Thursday, September 30, 2010

Happy Birthday!

Terrible Two's, here we come!  Little Libby is two years old today.  So hard to believe these past two years went by so fast, but they came and went and here we are.  Amazing how time flies.

Then again, it seems like ages ago.  Seems like we've always had Libby around; what did we do without her?  When she was born, we only had one little girl. Now that idea seems odd. When she was born we had two teenagers, one still in high school. I was in college!  My how life has changed in two short years.

Now that she's two, her personality is as big as the moon.  She's not as big as the moon though, in fact, she's pretty tiny.  Only 24 lbs and 32.5 inches. She might be little, but she's strong, agile, healthy and smart.  She can talk like a four year old!  She knew the alphabet by the time she was 21 months old.  By "know it" I mean she could recognize every letter and say what it was, plus sing along to the alphabet song.  She can count to 12 and recognizes most 0-9 numbers too. She sings lots of songs, most of them are Disney songs.  She's got a great memory for names too. I think she's ready for kindergarten!

Totally sounds like I'm bragging. I am!!!

To celebrate the day, I threw her a little party.  I decided to have the party at noon on a Wednesday since that is the regular baby play group picnic time slot and I knew all of her favorite little buddies would be available then. Plus, the daddies don't have to tag along.  Dads don't like to go to little kid birthday parties, especially when they don't know, or aren't related to, the birthday kid. So I broke tradition and didn't have the party on a Saturday.  Wednesday party!  Her birthday was on Thursday, which also would have been a good day for it, but Gracie has preschool on Thursdays so I decided a day early would be easier for us.

Via Facebook, I invited all of the mommies and toddlers from baby-group.  I don't know what I did wrong, but I accidentally invited all 233 of my facebook friends. Whoops.  Twelve said they were coming.  Wow, that's a lot, but it's not 212!  Whew!

I ordered a Minnie Mouse cake for her. Libby just loves Minnie Mouse!  Luckily, a friend of Lexie's decorates cakes as a little hobby business. She's just getting started with cake decorating, so I thought I would help her out.  The baby group mommies would go crazy over a cute little cake and she would get some more business for sure.  A week before the party (cutting it close!) I ordered the cake, told her what all I want, agreed on a price and gave her the delivery date, time, address, got it all firmed up.  Exciting!

The night before, I asked Lexie to give her a call and make sure she knew where we lived to deliver the cake.  Guess what. Cake girl hadn't heard from me since I ordered, so she assumed I didn't want it anymore.  So, no cake.  I was so very disappointed!  Lexie and Katie went to Albertson's on Wednesday morning to grab a generic cake out of the bakery bin.  It was really cute!  Libby loved it!  She has a passionate love for her "flop-flops" and the cake had flop-flop shoes on it.  Perfect! 

I made a green tossed salad and some penne pasta dishes for lunch.  Added a tray of broccoli and carrots, baked cookies and opened up a bag of chips and goldfish crackers for the little ones. Ended up with a good spread for lunch.  We gave up drinking pop a few years ago, so I set out a cooler of water bottles and juice boxes.  I also made sun tea which I remembered the next day.  Whoops.

Libby's favorite little friends came with their mommies. Jillian, Liam, Kaelyn, Justin, Nora, and the babies Mallory and Charlie. Fun, fun, fun! One daddy showed up and he was out running around the back yard with the kids so he was having fun too.  Looked like a very tall little boy (with a receding hairline).

Kids played, everyone ate, we sang Happy Birthday and had cake, then all of the kids opened her presents. Libby had such a fun time! 

After everyone left, I rocked the birthday girl and her new nephew to sleep in my lap.  That was sweet!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Lightning McQueen Dresses

My latest sewing project was to make Lightning McQueen dresses for the girls.  They just love the movie Cars but the merchandise, especially clothing, is all geared to boys.  To be fair, boys don't get much merchandise to choose from when it comes to Cinderella.  There was a prince in that movie too!  That's ok, Mom to the rescue!  Gender-equity for Lightning McQueen!




I decided to keep it simple and avoid buttons and zippers.  I got a  new sundress pattern for Gracie that has a halter style top and an elastic waist. She has a dress this style already that I bought for her at Kohls, so I know it will work well.  I measured her and got it all cut out and sewn up fairly quickly.  Somehow, I still managed to get it too big around the middle.  I'll just add ties, I almost put ties on it to begin with but decided not to.  The pattern does not call for a waistband or ties.  I thought the waistband was cute though, because it broke up the busy fabric print a bit.


 


Libby's dress was easy!  I used the same pattern that I had just used on her Tinkerbell sundress so I knew it fit and I knew how to sew it already.  I made a couple of modifications, very slight.  I shortened up the armhole; I thought it was too big on the Tinkerbell dress.  And, I put the straps at the edge of the yoke instead of moving them in a bit.  With the Tink dress, I moved the straps in to be sure that the dress would stay up on her shoulders, and that worked, but, it made the yoke look goofy with the corners sticking out.  So, I shortened the width of the yoke and put the straps on the edge where they belong.  Ta-Da!  I also trimmed up the dress with some plain red to limit the busyness of the fabric print.  Lightning McQueen comes in some very exciting print!


The dresses turned out so cute! The girls were playing and dancing around me while I sewed waiting for me  to finish.  Very distracting! I decided to move my sewing machine to the wide space in the upstairs hallway. The light there is excellent. I can peek over the edge to see the girls downstairs, and I'm closeby to watch them if they are upstairs. Seemed like a good idea in theory.  But the space is small.



I've been sewing for 18 years.  My first machine was a Mother's Day gift in 1992 from my husband. He had no idea if I would even be interested in the slightest, and we sure didn't have the money for it! But he took a chance and it paid off. I love it!  For the first time ever, I got my finger in the way of the needle.  The needle went right down through the very tip of my middle finger.  It hurt!  I've had worse paper cuts, but in the moment I kind of forgot about that. The girls made sure I got a Dora bandaid and some kisses, ahhhh, all better!



I also tried to figure out how to work that serger of mine.  I still can't figure it out. I'm about ready to sell it and get a simpler machine. I wanted top-of-the-line so that I would never have to upgrade, but maybe that wasn't such a good idea.  I'm hoping to find a serger class, but so far I haven't had any luck with that either. I think my problem is tension, but maybe that is just the result of another issue. Hard to say.



In only one weekend, I was able to cut and sew the dresses!  Cute new Cars dresses needed an outing, so on Monday we went to Disneyland and California Adventure!  Highlight (one of many highlights) was seeing Lightning McQueen and Mater!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Learning Too Much in Preschool

Me: Gracie, what did you do in preschool today?

G: I watched a boy pee.

Me: WHAT?

G: I was watching David go pee.

Me: Why?

G: He hadda go potty.

Me: (at a loss for words, I believe I just made some sort of a grunting noise)

G: He has a different kinda butt.

Me: You saw his butt?

G: Yeah. It's different.

Me: ugh. And what were you doing?

G: Washing my hands.

Me: Hmm.

G: He can stand up and squirt the pee!

Me: Oh my.

G: It was so totally awesome!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

An Open Letter to Kenneth the Commenter:

Hey "Kenneth",  yeah, you, the guy with no profile when I click your name,

Usually, I just love comments on my blog posts. Not this time. You are just a jerk, or a bot, I haven't decided which one yet. Probably a bot.

Did you search for blog posts that contained the words "dentist" and "child"? That must have been it. Obviously, you didn't read my blog post. I don't need a dentist that caters to children, or where they are experts with caring for children and have child friendly dental chairs. I really don't need a dental chair that gives me "the ambiance of playing". Oh, that's right, you didn't actually read what I wrote, you just assumed because you picked up two key words from your search. 

I also do not need a dentist office located in South Carolina. Nice of you to leave links to the office where you want me to go.  Again, you didn't read my blog, you just crapped out your spam on it. I cruised around your web site and there is a section "Meet the Staff". Hmm, where is Kenneth?  Oh, Kenneth, the spam advertiser for this dental office that I won't be going to... he's not listed.

Kenneth, thanks but no thanks for your concern about spending too much time in the waiting room with a child.  But, you see, if you had read my blog post and knew what you were commenting on, you would know that the waiting room was just the place where she wanted to be!   Bot.

If you are having a more difficult time getting through the comment security crapola, curse Kenneth.  I'm beefing up the anti-bot options on the comment settings which will make it more inconvenient for my one or two lovely much appreciated comments to get through now.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Five Generations

Grandma wanted a five generation portrait done, and we all thought it was a great idea! We tossed around a few ideas and ended up deciding that Grandma and Mom would drive over 1000 miles to my house and we'd do the portrait here. The key to the plan was that we wanted Michael Fletcher to take the pictures, he is awesome!  Last week, they drove from Wyoming to California and we had our picture taken. 

Starting from the top:

Gracie is my grandma. She is 102 years old, but only chronologically. She's "younger" than a lot of old folks who are only in their 80s.  She was born in the same town where she lives now. 

Helen is my mom.  She is the daughter of Gracie.  I always forget how old she is, 70 something.  It doesn't matter because she looks and acts at least 20 years younger than her true age! My grandma often refers to her as "The Kid".

Me.  Mary.  I'm the daughter of Helen.  And the 3rd in line in this five generation thing we've got going on now. 

My daughter, Lexie.  She is 19 yrs old and just had a baby in August.

Charlie.  He is 3 weeks old and very happy and  healthy.  And that makes 5 generations!  Isn't that cool!

Here is a photo from one of our point and shoot cameras... not nearly the amazing quality as the professional pictures, but good enough for the blog.  All of us in one place sitting together.  So nice!

Friday, September 10, 2010

How to Have the Quickest Dentist Appointment Ever

It's easy.  Take along a two-yr old.  (she's 23 mths and 2 weeks to be specific, but the attitude is totally two!)

A week ago, I had my worst dentist appointment.  Got it done.  The left side of my mouth got a deep cleaning, 4 cavities filled and a wisdom tooth extracted.  No fun.  I'll blog about it later and backdate it so that it all fits in the stream nicely - yes, someday when I have time.  Anyway, I had a big gaping hole in my mouth from the tooth being pulled. Yesterday, I went in for a follow-up to see if I was healing ok. Which we all know is code for "so we can charge your insurance again".

I knew it would just be a quick check so I took Libby with me. She'll be fine..... Why do I think crazy thoughts like that?  When will I ever learn?

She was fine in the waiting area. We waited for 20 minutes.  She sat at a cute little children's table in some small little pint sized chairs.  She just loved the chairs!  She sat in every one of them and decided the green chair was the best.  On the table was on of those beads on wires things.  Happy little girl content in a little green chair playing with beads.  And then they called my name.

I plucked my happy toddler out of the little green chair that was just her size and it was like I turned on the sirens. Let the wailing begin!  She was screaming "Chair". I asked "Can I bring the little chair back with me?" The mean lab coat man said "No".  Ok, then.  Remember you said that.

I went back carrying my squirming screaming kid and was shown to a dental chair.  I tried to sit in it, but Libby just bucked and screamed and she got away from me.  She went screaming and running through the big room of stalls with me chasing her.  I caught her and held on tight, got in the dentist's chair and I heard them say, "let's just do this one quick" and Poof the dentist and his entourage surrounded me.

The dentist took a quick peek with his little mirror on a stick and said I was healing nicely.  Then he said very loudly so I could actually hear him over her high pitched screams, "she reminds me of my 2 yr old little girl". Haha.  Then he yells, "Did you know you have a huge canker sore right next to where we extracted the tooth?".  No, I did not.  He said it isn't in the tooth hole, it's next to it.  He says very loudly it looks sore but it'll heal.  Ugh, no wonder I'm in this much pain. Canker sores hurt like crazy all by themselves!  Libby is still screaming and kicking in my arms. Ok, you can go he says.

That took all of a couple of minutes, just like I thought it would.  And, I got to be seen right away and didn't have to wait my turn. Haha!

I shift Libby around and get a better grip on her flailing little body and reposition her so that I don't get smacked on my sore side of my face and walked out.

I really wish this was on video.  Really!  As I walked down the short hallway to the reception area and the waiting room, it was like I pushed the pause button on everyone.  Nobody moved.  The now full waiting room was fill of faces with jaws dropped, all of them staring with big fearful eyes. Even the reception area froze solid with fear.

I could read their minds.  "What did they do to that child back there?" I said to the nearest receptionist as I passed by, "She just wanted to take the little chair back with us".  Hahahaha!