our first trip to dutch wonderland. the bean decided she wanted to try the roller coaster... and she did! she was so brave, and loved it so much that she just had to go on again immediately. then we had to try everything, and all the time she was giggling and screaming "this is fabulous!" (i have no idea where she picked up that expression.)

as the last ride of the day she opted to get on one of those circles that spins so fast that you're glued to the wall... not my favorite. she wanted to go alone, so i told her what the ride would be like, kissed her goodbye, and waited breathlessly for the ride to stop so i could see her face. i knew either she'd come out crying or triumphant, and all i could do was hope for the best and be there when it was over.

i think that's what being her mom will be like all the time from now on. but for the record, she loved it. so proud of my big girl.

happy birthday, bean.

a first birthday and other randomness

it's hard to believe it's been over a month since i've blogged! we've begun what i'm calling our "east coast tour 2010," which so far has included richmond va, for the spring bada bing show, and new york city (or as the bean says "you nork") for a belated birthday trip for me. we were lucky enough to get tickets to the tim burton show at moma, and spend a day in the super cool natural history museum. i am a longtime fan of tim burton (at 14 i already knew i wanted to live in a house just like the one in beetlejuice), and rick and i have a very special attachment to the nightmare before christmas. i'd never been to the history museum, but am now totally obsessed with it. the dioramas... love.

then we settled in back home for a relaxing (ha!) weekend at home to celebrate the little guy's first birthday. it's amazingly hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that a year has already gone by. i made this super sweet little dinosaur cake, inspired by the one here, though i think that one is cuter.

anyway, wow, a year. it's been a rough one, an amazing one, there's just not enough words to describe it. but we're lucky, very, very lucky, to get to see a smile like this every day. we love you, boo!

spring is here (almost!)

just a few photos the bean (4) took yesterday of our first official springlike activities. yay, warm weather! may your days be filled with blue skies, long shadows, and chalk drawings.

color therapy

if you have friends on the east coast, you may have noticed that most of the pictures they've been posting have been white. we have so much snow around here that even i, who am lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful hues every day, desperately needed some color around here... so we finally found the perfect place for our rainbow maker, which is a lot of fun - it results in the bean screaming "rainbow" at random times through out the day and the cats giving chase to rainbows that disappear and seem to totally blow their little cat minds.


we also made recycled heart crayons, after cleaning out our endless supply of broken and de-papered ones. these will be packaged and given with our greenstarstudio valentine cards when the bean finally goes back to school. we used some of the smaller bits to make a waxed paper heart chain, which i'll post tomorrow, hopefully.

i've also been digging deep for a tropical flower vibe, and have started making a few spring flowers to hold me over until we can have some buds in our garden. (i'd actually settle for some green grass about now.)

and really, we're feeling better already. i can tell, spring is just around the corner.

snow day(s)

the snow came, we shoveled and played, we aren't sure if we'll ever get back out of the house. the bean found it amusing until the cold seeped through four layers of clothing, while the little guy preferred to watch it from the comfort of our living room. i can see the value of both of those strategies.

happy halloween!

from a hula girl,

a mischievous alien named stitch

and these guys.

images from my favorite season

sometimes we try to cram a lot of fun into our weeks. starting with the bean's field trip to the always nostalgic (for me) clark's elioak farm, for her first field trip, we kicked off our harvest season.



then we spent the weekend at baugher's, getting our pumpkins and generally getting into the autumnal spirit...


and topped the weekend off with the annual lantern parade, where rick and i decided we were definitely building our own lantern next year.


i was feeling inspired by tamara's post last week on her block party press blog which featured an amazing image of her son enjoying all that fall had to offer. with that in mind, i squashed all terrified-mom instincts and let the bean have at this bail of hay.

i was well rewarded.

flashes from the past

rick and i celebrated an anniversary this week... and i was thinking a lot about how much a different world we inhabited back when he proposed to me. i'd decided pretty early on that while marriage and kids were fun to think about, it was something i thought about as a path other people chose. i wasn't going that direction... all i wanted was to travel and have fun. a world beyond 30 never even occurred to me, like somehow at 29 everything would just end. that's it.

rick and i had been dating just a bit over a year, a year which had been really rough for me in a number of ways, when we decided to take a trip to california to see some friends of his. they lived in l.a., not too far from disneyland, and we had heard about how the haunted mansion (something we both really love) was transformed every year into a nightmare before christmas ride, something we both loved too. i remember thinking how funny it would be if he proposed to me on the ride, and it kind of left my mind as we prepared for the trip.

well, to make a long story, very short, he did propose to me, on the third ride, at the end of the day, after we had a beautiful dinner in an new orleans style restaurant right next to the haunted mansion. i was so shocked i barely left the ride standing, and after stumbling into the art gallery with all of the nightmare before christmas memorabilia, i purchased these jack and sally figures, which we used on our wedding cake. it's funny, but i totally knew we were supposed to be together after that.

i look at this picture of us, taken on that day, and i can't believe how completely unaware we were of what would be in our future. and by that, i mean our little family.

last night at dinner we were talking about halloween costumes the bean had worn, and rick pointed out the year she was a bee, which i had totally forgotten, since i hadn't made the costume. i remember this particular point in my life being so insane at my job that i didn't have the time, and clearly, barely remembered the day. it was a particularly life-affirming moment when i found this photo just to prove that she had indeed been a bumblebee one year, because just this week i was discussing with friends the role motherhood plays in our lives, and how even though i still work (at least two jobs), it's never enough, and it should be. it is.

150 days, or thereabouts.

the little guy is 5 months today, hard to believe. i'm starting to feel optimistic that things will return to normal, whatever that is. i keep thinking that niecy nash from clean house is going to show up at my door, and in a way, i kind of welcome that idea. (hey, maybe she'd like to try out a felt flower in her hair. hmm...)

anyway, i realized i hadn't posted a pic of my little tiger lately. it's certainly not that i haven't taken any, since, like we did for the bean, i'm documenting each day of the first year of his life. (if you'll follow along while i go on a tangent here, it's probably the coolest project i've ever undertaken. there are tons of similar photos, but it's amazing to see how much they change in a matter of days. you just don't notice it when you're with them.) annnnnyway, it results in a lot of pretty boring photos of him doing pretty boring things. like sitting in his chair at the table. but really, i can't ever get enough of that smile...

happy birthday, bean.

you go, my little supergirl.

let them eat cake

the bean will be four tomorrow. it sounds weird to say it. it wasn't that long ago that we were pacing around the house, rick watching american splendor and me trying to decide if i was indeed in labor. (ok, i knew i was but somehow was still in denial.) my little girl was so strong from the beginning that the midwife actually jumped at the screams that came out of her with her first breaths. i remember that so clearly. it can't have been four years.

when she started talking about her birthday party three months ago, yes three, she was going to have a princess party. ok, i thought, easy enough. as the big day got closer and closer, the requests got more specific, until eventually they cake had to be a princess rainbow castle cake. now, being the avid color lover that i am, the rainbow part sounded great, and i was lucky enough to find this great tutorial on cake rainbow-ing. i never thought it would work, but it did. and thanks to her gigi, the outside fulfilled the castle and princess requirements.

we planned a simple but fun party... and of course, since i am both an overachiever and one crafty mommy, we had a wand-making session for the party princesses. as i watched the bean skillfully and stubbornly attach 50 some jewels to hers, i marveled at her little hands. hands that didn't need my help. i remember so clearly when those could barely wrap around my finger, and yet here they are. almost-four hands.

i don't know what this year will bring. and while i could probably squint hard and imagine that this bigger and brighter girl is my baby, i know she's ready to do bigger and brighter things. those strong, stubborn little hands have so much potential. so with luck, and some rainbow cake, we start year four.

bring it on.

gettin' much sleep?

image by krisblues

this is the question most new moms are familiar with. usually we'll nod, eyes half-closed and respond with something like, "oh, sure, like 2 or 3 hours at a time." this seems reasonable to us in our sleep-deprived state. the answer is met with a knowing smile, and that's it. conversation over.

i know i got the question a lot when the bean was new, and yes, i'm still getting it now. but this time, i find the one i get more often is, "how is it with two?" i'm not sure what people want to hear, but i always tell the truth. depending on the day, i may say it's a thousand times harder than i ever imagined, or i may tell them that we're getting by.

maybe it's because i'm a sahm this time around, or a wahm i guess, but the only thing i can relate my days to is this. you will understand if you've ever worked retail during the holidays - that feeling of looking up from your work and seeing no end in sight. there's not a minute where at least one doesn't need me, and more often both need me at once. i often feel that in some way i'm neglecting one or the other, and that is a pain i can't quite describe. i know, i know, i'm a total wuss. i don't know how people do this.

as stressful as my days are, sometimes, though, having a second baby has opened my eyes to things i couldn't see with my first. the first time i looked at this little guy next to his big sister, i broke down and cried. it seemed like just yesterday the bean was a tiny screaming little red thing, all colic-y and determined - i knew from the second she let out that primal first scream that she was going to be a force to be reckoned with. at almost 4, she still is more of a force than ever, and the little guy, well, all he wants to do is cuddle.

having a second makes me appreciate every moment more, because i realize how quickly they go by. it's made me re-think many decisions i thought i had made. you might have noticed, my blog and my shop have been a little quieter than usual. i'm slowing down, intentionally, but i'll be back. i've got lots of new work coming bit by bit, and i'm getting ready to kick off the show season at crafty bastards on october 3rd. you can catch my crafty blogs over at BEST, and i'll be here occasionally posting new work and updates from the bean residence.

i hope you enjoy the rest of your summer. i'll see you soon!

the new little man

he has arrived. i knew from the beginning that he would be my little tiger... from the minute the bean heard the white noise while the midwife was looking for his heartbeat - and thought there was a tiger in mommy's belly. then later, when she chose a special friend for him, it had to be - a tiger.

we waited a long time for him... i mean, it was the typical nine months, but it was a very, very long, hard nine months. i breezed through pregnancy with the bean, but with this one it was just one hurdle after another. it is not something i'd like to go through again.

but here he is, now, and he is just a sweet and mellow as could be... he's just 16 days old, and already we can't imagine our home without him. welcome, little tiger.

happy anniversary, hon.

can't believe all that's happened since then. love you!

still here.

this will be us soon. image by goosegrease.

ok, it's been close to a month since i posted. i'm going to have to face the fact that i am NOT superwoman and i cannot do it all. bummer.

i am waiting not so patiently for this baby, and nesting like a crazy person. i'm hanging out with the bean, and trying somehow to schedule some shows for the spring/summer so i can get back out there. i'm hoping to be at the summit of awesome in may. i'm scheduled to speak, but babies can be unpredictable.

i'll post my show schedule, soon, but in the meantime, i'm just going to catch up on my sleep. see you soon!

snow day! for real.

even though i am beyond ready for warmer weather, it was the bean's first real snow and she couldn't get enough of it. so i guess i'll have to deal.

snow at last!

we had the snow pants, the boots, the gloves, the hat, the coat. we've been waiting for snow. when we woke up this morning to see snow coming down, the first thing the bean wanted to do was get out there and make a snowman. it didn't matter that there was barely enough snow to cover the grass-she was ready. now snow isn't nearly as fun to me now as it used to be. i mean, i don't get the day off "work", rick goes in anyway, and the bean's not in school yet, so snow to me just means snow. it's pretty and all, but it's cold.

we bundled up anyway, and got outside, and while the bean ran laps past me and threw snow in my hair, i tried my best to scoop up the little bit we had and make the obligatory snowman. he's about barbie-size, and the bean lost interest before i could go find mini-eyes, nose and a scarf, so there he stood, guarding our front walk.

then we got to go in and have tea and cocoa, which really is the best part about snow.

in the leaves

alright, it has gotten bitter cold around here. i'm not used to having snow/frost on leaves as we're raking them up. rick and i thought it would be fun to have the bean out there with us, and it was, although if we were looking to speed up the process we were definitely mistaken. because what's more fun then jumping in the big pile of leaves you just raked and throwing them up in the air?

absolutely nothing.

we did it!

we voted. we waited in line about 45 minutes, and the whole time the bean kept asking what ride we were going to go on... or when we were going to see the "boat" (instead of "vote.")

i feel hopeful. and am glad to have had the ability to cast my ballot. and i can't wait to tell the bean her first voting story sometime down the road...

voting pin by minorthread

pumpkin farm

i love this time of year. it seems like there is color everywhere, the days are cooler, and we get to go to the pumpkin farm. it's always a struggle for me not to end up with a car full of pumpkins.

the last few years we have gone to Baugher's Farm. i like it there because they really have enough to do to keep us busy for half a day, at least. we get to take a hay ride to the pumpkin patch, pick our pumpkin (from the vine), and cart it back. this year, the added bonus was a giant hay mountain for the kids to play on.

there is also a small petting zoo, with animals walking around, a great market (mmm, apple dumplings), playgrounds, moon bounce, make-your-own scarecrow, and lots of other little activities. the bean did not want to leave.

in the end, there was so many distractions we somehow only came home with one, very slanted pumpkin (and lots of food from the market.) so we'll have to head down to the farmer's market on sunday and get the rest.