Run from the Sun

Up until now, Sigourney’s fears have been toddleresque and sort of sweet. I mean, being scared of a wittle bunny wabbit? That’s adorable!

Then, a few nights ago, she told me that she’s scared of the sun.

It was night time when she told me this. She wanted me to close the drapes.

“The sun isn’t out right now. It’s night time. Are you scared of the dark?”

“No,” she said. “Scared of sun. Sun watching me. Sun eyes watching me. No yike sun.”

I closed the drapes and figured she was being purposefully silly. (She is sometimes!)

The next night, she again told me to close the drapes and that the sun was watching her. I tried to have a rational conversation with her about how the sun can’t be watching her because the sun doesn’t have eyes. And the sun is far away in the sky. And the sun is away right now, because it is night time. And the sun doesn’t have eyes.

She looked at me with wide eyes and said, “I no yike da sun. I scared of dat.” Then she tried to close the drapes and dove into her bed.

Where in the world would she get this idea that the malevolent sun is stalking her through windows?

Okay, I may have found the culprit of her nightmares. Still, totally creepy.

The Frozen Chosen Purim Party

The girls and I went to a Purim Carnival today.

The last time I attended a Purim Carnival was as a child. My memory is of people throwing sponges at my uncle’s face. My memory may have made this up. I’m awaiting verification. (UPDATE: VERIFIED!)

Needless to say, this was Erma and Sigourney’s first encounter with the Jewish festival holiday. Their favorite things about the Purim Party:

• Playing games
• Eating yummy food with friends
• Shaking the groggers (noisemakers)
• Throwing darts at balloons
• Getting dressed up in costumes
• Seeing other kids dressed up
• Winning prizes
• Dancing (Sigourney)
• Running around (Sigourney)

Somebody let a four-year-old with questionable aim throw darts at balloons.

Sigourney tries the hamentashen — a triangular cookie with a filling. This one was a jelly filling. It was delicious. Sigourney “no liked it,” but I sure did.

Erma guessed closest to the real answer of how many Tootsie Rolls were in the Tootsie Roll bank — and she won them! Also, her Waldo glasses have been slightly altered by a reckless little toddler. Maybe that’s why everything has a warning on it that it’s only intended for ages 3 and up.

We came home and I tried to find our groggers. These are noisemakers, and when you turn the crank, they make lots of noise. When you hear the name of the awful man Haman, you shake them like crazy. Yelling out some loud BOOs is also encouraged.

I couldn’t find our groggers. Erma was sad. She said, “Aw, I wish I could MAKE my own groggers.”

So we did.

To make our own groggers, we filled some empty containers (a vitamin bottle and a sour cream tub) with macaroni and wagon wheels and then painted them.

Erma asks me if it’s okay to fingerpaint her grogger…after she fingerpainted her grogger. I told her no, it’s not okay. What’s she going to do about it?

The finished groggers. Shake shake shake!

Elbows and Wagon Wheels

Another stuck-in-the-house day for us, and we are all going slightly crazy. Every plan I had for today was cancelled due to winter weather.

Even Clifford seems to have SAD. He is hanging out at the top of his tank all day, acting like he would prefer to jump out than stay in. This may not end well.

The most exciting part of our day so far has been pasta art. Also, the mess of clingy window things that “happened” while I was cleaning up the pasta art mess.

Toddler + Glue = Pure Joy. And yes, that is a banana sticker she is wearing as her badge of honor.

The trick to good pasta art is to use the She Says section of the paper. Hopefully the injustice of having the trivial parts of the paper dedicated to women will seep into my daughters’ brains and they will grow up to believe that men and women are equal. I’ll let you know in ten years or so if this system worked out.

 

Happy Birthday Clifford

How do you know when it is your fish’s birthday? Simple. He tells you.

For Clifford’s birthday, Erma did exactly as Clifford asked. She even gave him a present: a picture for his wall.

Now Clifford can look outside his tank and see a picture of himself and all of the things that he gets to look at 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There’s his bridge, his gravel, his fake purple flowers, and even the bottom of the filter.

Clifford seems to think that Giant Fake Clifford is his enemy. He gets all puffed up when he looks at himself. He gets that way around Flathead, too.

Here’s a chill flake, Clifford. Just relax and enjoy the show you are starring in. And have a happy birthday!

Cake Crusader

Erma looooooves art, so when a coworker mentioned a monthly activity at the Plains Art Museum, I signed us up. This month, following the opening of an Andy Warhol exhibit on Myths, the Kid Quest was to design superhero capes.

“Do you want to make a cape?” I asked her the day before the event.

“YEAHHHHH!”

Just making sure.

Then she asked me every five minutes when we were going to go. When when when when? I looooove four-year-old levels of excitement.

“You sure are excited about the capes!” I noted.

“YEAHHHHH,” she agreed.

On a snowy, frigid Saturday afternoon, there was only one spot left on the museum’s street. The parking lot was full. Once we blew in the front doors, we saw lots and lots and lots of people were inside, warming up, looking at pieces of blue paper, and chattering about the quest.

Oh, the quest. Yes, this was not any kind of usual kid activity, such as yoga at the library. (So. Typical.) No, this was a three-parter.

First, we had to follow a set of directions (and many, many, many stairs — I almost died — got to the top and the elevator door I hadn’t seen opened right next to us) to the Warhol exhibit. We looked at screenprints of Superman, Howdy Doody, the Wicked Witch of the West, Dracula. Then we sat down to read the next part.

What would your superhero name be? What would your super powers be? How would you help people?

We answered the questions, then followed some circles to a checkpoint. Once Erma’s passport was stamped in, we attended a live screenprint demonstration before entering a studio.

Erma picked a blue felt ribbon and received her cape. We sat down at a table packed with markers, scissors, vinyl stickers, and kids.

Erma wasted no time bringing her superhero to life. She colored. She cut. She stuck. She decorated. It was like all the ideas must have been at the forefront of her brain the moment she picked her superhero name.

“Okay, I’m done,” she said. “Can you put it on me?”

I tied the cape around Erma’s neck, and she was no longer Erma. She was RAINBOW GIRL, grower of flowers and fixer of houses!

We said hello to some friends we met along the way, got her passport stamped on the final exit, and I told her we were ready to go home.

“Awww,” she said, her mouth clenching into a pout.

“What is wrong?” I asked her. “Didn’t you have fun doing art?” I could feel myself becoming exasperated, with that four-year-old way of hers in which I feel like I turned the world into an amazing place and she has somehow still been disappointed.

“Yes.”

“Erma! I don’t understand why you are getting so sad and upset.”

“How come we have to go home?” she asked, and she started to cry.

“Because we finished the quest. So now we go home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

I started to feel this eureka moment. She LOOOOOVED the art museum. “But we finished the quest. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But when are we going to make the cakes?”

A slight communication, justified disappointment. If I thought I was getting cake and it never appeared, I would be pretty sad, too.

Too bad she didn’t know a cake superhero.

Cinnamold

There is basically nothing left that you need to buy anymore. Thanks to Pinterest, you can hop onto the internet and create your own shampoo, dog food, ugly sweaters, cake pops, laundry detergent, toilet paper. And it will not even cost you three times as much as the products shipped over from China and available at seventeen of your closest stores.

I googled “how to make your house smell like cinnamon.” If only the post I am writing would have come up first, then I would have bought the Made from China cinnamon pine cones sold at a craft store near me for $5 a bag.

Instead, I boiled some cinnamon sticks in water for a few hours, dipped some pine cones into the cinnawater (after removing from the stove first), and let them dry on a rack before placing them in a pretty green bowl. (I even baked the pine cones in the oven first, just as Pinterest told me to.)

Moldy pinecones make a great holiday gift…for the neighbor who hosts the 3 a.m. parties; the boss who makes you work too much overtime; or that guy who just cut you off in traffic and then had the audacity to give YOU a dirty look like it was YOUR fault YOU got cut off in traffic. … What was I saying?

On Saturday, I decided that the pine cones were just not cinnamony enough, so I set about another batch of boiling cinnamon sticks. Just before I rolled the pine cones in the cinnamon water again, I noticed something. Namely, mold.

Pinterest did not warn me about the mold. I’m no scientist, but someone (Ben) tells me that bathing pine cones in moisture is one of the easiest ways to grow mold. The pine cones need to be sealed with something after the cinnamon oil unless you are TRYING to grow mold.

Next time, I’ll go the cheaper and healthier route. I’ll just buy the cones. My mother would cry if she knew I was considering spending hard-earned childhood pine cone-collecting money to buy more pine cones. But such is life.

• Cinnamon sticks $5
• Water: $0
• Pine cones: $Free from Northwoods in-laws
• Subtotal: Mold with a side of disgust

Cinnamon cones at craft store:

• $5, made in China, no hassle

Today Pinterest is teaching me to make cake pop frosting. Surely THIS won’t be a disaster.

Perfectly Pomanderous

I don’t know what inspired me to google the words “how to make your house smell like cinnamon,” but there are seemingly only two answers:

– A complicated recipe of simmering or boiling various items of dubious availability on a long-term basis

– Making a pomander

Obviously, I needed to make a pomander.

Unlike me, most everybody knows what a promenade is. It’s medieval or renaissancian or crusadish. I think midwives would sell poboys out of their secret apothecary shops before they were burned at the stakes as witches. Mostly, pomegranates were used to keep moths from eating through fine garments, as moths find moldy fruit naturally abhorrent.

Someone tell me how to pronounce the name of this thing.

Back to life/reality. I decided to make a parliament. In fact, I had all the ingredients on hand. How often does that happen?

• Orange, almost too ripe to eat
• Toothpick or other poky implement
• Whole cloves (seemingly unopened)
• Ground cinnamon (always kept on hand for the daily dose of cinnamon toast)
• Nutmeg

Some of the recipes also mentioned sandalwood. I suppose it preserves the whole thing from smushing over like a month-old jack-o-lantern, but isn’t sandalwood kind of musky smelling? Not cinnamony at all, in my opinion. And the act of acquiring sandalwood was beyond my mental capacity.

The children and I spent about five or maybe six minutes creating our pimento. I did the toothpick part. And the clove part. The children did the rolling of the spices part.

In case you want to create your own paparazzi and welcome the sweet smell of cinnacitrus into your home (it covers up litter box smell marvelously!), here is what I did (your results may vary):

1. Poke an orange with a toothpick.
2. Stick a clove into the orange hole.
3. Cry when citrus juice enters previously obtained paper cut.
4. Repeat until orange is well covered with cloves.
5. Shake cinnamon and nutmeg into a plastic bag; seal clove orange into bag.
6. Let children roll the thing around for a while.
7. Keep in cool, dry place near litter box.

I’ll let you know when the pompandcircumstance has molded over. Until then, we’ll be enjoying the aromas near the cat’s bathroom.

Notice that the iPad has to accompany Erma as she checks on the pomander the next day. The stylus felt that the pomander was doing quite well. And in case you’re wondering what Something Erma is Drawing: it’s a cupcake. Pomander hasn’t come up once in all my Draw Something games…don’t know why that is…

The Knitty Gritty

That’s not a lion typing out his frustration on the blog you are reading. No, no, it’s me, sillyliss. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

All my life I have yearned — YEARNED — to do something feminine, housewifely, practical, trendy, grandmotherly, erotic. I’m talking hemming pants. I’m talking mending socks. I’m talking sewing a button back on, or crocheting an afghan.

I’ve tried all of those things and failed at all of them. Except for the afghan, because my attempts at crochet ended with the world’s longest chain of yarn. I think it was tying the slipknot that really threw me.

Then my mother bought me The Magical Hat Loom. It is magical because you can make stuff without knowing a bit about knitting. You just put the thing on the loom and PRESTO CHANGO hat. No counting lines, no fancy patterns. I make hats. And half a scarf.

See the flower? You won’t believe this but I MADE IT WITH YARN. Thanks to hectanooga. Also, I USED A HOT GLUE GUN. And accidentally glued the hat together. BUT THEN I UNGLUED IT. The end.

Okay, I watch a lot of youtube videos and do a lot of unraveling. I don’t like anything I’ve made. You know what I like? Shopping for yarn. There. I said it.

I love my yarn. I love my worsted weight, my bulky, my accidental purchase of embroidery, my baby alpaca, my 39% wool, my Valley Yarns Cold Spring, my cable knit, my Made in Italy, my Peruvian cotton.

Erma wanted to knit. Probably because I make it look so easy? Hah. She was begging me to teach her. She is four. I bought her a Knitting Nancy (the yarn was a bit thick and it never did come out of the bottom) and a small can’t-go-wrong loom. She worked at both these things happily until she was sobbing in frustration. She is four. But she keeps at it, and while I was at work today, she tried to show her father how she knits. It didn’t end well. She is four, did I mention that?

Knitting with Nancy…before it all went so, so, so wrong.

Tonight she told me she REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to knit. I told her, go ahead; knit your heart out. She said, she needs me to sit by her and help her. I knew how this would end. I sighed, but relented. “Go get your loom and hook out of the yarn box.”

I took a few moments to collect my thoughts. How wonderful to have a daughter who wants to share a hobby with me. We have come a long way since her “I want Daddy; I don’t like you” days.

Five seconds had gone by, maybe less, when Ben calmly told me that there was a situation developing. “The girls have gotten into the yarn,” he said.

I darted toward the bedroom, but it was too late. My beautiful, beautiful, precious, gorgeous, soft, Peruvian, Italian, cotton, wool, alpaca, 6% silk, worsted weight, bulky, fiscal cliff yarn — it. was. everywhere. There was some screaming and the leaving of children from the room. And then I sat amongst the tangles and tried not to sob uncontrollably while I unweaved the superwash from the handwash, the Italian from the Peruvian, the Merino from the Angora.

When it was done, I stared at my neat bundles and felt a pang of anxiety that it was only a matter of time before another epic wreck occurred. How could I prevent an epic wreck?

It’s odd how needlework and crafting is a lot more expensive than just buying off the rack. Is that how the universe is supposed to operate?

Yarn – $
More Yarn – $$
Tote Bag for Yarn – $
Loom(s) – $$
Low Temp Hot Glue Gun – $
Low Temp Glue Sticks – $
Combination Safe for Yarn Storage – $$$$$$$$

ROAR. This hobby is making me stressed out. Maybe I should find something a little more relaxing, like whittling or anger management.

The Art of Art

Erma and Sigourney practice the art of art in a variety of media: craft projects, coloring books, rocket ship boxes, stickers, photography, block architecture, sketchbooks, iPads…

Both girls enjoy art. Their father and I try to foster that passion in them. It engages their minds and keeps their attention in ways little else outside of television can.

Then you turn around for a moment when the children are quiet and busy, and when you turn back, that’s when you see the writing on the wall. And on the couch and on the carpet and on the table…

This is one of Erma’s Drawsome entries. It’s 8 letters and obviously is obvious, no?

Not to be outdone, here’s my own handiwork from this weekend:

“Hello, Country Bumpkin. How’s the frost out on the pumpkin?”

Chalk Outlines

I made a small mistake at work today. I lost a smidge over $2,000. I can’t find it anywhere.

Before you call the state auditor or the Fargo Forum or anything, it’s just lost on paper, not in reality. I’ll find it. I should have paid more attention in pre-calculus class. Or remedial math. I’m definitely missing something. (I hope Ms. Campfield isn’t reading this; all I remember from junior high algebra class is to say “r” like a pirate. “R”? Isn’t algebra about “x”s?)

Here is some easy math, though:

I drew Erma a stoplight and a parking spot this evening with her new box of (now smashed, thank you, Sigourney) colored chalk, and suddenly our driveway became a map to the city, the region, the world. She can take an idea and really chalk it up to something!

An evening well spent!

Wish me luck tomorrow balancing my distributions. If I can’t find my mistake, the assistant boss is going to have me walk the plank. Arrr!