Miss Hazel Mae is three years old today – until I ask her to walk up the porch steps because my arms are full of work stuff and shed outer layers and chinese takeout (her bday dinner request).

E: “Come on, you’re THREE! You can definitely walk up these steps.”
H: “NO! HOLD me! I’m TWO!”

Photos of yesterday’s festivities forthcoming – there were several talented cameras floating around her party, so I took about seven pictures. BUT… this evening I did photograph all of the fun handmades for her dollhouse. It’s kind of a problem, the making of these Tiny Little Things. Jamie, Sarah and I went to town on the itty-bitty.

Jamie and Sarah created an amazing array: dining room hutch with Fiestaware and other goodies, craft cabinet, YARN STASH and knitting needles, a cabinet filled with (scrabble tile!) books with actual tiny covers of books that H has memorized, a clothesline (swoon) and crocheted basket of tiny clothespins, a pot of flowers, a trunk, and afghans. Whew. I knitted a tiny blanket, made various sizes of flower pots, a toybox with blocks, balls, and a tiny train (I didn’t make this – scavenged it from tiny xmas decorations!), Peanuts comic strip wall art, interchangable on velcro backing, and tiny paper bunting. We’re all brimming with ideas for more, more, more tiny things.

Happy Birthday, Hazel Mae!

A pretend trip to her cousin’s house apparently requires: a cup, a lizard, a single jelly bracelet.

Hazel comes around to things in her own time, always. She has never liked to ride Mechanical Things… tiny zoo train, quarter helicopter / car / dog things at the mall. No way. No. Way. But then…

Last night at the Buckwheat Festival, she had a silent epiphany. I don’t know how or why. A couple hours of looking, watching, enjoying the midway but flatly refusing to go near for a close look, panic-voice if her stroller strolled too near a whirring, blinking ride. And for some reason, just as it was getting dark, she looked at the small carnival prize bears clutched in each hand. Calmly and certainly decided.

“I want to take ‘dese bears on ‘dose boats, Mommy.”

I only let myself say “are you sure?” one time. She was secured into a boat. Ordered me outside the fence. Sat patiently while more kids trickled in. My heart was racing… I was sure she would bail or freak out as soon as the ride started. I was sure I would freak out.

A momentary panic-stricken look and arm-flail at the first tiny hill and then… bliss. We all cheered every time the Devlin-and-Hazel-boat came around (we were THOSE moms.) Three bucks to ride one more time. A toddler meltdown when I vetoed the airplanes because it was already bedtime and we were forty minutes from her bed… but a promise to go back on Saturday afternoon for a $9 wristband and rides ’til she pukes. If it doesn’t rain.

Please don’t rain.

…are the nearest thing to heaven that I know.

And they are not green, but blue, as seen through this lovely instagram filter. I’m teaandlaundry, and I’m an addict.

Hay-z is three years old in about a month. This will be our view from her party, if the weather cooperates. She has long loved birthday parties, but has never put too much (voiced) thought into her own. She has requested “chalk, crayons, Ella, Xavier, Morgan, black balloons and black cake.” Auntie Megan has already taken care of the first. I have high hopes for some of the others. I can indulge some Snoopy-colored balloons (to complement her Snoopy-themed invites, of which I’ve completed steps 1-3!) I have other cake ideas that are hopefully so exciting she’ll forget she asked for a black one. Does anyone out there happen to have the retired 1960s Wilton Snoopy cake pan? :)

Nothing makes this kid happier than birthday parties. And when you ask her how she got so tall, she says “workin’ for Chuck.” The ideas are pretty much directing themselves… :)

…some things growing from the cracks in the sidewalks in a two block radius. Touched, pondered, smelled and named by miss Hazel in between collecting a bag of rocks for Uncle Ben and Megan (I’m not sure why) and rejecting every “banana pine cone” available for the taking. I am totally blowing up your instagram feeds, I know. The statute of limitations on keeping a gifted bag of rocks from your niece is like, two visits later when she brings you enough other things to forget about the rocks, right?

Black-eyed Susans (I think), thistles, lemon balm, and snow on the mountain. I’m currently trying to get a cutting of the snow on the mountain to root, I’m pondering some acquisition of lemon balm (but I don’t know how – root it in water? dirt?), and I just got some cosmos and bee balm seeds (and sunflower-seed-harvesting lessons) from my neighbor. Yip! Happy birds, this winter.

A gigantic, crazily rainbow striped, crocheted masterpiece. Vintage sheets (and quilt daydreams.) Hazel’s find – cowboy boots, one size too big. Which is not stopping her :) And, a turquoise Pyrex bowl – the first piece I’ve found of the clear glass variety. And a wee green milk glass dish, unmarked. I had intended it to go straight to the selling stash after I paid my quarter, but it’s too cute and happy – I just keep using it.

When I was little, my family referred to me as a “bag lady.” I carried around bags full of magazine subscription cards and empty pill bottles – I’d load and unload, sort, pile. Hazel has inherited this habit, and when I’m cleaning up the house or watching her “pack a bag” to take somewhere, I marvel at the strange array of things she very, very carefully selects to serve as Bag Contents. Every single time I think “I should be documenting this.”

Here you have…. August.

Bag: green paper gift bag (she will play with this until it falls apart)
Contents: a “wallet” that once held post-its, and still contains some little flag sticky notes (Ma Ruth knows she’s into office supplies) – it now also contains some pom-poms, a splat-shaped piece of confetti, and a piece of reflective tape; a kaleidoscope with no mirrors; a notebook and pen; a doll sock; a piece of string; a lego; a tissue (aka, “a bed”); a glass Snoopy pendant that I made; a chunky black button; about fifteen hot pink tickets. She loves tickets. L-O-V-E-S.

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.

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?