Baby plants become unbearably cute with the addition of “cute ‘spouts, Mama! Baby ‘pants! Yook Mama, gettin’ big!”

There’s almost nothing that is more satisfying than successfully navigating witching hour with an activity so distracting that Miss Hazel Mae hasn’t even noticed that 6:00 has come and gone with not a single ounce of Whine. This particular evening – scraps of felt and wooden beads & buttons, chosen individually and handed to Mama for stringing… 40 minutes straight until she declared it Done…

…which is, of course, perfect.

After more than two years of mothering, this is among my top 5 favorite things: watching her begin to very mindfully, rather than experimentally, make art. The girl is a fan of glitter, big paper, stickers, and the color white.

She picked out a bunch of internet-found coloring sheets and we made them into a coloring book for “Wookie-Wou”.

What is the noun of assemblage for many robots? And a pound of glitter all over the kitchen? We have those things, along with 24-hour-later chatter of “eye glue” still lingering.

When we made our last batch of cookies, she quickly listed her desired recipients. We ended up putting too many cookies in our bellies and not enough in the mail (although half did end up elsewhere!)… so we made more.

With all of the mama-assisted projects going on, still more in the works, and an entire week spent SICK and cutting FOUR molars at once and not sleeping longer than 40 minutes at a time (oof), her own gift is probably not going to be off of the needles in time. She spent much run-down movie time on the couch rubbing a ball of this yarn against her face and muttering “soffffft”, and holding it for cuddly comfort. What else was I supposed to do with it? Six stripes in, might not get done in time, but at least it looks like a future-blanket. Maybe it’ll be done by the end of March.

$3.00 vintage folding chair – a little WD-40, some added padding, and fresh new fabric (and a fifty-cent apple tablecloth of perfection – thank you goodwill.)

Various scrap fabric, leftovers, and a vintage shirt popped into “circles” (much to Hazel’s delight) and arranged on the wall. I think I’ll be adding to this – delicious color combo!

(and then I pilfered some photo frames from my parents’ basement.)

Hazel’s current loves, because why not? This book – every.single.night. This album – she runs to her bedroom to start it over every time it ends. Peanut butter toast. Harvesting ornaments from the Christmas tree for her own use (I found a bunch crammed among a silo full of crayons when I cleaned up her toys last night.) Sparkly pipe cleaners. The Floppinberg family. Snowglobes – she calls them “heavies”, but it comes out “harveys”, so if she’s asking you desperately for a “harvey”, she wants a snowglobe…and she wants it to play music. She has two, and she by far prefers the Morgantown snowglobe that plays Country Roads :) And the current love of her life… the focus of her songs and daydreaming… her hopeful request when she knows she’s about to be allowed to watch a cartoon… her alpha, her omega, her one and only… the one who keeps showing up in thrifted books, the Target dollar bins, Christmas stickers at the grocery store, in the form of awesome chunky chipboard pieces in the scrapbooking aisle at Michael’s…

“Snoopy dog?? Snoopy dog?? Pease Mama, Snoopy dog?? Chayey Bwown???”

Hazel Mae.

Luca Andres.

Knitting scarves for kids before handmade scarves become uncool: priceless
New snow shovel: $9.95