Four.

Lucy is 4 today! What?? I've been waiting a year and a half to be able to do this for Lucy, after seeing it over at SortaCrunchy, so now I'm finally, shamelessly stealing the idea from her.

This is the song.

Here is Lucy's birth story.
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I'm sittin' here 

 I'm one day old

And I'm sittin' here

I'm two days old

I'm sittin' here

I'm three days old

And I'm sittin' here

I'm four days old.

One day I'll be a year

Then I'll be two

Then three

Then four

But as for now I'm sittin' here

I'm five days old, and no days more.


Happy Birthday, Lucy!

Delivery!

I spent $85 at an educational supply website the other day.  Part of me was like "85 dollars???" and part of me was like "::shrug:: Gotta spend money to be awesome."

What that $85 dollars got me:

*10 pounds of tempera paint powder (1 pound each of 10 different colors)
*168 colored wooden dominoes
*500 stick-on googly eyes
*One of these (cork board, hammer, tacks, and wooden shapes with holes in the middles.)
*a set of fabric markers (for Lucy's birthday festivities, the details of which will be coming in approximately 2 weeks)

Here's what I immediately did with the googly eyes:

 

Then Norman did some, then Lucy did some. Then I put some up at the rink where I ice skate every week. And in our car. And then Norman and Lucy put some more on some rocks outside.  Our house is so much happier!  (Apparently this activity is call Vandaleyes, and there is a website.) 

Lucy and I have also played with the dominoes. Good for counting/number/math practice, good for setting up and knocking over, and they also make good building blocks.

I plan to use the tempera paint powder to do all kinds of awesome Pinterest-y type activities.  Essentially, you can use it to make paint, or to sprinkle on and mix into various liquid and viscous substances -- pretty much it's like food coloring, but more awesome and less edible.  (That last part is probably not true, actually. It's just not made to be eaten.)

I started a new blog to catalog what Lucy does each day, so any of these projects we do are going to end up over there. Go subscribe if you want to see!

Playroom Cleanup

Lest anyone is under the mistaken impression that I am 1.) a meticulous housekeeper, or 2.) a strict disciplinarian, I offer the following for clarification:

 

[Lucy's playroom]

It's looked this way for the last... two weeks? At least? Probably more because we were on vacation last week and it was like this before that.  

Every now and then Norman or I will go in and put some things where they go. We don't make Lucy clean it.  It's her room, and if she doesn't clean it, the consequence is that playing is harder and she can't find stuff.  Also I understand the frustration of having to clean up a "mess" when you're in the middle of creating something.

Lucy has free rein over safety scissors and a large amount of paper, scotch tape, stickers, and writing instruments.  She creates paper trash like nobody's business. She's quite prolific and is not sentimentally attached to most of it.  She also makes quite a mess of the drawers that all these craft supplies are kept in, of course. 

And every now and then, I just can't stand the playroom anymore.  I just can't stand that much of a mess for too long.  Plus I feel sorry for Lucy.  I know when it gets that bad, there's just no possible way for her to even begin to clean it.  Like, it's developmentally impossible for her.  So about every two months or so, I go through and really clean everything out and toss the scribbled on and cut up bits of paper and junk mail that she hoards.  Today she helped... a little.  I put everything where it goes and cleaned out and organized the craft drawers.

I got rid of almost a whole trash bag full of stuff (mostly paper).  But only the stuff she won't miss.  One of my earliest traumas was my dad going through my room and giving away a bunch of the toys I had left on the floor.  I was about Lucy's age.  I know he was doing the best he could, just like I am.  I'm about the same age now as he was then.  But man did that suck.

 

[Ahh, lovely.]

So it'll look half-decent for the next day or two. :-)

Dreams

Some of my Facebook friends and I have been thinking and talking about dreams a lot lately.  Not the sleeping kind.  The bucket list kind.  The things you want to do, but you're not sure if it will ever happen.  And you're kind of afraid to try.

We've been talking about what they are, why they're scary, and who's doing what to try to accomplish them.  It's really inspiring.  There are a lot of us taking chances and doing hard, exciting things.

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This conversation is the intersection of lots of things in my life.  One would be the movie Accepted.  I've written about it before here.  It came out right after I finished college and got married.  Immediate love.  It's my favorite feel-good movie, seriously.  And this is the most important part:


What do you want to learn? Write it on the board.

For a while back then Norman and I had a list going on the little chalkboard in our spare room.

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I think that movie gave me the courage to keep thinking outside the box.  First the college box.  Then the school box altogether.

Before my daughter was born, I discovered Attachment Parenting philosophy.  Thank God I did, because Lucy's babyhood would have been even more miserable than it was if I hadn't.  She had a lot of needs, and she refused to let them go unmet.  Attachment Parenting leads naturally to peaceful parenting and non-violent discipline.  And peaceful parenting and non-violent discipline lead naturally to Unschooling philosophy.

The thing about unschooling is... You have to know yourself well enough to know your dreams.  It won't work if someone else is always telling you what to do or what you can't do, and it won't work if you're afraid to stand out, to be different, to be passionate.

Lucy will learn from my example.  I want her to know that we don't live in fear in this family.  No fear -- of God, of our parents, of punishment, of hurt, of society, of failure.  So we don't hit her.  We listen to her.  We try to err on the side of love and gentleness.  And we try to live our own lives without fear.

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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote my own stanza to the song "I've Got a Dream" from the Disney movie Tangled.  It goes like this:

I've long been kinda flabby
Athletic skills are shabby
That I'm no jock, no one could debate
But despite my HSP
And a creaking in my knee
I really want to learn to figure skate!

Can't you see me on the ice skating to Chopin?
Salchow jumping while my sequins gleam!
My thighs in tights would be a sin
But soon I'll do a layback spin
Like little Russian girls, I've got a dream!

And that's my dream.  Since nearly forever.  I'm realistic.  I know I'm not in great shape, I bruise easily, and I've never been any kind of active.  But I just want to be able to do a waltz jump before I die.  But right before I die would certainly not be the time to try.

[First day of lessons]

And neither, I decided, would After the Kids Move Out.  (That mythical time that seemingly all parents long for and then immediately lament.)  I want Lucy to see me working hard and trying scary things.  I want her to work hard and try scary things!  I'm going to help her.  I already help her do it!  We all help each other. 

And eventually she will leave for her own life.  I would rather not be left with nothing.  I am a mom, and that calling is extremely important to me.  But the bulk of that work is gonna be over in about 15 short years.  And then I'll probably keep living for another 35 or so.  So I'm taking skating lessons.  And I love it.  Gotta keep dreaming.

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I want to hear about your dreams. Leave 'em in the comments!

Christmas 2012

It's the Twelfth Day of Christmas, so I'm just fitting this in under the wire!  (We go to an Episcopal church now, so it's totally allowed.) 

We had Christmas!  Lucy is now 3.5, so she was way more into it this year than any time previous.  And she has chosen to believe in Santa Claus, even though we do absolutely nothing to encourage (or discourage) that.  She's also old enough to listen to and start to comprehend stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible, so we followed this plan for the duration of Advent.  Lucy also decided that the nativity set was just more toys for her to play with. (Should have seen that one coming!)

In the spirit of our spend-time-and-money-proportional-to-how-much-you-care philosophy, we spent all of 15 minutes taking our Christmas card photos (including getting Lucy dressed). 

Lucy was an angel in the Christmas Eve pageant.

We helped set up for the Norman Community Christmas Dinner.

Our own Christmas dinner consisted of roast chicken, green salad, soft pretzels, mashed potatoes, gravy, and champagne. 

Lucy got Scotch tape in her stocking. She was super excited!

I made Norman another shirt.

Norman bought me a book for those who are questioning.

Then on Saturday we had Christmas with Norman's parents and siblings. 

Lucy's uncle designed and created this bear blanket for her!  (It rolls up into a bear.)

Norman got some sonic screwdrivers.

And I got a dress form!  I still can't believe it!

And I made hot pizza dip, which I can now highly recommend!

Yeah, that pretty much covers it.  Oh, except for the part where the weatherpeople were predicting this big crazy snow storm for Christmas Day, and then it just iced and sleeted and then snowed a little.  But then a couple days later, they said we might get some flurries, and it snowed like 4 inches!  They were a little confused.  Merry Christmas!

Two Shows Down; One to Go!

Home show / open house -- check!
Deluxe -- check!

The home show was a fun event, but a moderate success.  My friend Jen did great, because her stuff is adorable!  She makes jewelry and accessories from leather scraps, which makes them, in my opinion, perfect because they're feminine without being too girly.

[See?]

Our friends generously hosted again in their House of the Spacious Front Rooms. (I don't know if they have a name they call their house, but I think they should seriously consider that one.)

[New this year -- puzzle piece magnets!  Some of them even have glitter.]

Then this last weekend I did Deluxe again.  I'm not gonna lie -- when we found out for sure we were moving back to Oklahoma, after initial feelings of hopelessness and disappointment, I had two excited thoughts: "Book sale!" and "Deluxe!!"

Deluxe is the best, most fun show I've done, and it's consistently awesome.

 

And I feel like my booth setup is really gettin' good.  I've been working on height, and I think I'm making good headway in that department.

[Tiny dresser for displaying sachets for your dresser!  I'm in love with my own idea.]

I sold a ton of stuff!  I must of sold about half the magnets, most of the yearbook sticker sets, and I sold out of floppy disk journals.  They always say you can never tell what will sell and what won't from year to year and show to show, and it is so true!  It seemed like nobody was touching those floppy journals with a ten-foot pole before, but on Saturday they all got snapped up.  ::shrug::
 

[I had Lucy put business cards in my business card holder. ...Norman fixed it later.]

Story time!  One lovely lady visited my booth, and upon looking at the yearbook stickers, started saying, "I know her!!  That's Betty Miller*! Oh, it's Kathy Smith*! This is our class!"  I explained to her that I use old yearbooks, and she explained to me that she was Norman High, class of 1967, and that a bunch of them still live in the area and hang out.  Then she called her friends and told them they had to come see this.  When she came back she had about five of her friends with her -- they were so excited!  More name naming -- they thought is was just the funniest thing ever.  And then one of the ladies bought 4 packages.  LOL.  They just made my day!

Also, I've been taking this up all over Facebook, but if you need to take money from people in person on a regular or semi-regular basis, and you have a smartphone, you need a Square.  Easiest thing to use ever, and the fees are beyond reasonable. They're downright cheap, compared to all of the other ways to accept credit card payments at the point of sale.  I love living in the future!!

 [Getcha some!]

Up next: Junk Hippy!  It's a handmade and vintage show, so I'll have about twice as much inventory as normal, crammed into the same size booth. ::nervous laugh:: Yeaahh.... We'll see how that goes.  Should be fun, though!


*Names completely made up by me in the style of women who graduated high school in 1967.

Busy Building a Village

Hello, out there in blogland!  I haven't updated the blog in 2.5 months.  And I don't feel even a tiny bit guilty about this.  I've been busy!  I've been busy getting settled back here in Oklahoma.  I've been busy shopping and making and listing and selling for my Etsy shops.  There was October curb shopping (though somewhat toned down), which has so far resulted in a gross profit of $200, a toddler slide and Harry Potter books for my friends, and a backup digital camera for myself.  (Seriously, people -- I love free things, but the Goodwill truck will pick up if you just call them!)

 [And of course, return of the Commode!]

And I've been busy trying to build my mom village.  It took me 3 years to figure out that moms of tiny people must have a village.  You must have someone who will help you when they can, no questions asked.  Some women are blessed with family who can fill this role.  I am not.  (Between my parents living out of state, and my husband's family having a major health crisis, it just wasn't happening.)  I didn't know how much help I needed when Lucy was young.  The answer was "a lot", and I didn't get most of it.  Some of that was my fault.  Now that Lucy is 3.5, way more chill, and solidly preschool-aged, I feel like I have the time and the energy (and just the general sense of awareness) to help others.  So I've been working on becoming better friends with some like-minded moms-of-young-ones that I know.  I mean, beyond helping with physical needs, we just need people to talk to, don't we?  People who won't judge, people we can be open and honest with.  If I need it, then I know others need it, too.

[Gratuitous pumpkin patch photo!]

Turns out I'm still not awesome at it.  I pretty much suck at staying friends with people I don't see all the time.  I'm an introvert, and I've never made myself practice.  So, to the moms in my self-constructed village -- Sorry! I'm trying.  And to anyone who doesn't have a village -- It's probably because you're too busy changing diapers, feeding, and trying to find time to fit in enough sleep.  That's why the rest of us need to pick up the slack.  I want to be the slack-picker-upper.  I think that's one of my divinely-appointed jobs right now.

And also keeping my house in order, feeding myself and my family good food, playing with my daughter, and running two Etsy shops.  But now that my daughter mostly takes care of her own bodily functions, gets her own snacks, entertains herself, and usually sleeps all night, that is seeming a lot more doable.

[Oh yeah, and half of my hair is blue now. ::maniacal laugh::]

School Accomplishments

This is about to get really real, y'all.  Serious blog post with sprinklings of embarrassing facts about me ahead.

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It's Back to School time.  I just moved.  I just read this blog post.  These events have converged and resulted in my thinking about what I accomplished in school.  I spent 17 years in school.  I attended public school, a Catholic prep school, an evangelical Christian school, homeschool, and a public university.  I've pretty much done it all.  I was very good at school.  Straight As.  Total number of classes in which I received a B: 4.  Ever.  I got great standardized test scores, I was a National Merit Scholar, I'm in Phi Beta Kappa.

True story: I got really into DC Talk's album Free At Last when I was in 6th grade.  There's a song on it called "Time Is...".  One of the lines goes, "Get busy like a schoolboy makin' an A / 'cause time, my brother, is tickin' away."  I was truly, deeply perplexed by this as a sixth grader.  In my experience, those who made As where those who did not have to do any hard work, while those who worked hard did so in order to receive Bs or Cs.  Honest mistake.

When I look back on my school career, there are very few things I am truly proud of.  And thanks to some gentle encouragement from that blog post, I decided to take those things out of the box I had stored them in and display them on my wall.  As I was putting them up, I realized that it's not just that these are the kinds of school projects that can be displayed on a wall, but that they are nearly the only things I did for school that I still consider worth displaying, sharing, or looking at.

Here they are.

Embroidered Scarlet Letter

The story: I had an English teacher for a year and a half in high school who came up with some pretty interesting projects to require of us.  Each year she had us write a short story (both of mine involved portals), she had us write poems (I still have both of mine, though they aren't very good), and she had us do artistic projects, like this one and the next one. 

After we read The Scarlet Letter, we had to pick one of four artistic projects to complete, and one was to create your own embroidered "A".  I chose this, as did my friend who I was in the process of "breaking up" with.  I was determined that my letter would beat the snot out of her letter.  There's metallic thread in mine, y'all. Metallic thread.  Well, mine definitely did beat the snot out of hers.  Because hers looked like she didn't even try.  It was approximately as satisfying as beating a 4-year-old at checkers.  At which point I realized that it shouldn't be about her.  I love my letter.  It's beautiful, and I spent hours working on it to make it just right.  I had hardly ever put that much effort into a school project.  Since then it has come to mean even more to me, as I often find myself identifying with and empathizing with Hester Prynne.

 Thoreau quote collages

The story: This was another assignment by the same English teacher.  We were to create illustrations of two Henry David Thoreau quotes.  I took that opportunity to rifle through my craft supply box, and also include my own inside joke.  (The faces of the two sirens are the faces of Brian the Backstreet Boy's wife, and David Duchovny's wife Tea Leoni.) (It was an angsty, jealous time, okay?)  At the time these assignments were assigned, I thought they were a good idea.  Because they gave the artistic, non-academically-minded students a chances to be good at school.  Even as I had so much fun completing them, I didn't realize that I was one of those students.  I got to be good at school.  Not sufficient.  Not checking off a box.  Not skating through.  Good.  Engaged.  Passionate.  Thank you, Mrs. Olson.

Ballet shoes (and a photo of Julie Newmar)

The story:  I went to college on a full scholarship.  I took that opportunity to take whichever classes I wanted (Guitar), especially since I came in with 24 hours worth of credit from AP tests.  By senior year, it was time to buckle down and finish the Honors portion of my degree.  I was in the Honors College, I had taken Honors classes.  My parents wanted me to finish it.  But schedules were such that I needed to choose -- finish my Honors degree, or take Ballet (and Creek [the Native American language]).  I picked the crazy classes.

Ballet was hard.  Really hard.  It took a lot to swallow my pride and wear that leotard in front of 12 other people three days a week.  I was so bad.  So bad.  I know this because halfway through the semester, our teacher filmed our class and then made us watch it.  So, so bad.  I taped the photo of Julie Newmar up in my changing room locker to inspire me.  She is so graceful, so provocative, so female.  She got me through that class.  (Ballet was one of my Bs.  I didn't study for the vocab tests.)


I can only think of two other projects from school that still make me smile to think of them.  One is my senior thesis ("capstone").  I was so done with college.  It was becoming clear that I had zero professional ambition.  I had to write a capstone in order to graduate.  I had started watching The Monkees, and quickly became obsessed.  I watched all the episodes and bought a bunch of their music. And by golly, I turned that ridiculousness into a proper paper.  I wrote on American slang in the 1960s and looked at why some slang sticks around in a language, and why some disappears just as quickly as it appeared.  (You can read it here if you want.)

The other was... Oh, how to explain?  Let's start with Embarrassing Fact Number One about me: In high school for about 2 years I was obsessed with the Backstreet Boys.  I went to two concerts.  It was serious.  Now I don't know if you remember the late 90s, but at that time there were two rival boy bands -- the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.  I loved the Backstreet Boys.  My good friend since elementary school loved NSYNC.  Well, we were in speech class together, and it was time to give a persuasive speech.  We drew names for the order in which we would present before we started working on the assignment.  I was to go directly before my friend.  We decided that our speeches should be on the same theme: My Boy Band Is The Best.  We even traded teenie bopper magazine photos so we would both have good visual aids.  It was so silly and so fun.  Perhaps the best part was our evaluations:

["Great enthusiasm! Really drew me in" "Good eye contact" "Very well thought out and strong outline" "Great visuals and strong conclusion; kept everyone interested"  God bless you, Nate Madden.]

That's right, our speech teacher totally played along and decided to grade us on skills rather than content.  Thank goodness.


Those are my accomplishments. And now, finally, six years after I graduated college, my school stress freak-out dreams have transformed into dreams in which I find myself at a school, expected to attend and take classes.  I look around, and invariably say something to the effect of, "Screw this! I'm leaving. I don't have to be here." It's about time.

Featured...

This very blog was recently featured over at Pocket Change, a cool shopping blog.  You can see the post here.  I'm pretty excited, because they found me and asked if they could feature me.  Fun stuff!

[Bonus! Photo of my daughter sitting in her "Big Bird Nest". Just happens to be both the first and last time she'll have done that. Ahem.]

Dear Arcata

This week I'm leaving you. It's not you, it's me. Actually it's my husband. No, actually it's God.  I knew I couldn't stay here when I showed up.  I'm sad, but not disappointed.

Arcata, I'm writing to say thank you.  Thank you for one year's vacation.  Thank you for giving me the gift of knowing myself better.  Thank you for space to breathe.  Thank you for convincing me to finally get those red streaks in my hair.  When I get back to Oklahoma there will be teal, or maybe purple.  So people will know I'm yours.

And I am.  I fit in here.  It's so ethereal and mostly indescribable, but I've never felt more at home.  Everyone seems to think the way I do.  Or when they don't, it's okay.  A Rent lyric sums it up best: "To being an 'us' for once, instead of a 'them'!"

The fact that I came here, "found my geographical bliss" (to quote my father), and am now being boomeranged back to where I came from sounds pretty unfair from the outside, I guess.  But it doesn't feel that way to me.  There's an important feeling that I want to remember -- The way I feel in Oklahoma is the way we should all feel here on earth.  It's not the place I'm supposed to be, and now I know that there is somewhere better.  The Promised Land is waiting for me.  But first I have to go through the desert.  (Arcata, in this metaphor you are Canaan.)

An apt metaphor, I think, considering your amazing beauty and fertility.  Here nothing struggles to survive.  Everything just grows.  The trees are enormous, the plants are colorful.  Even the bugs are totally chill.  And most importantly, the sun is our friend, not our enemy. 

But I'll be on the lookout for you, Arcata.  And whenever I find your spirit in Oklahoma, I'll stick close.  And when I don't find it, I'll remember you.  I'll remember how I felt every time I saw hitchhikers on the Plaza, or a young woman riding her bike in a skirt with her yoga mat strapped across her back. The way I felt the first time I heard a Christian over the age of 50 make a joke at the expense of the Republican Party.  How amused I was when I realized that my city-issued recycling trash can is 5 times larger than my city-issued garbage trash can.  The generous and nomadic spirit embodied in the numerous front yard "free piles" that pop up every week.

Maybe someday I'll be back. You are where old hippies go to die, after all.

Peace,
Jessie