When I was little my cousins lived right across the road from my house (<— as in the former, and the latter’s husband, and their little brother). They lived in the bottom between the creek and the road, and I lived on the hill above them. I spent a lot of my time at their house following my boycousins into treacherous situations and falling into – or willingly entering – the creek. I genuinely loved this kind of play, but in retrospect I wonder if I spent so much time with them to keep myself – and my freakishly long hair – away from Jessie and her Dreaded Caboodle. She ALWAYS wanted to “do my hair”. The closest I’d ever come to “doing my hair” was tucking it into my shirt so it didn’t get wound up in the back wheels of my big wheel (…ever again).

Anyway -

Oftentimes when I’d fall (/jump) into the creek, my aunt would put me in Doug’s dry clothes and I’d wear them home. This thrilled me to no end because then I got to wear – and keep – BOY UNDERWEAR. Constrained to the land of hearts, stars, mermaids, and pink, I lived for the motorcycles and GI Joes making their appearance in the laundry cycle. My parents let me wear them (thanks parents!) and I distinctly remember sporting the motorcycles one day in first grade – the same day my friend Joey showed up in a brand new puffy painted MTV denim jacket.

Anyway -

That kind of stuff – the day I walked into the kitchen with a golfball stuck down the front of my (Doug’s) GI Joe briefs and said “look Daddy, they have a pocket!!” – that’s kind of the epitome of my mentality as a child. I wanted to be a boy. They had more fun, easier clothes, better toys. I went through phases as a pre-K aged kid where I made everyone call me Kevin, and then Josh. I wanted (and got) Tonka construction toys instead of Barbies. I wanted (and got) my first pocket knife at age six. I wanted to wear boy underwear, flannel shirts, and converse. No pink. No dresses. And don’t ever touch my hair.

When Meggan and I became friends later in elementary school she was always trying desperately to fix my hair. “Please just let me fix your bangs! They look funny! They are falling out of their clips!” She was a girly girl and couldn’t fathom my tomboy ways. She hooked me up with her cousin Greg in fourth grade (ha!) She sighed (in a loving kind of way) when I showed up for the first day of fifth grade in brand new mini hiking boots that matched my dads, she in her bright white cheerleading shoes with the colored tabs that you can switch out to match your outfit (which was red and white… on our first day of fifth grade). She did not understand things like my rock collection, but loved me anyway. I did not understand things like curling irons, but I loved her anyway. She was the first one to notice and freak out any time I adopted any new little bitty femme habit.

So she, more than most of my friends, giggled hysterically and completely understood the disconnect when we showed up at her parents’ pizza shop on Saturday night with Hazel sporting the new shoes she’d picked out and suckered her grandpa into buying for her (my dad cares very much that his granddaughter is well-dressed and that her hair is combed… it’s kind of adorable, but very weird to me). Sometimes I don’t know where this kid came from.

Hazel is lucky to have an Aunt Meggan to school her in the ways of makeup-wearing, getting poker-straight hair to do anything but, and everything other girly thing under the sun.

Except nailpolish. I do love nailpolish. But usually only… brown. Brown glitter. :)

“I don’t expect things to ever be as good as they are at home – I’d say that’s an impossibility. There will never be family, crickets, darkness, stars, campfires, or quiet in this city. Someday there might be music and drop-in friends.

Something monumental needs to happen on this side of the border. The drive back gets longer every time.” -July 2007

A month later we found music. Monumental. And we get to see whole bunch of those folks in just over a weeeeeeeeeeek at clifftop!

Anything’s impossible ’till it ain’t.

I haven’t watched LOST yet – I will soon, promise. In the meantime, here are some photos I took of Hazel the other day. I hauled a bunch of my beads down to the dining room table from the loft to do some work there in the afternoon while she occupied herself with her books and toys (and the dog, and the cabinet of food storage containers, and the bag of paper recycling). It’s the most beading I’ve gotten done in AGES. I only like to bead in the daylight. After about 45 minutes she got intensely curious, so I opened an organizer of my chunkiest, most colorful plastic beads and situated her on my lap so that I could clearly see both tiny little hands and one tiny little mouth. I assumed she would immediately start having the little finger wiggling fits that she so effectively uses to spray bowls of cheerios or crackers all over the room, and start shoving things in her mouth and dropping them on the floor excitedly as she moved on to something else to look at. I was happy to let her have a look, but expected it to be like a bull ride – short, intense, hopefully with no injuries and back on the ground before I could blink.

But.

She was reverent. My wild child was slow, deliberate, cautious, and full of wonder.

She could barely contain her delight at the pretty things just beyond her fingertips, and kept peering at me with a quizzical “are you sure this is okay to do?” look, and then she would carefully pick one after much examination, tiny, long-fingered hands hovering over various compartments. She’d pick just one. Roll it around in her fingertips, palm it, uncurl her fingers and look, press it to her lips (which almost caused me to snatch it away immediately, but then I remembered that I do this, too), and then carefully place it back in the proper compartment, matching colors and styles and fingertips lingering to roll it around a little more while her eyes moved on to the next thing. She did this for about 50 beads, for half an hour, going through every single container (even SEED beads!) At one point she was holding a chunky, faceted, mustard yellow bead for longer than the rest and I said “is that one cool?”, and she immediately adopted the word for her favorites. In the next container, a white shell disc painted with a red lotus flower was declared “coooool” in a quiet, mystified toddler voice. Big, bright green wooden beads: “coooool”. Foiled turquoise glass: “cooooool”.

We did it again the next day.

Today I have to bring my beads back upstairs because we’re having a table full of people over for supper, but I suspect there will be much more bead-fondling in my gal’s future. Her Auntie Erin is proud.

I am left wondering if all this early exposure to non-pony beads means that the First Childhood Beading creations that I receive will be a little less horrendous than the plastic and gold-findinged concoctions that my mom dutifully wore (think gold earwires and stacks of small, faceted, plastic red white and blue beads – a brief stint with patriotism?)

But when I think about the beads I got to fondle as a kid, they are even more awesome. Remnants of the 70s – shell and huge chunky clay beads, millefiori, smoothed urchin spines, glass beads from deconstructed jewelry (my mom taught me the fine art of Buying Jewelry on Clearance Just To Cut Apart for the Beads), a campfire girls gown like this one, full of of beautiful cascades of wooden beads that I always wanted but could never have…

…and I still made ugly kistchy kid jewelry.

And I still love ugly kitschy kid jewelry. Auntie Erin will not be the one buying pony beads for Hazel, but I’m sure someone will, and I’ll wear them with pride.

Listening: Iris Dement
(Hazel is) Reading: Green Eggs & Ham
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
Working on: laundry mountain

During one of my college summers working for this Americorps program, I had this kid. This. Awful. Kid. By “awful” I really mean that he was charming, energetic, smart, great at reading with his counterparts who could not, witty enough to do some severe laughter-damage to my ribs, and as adorable as all get-out. But as much as I loved him – he was not creative. And I don’t mean that in a way that a lot of my friends say “oh, I’m not creative”, yet they can decorate a room or take beautiful photos or solve problems well – they just mean they can’t draw. I mean we had an entire table full of art supplies and he never knew what to do with it. Huge, deep boxes of found materials just waiting to be pawed through and put to use. Empty boxes waiting to be made into towns. He couldn’t come up with something to draw that was not copied from a picture book or a television character conjured from his brain. If you’d take him outside to play, he’d complain that it was too hot and he wanted to go home to his air conditioning and play video games – he could not creatively amuse himself with some basic sports equipment. He knew every single basketball, baseball, and football rule and could play them all well, but couldn’t play in an open-ended way. He whined several times a day about wanting to go home and play videogames or watch TV. All of his play was centered around videogames and TV. He was five years old and had already forgotten how to play. I became terrified that I would have kids like that and swore they wouldn’t have any screen time, if any, and not play videogames until… I couldn’t even fathom when. Of course it all had to do with his quantity of screen-time I’m sure, but the idea of ANY became scary to me nonetheless. Obviously I’ve loosened up a bit, because my life is full of video-game-playing, TV-watching kids who are awesomely creative :)

Three things could entice my little king of Grand Theft Auto and Spongebob Squarepants: baking projects, water balloons, and bean bags. Each classroom had a set of 26 beanbags stitched with the letters of the alphabet. They always seemed like a simple thing, but I could get my little brood of five and six year olds to do ANYTHING if we were using those beanbags – word games, physical activity, making up stories, sitting through a long storybook while squishing them around, calmed down by the feel of beans trickling through the fabric in their fingers – Any. Thing. Inevitably I would have to take them away because they’d morphed from beanbags into grenades and landmines (yes, landmines), but it was always fun while it lasted.

I was cleaning out some EE stuff at my parents’ house last summer and filed away in my brain the idea of making a set of alphabet beanbags for Hazel when she is older. When I was fondling this red and white polkadotted fabric in JoAnn’s a month or so ago, I was trying to come up with something for her for Valentine’s day involving little fabric hearts. Little soft hearts numbered 1 – 10? Spelling out her name? She’s not really into soft toys and never has been, so I decided to make her some beanbags instead. I still wasn’t sure what to put on them, and then coming across a letter-stamping project in Handmade Home made me decide to simply stamp a few patches (made from an old white tshirt) with some of her loves and stitch them to the hearts. I decided on six and have been working on them, and a drawstring bag to hold them, for most of the afternoon: Mama, Papa, Pears, Dogs, Music & Books. My bobbin ran out 3/4 of the way through topstitching the last heart, which was my cue to take a break and blog the progress. Tonight I’ll fill them with beans and stitch up the holes.

I think they are going to be super-cute and I hope she likes them. I also hope that at age five she doesn’t even know what a landmine is. Just sayin’.

History shows that I despise the month of February. I don’t know why. It is so draining and contains no exciting things… it’s like one long Tuesday (although starting tomorrow, LOST is going to save my Tuesdays). This is totally in my head though. Nothing bad has ever actually happened in February. It just seems like a big fat (…something…) standing between myself and spring.

Get out of my way. I hate coats and I want to plant things.

Good things that February has contained in the past:

February 1, 2007. Four months old.

February 4, 2008. Jake’s going-away show. I am 95% certain that Hazel came into being on this night.

February 4, 2009. Four months old.

Today we are going to play with Luca and visit Grandma Jan for the afternoon, and then I have to clean my little heart out. We are having a bunch of housemates on Wednesday night (five plus the usual three) and the sofabed on the loft won’t fold out because, well…

it, and the floor in front of it, are totally covered with craft supplies. A few days ago I told Mikey I was coming upstairs to clean it all up and then I proceeded to spend an hour and a half finishing promo packets (which WERE all over the floor) and playing with fabric (which was not all over the floor, and now is.)

Oops.

Listening: nothing at all
(I am) Reading: almost done with The Happiest Toddler…
(Hazel is) Reading: Itsy Bitsy Spider
Working on: blue & gold blanket (came to a halt for a week when I ran out of gold, but my MIL is bringing more today – couldn’t find my color at seven stores around here – craft store fail); dishrags for Jenn (or Mario, since she might very well have a newborn by the time I finish up the last two) and Kelly

Morgantown boys / REM tribute show / Novermber 3, 2007

Reason #37482374238473 to move home.

Trying to catch up with life after taking a week off.

Hazel is one. I don’t quite know how that happened. I just finished baking birthday-vanilla-cupcakes for the second time in a week – blue and gold sprinkles last Sunday for her WV party and red and white sprinkles for tomorrow’s Canada party. It is all very surreal. I never thought I would live in Canada. I never thought I would have a baby in Canada. I never thought I would be freaking out about the prospect of leaving Canada. On the drive back here yesterday Hazel and I listened to the mix CD I made in December of 2006 to listen to as soon as we picked Janet up from the bus station in Pittsburgh and headed for the MOV for Christmas and the 2006 Iafrate Sibling Convention. I remember crying while I made it and crying whenever I listened to it after that trip. This time I just thought things like “oh, how I love Billy Bragg” and “oh, how I wish I’d been there to witness Janet drunkenly singing this song on a picnic table in Central Park after a long night of karaoke”.

Now nothing is like 2006. Angie and I were discussing the 2009 Iafrate sibling convention a couple of weeks ago and pondering how it should work now. Should there be childrens’ activities early in the evening, and the Airing of Grievances + booze after they go to bed? Or should they be around for the Airing of Grievances? We just don’t know. Having babies has changed the whole dynamic of siblinghood.

Today kicked off what will probably be the busiest month of my entire life thus far. Tomorrow morning is Hazel’s birthday party. In the afternoon I desperately need to unpack some things and pack up some other things. In the evening we are going to Chris’s CD release show. I am trying to calculate exactly how much bluegrass and old time I can fit into the next four weeks, what with all of the work / Etsying / craft show prep / mothering / housewifing / packing up of our life that I have to do.

Did I mention that Hazel is one?

The first morning of Hazel’s life – October 18, 2008

…and now. She looks just like her daddy and has his personality, too. She loves books and animals and people and food and music. She has very patiently spent her first year teaching us how to be parents.

Our trip home was great but there is too much to recount so I will just direct you towards all of the pictures on my flickr page. There was much visiting with family and friends, lots of celebrating various birthdays and Halloween goodness, lots of playing outside in the perfect blue-sky-orange-leaves crisp fall weather that came after a few days of perfect cold-dreary-rainy-cozy fall weather. I hit up two craft stores to restash my EBP blanket yarn (there’s no way I’ll finish before the first snowfall – too much else going on – but definitely by the LAST snowfall). I read two books. Neither was spectacular – I really like how the former was written and I really liked the story, although this might only be because it’s dysfunctionally close to home* (except the small detail of the main character killing her mother – which is the opening line, so I didn’t just ruin it for you). As for the latter – I hate Dan Brown, I hate how he writes, and I don’t like his stories. I think the Da Vinci Code is the only time in my life I’ve ever thought that the movie was way better than the book. BUT… I thought that the art, science, and D.C. architecture stuff in this book was reeeeeeeeeeeeeally really interesting and I couldn’t put it down.

*We once had a collie whose tongue would swell up and turn blue when she got upset, so the vet told us that when it happened we could just shoot a turkey baster of whiskey down her throat. Once Mom went to fill the turkey baster and realized that all the liquor had been drunk and the empty bottles put back in the cabinet. You’d think she would have realized how much grandma drank before that moment… -AMD

Listening: Bright Eyes in my head
(I am) Reading: I have sworn off of books until after the move
(Hazel is) Reading: Ten Little Penguins and all her other new birthday books :)
Working on: birthday party stuff
Packing progress: I moved home a carload of dog, dog crate, all of our records, clothing, Halloween decorations, and anything else I could fit in the car, and brought back the last of the perfect U-haul boxes (with handles! for books!), eight rolls of packing tape, and lots of bubble wrap from Maggie :)

I never would have imagined it being immeasurably worse than this.

templeton has had a hard-on for 24 hours. if it’s not gone in the morning i have to take him to the vet.

why can i not have normal pets?

(he was a rat, fyi.)

“how do you spell diabetic?”
“how do you spell guiness?”
“how do you spell kid rock?”

fights over who gets to sit by me at lunch, kid art projects, five year old dance parties, one adoption crush.

he turned 13 in april. i’d still take him.