Mikey’s creation at Jenn’s baby shower.

The girlfriends that came with marriage – lucky me :)

1:00 a.m. walmart run. We have never used motrin before – didn’t have it on hand. Bad move. Molar-getting child.

Finished presents for Hazel and Luca – with a fatal design flaw. I might make new ones after Christmas if it proves to drive me absolutely crazy.

Stripey stripes.

And… I love love love this magazine, published by Better Homes and Gardens. I picked up an issue today so I could have something new to read in a bath, which I sorely needed because I’ve been so stressed out over the past couple of days that the corner of my left eyelid is all twitchy… which only happens during the Worst of the Worst. Maybe once every year? And, um, all of my books are still in boxes, because all of Hazel’s clothes are folded on the small bookcase that I’ve been allotted for my own use (I’m not going to beg, after all), because I still have not found the perfect drawer pulls for her revamped dresser. Actually, I have, but am not paying $24 for drawer pulls.

ANYWAY.

I love this magazine. I would make – and USE – almost every single thing in it. I like it exponentially better than ReadyMade, which is full of good ideas to be sure, but this one is slightly less… hipster? Definitely getting a subscription with Christmas money. This will mark the second time in my adult life that I have subscribed to a magazine (the other being Mothering) for myself. I once had free issues of American Photo, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Vegetarian Times, but those were not nearly as exciting. I kind of want to rustle up some back issues, too.

This is what we did last night:

And tonight Mikey (who is recovering well) will play music and I will try to sell as much of this as possible:

And tomorrow we will go to our last mass at the Dominican house and clean and pack and watch lots of our stuff exit our apartment. I put up flyers of stuff we are selling at suppertime yesterday, and most of it had sold within two hours. Some little stuff already went, but people who bought big things are picking up tomorrow after Hazel’s nap. I think I will feel a bit more under control once we have lots of empty spaces to pile boxes in an organized manner, instead of just sticking them wherever they will fit.

And then it will practially be time. At least it won’t be snowing, I guess…

Serenity now.

Listening: Hazel is watching Robin Hood for the hundredth time in the past few weeks while I do a few odds & ends
(I am not) Reading: the new Mothering has been sitting in its plastic wrapper, untouched, for two days – it’s starting to make me twitch
(Hazel is) Reading: Big Little – she usually multitasks while watching a movie
Working on: what am I forgetting??? I think I still have enough time to stamp some little paper bags with my website.
Packing progress: stopped by the bookstore to fill the trunk of our car and half the backseat with (more) flattened boxes

Hazel’s birthday week is officially over, wrapped up yesterday by celebrating with ten kids (no fights, no blood, no epipens needed), their familes, and a few other friends. After the party she had a nice long nap to regroup, and then we headed out in the evening to Chris’s CD release show at the Sixth, where we kept her out listening to our friends play music until midnight (she spent much of that time fast asleep in her Ergo). She made it through the whole day without a meltdown – such a happy girl :)

I am taking a break from my packing to share photos…

I agonized about what to put in loot bags for the kiddos, wanting to send them away with a little something from Hazel. I wanted it to be practical, but toddlers are, by nature, impractical, so I was at a loss. I was ready to steal Andrea’s idea of a prettily-wrapped bottle of bubble bath for everyone, then I spied these goodies in the Target dollar bins: sweet basil seed and soil kits, two-packs of pots, and tiny spades. Ten little urban farmers instead of ten little kids hopped up on sugar and the excitement of cheap plastic toys? Yes please. Although for the record the beloved dollar bins also contained cheap WOODEN toys – all sorts of vehicles and the little puzzles where you have to get all the ball-bearings settles into the little holes. The paper bags and glittery foam letter stickers and pipe cleaners are all from the dollarama :)

The birthday project I’ve been alluding to for awhile – a sewn birthday banner that I plan to use for all of our family birthdays. As Maryellen put it, “you know this is going to mess her up the first time she has a birthday as an adult and doesn’t have the banner for the first time in her eighteen years or whatever” – which I’d already thought of, because she is MY kid and I would totally be messed up about something like that… but hopefully it won’t cause trauma. Maybe I can mold her against her genes to not freak out when the silverware gets put in a new drawer. Leo asked if I made it and when I told him that I did, he said “I KNEW it! I knew you made it because you’re a good knitter.” Well shucks…

Colored bandana prints – leftovers from a pack of Martha Stewart dishtowels bought for a summer 2006 wallet project. I’d used all of the green one so Maggie kindly donated hers to the cause :)
Yellow bandana print – $2.00 a yard on the clearance shelf
Green bias tape – $1.something a pack
Yellow recycled pop-bottle felt – fifty cents a sheet

Big and little friends

The birth buddies – Hazel, Maddy, and a very tired Oscar.

They always sing her to sleep.

Release show for Chris’s new album, Old Dog… which is reeeeeeeally awesome.

By the way, thank you to everyone for making and/or getting Hazel wonderful gifts that, miraculously, will probably fit in two totally normal-sized boxes. I was worried we’d need to upgrade our U-Haul size after two first-birthday-parties. You have made our lives easier. Mikey has also made my life easier today by washing a HUGE, and I mean huge, pile of dishes. And to Fuzzibunz, who so artfully contained every single bit of the most explosive diaper-filling of Hazel’s life this morning. It could have started off as a very bad day, but it is a good day.

Now, back to packing. Packing, packing, packing.

Listening: Hazel Dickens
Hazel is reading: M is for Maple, and Mama is book-fasting if you remember… I even packed up every single “to-read” book in the house this morning so I’m not tempted
Working on: craft show stuff
Packing progress: five boxes so far today

in second place for taking up all of our time at home were lots of our amazingly talented and good looking and fun and hilarious friends. there are lots more pictures here, and more people still that we didn’t even get to see… but we’re not too concerned about this because, you know, we’re moving home :) have i mentioned…?

five weeks with your own family and your in-laws is enough to send most people over the deep end. luckily mine are all awesome. hanging out with them is how we spent most of our time at home…

lots more photos of lots more people on my flickr, if you are feelin’ like you got left out :)

when the weather is like today’s i almost always get the song “three marlenas” by the wallflowers in my head. i haven’t actually listened to this song since grade nine, probably. a degree difference in either direction would mean a different song i’m sure – but it’s a wallflowers day. so i am listening to it for real. for bob dylan’s kid, he sure didn’t go very far.

home was awesome. a list:

+ spending a few days at the farm was just what i needed to remind me why i joined the catholic church – after a bunch of bullshit that happened regarding luca’s baptism (isn’t that the weirdest statement one should ever have to make?) – i was swimming about four-hundred feet from the boat and feeling like i was throwing hazel to the dogs, in a way.

+ mikey dragged me back on the boat, jesus fish clutched in hand (as andrea says), and all ended well thanks to good catholic priests and lots of good friends to remind me that some asshole priests are not the catholic church. the double-baptism went off without of hitch and with an efficiency that exceeded my brother’s expectations (i think he thought he was settled in for a couple of hours). lots of people came and we had beautiful weather for a picnic.

+ i found two tiny, vintage, fiberglass school chairs for hazel at a yardsale. i rustoleum-ed the legs in black and the shiny new coating really makes the mustard-colored seats pop. they were two dollars each – find of the day.

+ also found a pristine set of pyrex milkglass teacups in a brown-flower pattern that i’ve never seen before (one dollar), a seventies owl spoon rest that i will probably give to manda (one dime), several records for mikey (five bucks), and a basket of vintage plastic fruit that was mostly MUSHROOMS – i have never seen mushrooms in a fake fruit arrangement – they are fabulous (one dollar). hazel got a little people noah’s ark, whose clearly heterosexual animal pairings she is in love with – i suppose procreation is the point, but it’s still kind of annoying. she is mostly in love with the zebras, with giraffes at a close second because they have very eatable faces. i also got a brand new christmas tree stand – the ingenious kind – for a dollar. because… we will live somewhere this christmas that we can have a REAL TREE.

+ all i was looking for were dressers (none to be had) and a booster seat for hazel to keep in wv (found one for $3). so all in all, the twelve-mile yardsale was a success.

+ after a battle with ritz camera, who are STILL harrassing me by phone to take down the negative feedback i left on amazon regarding never receiving macro filters or any responses to my inquiries about the lost order, amazon refunded my money and i ordered some from elsewhere. they were waiting for me at mom & dad’s, as were the supplies i’d picked up a couple of months ago in anticipation of having filters to use then, so i finally dragged all of that out and spraypainted everything i need to start redoing my etsy shop photos. for the record, valspar spraypaint is far superior to krylon. far, far, superior.

+ hazel is not the least bit afraid of horses. she also got to meet pigs, chickens, and a rattlesnake (which was in a tank of course). she spent some time squeezing and scritching bones, feathers, turtle shells, pinecones, a swatch of mystery-animal-pelt, and various other touchy nature things at the nature center at pipestem state park and was delighted.

+ we left paisley with my parents for three weeks. she would have been in a funk all of this week. on sunday or monday we are going up to chris’s cottage for a few days, so she would have spent all of next week in a funk after that stint in the country. that only leaves a week of happiness to be had before we drag her back down to wv at the beginning of july. just couldn’t do it to her. we are thinking of her time there as doggie summercamp – hopefully grandma-the-enforcer and a pack of dogs will teach her some country dog manners. her city etiquette is good, but she freaks out (some) other dogs (sometimes) when we are in the country or elsewhere. it’s very weird to not have her here – i don’t like dogless existence. we keep hearing her toenails on the floor in the next room, and keep almost putting our plates on the floor for her to lick. mikey got out of bed this morning and looked down at her bed and said “hi padel” and it was very weird. i didn’t know he was home yesterday until he was well into the apartment becuase she’s not here to tell me he just got off the elevator. i know she is having so much dog-fun though.

+ i don’t know what else. here are some pictures.

listening: the wallflowers

the past few days have been a whirlwind. highlights:

- scott & alex are in town. alex, zoe, ella, andrea, cara & i went to the dollar on wednesday night. hazel woke up twice while i was gone but mikey managed to daddy her back to sleep. i had no frantic phone calls to come home. alex & i stayed for all three sets – we are champs. they played all of our requests. i did not feel severed from hazel because she was with mikey – different story with anyone other than him, i’m sure. she was not mad at me.

- lost season finale, which i had to watch in two parts over yesterday & today. kind of mind-blowing. still processing.

- will oldham last night. i am really pissed off about a small detail & will probably post my ranting email to the venue later. other than that it was awesome. great show, lots of friends, hazel fell asleep halfway through the show, but afterwards will got to pat her dozing head and get a look at the super nerdy shirt i made for her. he was delighted.

- half-hour walk to a bar to meet tony so he could give me my camera after the show (result of annoying detail). mikey and chris were rather toasted, so i had one on each arm because mikey kept tripping on everything and i was afraid chris was going to end up face-first in the gutter. it was so late and i was exhausted but hazel sleeps as long as i’m on the move, so it was fine. a very nice night for a walk. nice neighborhood. hilarious dialogue between those two including mikey trying to convince us that turtles definitely do not walk. i hurt from laughing. we got home so late. when we got in the door and i took hazel out of her carrier, where she’d been sleeping for about three hours, she got very excited and hyper. today she has napped for two half-hour stretches. in half an hour we leave to go meet mikey, scott & alex for dinner, a walk down queen west (maybe i will get some fancy organic yarn that won’t give me a rash), and oldtime at the cameron house. we have plans all weekend and monday is victoria day, so i think we have plans for the holiday. i don’t know how my brain is already half-fried from all the people but hazel just gets happier and happier…

listening: elizabeth mitchell
reading: i’ve had no time to read over the past few days

we’ve been so busy over the past few days. end-of-the-year party with priests in the making who always make sure they have a case of yuengling on hand for these shindigs. birthday party saturday morning, playing outside, bluegrass in the afternoon. more music sunday. another birthday party monday. uffda. hazel loves all the activity, but my brain is way over-socialized.

(oscar, hazey & miss maddy at sophia’s birthday party.)

saturday was beauttifulllll. a little warmer than sixty degrees. after nearly two hours of being surrounded by toddlers, my dear little introvert was about to crack and really needed a coffee. he ran upstairs to get pasiley and then we got drinks and went for a walk. hazel would close her eyes and feel the breeze ruffling her sparse hair, and paisley bounced around like a six month old puppy. it’s supposed to be almost 70 on thursday and friday. i don’t even know what to do with a baby in that kind of weather. stick her on a blanket in the park? it might be too soggy.

(husband & wife.)

hazel is teething bigtime. she is in fine spirits and doesn’t seem to be in pain, despite the one little tooth cut through her gum on the bottom. her nose is dripping like a facuet off and on, which is also making her hack like a 70 year old smoker a few times a day. it sets off all my panic alarms but i’m sure it’s just allergies or teething. mikey is more of an on-edge father than i thought he would be when it comes to her health. i had our big reference book out the other day reading some teething info, and he asked me what was wrong. “nothing, just looking at teething stuff.” i came across something that angie had asked me about a while back & i didn’t know the answer at the time, so i called her the next day and he got home from the library just as i was reading something to her with that book open in my lap. “why do you have that book out so much?? tell me what’s wrong!!”

hazel has been “singing” with her daddy. she lets out a very long, monotone “aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh” or some other screechy noise, which he’ll mimic. she’ll pause, look at him and take a very deep, dramatic breath (she NEVER does this while babbling to herself), then let another one go and wait for him to chime in.

he helped me clean out our closet the other day and pack up practically all of our sweaters to store at my parents’ house, since we never wear them in the great white north. he also packed away a ton of his really costumey cowboy shirts that he hardly ever wears. in all the poking around we were left with things for the freestore: resolution!

i currently have two loads of laundry drying, including hazel’s snowsuit… in anticipation of being able to pack it away in a couple of weeks. i really, really hope this isn’t preemptive.

listening: elliott smith
reading: finishing milkweed by jerry spinelli

we went home. it was awesome. we visited lots and lots of people in wheeling and morgantown and paden city. hazel had her first food – a couple of tablespoons of ma & pa’s homemade applesauce. went barefoot in the grass. noticed luca’s existence for the first time, and noticed him noticing her. she flipped from her front to her back for the first time but i didn’t get a picture of it. she cried for 75% of the drive there and 75% of the drive there but i didn’t get a picture of that, either.

(those photos are all private – i don’t know what happens if you try to view them when you aren’t logged in to flickr).

we saw tim o’brien & todd burge play a few songs at the opening of a west virginia music memorabilia display at the artisan center in wheeling with our crew there & had dinner with them. reunited with high school friends. made terrariums and photographed broken things and made patterns for hazel clothes with mom. i was going to play cards with my cousins & brother & parents on saturday, but as soon as cousins arrived we received an “urgent collect call” from mikey, and my parents’ phone wasn’t letting us accept it. he wasn’t answering his cell phone. we didn’t know where he was (because i stupidly did not write down his hotel information). instead of playing cards we sat around drinking beer and worrying and thinking and calling every hotel in portsmouth, ohio, that was offering a discount to people at the appalachian studies conference – i knew he was at one of them. it took at least two calls each to finally get them to spell our name correctly and we found him and left a message in hotel room telling him to make a credit card call if he got the message. worried some more. he seemed to be calling once an hour so jess tried the county jail (“would he be in jail for anything?”……… “maybe public urination?”). he wasn’t there but an automated system told us the closest match, which i thought was kind of an odd invasion of privacy. much to my surprise he DID notice the blinky red light on his hotel phone when he got back & made a credit card call at 11:30. he was just calling to say hi. his phone was acting up and MAKING him make a collect call (even though it had worked normally the night before), which you cannot do to a cell phone so he kept trying my parents’ house. he wanted to know why we called the jail – “the recording said it was an urgent call”……… “well it didn’t ask ME if it was urgent!”. all was well. i found perfect bird bedding for hazel’s room – cheap, organic, green but with bright colors, too – at WALMART. dammit. but yay. i even kept my new year’s resolution while we were there. i only wrote two haiku, though:

lenten haiku, day thirty-one

if i cannot make
a haiku out of this shit
then i’m not trying

now we are back and hazel’s naps & bedtime are out of sorts – hopefully this will right itself soon. since she seemed to really enjoy eating applesauce (not just the event, but the actual food) but she’s still so little, we decided to start giving her a little cereal a couple of times a day as a snack. i got some three-grain organic cereal from the healthfood store yesterday & fixed her a tablespoon to try while we ate our dinner. she loved it but ended up with a lot of it on her / crusted in her hair / etc., so today i made her two tablespoons a little thicker for lunch. she ended her “meal” with one drop on her bib, plus a few smears from excitedly trying to help me put the spoon in her mouth and ending up getting a few fingers in there, too. she LOVES to eat, apparently. after one spoonful yesterday she’d open her mouth wide & kick her feet. today when she was done & i went to get a wet cloth to clean her up, she was banging her palm on her tray and staring at me. if she keeps doing that well i will probably try mashing up a little banana in her cereal next week, or making some applesauce to mix with it. the task of introducing foods to another human is daunting and i kind of feel like, can’t i just skip to the good stuff? can’t i puree some chana masala? who wants this stuff that looks like skin flakes when it’s dry? she certainly does. i still don’t want her to wean herself before a year, so the plan is still to just give her things as snacks and mainly breastfeed.

okay, way more things to do while she naps – which could end any second.

listening: paul simon
reading: annie dillard; milkweed by jerry spinelli; magazines of mine that had piled up at my parents’ house