Whatcha Doin'?

Ya'll I wrote an essay and sent it off to my friend - the one who has offered to publish my stories in her on-line magazine! I'll give you more details if and when this comes about, but for now, I am giddy and a little bit nauseated with anxiety. What if it's not what she wanted? What if... whatever. No more what-ifs. It's done. I sent it. Now, we wait.

While we wait, let's make some stuff!

Still on the Valentine's Day kick, Lily Ruth and I 'made' chocolates to give to her teachers at Parent's Day Out. These sort of things do not require recipes as you simply melt chocolate and squeeze it into molds. It was big fun, though. We made milk chocolate with pink (vanilla flavor), and dark chocolate with sea salt and caramel:

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

'Salt in these hearts?!' 

'Miss Briana needs a pencil, Mama!'

Everything's better with stickers.

I think that was the end of the Valentine's Day stuff. Oh, unless you count the hours wasted creating my Pinterest board...

Source: designsponge.com via Rachel on Pinterest

*sigh* Who DOESN'T need a love nest?!

Least I seem like a big whiner, I really do love Pinterest. It has inspired quite a bit around here lately! Let's see... we've made cupcake pictures:

based on this pin from 3.bp.blogspot.com:

Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com via Rachel on Pinterest

We made fireflies from pipe cleaners, glow-in-the-dark paint and glitter:

Well, I guess we really made sparkly moths as fireflies don't have round, luminescent wings... (also, my glow-in-the-dark paint sucks. Barely a shine :-/ ) they were based on several crafts that I saw when googling glow-in-the-dark crafts, but didn't 'pin'.

I also went a bit wild at Michael's today. I'm just full of excitement about color and bright things and MAKING STUFFFFFFFFF!

Clockwise from the upper left corner: 1) replacement paints for Lily Ruth - that's what we use to make the giant pictures on freezer paper that usually become full-body art. 2) adhesive foam pages so we can cut out our own stickers :-O! 3) small glass bottles and enamel glass paint - I gotta make THIS!:

Source: myyellowsandbox.blogspot.com via Rachel on Pinterest

4) magnifying lenses - things are growing, time top get a good look! 5) 2 new boxes of crayons so that I can make THIS!:

Source: theletter4.com via Rachel on Pinterest

6) face paints - that's just big fun & 7) nature themed stuff (notebook, notepad, magnets) to continue our thoughts (and document them) of exploring the Great Outdoors.

The colors outside are so new and fresh. It makes my heart sing. Yesterday, it was rainy and gray, but my aloe plant was ORANGE!

I am filled with the impulse to paint everything that will hold still with bright, fresh color. I long to cram my world full of shiny newness. I think my sap is rising. Welcome, Spring!

Quintessentially Two... and a half... Almost Three

Lily Ruth has been feeling her age these days. In a good way. She is solidly and comfortably living in the lands of  I Can Do It, Why? and I Need to Help You Do That. It's been a ball - and I don't mean that sarcastically. It really has been fun!

From choosing her own outfits:

A princess skirt over jeans is never a bad choice

Mama's slippers and a felt tiara? Don't mind if I do!

 To demanding her own curlers while getting ready for Grandpa's birthday:

To getting hands-on with a glue/salt/watercolor project (from The Artful Parent):

The Finished Product

It's been a bit hilarious around here :-)

She also takes her own photos:

Makes her own Valentine's Day gifts for her class (with a small amount of help):

And keeps the tiny things that are most interseting to her in a special place:

She insisted on a Valentine's Day bag for herself as well. When it was done, she announced that she was going to 'put this away in my room'. When I went in there later, I found out that 'away' means 'in the middle of the floor'. It really cracked me up!

What with all the I DO IT activity over here, I've hardly had time to do any of my own stuff. I did manage to make a quick garland for Lily Ruth's room. It was time to replace Christmas lights, so we chose dancing hearts:

We also stole Kittyn's recycled crayon idea, and Lily Ruth took them to 'school' today to share them with her friends!

Lordy! When I look at all of this stuff, it makes me tired! No rest for the weary over here, though. I've got to finish up my contribution to the Parent's Day Out bake sale:

Since I don't really (successfully) bake, those are mini pretzel twists with chocolate hearts gently melted over the top and an m&am dotted into the center (based on an idea that I saw on pinterest). My biggest challenge is going to be not eating them all before time to drop them off! THEN I have to finish the laundry and clean up the house because my in-laws are coming - Lily Ruth's Mama and Lily Ruth's Daddy are having their first night away together since she was born! YAAAAAAAAY me!

Everything's coming up Rachel around here folks! My husband is taking me out of town, my mother-in-law wants to enter my dragon mask in a contest AND an old friend is interested in my storytelling skills - as in she wants to possibly publish me in an on-line magazine!!! I freaked out at first, because I don't consider myself to be an actual writer, but Kittyn reminded me that I AM a storyteller - and a pretty good one. When I think of it that way, it doesn't scare me as much, and I may even give it a go!

Now, if I could just translate all of this good fortune and hilarity into a J-O-B, that would be great...

The Art of Being 2 1/4

I got brave, ya'll. I brought out the liquid watercolors again!

Instead of loading the bingo markers (DISASTER!), I used an ice cube tray to hold the colors and paintbrushes for application. This was MUCH better. I also borrowed from The Artful Parent, and gave Lily Ruth a salt shaker...

The salt 'chases' the color, and adds a cool texture... until it all dries and falls off... whatever. It was big fun! Jean at The Artful Parent uses the salt in a different way (with wonderful results), but my Darling is younger than hers, so we're making it up as we go :-) When she's a little bit bigger, we'll try some of the more structured stuff. Until then...

We just added color and water and salt until we (*ahem* me...) were done.

LOVE IT!

By the way, check this out ;-)

Bubble stickers as body art! She's had them on all day, and had forgotten about them until just now when she watched me add that photo. Now I have to go - Her Nibs requests my assistance measuring things with the tape measure and moving her body stickers around. Duty calls!

Easing Back Into Life

I'm still here. I'm still healing. Things are slowly returning to normal.

I'm trying to pay more attention. I feel like I have gotten a bit disconnected from my own daily life. I worry that I'm actually a bit depressed (again), and hadn't noticed. It's been hard for me to get anything done. Not just the stuff that I don't want to do (like chores), but also the stuff that I say I'll do and then just flat-out forget and stuff that I want to do, but somehow never make time for.

It's also really, really hot here. We're talking so hot that it's hard to leave the house. I allowed our routine to become a bit Morning Outing Then Lunch Then Nap Then......... nothing. O.k., maybe 'nothing' is a bit harsh - sometimes we make it to the grocery store...

But I'm trying again. I'm paying attention again. I'm getting things done again. I even started a blog post about recipes that I've made recently, but I got bored with it. I'll finish it later. Let's play My Life in Snippets of Talk and Photos instead.

I made my first baby blanket! This was the stuff that I had picked out for the baby I lost. It will instead be for my friend who is having her first baby (a boy!) this November. I love the colors. It has inspired me to make one for Lily Ruth as well. It will have the same backing and edging, but a different (girly-er) flannel:

Lily Ruth and I have been trying to get out of the house every day, but some days are harder than others. Some days, it's 107 degrees in the shade, and you have to eat your Dora the Explorer popsicle FAST before she becomes a puddle:

OR, you repeatedly tell your Mama that you want to stay home all day, but she drags you out of the house anyway, so you're forced to have an epic tantrum in your carseat then pass out so that Mama is stuck sitting in the car for an hour and a half while you nap:

But then, there are good days. Days when Mama drives all over trying to find ice cream at 10:30 am:

And days when you have lunch at the Taco Garage so you can 'eat chips and cheese with my FACE!':

We're also doing more art projects again. We were in kind of a creative slump. No energy. No inspiration. Then Lily Ruth started carrying a package of paintbrushes in her 'purse', so I decided that it was time to get some paints out. Friends gave Lily Ruth a finger paint set for her birthday. They're gel paints, and I have no experience with those. I was a bit hesitant about them, and I'm still not crazy about them, but they're fun and fairly easy to clean up.

In typical Lily Ruth fashion, she started off on the paper, but soon began painting her body 'on the sly' - checking out of the corner of her eye for any possible negative reactions:

Then she gingerly applied some to her nose while pretending to sniff her hands:

Then I grabbed a brush and we giggled while we painted almost all of her tiny body:

(Note the use of Mama's bead necklace as a headband) She loves it when I paint on her :-) These gel paints are gorgeous in the pots, but tend to be a bit washed out once applied to paper or skin unless they are applied in thick globs. Lily Ruth likes for me to glob on the paint in a pattern. She then rubs it around with her hands until it's smooth. Then she demands 'Moe, mama, MOE' (more) or 'draw heart, Mama!'

So, there you have it. Nothing earth-shattering. Just everyday good stuff. I'm re-learning how to be more like myself. Lily Ruth is learning how to be her own self.

Art 'Fails'

Remember when I got aaaaalllllllll excited about liquid watercolors? Well Lily Ruth's paternal grandmother is an artist, so she thought that buying art  supplies for birthday presents was a great idea! The Artist Known as Lily received 4 glorious colors and 'bingo markers' (tubes with sponges on the end) to use with them.

I could hardly wait to try them out. When Lily was ready to paint, I filled 4 tubes, grabbed a piece of nice watercolor paper and sat her down in her chair. I reached for the camera as she grabbed the first color. 'Just dab it, Baby.' 'Like this?'... she half-heartedly poked it at the paper 5 or 6 times. Then, before I could so much as blink, she announced 'didn't work, Mama! Open it!' and just like that, there was green liquid watercolor everywhere. I scooped her up and dumped her in the tub. Then I took these...

Then I cleaned up the mess and put the paints away... methinks that we need to reintroduce paintbrushes before we try those again...

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Ya'll know how we love window markers, right? Well, we do. They're awesome.

Earlier this week, we were window drawing while waiting for Daddy to come home. I was also making dinner, so I kept excusing myself to check on noodles and sautee vegetables. Which led to this...

Please note the bathing suit top worn jauntily around her neck ;-) She is learning to dress herself AND she adores her bathing suit.

Now, body art wasn't my original plan, but honestly, what's the harm? So when she grinned and aimed her marker in my direction, I simply laid down the 'no drawing on Mama's clothes' rule, and let her have at it. Check ME out!

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For me, a big part of parenting is learning not to kill the joy. Learning to allow things that I would normally avoid (like things that are messy or annoying) simply because they are FUN. Learning to look into my daughter's eyes and acknowledge that her experience is just as valid as mine. Learning to proudly wear marker tattoos.

The Artist Speaks

For Lily Ruth, paint isn't just paint. It's performance art.

Things start thoughtfully with color on paper:

Then it's time to add in body painting:

Then, a little ABBA:

Then, you yell 'TA DA!'

Then you stand up so that Mama can see the full finished product:

Then it's all over except the bath and the floor scrubbing. Take a bow, Baby!