I’ve never worried about a single thing about Hazel’s development, tastes, interests…not a single thing that I can recall now, anyway. She talked and begged solid food early, never did crawl, walked late, weaned herself at age two. She oscillates between shy and very forward with other human beings. She is wary of water, but coming around to it slowly, thanks to pool outings with friends and family where she spends a lot of time ankle-deep, simply observing. It’s all fine with me, and I’ve been totally comfortable trusting her to come around to things in her own time.

Except one thing. Legos. For the past six months or so I have been seriously worried that she was never going to like them. Is there something wrong with her?? Can you just put away the doll stroller for five minutes and build me a rocket ship, PLEASE? She spends her days in all kinds of elaborate, imaginative play. And it never involved legos. She got a big box of duplo legos from her Ma & Pa for her first birthday. They lived in the tub for a very long time, and when we moved into this house I put them in an open basket, thinking she might be more inclined to get them out if they were strategically positioned underneath a piece of furniture with the baskets of blocks and random small toys. Eventually I put the basket out in the open, where she could see it all the time. Nothing. She only showed interest if I was building robots for her. This didn’t stop me from goodwilling another tub of legos a couple weeks ago, soaking and scrubbing them (they were seriously gross), and upsizing the lego home to a fun orange tub. We have been having a lot of “what is your favorite _____” conversations around this house lately, and I always tell her, when asked, that my favorite toy is legos. I’m not embellishing.

I know my mom, at least, can imagine the excitement and wild applause when, after only a few moments of the magical sound of legos tinkling around against one another, Hazel came running into the room to present me with her creation.

Yook, Mommy! A boat!

MY CHILD. LIKES. LEGOS.

Thank god.

Natalie posted a slideshow! I keep watching it and crying – the Rosie Thomas song is perfection. Natalie has / is such a gift!

Other news of the day: I am two yardsticks closer to having a finished coffee table, thanks to the generous and encouraging Cheryl. (Hazel is also two pretty sunflowers richer, thanks to my neighbor!)

(I’d be very excited if the “Lowe Brothers” are Lowe’s. I do not, however, have the mental capacity to research this right now – it “feels like” 102 degrees and I’m on round three of a headache that just won’t stay away.)

Stand on the other side of a professional lens, that is…when I was a senior in high school. Even though I’ve not seen Natalie in years, it was as easy as pie to take up residence against her kitchen counter and catch up on the years between, cold drink in hand, one toddler occupied with toys not her own. After a delicious meal, her couch was temporarily relocated to a hayfield. Hazel and I lounged and read some of our favorite books, wandered around in the tall grass, sweated, spun, laughed, and sweated some more.

The results she has posted make my heart oh-so-skippy, and I can’t wait to see the rest! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Natalie!

Simpler, much less time-consuming packaging…

…and selling a little bit of new supplies, rather than just the occasional destash from my own goodies. I have no idea how this will go or what it will include, but I do know that Etsy is my first stop if I’m looking for a particular something that I can’t find locally.

Also, I spent over three hours the other night tidying up my shop and doing general business housekeeping. THAT was more refreshing than the new packaging, the supplies, the vintage… ahhh.

After seeing (only about an hour of) her first movie on the big screen.

“I had fun wif Daddy and watching Cars movie on ‘da big TV wif all ‘da kids and eating corn on all ‘da couches. And it was dark.”

When she and I can’t find her binky at bedtime.

H: “Where’s my binky, Mommy?”
E: “I don’t know. It seems to be MIA.”
H: “Yeah, it’s pob’abwy in your A.”

:)

I can’t remember the last time Hazel said “Manga” instead of “Grandma”, “gackeyes” instead of “glasses”, “meegant” instead of “music”, “fronins” instead of “macaroni” – instead, those things have been absorbed into the language of our family, even since she began to pronounce each of those words in a more conventional way. I have to think to remember when I last saw her flap her arms for something she wanted, or saw her walk like Shrek. I didn’t make note of, and can’t even ballpark, her last baby stretch, the peak of her baby baldness, the last time she did the Hazel shuffle in place of crawling before walking became her all-the-time mode of transportation. I don’t know any of those things, because, of course, I had no idea The Last One was The Last One.

For now these “band aids” can be found just about everywhere in our house and car (and sometimes yard, and sometimes other people’s houses and cars and yards.) Someday I will pluck the last one from the carpet or scrape it off the mirror or peel it from the bottom of my foot, fold it in half and throw it in the garbage can. I won’t have any idea it’s the last one I’ll ever find, smile, and throw away. This thought occurred to me this afternoon while handing her her third sheet in a row, and to keep myself from tearing up at the idea, I tucked a sheet of them between the pages of the journal I keep for her. To stick a few to a page and write about her current fixation on real or imagined injuries of just about every person and animal that crosses her path. We spent three months this winter visiting her great grandma at the hospital, which Hazel eventually began to refer to as “Ma Ruth’s house.” She became fixated on doctors and their ability to make people better, and even more fixated on what SHE could do – band aids, tucking in with blankets, kisses, “tea”.

Because Ma did get all better, Hazel now has complete faith in doctors and medicine, even (especially) if she’s the doctor and the treatment is simply to stick some office supplies to the dog’s butt. I mean… who couldn’t this cure?

First tomatoes! They will have ripe siblings soon, I hope.

Vintage yardsticks gifted from my grandpa…

+

…thrifing find…and some casters…

=

a coffee table.

YUM. You know I can’t wait to decide what gets to live inside all those little magical drawers and make LABELS for each and every one. I have spent more time over the past few weeks contemplating the labels – library cards? typewriter font stamps? just get my typewriter working so it’s authentic? fsjdfkasd – than I have spent trying to locate more vintage yardsticks. They are of a particular thickness, you know. A quarter inch, and most I’m finding are for advertising and have a phone number sans exchange (I finally went through two pages of ebay listings last night.) I’ve yet to purchase any more, but if I wait for enough of them to show up at yard sales and goodwill, it could be years. I’ve been watching, but not buying. I’ll get there. Hazel clearly doesn’t mind that the top is unfinished, anyway. It still serves as a good platform for putting Snoopy to bed with a book, standing to declare things to the kitchen, to “cook”, etc.

(Eventually it will live in front of the couch like all good coffee tables do. But for now… it’s heavy.)

At various points in my growing-up years Old Stuff and Other People’s Stuff oscillated between fascinating, boring, detestable, and desirable.

I loved my grandpa’s treasures that were yardsailed just for me (still do).

I hated “just five more minutes” in an antique store.

I loved Ma Ruth-ish primary colored Pyrex bowls but desired none for myself for a very long time, because they didn’t come in black.

I hated anything crocheted that was supposed to cover your body and keep you warm (because of the drafty little hundreds of holes between the doubles and triples.)

I loved, but never understood, Hoosier cabinets.

I never understood, and still don’t, rusty old farm implements as decoration (sorry, Mama. Yours look good but I could never work it.)

Growing up I always recovered from illness under handmade quilts. Sometime in my teen years I began to wonder how I could ever function as a green-bean-serving adult if I didn’t use the same green bean bowl as my grandparents, but I was pretty sure I’d be better off in life if I never made use of a holey-crocheted item. In Canada I met Ella, an Illinois farm girl who is just like me. Together we coveted Fiestaware in retired colors and 1950s appliances.

At 28 I’m a blue #401 away from having thrifted my own set of Ma’s pyrex bowls, which have (tomorrow!) survived 59 years of marriage and muffins. I drag my own whining child through goodwill, promising “one more aisle, sweet pea.” I would love a Hoosier cabinet but still ponder what I’d do with the sifter – use it for hiding candy (my mom) or phone books (Ella’s mom), or remove the sifter and make the most of the space? I am learning to identify depression glass and things from various glasshouses, especially WV. The long hook that was once used to reach top-shelf-things in my great grandfather’s store now hangs the side of my skinny wooden cupboard instead of my mom’s, where it lived for my entire life. I nap (sometimes, when I remember what a nap is) under blankets that other people made, that other people slept and rocked babies and cried and got sick and got well under. I cook and serve in bowls with infinite batches of pancakes stored away in their memories.

This post-teenage shift in perspective and appreciation has come with a problem: if I find some Jadite plates in goodwill for a quarter each I can’t just leave them there, but I also don’t want them because I don’t collect Jadite, but what if someone just buys them to smash up for mosaic pieces not knowing what they have ohmygod. What if someone buys this amazing afghan for their dog’s bed? Quick, text photo to friends to see if anyone else wants to give it a home because I certainly don’t need another one.

I can’t dump everything on my friends, have no desire to rent a storage unit, and hope to always keep my own selective collections modest. So… the hideous-to-me gold eagle Pyrex? The Jadite? The amazing juice glasses when I already have amazing juice glasses? The pulse-racing western shirts that don’t fit anyone I know? The irresistible colors and the 1940s sewing notions that I WILL NEVER USE and no, I DON’T, in fact, fondue, but god this mod blue-flowered fondue pot is amazing… I’ve been buying it for 19 cents here, a quarter or a couple bucks there. I’ve been hoarding it all in tubs and this past weekend I unpacked it all, took stock, researched and priced and made a spreadsheet, and this coming weekend I will photograph.

Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll begin listing it all in my shop. To delight someone else, and send it all off to people who will love these things for their history. Because really, I think muffins are better whipped up in a well-loved bowl. I think naps are better under a blanket that you didn’t just walk into Target and buy. I believe this wholeheartedly, even though I didn’t always.

(Dear Ikea, please do not take offense – I still love you.)

(Dear Paisley, it’s not that I don’t think you’re deserving of a lovely vintage afghan for pawing-spinning-nesting.)