Easter, First Quick Post

The girls and I spent Easter with my parents and then stayed for a couple more days, since Sweet Pea is on spring break this week. I couldn't keep up with Sweet Pea during the egg hunt. She was off and running.

The Bug demanded more close personal attention anyway.

Look at those luscious curls. But this picture is here mainly for an old friend who may stop by to see whose blog this is, after I found her blog and left a comment after reading her fantastic Valentine's Day story.

I dressed my cuties in dirndls (since I've been asked what a dirndl is by more than one person, I'll tell you that it is a traditional German dress) to take pictures while they fit into them! Sweet Pea is wearing a dirndl that my godfather sent me from Germany (where he lives) when I was little. The Bug is wearing a dirndl that my godfather brought from Germany last time he visited, when Sweet Pea was 2ish. Unfortunately Sweet Pea never wore that dirndl even once, since she received it during her year and a half of eschewing clothes, even during the winter. She only wore diapers WAY most of that year and a half. The Bug enjoys clothes quite a lot but I thought I'd better get some photos of her in the dirndl as early and often as I can until she grows out of it (it is clearly currently too large for her), just in case she goes native on me too. And also because she is very vocal about what she wears, and there may come a day when she just won't put the darn thing on.

More stories of Easter and pictures soon, but I'm posting this stoopid late (well, early, really) and really need to get to bed.

Shattering my Children's Innocence, One Truth at a Time

Sometimes I feel like (and have been heard to say to Slipshod) I hate my job. What that really means is that I feel like I'm making a complete mess of things and I SUCK at it, so I hate trying so hard to do it and feeling like I usually get it wrong. Here's an example from last week:

Sweet Pea: "Mom, are unicorns real or something that somebody made up?"

Me, deer in the headlights: "Um, they're made up."

Sweet Pea: "Why?"

Me: "Do you mean why did somebody make them up?"

Sweet Pea: "Yeah."

Me: "Well, a long time ago people couldn't always explain what was going on in the world around them and so they made up stories and imagined creatures to explain those things." (How this relates to a unicorn I couldn't tell you, but it sounded good... but here's where I really stepped onto the wrong path:) "There are lots of neat creatures that people have made up."

Sweet Pea: "Like what?"

Me, realizing I need to tread very carefully here - after all, she's only 4.5: "Well, like elves and dwarves" (which she has probably not heard of yet). "And fairies."

My hand flew to my mouth. We haven't even gotten to the tooth fairy yet! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

At the same time that I said "And fairies," however, she was asking, "and leprechauns?"

I can't even remember what I said about leprechauns but I tried to make their existence sound more than likely. At that moment, though, I was busy being completely horrified that I had told her fairies don't exist, and hoping that she hadn't heard what I had said.

My problem with this sort of thing is that I am not the kind of person who can instantly come up with some kind of cute or funny story that is on the subject, yet deflects the child from the direct question and makes them decide for themselves. Sometimes I do have the presence of mind to ask, "what do you think?" but Sweet Pea will always tell me what she thinks and then ask again for the real answer.

I also don't want to lie to my kids. But I DO want to provide them with a sense of childhood wonder. You know, while they're wee. What is the answer? How do you deal with this sort of thing with your children?

I Am Freaking Brilliant

So, while Sweet Pea is taking an hour and a half to get dressed for school, I've started going through some boxes that have been sitting around upstairs waiting to be unpacked. I found all my maternity clothes and started mourning not being able to wear them anymore. Not because I want to be pregnant again, geez! No, I was feeling sad because some of my maternity shirts are WAY cuter than my regular clothes and I was going to have to give them away. But one of them didn't look so wide and I tried it on and decided to keep it and see if it could pass as a normal shirt. THEN it hit me: DUH, I have a sewing machine. I can take in my cutest maternity shirts and KEEP them and WEAR them! I can have cute clothes without shopping, which I hate to do! YEAH! And, this means I don't have to give away or sell clothes that I like a lot but didn't get to wear very long. Besides that, the maternity shirts are longer than my usual shirts, which seem too short this winter. I'm all excited. I probably won't keep that many of the shirts, but I can think of two I definitely do want to keep, and maybe there are a couple more. My summer is looking a little cuter this year.

** NOTE: Okay, so now that I've looked through the box with a more discerning eye it's only two shirts. But still. Good idea, no?

I Present For Your Amusement:

Batter Blaster! Organic, no less.

Yes, I'm serious. Slipshod saw this stuff in the end of one of the refrigerated sections of Costco and HAD to check it out. He thought it looked funny, so we bought some. "We're having pancakes for breakfast tomorrow," he promised gleefully. I asked him if he thought the propellant was organic too.

Seriously. Pancake batter in a whip cream-type can. For reals. My eyebrow remained cocked.

The pancakes were actually fine. Slipshod seemed a little disappointed that the batter didn't actually shoot out of the can like whipped cream, though.

Catching Up - Just Quickly

Well, we're finally all over that flu thing. The girls STILL have stuffy heads & occasionally runny noses, but we're starting to blame that on allergies 'cause it doesn't seem to be anything else. Took The Bug to the doctor on Saturday because she is just not quite right - naps are WAY too short and she wakes up screaming - very unlike her - and she's been extremely clingy to me for a long time. Doctor couldn't find anything wrong - her ears look "perfect," he said, and her chest sounds fine, and we don't think her two-year molars could be cutting yet, but she does still have a bunch of congestion in her head. He gave us some samples of children's Dimatapp and we've been giving it to her before bed for the past two nights. Best sleep she and I have had for a year or more! I don't know if I'll give it to her tonight, though; she sounds much less stuffy today.

Sweet Pea went to school every day last week except for Thursday, when she was worried, because of her runny nose, about getting her classmates sick. She's been very happy to be back, and having been gone for two weeks does not seem to have made her classmates forget about her (which totally did happen earlier in the winter when she was out for one week). Or maybe she's just gotten more outgoing since the flu, I don't know. At any rate, her teachers say she seems thrilled to be back in school, and I've seen her interacting with some of the other kids just like before.

I'm still trying to catch up with the laundry but otherwise things are pretty okay around here and I'm still plugging away at the Christmas cards when I can. I'm up to K now...

It's been so long since we did a meaningful shopping trip that I don't even have a useful onion in the house. I was going to put together a casserole now for dinner tonight, but oh well. We have other options. Guess I should meal plan & write a grocery list instead.

I wanted to post some pictures today but Slipshod moved some stuff around on my computer over the weekend & now I can't get things to import from my camera. Photos will be posted here when that gets cleared up.