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The other day, it was my birthday. 

Two years ago, the same dude tattooed my left forearm with a blue bird, a poppy, a banner that says George. My baby -- the first one -- was nine months old; I put on a flowered and pheasant-feathered headpiece, got drunk and walked across the street to get my indelible birthday present: a little bird for Woody Guthrie's tune by the same name, for the bluebird of happiness, for the blue of George's eyes. The poppy for the ones that line California's highways in the summer, growing wild, blanketing the way to Disneyland like a yellow brick road beside the real, wide, gray one. Things I love, that I love to share with him, that I look forward to sharing with him in the future (should Southern California be spared from its imminent ocean-falling-in). He learned to spell his name from that tattoo, can recite "G-E-O-R-G-E George" while pointing to the corresponding letters on my skin. 

Since Zelda was born, I've known what hers would be. My round little same, looking so familiar, so like my own baby photos minus the cleft chin and plus a reddish tint to her hair. She is fat and happy, most of the time, with other dimensions peeking out from behind the good humor: determination; ambition; particularity. Even if she grows out of the resemblance to her mother, I can tell her that once, she looked like I had once looked. Maybe she'll like that.

The marigold-spangled dress, the doll's blue eyes: those are easy. That Goldie came with eyes just like George's, just like mine. The colors match her brother's and together they make a nice pair, on my arms, in my arms, in general. 

We came home and had cupcakes.

It was a good day.

how to stain your baby

Zelda is so into being a regular person. She wants to drink your water and eat your pizza and play with that choking hazard and she will not take no for an answer, even when it is the obvious answer (I do not feed my seven month old pizza: don't bother). So during Nathan's first week back at school, when I was attempting to keep extra busy, I tried to find some fun things for both kids to do together at levels they'd each enjoy rather than George coaching Zelda or Zelda having things pried repeatedly from her grasp. Cornstarch paint seemed a nice, easy DIY for these last warm days and George is on a painting kick that I'm really trying to encourage.

My recipe is 1 cup of water to 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. For this batch I made three cups because I knew they'd go through it quickly. You just mix the cornstarch into lukewarm water, then heat over medium-high heat until it's thick, stirring pretty frequently. I put a few drops of food coloring into cups and added the gloop once it had thickened to my liking, stirred to mix in the color and put the cups in the freezer to cool off for a little while. I gave them another stir when they came out, and they were ready to go.

Zelda immediately turned the tablecloth and paper into a slip-n-slide. The sensory aspect was basically it for her, but she squished the paint around in her fists and slid all over the place and that was good enough for her. George is something of a rule follower and wasn't thrilled that Zelda had dumped the paint and subsequently got it all over herself, but I tried to give him an area of his own by repositioning the remaining paint and corralling his sister. I encouraged him to paint on his own arms or belly, but that was preposterous and he was deeply offended at the suggestion.

Zelda was having so much fun rolling around in the paint that George finally decided to give some handprints a try, and, after watching her brother for awhile, Zelda picked up a paintbrush. This exploration inspired by each other was, to me, totally the highlight of the activity.

I plunked them both in the bath immediately after they were finished playing, but Zelda came out looking like I'd haphazardly shot a tube of sunblock at her and left her out in the sun all day. It came off, though... eventually.

a pony bead mobile

Way back last winter when we were dying for new indoor activities, I bought a container of pony beads for George to string on pipecleaners. He enjoyed it for a little while but got good at it pretty fast and then the activity lost its charm. I'd bookmarked The Artful Parent's pony bead suncatcher tutorial and, though our beads weren't the translucent variety, thought we'd make a go of it anyway. George really likes playing with cookie cutters so even if the end result was a bust, I knew he'd have fun in the process. 

The beads we have are a rainbow assortment which was good for our purposes. Older kids would enjoy making shapes or scenes out of the different colors, but "can you put another purple one into the star?" type stuff seemed to help George feel successful while still being mildly educational since he's got colors and shapes down pretty solidly.

We talked about putting them into the hot oven (400 degrees for 20 minutes) so they would melt, and I asked him what he thought would happen to the beads -- would the colors blend together or would they stay separate? He's been pretty interested in cooking recently so I likened it to making a pizza, where the ingredients stay identifiable, or making a cake, where the ingredients blend together to make something that looks different. 

Meanwhile, Zelda chewed on a cookie cutter. I let George choose which cutters we used, and he picked all of the Hanukkah shapes: dreidel, star of David, scrolls, and menorah, in addition to some ovals. Weird, but whatever.

I got out the drill and a small bit and drilled holes in the finished shapes. This was easily the least popular part of the whole process. Zelda whimpered in fear and George cowered in the doorway saying, "do it fast!" After fastening on some fishing line and snipping the top ring out of an old oats canister, I tied them uniformly around the ring and added a bit of yarn for hanging. I'm not sure how long it'll last, but it's a pretty cute little mobile.

Festive! And only four months early for Hanukkah. We'll totally do it again, but with the translucent beads. Guess who's proud of his handiwork?

thrifty sunday: in which we actually go shopping

Nathan got paid and we promptly went out to lunch and to Goodwill. The goodwill trip was technically an attempt at getting Zelda to sleep before we went in to the restaurant, in the hopes that I'd be able to eat a meal two-handed (thanks, Boba). Walking around usually puts her right out, and it worked! But not before we found some treasures.

I'd long been looking for a rainbow granny square afghan that's joined in white. I could make one myself, but big crochet projects don't usually work out for me; my attention span isn't long enough. I finally found one, and it's a nice little lap/toddler size, and in good shape. Hooray! Dream afghan: $4.99

George has plenty of interests that I don't share. Soccer (and every other sport), Blue's Clues, eating peas. But one interest that I'm extremely happy to share with him is space. He can name some heavenly bodies and identify them in the night sky (Moon, Venus and Jupiter), and knows which planet we inhabit. I, of course, believe this to be evidence that he's a genius. Spacey shirt: $1.99

I am what you might call a Kennedy enthusiast. I stop short of commemorative spoons, but I'm a sucker for pretty much all things Camelot, and as though the nice people at Goodwill knew I was coming, they priced this ridiculously high. Nevermind; we're rollin' in dough (rent and bills having not yet been paid), so we pretended like we were those richies who shop at thrift stores for the kitch value and splurged on this painting because it would've haunted me for the rest of my life if we'd left it on the shelf. JFK/RFK painting: $9.99

Yard sale season is almost upon us (and IS upon some of us, who don't live in the dank, dark woods). Have you scored any gems lately?

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!