I want a refund

I've always been a vivid, detailed, full-color dreamer. A lot of my dreams are like action movies, and some of them are so utterly badass that I wake up wishing I had one of those subconscious typewriters from The Tommyknockers. This morning, though, I felt utterly ripped off. The last dream I had after putting Nico back in his crib for a rare and much-anticipated lie-in was an incredibly detailed and vivid road trip dream. I was traveling around with several of my friends, hooray, it was really cool! And then we decided to stop at Taco Bell and the rest of the dream was a completely realistic scenario of us realizing several miles down the road that they'd forgotten half of our order and returning to get the rest of our food. For some reason I was elected to go and demand the food and a refund, and then when the Taco Bell manager refused to give me the refund my friends made fun of me as if I'd promised results. Plus they messed up our order again, and doesn't this all sound riveting? I woke up wanting to demand a refund on the time I spent having that stupid dream.


Billionaire

If I ever win the lottery or some other very large cash prize, I will spend a ridiculous amount of my winnings on woot shirts. Thanks to the bibliophile I'm already the proud owner of two woot shirts, the Villainous Victorian Velociraptor and Knock, Knock (Nico is a fan. He thinks the orange is a ball. The placement is slightly problematic as he likes to point to the ball repeatedly.) I made the mistake of looking at the site the other day and now I want one of everything. Okay, not quite everything. But close. Come on, man, this? Gorgeous.

(Gardening at Night)

This is fabulously nerdy:

(Nevermore)

Lovely!

(Transitions)

And just kind of generally cool:

Rise of the Goblin King


Imagine

Last night Nico got the little plastic pots and pans out of his play kitchen and for the first time, stirred around in them with a spoon. Then he dipped a miniature spatula into a pot, raised it to his mouth, and pretended to eat. I lived and breathed pretend play as a child, so obviously I was thrilled. Once he noticed that I was watching him, he wanted me to pretend to eat, too. We'll have to work on his aim, lest I end up with a tiny plastic pasta serving spoon wedged in my nostril.



Bonus video of my kid's creative approach to banana consumption:

Double standard

Indy has a recent habit of going out to the yard and then refusing to come back into the house. He'll come to the door and bang on it with his paws, but when someone goes to let him in, he darts off. Sometimes he does this over and over, until MB corners and leashes him. Earlier tonight, we were getting ready to go drop Nico off with my parents and head to game night at the bibliophile's house. Nico did an epic poo right about the time that Indy started his ding-dong-dash routine, and MB would only agree to take care of the poo if I tried to get the dog inside.

I decided to see if I could lure him in with little bits of cheese, since I wasn't in the mood to chase him around the yard. MB returned halfway through the process with a de-stinked baby.

MB:  What are you doing?

VBG:  I'm trying to show him that good things happen to him when he comes to the door.

MB:  You shouldn't bribe him.

VBG:  It's not a bribe...it's positive conditioning.

MB:  It's totally a bribe. We shouldn't bribe him. It'll make him stay out longer next time. Here, let me do it.

So I took Nico and wandered off while MB headed to the back door. He called Indy, Indy didn't come in.

MB:  Hey, go knock on the front door.

I went and knocked on the front door.

MB:  Do it again!

I knocked again.

MB:  Hey, Indy! Who is it?

Indy darted in and trotted over to the front door, tail wagging.

MB:  Good boy!

VBG:  Hold up a minute. I can't bribe him but it's okay to trick him? What's up with that?

MB:  It's totally different.



Reading:  Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Playing:  a booty-shaking mix that Evilducky made for me

How to make a dinosaur cake

I got the idea to make Nico's dinosaur birthday cake from a neat vintage book my mom found and bought for me. The directions called for a rectangular cake cut into about 9 pieces and then assembled into a dinosaur shape. I figured it was do-able but decided to check online in case someone had come up with a simpler method. Voila:



With only three pieces, this one was a clear winner. I briefly contemplated making the cake from scratch, but then came to my senses and decided that attempting my first-ever scratch cake plus my first-ever custom shaped cake the night before my kid's first birthday was probably not a great plan. I grabbed a chocolate cake mix from the grocery, borrowed a friend's 9" round cake pans, and figured I was good to go.

The first attempt was pretty much a disaster. I don't know if it was the cake, the pans, my method, or a combination of the three, but despite my liberal pre-cake application of cooking spray the rounds tore into pieces when I tried to remove them from the pans. I drove to the grocery at 11:30 PM and bought a second cake mix, and this time I greased the pans with butter and dusted them with flour AND cut circles of parchment paper for the bottoms. The first mix was the standard kind I remember using in high school and college, requiring vegetable oil, but for the second mix I bought the "butter recipe" version that used a stick of butter instead of a cup of oil. I tasted both cakes, and the butter recipe one was much, much tastier. The butter recipe rounds also dropped perfectly from the pans after cooling. Hallelujah!


At this point I covered the cakes with wax paper and left them to cool overnight. I got the trays on clearance at Michael's to use for veggies and fruit at the party, but they were also perfect for popping the cakes into the freezer the next morning, as the video recommends. While the cakes were freezing, I prepared a cake board. The directions for the cake note that it requires a 9 x 14" tray to assemble, so I bought a 10 x 19" cake box at Michael's. I didn't think to buy a cake board, so I made one by cutting the sides off an office paper box lid and wrapping it in foil. Easy peasy, cheap, and it took about five minutes. Also pictured, the dinosaur pattern pieces, printed on cardstock. I cut the dinosaur's head a little larger because I thought it looked a little bit stubby on the original pattern. If you do this, test the pattern pieces on your cake board before cutting the cake, for obvious reasons.


I also prepared the icing while the cake was freezing. I used this Paula Deen recipe for cream cheese icing, but unless you're an extravagant icer or are making a second cake, I would recommend halving the recipe, possibly even quartering it. I had a painfully ridiculous quantity of leftover icing. Once the (easy) icing was mixed up, I set aside a small amount of plain white icing to use for decorating purposes and then added food coloring to the rest until it was an acceptable shade of green. It took a lot of food coloring. Like, a LOT. Probably half of the small bottle I had. I was really happy with the results, though. Okay, so the cake board was ready, the icing was ready, time to cut the cake! I won't lie, I was kind of terrified.

Freezing the cakes made them easy to cut and much less crumbly around the raw edge, just as promised. I was shocked at how well this step went, considering it was my first try.



The video recommended briefly re-freezing the cake, applying a thin layer of icing to "crumb coat" it, and then freezing once more. I almost skipped this step to save time, but decided not to risk it. Heed my experience: DO NOT SKIP THE CRUMB COAT! It was magical how well it worked. Putting the crumb coat on was probably the second-most-frustrating / time-consuming part of the process, but it was well worth it in the end. The pre-freezing did keep most of the crumbs from the raw edges from mixing into the icing, and the post-freezing made the final icing coat look fabulous and completely crumb-free.



The final and probably most important step was to decorate the cake. In the past I've constructed my own icing bags from zipper bags and icing tips, so I was confident that I could do it again this time. I don't know if I used better bags in the past or if I lost my mojo somehow, but unless you have done this and are 100% confident in your bag selection, don't follow my example. Just buy some damn icing bags. I wasted a lot of time and icing trying to make an icing bag that would work. The seams on the zipper bags I had were too weak and would split as soon as I applied pressure to squeeze out the icing. I finally ended up using Lansinoh breastmilk bags, and they worked pretty well, though there was some trial and error with where to cut the slot for the tip. I ended up getting icing all over me and literally taking it down to the wire as far as time, finishing the cake at 1:30 with the party scheduled to start at 2:00 (and I still had to take a shower).

In the video they used Hershey's kisses to make spikes and spots. I knew I didn't want spikes and debated getting kisses for the spots but decided against it. Initially I had planned to leave the dinosaur plain, but then I started to think it looked too plain, so I added chocolate spots. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I used the set-aside white icing to make his eye. I had planned to write on the cake in white as well, but decided that first, the contrast wasn't high enough, and second, I was not going to risk screwing up the lettering with my ghetto-fabulous homemade icing bags and having to scrape the cake and start over. I wrote on the cake board instead and it worked out great, even though my icing penmanship was pretty bad. I was thrilled with the end result -- especially considering it was my first cake construction project -- and it got lots of compliments. And it was delicious.



And there you have it...dinosaur cake! Quite a bit of cake is wasted, so depending on how many guests you're expecting, you may want to make a second sheet cake or some cupcakes. We had about 20 adults and 6 kids, so I made a batch of cupcakes to go along with the cake. We had the dinosaur's neck / head and about five cupcakes left at the end of party, which is a nice amount...enough to enjoy but not enough to overdo it. If I ever do this again, I'm buying icing bags and leaving a little more time to work. From first freezing to finish, the assembly took about three hours. Overall, though, I give the whole project a big gold star!

Blah blah

I need to get back into the swing of things around here. I keep not blogging just because I don't have anything really interesting to say and all the slightly interesting stuff isn't enough for a whole post, but I realized this morning that if I keep to that pattern, I'll never post anything.

Dumb for a smart person
I'm on-paper smart, in that I was always good at school. I even managed to graduate college with a 4.0 in one of my majors (hint:  not the science one). But sometimes, I will admit, I am inexplicably dumb. There are many examples, but the one that was brought to mind yesterday is my constant inability to remember what a bank holiday actually entails. Every time there is a bank holiday, I go to the bank or the post office or both and then am really shocked and cranky when the establishment in question is closed.

Last year I left work to go to the bank on Columbus Day. I brought all my banking materials, left my office, drove to the bank, and then sat in my car and sent increasingly pissy tweets about why the hell was the bank closed and it was after opening time and was it some kind of banker in-service or what? And then I realized, ding-dong, hello, you're a moron and slunk back to work. Not a month later, on Veterans Day, I went several miles out of the way to take a check to the bank while out running errands. And yesterday morning I boxed up a gift for a friend and smugly popped it into Nico's diaper bag before we headed out. For once, a gift wasn't going to sit on the dining room buffet for weeks waiting to be sent. I was going to send it the very day it was wrapped! Booyah! Only...not so much. I have no idea what it is about this concept that is so hard for me to nail down. Bank holiday. Banks are closed. DO NOT MAKE A SPECIAL TRIP TO CONFIRM.

In other dumb news, I was so excited about finally buying myself a pair of cute rain boots on Sunday that I included them on my daily list of happy items at Grace in Small Things. Then Monday I went shopping in the rain wearing trainers and didn't even think about the boots until I was unloading Nico's stroller in the Target parking lot and feeling crabby about my wet jeans.


Hosebeast
I hate our vacuum. Okay, maybe hate is a strong word, but I really don't like anything about it. We thought it was decent when we bought it, and maybe it was for a while, but now it's just adequate. Being eco-conscious hippie-dippy types, we went with the bagless option, but now I regret it. I hate cleaning the damn cylinder out and so I put it off as long as possible. Then when I finally do empty it, it's jammed full of really fine grody dust that's been around so long it's building dust civilizations and developing advanced dust technologies. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. So indulge me for a second...do you have a vacuum you love? Or have one in mind that you'd buy if money were no object?


Obligatory baby update
We had people over for a casual birthday party for Nico on Saturday afternoon. As per family tradition we invited my aunts and cousins as well as close friends, Julia from work, and my nursing group friend. We ended up with about 18 adults and six little kids, which doesn't look that impressive written down, but it was a pleasantly full house. I barely saw my kid through the first hour and a half of the party as he was exploring the playroom (which had toys in it for the first time) with the other kids or crawling in never-ending laps around and around the kitchen / dining room / living room / foyer loop. More than once I realized I hadn't seen him in a while and had to call out, "Has anyone seen my kid?"

We didn't have any fancy party plans, we just got a banner and a balloon, bought some veggies and fruit and chips and various dips, and let everyone hang out. It seemed like people had an okay time, and my aunts and cousins got embroiled in a dominoes game that lasted about an hour longer than the official party, but I didn't mind. I feel a little sheepish about Nico's haul of gifts, though of course I'm stupidly grateful that people brought him things. MB and I didn't buy him anything since we weren't sure what he'd be getting, and it's probably for the best since he probably doubled his possessions in one afternoon. I'm kind of torn on listing his gifts even though I want to tell you about them because I'm so pleased for him, so I guess I'll refrain. (Unless you guys want to know, then I'll tell you! Awkward consumerism / conscience conflict!) At Christmas all he wanted to do was eat wrapping paper, but at his party he actually participated in the gift opening to some degree. He also ate / destroyed a cupcake with great enthusiasm, much to my delight. I had been a little worried he wouldn't eat the cake at all.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of cakes, this was his main birthday cake. I made it. I should probably give it a post all of its own.


I only have video of him eating his birthday cupcake at his party, no stills, but here he is eating a leftover cupcake last night. Hooray for cake!

One.

Dear Nico,

Today you are one! Not to be a total cliche, but I can hardly believe it. It didn't really sink in until yesterday while I was at work but thinking about you and felt happiness bubbling up in my chest like a shaken-up soda pop. As sad as I am when I realize that my days of having a proper baby have ended, it has been wonderful seeing you become a little person over the past few months. You've just started developing an independent streak that sometimes conflicts with what I'd like you to do, but for the most part you are still immensely sweet and easygoing. You smile and babble and sing, you tuck into my lap for cuddles, you rub your eyes when you're tired. Your hair turns into a mass of perfect curls in the back when washed or exposed to any humidity. You still just have six teeth, but you're getting much better at sampling real people food. Just this week you've tried cheesy pasta shells (a fan) and oranges (NOT a fan).

You sign "more" for more snacks and more bedtime stories. You have fourteen words, some of which you use all the time (ma, da, bye, bib, bear, picture, light, pig) and some that you used for a few days and then mostly moved on from (hi, dog, baa, book, baby, pretty). You love books, and will sometimes sit happily paging through your board books for up to half an hour. We read three books before bed almost every night, and you're more wiggly than you used to be, but you still sit quietly for them for the most part. When we get to the last page in Bear Snores On, you wave goodbye. You still prefer to take your naps on someone's lap. You don't quite sleep through the night and I guess I should start working on eliminating your near-nightly wakeup between 1 and 3 AM.

You've lost that baby smell, though your feet haven't become stinky yet (I've been warned by other moms that it's coming). If I tickle your chest while dressing you, you'll lie on your changing table and chuckle deeply. If I don't tickle you to keep you distracted, you sometimes decide you have better things to do and writhe until you're impossible to diaper. You love playing with your toys, and favorites include your Little People barn, singing helicopter, ride-on car, and your toy kitchen (you open and close the doors over and over and dump out the play food). You can identify nose, mouth, and eyes on other people's faces and your own ears some of the time. You have a toy cell phone at Granny and Grandpa's that you very solemnly hold up to the very back of your head. It's perishingly cute. You haven't made any attempts at walking yet, but you climb stairs and crawl with impressive speed.


Earlier this week I was reading over some of the blog posts I wrote at the end of my pregnancy last January, and it simultaneously seems like forever ago and like it should still be going on. How can it be that you're here? But at the same time, I barely remember what it was like to be waiting for you to arrive. This past year with you has been an incredible gift and I'm grateful for every day. It's not always easy, but I always love being your mama. You make it easy to love it, really. You've only been with me for one year and you've already changed me and made me better. You are the light of my days and I am so glad to know you.

Love,
Mama

August to December

Children's museum for scale

Bring on the schmoop

Cute things my kid is doing lately:

Sometime around Christmas Day, Nico brought me the goat from his Little People barn and said "Baaaa. Baaaa." I've been telling him that the sheep says "baa" and the goat says "maa" for weeks, so I said "Close enough!" Then a day or two after Christmas, he started saying pig. I was cleaning while he played inside his baby fence and suddenly he started yelling "Pih! Pih!" while waving the Little People pig above his head. The look on his face was awesome. I could see him thinking I figured it out! YES! Ever since, all the animals in the barn are Pig and they all say "baa."

He received a talking helicopter toy in the family kids-only Christmas name draw, and MB showed him how to pop the balls through the top so that it plays a song. He'll put one in and then bob up and down, dancing to the music. He also dances to the songs from the LeapFrog Scout dog my sister gave him, and once he danced to the iPad commercial with the piano music.

Speaking of Scout, Nico really seems to like it. He's figured out that squeezing the paws makes it talk, so he presses them over and over. If he sees Scout through the bars of his crib, he'll go over and point until I retrieve it for him.

He also got a really great board book in the name draw. When he (okay, I) unwrapped it, his face lit up. He grabbed it and started paging through it right away and my nerd heart sang.

MB and I gave him a Little People Noah's Ark for Christmas with a bunch of extra sets of animals (I found the whole shebang on Craigslist for cheap). We have all the animals in a basket since it's hard even for me to fit them all into the ark at once, and Nico likes to get the basket and start chucking the animals around the room. Sometimes, though, he'll bring one over to me while I putter around on my laptop. When he hands them to me, I try to make up a song about them. ("I'm a giraffe / I'm the color of a banana / I like to roam / on the African savanna!" "I am a leopard / I have lots of spots / I live in the jungle / where it's very hot!" "I'm an alligator / and I like to romp / down in Florida / deep in the swamp!") So far he hasn't complained about my lyrics or my singing.

I usually put Nico in his high chair and let him snack on rice puffs while I fix his cereal plus baby food. When I bring the bowl to the table, he will request his bib by pointing to it and saying "Bih! Bih!" Once I fasten the bib around his neck he pats it and says "Bih!" and then signs "more" for the food. Unfortunately he's also started swatting the spoon when he gets tired of eating.

If there's any humidity or if he's napped on someone's lap and gotten a bit sweaty, the back of his hair turns into a patch of lovely curls. I need to get a good photo of it in case it stops doing that.

Every night before bed, the last story we read is Bear Snores On. When we turn to the last page, Nico waves bye-bye to the book.


He's going to turn one in twelve days, you guys. ONE! In TWELVE DAYS! I'm not sure how this happened so quickly.

Yet another freaking site

I finally started a tumblr site so I have a place to post funny shit I find on the internet that's too good to pass up but not worthy of actual blog posts. You can find me at http://velocibadgergirl.tumblr.com/ if you're so inclined.

Tiny chef

We gave Nico a really cool play kitchen for Christmas. It was supposed to be the main gift for his first birthday in January, but we ended up giving it to him early so that he could share it with my friend Tamsyn's toddler when they visited us this week. Then it turned out Nico liked the kitchen so much that he didn't want to share it.

It's a great kitchen, though. We got it from CSN Stores, online purveyors of everything from modern rugs to martini shakers and I posted about it over on my review blog.



DISCLOSURE: As a participant in the CSN Stores Preferred Blogger program, I will receive a $100 voucher in exchange for posting a linked keyword selected by CSN Stores. The choice of product as well as the words and opinions in the review are my own.

Dead Reckoning

Originating with Linda at All & Sundry.

Here are mine from years past:
2006
2007
2008
2009

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? I had a baby! And I started cardio bootcamp classes at the gym and surprised myself by loving them.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
 Last year, I said: "For 2010, I'm keeping it simple. I just want to be the best wife, mother, and friend I can be." I guess I did an okay job with that. For 2011, there are things I hope that will happen (like finding a new full-time job) that are somewhat out of my control and things that I hope to do that I probably don't need a resolution for (like being a good mom), so I've decided to make one main goal for the year and leave it at that. I want 2011 to be the year of the Great Decluttering, in my house, my professional life, and maybe my personal life, too.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
 One of my message board friends had a lovely little boy in June.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
 My friend Danger's brother passed away.

5. What countries did you visit? None

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? Job security

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? January 15


8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
 After coming very, very close to not being able to breastfeed at all, I'm extremely proud that I have been able to nurse Nico for almost a year now. It was a lot of very hard work, but it was worth it.

9. What was your biggest failure? Even before my hours were cut at work, I was pretty jaded. I shouldn't have let the bullshit interfere with the parts of my job that I love, but I did.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I can't decide if I should say "Just a C-section" or "OMG a freaking C-section!"

11. What was the best thing you bought? Maybe Nico's Little People barn. It cost me $2 for the barn and $15 for the replacement animals and he has played with it every day since I gave it to him.

12. Where did most of your money go? Other than the mortgage, our biggest expense was probably the bundle of hospital bills from Nico's birth.

13. What did you get really excited about? Finally getting to meet our kid

14. What song will always remind you of 2010? Anything from Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? So much happier.
– thinner or fatter? Thinner, but only because at this time last year I was epically pregnant. I'm fatter than I've ever been while not pregnant.
– richer or poorer? Poorer, for certain.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
 Exercised, commented on blogs

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
 Watched TV

18. How did you spend Christmas? We visited MB's family the weekend before Christmas, had Christmas Eve dinner with my mom's extended family, and then spent Christmas Day with my parents and sister at their house. It was really nice.

19. What was your favorite TV program? Burn Notice, I think. Or Deadliest Catch.

20. What were your favorite books of the year? Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Half Baked by Alexa Stevenson, Room by Emma Donoghue (whole 2010 book list here)



21. What was your favorite music from this year?
 Mumford & Sons, hands down

22. What were your favorite films of the year? I can only think of two movies I saw in the theater, and I enjoyed them both - Inception and Legend of the Guardians in 3D

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I had friends over for cake and Chinese checkers, and I turned 29.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Suddenly coming into a lot of money and adopting a new life as a stay-at-home mom

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? maternity-clothes-way-after-the-baby chic

26. What kept you sane? friends (especially online friends), lots of TV on DVD, naps with my kid

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. I may not be a perfect mother, but I'm a good one.


Transformation

Twenty days ago, I wrote this. Since then, I have come to realize that I was probably a little too kind to myself. I may not be a full-blown hoarder, but I definitely have hoarder-like tendencies. So that was kind of scary. But! I also did this:









I wish I had time to dig up the photos I have showing each room at its worst, but these will have to do for now.

(PS I steam-cleaned the playroom floor using a Bissell Shark that I borrowed from the bibliophile and I think I am fond of it to an inappropriate degree.)

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a truly wonderful holiday! xoxo

This little light of mine

I think I've mentioned before that upon my return to work after maternity leave, I arranged to work 36 hours instead of 40 and work longer hours on weekdays so that I could take Mondays off with Nico. Surefire cure for hating Mondays, let me assure you. Today didn't start out so well, though. I cringe to even type these words, but Nico had his first Poo Up The Back incident, and it was really bad. Really, really bad. He was wearing two-piece pajamas, and my shirt-removal technique was clearly completely useless, because he ended up with poop smeared up his back to his shoulders. He sat there mostly oblivious as I howled in horror and scrubbed him down with baby wipes. Once he was finally clean, I lifted him up to do a last butt / leg check and when I turned him to face me, I discovered a huge smear of shit ACROSS HIS CHEEK. As in the one on his face. As in oh my God, kill me now. The bath I was going to put off until Wednesday night became an immediate priority, and I suppose it was almost worth it since I got to spend the rest of the day with a sweet-smelling curly-haired baby.

The Universe must've felt a little guilty about the Poopocalypse, because the rest of the day was really stellar. I'd put off the last of our Christmas shopping until today, after a hastily aborted attempt to go to Walmart on Saturday morning. (No. HELL no. I don't know what we were thinking. Luckily we came to our senses as soon as we saw the long line of cars waiting to turn into the parking lot.) Nico is usually a good shopper, but today he was an amazing one. We went to Goodwill to buy an end table for the guest room so my friend Tamsyn has a place to put her glasses when she comes to visit us for three days next week (squee!). Nico rode in the cart and didn't try to shove the table off the back when I balanced it across the basket part. He fell asleep in the car on the way to Toys R Us and I almost bailed on going in, but I needed "something to build with" for my cousin's son, whose name we pulled in the kids-only family gift exchange. (We ended up getting these Trio things from Fisher Price that look really cool, since I felt like at three years old he's on the upper end of Duplos and maybe a little young for Legos. Plus, holy hell, Legos are expensive.) Nico slept in his stroller during that entire endeavor, and then miraculously stayed asleep through the transfer back into his carseat and the drive out to Walmart.

Once we got there, he woke up and proceeded to be as charming as humanly possible for the duration of our visit. He was bright-eyed, he grinned and chatted with me, he sat politely in the cart and did not try to lick it. My kid magically made a trip to Walmart four days before Christmas something fun. Crazy, right? We had two more stops after that, and on the way over Nico suddenly began crowing happily in the back seat, clearly immensely pleased about something. When I looked in the mirror to check on him, I discovered that he'd somehow figured out how to remove his hat while his hood was still on, and he was very proud of himself.

Obviously I had great hopes that having a kid would be enjoyable. I knew when I signed on that of course it wasn't going to be fun and games all the time, but I don't think I expected it to be this fantastic. My friend bibliophile81 said not too long ago that Nico is the kind of baby that fools people into thinking they want a baby, and she was totally right. I'm not sure how I ended up with such a wonderful, easygoing kid, but I will definitely take it.

Handmade holiday

I signed up for Jett Superior's fantastic internet ornament exchange this year, and I'm so glad I did. My ornament arrived yesterday courtesy of @angi33 and I love it:


The ornament is from Designs by Wesley and the technique was inspired by an old Japanese decorative process called Mokume Gane. (I'm suddenly kind of nervous about the way-less-fancy ornament that I sent out in the exchange!)

The only downside to my ornament is that I can't put it on our tree this year. With an almost-toddler in the house and an actual toddler visiting us the week after Christmas, I decided to decorate our tree only with non-breakable ornaments this year. I was worried it would look skimpy or lame, but once I got my decorations out I realized I actually have dozens of really nice non-glass things.


My favorites are the ornaments that were handmade by someone, so I thought it would be nice to show off some of the best ones. The first one is a beaded spiral that my sister made. I can't quite articulate exactly what it is that makes me love this ornament -- maybe the beads, which we used to make bracelets as children -- but it's one of my favorites of our entire selection.


She also made this one, a cute owl picture decoupaged onto a CD. It's a bit big, but worth the space on the tree.


A friend brought this ornament from Nepal, where it was handmade from what appears to be gum wrappers in a sustainable co-op set up to allow women to earn a living wage from selling their work. I think it's really beautiful.


My mom made bundles of these beaded icicles when I was a kid and used to sell them at craft fairs. I have four or five on my tree that I inherited from my grandmother.


The bibliophile made the next two from plain papier mache ornament balls. She used yellow as the base because it's my favorite color. I like them both, but the second one, with the little bits of tissue paper, is my favorite of the two.



Norahs1213 made paper cranes for our annual Thanksmas ornament exchange one year. It's such a simple but lovely idea.


Teacher Incognito painted snowman faces on plastic ornaments for another year's exchange.


Evilducky knitted "stockings" from a baby bootie pattern one year, though my favorite ornament-like items she's made have to be this year's adorable owlies.



Just for kicks, I'll include some that I made. These all came from the sets I made for the ornament exchange, except for the reindeer. The first one was based on a Chinese paper lantern pattern that I got from a girl at work. I had MB replicate the pattern in AutoCAD and shrink it down to miniature, then printed the patterns on Christmas-appropriate scrapbooking paper, cut out oodles and oodles of tiny pieces, and glued them together. It was a lot of work, but these are probably my favorite of all the ornaments I've ever made.


I think I made these the first year we did an ornament exchange at Thanksmas. They're from a kit, but I really liked the results.


This little spool / pipe cleaner reindeer was from a kit my mom bought when I was in middle school. I vaguely remember wrapping the thread around the spool, and I'm sure it was a bit tedious, but the end result is pretty darn cute.


I made this type of ornament for Thanksmas this year. Another kit, but it's exactly what I wanted. I love these not because I have a thing for sequins, but because my mom made a set of these for her tree when she and my dad first got married and they couldn't afford fancy store-bought ornaments, and they were always among my favorites of all the things on our family Christmas tree.


Do you have a favorite ornament, handmade or otherwise?

Kindness

I'm still (really) worried about how my impending job cut will affect our financial situation, but I have two happy updates since the bummer post I wrote the other night. First, BoMB brought back my laptop, patched up with a replacement screen, so I'm writing this from my very own slightly busted but beloved computer. Secondly -- and I'm still a little gobsmacked by this one -- Nico may get to continue his swimming lessons in the Spring after all. Ever since we started our second seven-week round of lessons, the assistant director of the aquatics program has made a special effort to say hi to Nico each time we see her. For a few weeks, I thought we must've met her somewhere else since she knew his name and it was driving me crazy that I couldn't place her. Finally I decided she just knew his name because he was the only boy in the class.

At the second-to-last lesson, a week ago yesterday, she asked us if we were coming back for another session. I told her that I was planning to take the January / February session off because it's so cold out, but that I'd like to bring him back in March. I explained that our coming back would depend on me finding another job, though. Last night she approached us before the class started and handed me the aquatic director's business card, then told me that the director wants me to fill out a financial assistance form and send it directly to her attention. Even though this particular YMCA usually only offers minimal financial assistance for programs to people who have memberships, she will be happy to make an exception and offer us direct program assistance. Apparently they're very pleased with how Nico is progressing in his lessons and they really want to see him continue to learn and grow.

Just writing about this makes me feel a little verklempt and choked up, I have to be honest. I didn't even know they were aware of my little boy, other than noticing him in the hallway and saying hi, and it turns out that they're as proud of his progress in the pool as I am. And as if to prove that their faith in him was not misplaced, Nico had his best lesson yet, spending the entire half-hour kicking his legs and paddling enthusiastically with his arms and showing more confidence in the water than ever before. I wish I had a photo of him in his little swimming trunks to share with you, but you'll just have to imagine it...it's really stinking cute.

Santa baby

Flush

I'm in a funk today and hoping if I write down the things that are bumming me out, they'll stop bothering me so much.

1. I found out the week of Thanksgiving that my job will be cut to half-time starting in January. We can't afford for me to only work part-time, so I am looking for a new job. I hate job hunting.

2. I may have lined up a second part-time job, but even if they pay me the highest possible wage they quoted me, I'll still be out $250 a month.

3. Because of this, I won't be able to sign Nico up for another session of swimming lessons. I'll have to stop going to the gym in January. I'm really hoping we can avoid going into debt just to pay our basic bills.

4. I'm pissed off at the shift in priorities that led to my job being cut.

5. I'm pissed off that after years of work and years of education, I'm back to scraping to make ends meet.

6. I feel bad about the commitments and holiday plans I made before finding out about my job. It's too late to back out of most of them without feeling like an asshole, but I have terrible guilt about spending the money.

7. My laptop is still out of commission and is holding most of my photos and all of my documents hostage. Obviously a new computer is completely out of the question.

Grateful

1. tiny colorful beads

2. Christmas decorations

3. animal cookies

4. nice soap

5. a great day with my kid

Room & Hoard

I am a packrat. I think it stems from a handful of factors. First (and probably most) of all, I was raised by a packrat. My mom is a crafter and thrift store shopper, a reader and a puzzle-worker. We never had a lot of extra money, so it was often prudent to hang onto stuff that we might need someday, because it seemed ridiculous to throw something out and then later buy a replacement. My parents' house isn't dirty, but it's definitely brimming with stuff. Then, because I worked at a craft store for almost two years, I have a closet full of craft supplies bought on clearance and with my employee discount. Our CD and DVD collections were similarly bolstered by my years working at the music store. I'm a little bit over the edge, probably, when it comes to trying to keep things out of the landfill. Mostly I can get by thanks to recycling and freecycling, but sometimes I still get stuck with stuff that I don't want but no one else seems to want either. I should just throw it out, right? But it's so hard. I've spent years chipping away at our contribution to the waste stream. And sometimes I watch Hoarders when they've got someone on who doesn't want to throw stuff out because someone else might be able to use it, and...it's kind of uncomfortable.

Two moves ago, back in 2004, we relocated from the little bitty one-bedroom apartment we had shared for two years to an 1100-square-foot two-bedroom place about a mile away. I wanted to crack down (on myself...MB is almost blameless when it comes to clutter. Almost.) and weed out stuff before we moved, but we didn't have time. By the time our new place was ready, we had two days to get packed and moved, while we were both working and I was still in school full time. So we threw stuff in boxes and laundry baskets and garbage bags and just took everything over to the new apartment. I'd clear stuff out as I unpacked, I told myself. But let's be serious. First there was work and school, then there was work and planning a wedding, and we actually never got around to unpacking everything. And while we were not unpacking, not purging, we were getting more stuff. Like a carnival goldfish in a 20-gallon aquarium, we grew to fill our new environment.

By the time we moved out three years later, that apartment was packed full of stuff. Good stuff, junk stuff, middling stuff. As I boxed it up, I was stunned at just how much we had accumulated. We didn't even have much money, so I really don't know how we had so! much! stuff! to move. I culled as I packed that time, having learned my lesson the time before. I gave away several boxes of stuff on freecycle, took an entire SUV-load plus a whole pickup-load of stuff to Goodwill, and threw out / recycled more stuff. It was really, really satisfying, and against my expectations, I don't think that I miss or regret any of it. But after all that work, we still have tons of stuff. For a few years I just kind of ignored it, but now that we have Nico, it's time for a change.

Our house has three bedrooms, a just-big-enough living room, and a small enclosed side porch that the previous owners converted to an office. We were very good with Nico's room, and it's entirely his. We aren't storing any of our crap in there, just his toys and his clothes and space for him to grow. But all the bedrooms are upstairs and it occurred to me a while ago that it would be nice to have some dedicated space for Nico on the main floor as well. Since we have laptops and no desk, we really don't need an office, so it was a natural choice for a playroom. Unfortunately for me, it's been our catch-all room since we moved in, so it's been a process. I've been very slowly trimming down and moving things out, but I keep getting stuck with stuff I don't want to throw out but can't figure out what else to do with. Some of it I could recycle, but it would cost a substantial amount to ship it off to an appropriate facility. Some of it truthfully no one needs but I just hate to throw stuff away. I don't like to admit it, but really, I kind of get where some of the hoarders are coming from. Not the really, really out there ones, not the one with 35 creepy pet birds, but the ones who just kind of let it get out of hand. I think sometimes it just happens.

But I am committed this time. I'm really excited about getting the office cleared out and cleaned and set up for Nico. I'm motivated to condense and thin my book collection so that by the time we have a second child, all my books can be on two bookcases in the living room and however many shelves I can cram into my own bedroom, instead of spilling over into every other room in the house. I want to give MB the clutter-free house that he wants and needs to function at his best. And I'd really like to have less stuff to dust, pick up, and think about. It's a little early for New Year's resolutions, but I think I'm ready to declare 2011 the year of the Great Decluttering. I kind of can't wait to get started.

Sad baby is sad

After a week's grace period during which I thought he might've dodged it, Nico came down with MB's cold. At first it was just a slightly wet-sounding cough, but since it wasn't slowing him down at all I hoped he'd shake it off and be fine. But on Thursday night, the snot arrived. And poor Nico, he couldn't or wouldn't sleep. So for most of the night, I tried feeding him, singing, rocking, and just when he'd start to seem ready to sleep, he'd wake up and start screaming again. He didn't have a fever and his nose wasn't totally blocked, but I figure he was probably uncomfortable and annoyed. He finally, finally went down at 3 AM, and I can tell you without equivocation that I am officially too goddamn old to function on 3 hours of sleep. When morning arrived, I seriously contemplated skipping work even though all of my sick days were applied to my maternity leave against my specific (written) wishes. Luckily (or unluckily), I remembered that I had a program scheduled at 10 that no one else would be around to cover, so I dragged my zombiefied ass in around 9:30.

Even though he looked pretty pitiful upon waking, Nico seemed chipper enough by the time I dropped him off at my parents' house, so I guessed he felt a little bit better than I did. And if not, I supposed his six sharp little teeth would come in handy when he got a hankering for brains.

Sick baby is sad

I keep getting surprised all over again that it's December, now. We had to start wearing winter coats for the first time this week, and I keep going, WTF, winter coats? and then remembering that yes, moron, it is almost Christmas. How did this happen?