like rain on your (neighbors') wedding day

Spring around here is a funny thing. It rains; it pours; your carport floods. And then, for one day, it is 62 degrees, bright and warm from the time the sun shows his unfamiliar face until he lays it down in the Sound. And those twelve hours are enough to make you optimistic about the possibility of enjoying outdoor life again, in a sincere way, not a ha-ha, good thing I'm wearing galoshes kind of way.  

We actually had, like, THREE of those in a row, a week or two ago. And then my poor neighbors who had waited TWENTY FIVE YEARS to get legally married found themselves putting up clear flashing around their gorgeous deck in preparation for a torrential downpour that waterlogged their wedding day. PNW, we can't quit you, but you sure are a jerk sometimes. 

To console ourselves after we put some measly starts into the garden only to have it frost overnight at 37 degrees and kill our broccoli, George and I decided our raised beds could use some flags to jazz them up a little. Zelda had never potato printed, so we got out some muslin, cookie cutters, a potato, some paint and a paring knife.

If you don't know how to print with potatoes, there is no shortage of tutorials online that probably give all the details you need, but all I do is press a cookie cutter deep into the freshly-cut side of a potato, then slice into the side of the potato with my paring knife and cut away the excess potato. Not exactly rocket science.

George and Zelda chose an arrow, a heart, a star and a leaf. One arrow attempt failed, and turned into a bunny. Zelda kind of just tried to eat the potatoes, but George had a good time stamping the strips of muslin I had torn. Speaking of which, I didn't bother hemming these; I just snipped the selvedge edge of the muslin and tore it along the entire width of the fabric, leaving me with strips. 

I gave George dishes of the paint that came with a paint-your-own wooden car kit. I have no idea what kind of paint it is, but it's labeled non-toxic, and it hasn't yet run. Do I need to tell you how many times it's rained? When the kids were satisfied that they'd eaten enough raw potato and sufficiently stamped the soon-to-be flags, we cleaned up, and let everything dry while we ate lunch.

While George napped that afternoon, I cut the strips into smaller pieces and sewed a ribbon across the top, bunting-style. We stuck bamboo poles into the ground on each end of the garden and tied on the flags. I love that it helps give the kids some ownership of our garden in these early, boring days of germination and perseverence. 

hundred dollar hanukkah: DIY menorah

I really wanted the gift our family opened on the first night of Hanukkah to be one that at least one of the kids helped make (and, let's be honest, Zelda's talents don't exactly lie in crafts, so it was all on George). Being a DIYer, I have a tendency to take on all of the holiday handmaking and this leaves me burnt out and annoyed: NOT something I want to model for my children. In the DIT (do-it-together) spirit of this Hanukkah, I limited my own handmaking to one project and chose an easy craft that George and I could do for very little money, that would still be useful. 

We have a beautiful menorah that I dearly love, and I hope that someday the kids will fight over whose family inherits it. But I have a more candlelight the better policy, and what's more Hanukkah-appropriate than a menorah? 

I found the candle cups in the woodworking section at Michael's for $1.69 per 5-pack. I bought two packs and a piece of wood from the same section for $1.99. I used a coupon, so it was 40% off, bringing my total to $4.58. 

We hot glued the candle cups to the board and doubled up the middle two for the shamash. 

George went crazy with some royal blue and turquoise acryclic paint, and I filled in the spaces he missed, per his request. I'll probably seal it so the melted wax doesn't ruin the paintjob, but otherwise it was a very toddler-friendly project and turned out really well: a yearly reminder of George at almost-three.

Even though it won't be a surprise, I know seeing it lit up with candles will be exciting for us all.  

george's new room

My first priority when we arrived at the new house was to get George's room in order. I wanted to make it clear that his stuff was still his stuff, it was all here, and his comfort was important to us. So, while Nathan and his dad did the heavy lifting, I arranged toys and put away clothes and generally made his room as Georgeish as I could. It's been a work in progress, as kid rooms always are, but we seem to have reached a good spot and I think we'll let it stay like this for awhile. With his sister crawling, some of the growing pains we thought we'd dodged in the beginning are rearing their heads and it's important to me that he, at least for now, have a space that's safe, baby slobber free, and his. Somewhere down the road, they'll share a room -- maybe this room -- but for as long as Zelda's co-sleeping, this area is George's and his alone. 

I love this room. It's bright, like the rest of the house, and unintentionally very green. It's cheerful but not in that saccharine way that kids' stuff can be. At least, to me. 

It's full but not brimming. Lived-in, with a bed big enough for two, or three, or four. There's art on the walls and not even most of it was made for children. I like that.

That closet, man. It's a secret lair. Another whole person could sleep in there, but right now it holds Zelda's clothes and a someday-to-be nook for hiding out when your mom's annoying you. 

"Do you like your room?" I asked him this morning. "Do you want some tea?" he replied. "Some CHOCOLATE tea?" I'll take that as a yes.

a child's garden of...dirt

On Facebook the other day, Dee posted a link to an article about a play garden. George likes to mess around in our fallow raised bed, though between him and the chickens this has proven a bad pastime for the growing season. Our family plot will be locked down with chicken wire this year, high enough to keep a curious toddler and his three clucking cohorts at bay until their "assistance" is needed, but I wanted George to have a place to grow things of his own, to dig and hunt for worms and shovel away to his heart's content. I also wanted it to have some sensory components aside from the squishy mud, and The Imagination Tree's post about their sweet little garden gave me some inspiration. 

Ordinarily, I am not one to recommend shopping at the dollar store, as I usually find thrift shops more fruitful and less, well, crappy, but when you've got about 20 solid, no-cry-guarantee minutes to get supplies for both a garden and dinner, you do whatcha gotta do. At the dollar store, I found:

• a pinwheel
• a muffin tin for mudcake making
• a mat to kneel on
• a bamboo windchime

And at Home Depot, which shares the parking lot with the dollar store -- another place I would not ordinarily discuss patronizing, as there is a lovely local hardware shop and there are myriad pleasant little nurseries around -- I got:

• a mint plant 
• a lavender plant
• two colors of posies
• cedar edging

At home, we already had a little trowel, a shovel and some terra cotta pots. I found some rocks and stones in the yard and piled them in one corner of the garden.

I used some of the soil from our raised bed, as it needs to be supplemented anyway, and made a large-ish dirt pile in the hopes that George might not dig up the plants. The rocks and stones, I imagine, will gather some critters underneath (looking for and identifying bugs is currently a hot hobby around here), and a blackberry branch that needs to be pruned back is holding up the wind chime whose cheapness is, honestly, rather obvious. The dull clinking adds something nice to the space, though; I'm glad I thought to buy it. Already, the scents of the lavender and mint waft around when you walk by...especially when a certain hapless gardener is accidentally crushing the plants with his galoshes. 

An hour of this morning was spent playing in the new garden, a good portion of which "makin' dinosaur fossils!" with his little raptor. Sometimes I am confounded over the fact that two years ago, my full-sentence-speaking, archaeology-interested child was this small and drooly:

His sister enjoyed the view from her little coccoon, and maybe she'll be big enough to dig around a little, herself, by the time summer's really here. Because summer doesn't really get here until August, anyway.

Happy spring!

chag sameach

It's a cliché, but for good reason, I guess: mothering comes with a decent amount of guilt attached. Guilt that you're overindulging, guilt that you're depriving, guilt that you've made the wrong decision. Holidays shouldn't induce guilt, but they often do, and the Spring ones are no exception. This year, George noticed those dreadful pre-made Easter baskets in the stores. Specifically, he noticed the one displayed prominently at our local grocery store that seemed to have been made just to entice him -- containing not one, but two full-sized, "big guy" basketballs -- and he asked to buy it on more than one occasion. When I tried feebly to explain that, actually, those are Easter baskets and we don't celebrate Easter, but rather we have a very long dinner during which we read a story and eat some food ("Noodles?!" Uh, no...) and drink a lot of wine, well, he was unimpressed. Passover has no dreidel and gelt, no presents. It's an admittedly tough sell to a two year old, albeit one I'm more than willing to keep peddling, as these traditions are important. The least "fun" being, arguably, the most important. 

So, as we sat around our hosts' seder table for the second year running -- as our friend led the meal in broken Hebrew befitting a crowd of Athiests, cultural Jews and... others -- my son ran around with his new little friend, having as much fun as a couple of toddlers could have at a Pesach seder. He spit out the maror, passed wholesale on the dinner and didn't live up to my dorky dream of joining everyone in saying cheerfully, "Next year in Jerusalem!" now that he actually could. 

I felt bad for bringing a rowdy child to a seder, no matter how irreverent. I wanted to supply coloring pages, to make a cute felt envelope for the afikomen and pass out masks illustrating the plagues for any guests who were game to wear them, but my shit was decidedly not together. I wanted George to have fun, to see that he didn't need an Easter basket or a chocolate bunny, but I also wanted him to understand the gravity of a holiday without gimmicks. I failed, it seemed, on both counts. And felt guilty. 

Despite all that, after a lovely meal with friends new, old and somewhere in between -- Zelda's first seder -- we came home and went to bed. The next day was glorious. Sunshiny. Springtime. I decided to give myself a break: that our cultural identity wouldn't be compromised if I indulged a little, to celebrate this beautiful season. After all, we've made it through the winter, and our modern, first world plagues: seasonal affective disorder, outrageous heating costs, perpetually damp pant hems and a lack of local fresh fruit, icy roads, waiting for the bus in the rain. Our chickens are laying reliably again -- as sure a sign of improved conditions as any -- so bright eggs may as well be hidden around their yard for a sun-starved toddler to find. 

Find them he did. And he had a ball. More fun than his time playing around the Pesach seder? Who's to say? And does it matter? Cultural sell-out or not, I want my kids to have fond memories of childhood. While that might not mean they get the double basketball grocery store Easter basket, I'm pretty okay with the plain old wicker one, and eggs filled with dimes. And if later they decide to go back outside to hunt for worms?

Yeah, much better than a stuffy church. Or temple, for that matter. Sunday best is relative.