The Scholar and the Raging Lunatic

So, after The Incident I popped out my other lens and declared my glasses a prop. Since Olivia had her pictures taken by a photographer from Canadian Baby, Nicole was more than willing – for once – to do a mini shoot with me. So I mean, in case you thought I was playing favourites with all the Olivia shoots, I’ll clarify that. Olivia is the one who can’t move fast enough to get away from me. Thus far.

If you’re curious, her jeggings (ha, I love that word. And those things. All of us ladies in this house own a pair.) are from Target and her shirt is from The Children’s Place. You can’t see it in these picture, but it’s got a long ruffle on the bottom, and it’s tunic length in the front and dress length in the back. PERFECT with leggings, and I love it dearly.

I love that laughing picture so much. It’s very “Nicole.” Speaking of Nicole – which clearly we are, since her pictures are littering the page – she’s taken some developmental leaps drawing-wise suddenly. I’m very pleased. She’s started drawing grass and suns in her pictures, and her people inside of a house, and also she’s starting to notice details and add them to her pictures. Details like hair. Or bums. Yup, of course bums. Today she was drawing a picture of “mommy and grandma and Nicole” and I hear her muttering to me about “your big bum.” Which, first of all, medium sized, I’ll have you know. Not pancake patootie but not exactly badunkadunk either. Anways, I go investigate and there is this giant C shaped thing sticking out the side of my person. Not wanting to jump to conclusions – I mean, she mentioned a backpack, too – I casually inquired as to what it was.

“That’s mommy’s big bum,” she replies just as casually, adding some pink to the red roof.

Awesome.

Does anyone else find they start spring cleaning in February? Perhaps its just because the snow doesn’t start to melt here until somewhere in May most years, but generally at some point in February I just get sick to death of cluttery closets and suchlike and turn into a raging lunatic. I mean, my dog threw up all over my house last night so that definitely contributes to my urge to sanitize every surface. But right now I’m taking a break in between ripping things out of closets and putting them back in in a better fashion and wishing I had one thousand baskets that magically fit in every cupboard and drawer because everything just feels much better organized in a basket to me.

Anyways, don’t come over, you’ll think you walked into an episode of Hoarders except that all the cupboards and closets are empty. And also, I am keeping up on my Project 52, sortof, I just need to edit and post the last few. Yay me.

Shopping Spree! Yay! wait… yawn.

I just spent a small fortune on two different kinds of Rubbermaid containers. They were on sale, I shopped around, I got three gigantic and three you-could-hide-bodies-in-there sized ones. They match each other, which doesn’t make them any less boring. You’d think for how much they cost that they would fill themselves up and hop on over to the garage by themselves, but nooo. That’s what I get to do. Well, not only me. Chris gets to fill a few as well. That makes me feel moderately better. Also, once I finish shoving all the baby gear into one of the hide-bodies ones, I can bat my lashes at Chris and get him to install our closet organizer, since the bottom half of the closet won’t be full of baby gear. So that makes me feel a few steps better.

All in the name of organizing and keeping busy and not using cardboard boxes to store things any more. I’m such a grownup.

Thanks for the well wishes and sympathy re: my toothache. I mostly don’t want to drown myself most of the time. I’m praying somebody cancels an appointment and I get in sooner than a month for my oral surgery. They will likely have to cut my gums open which I’m totally okay with because booboos I can handle. Booboos don’t hit nerves and cause everything from your eardrum down to halfways down your jaw to hurt.

Anyways, back to distracting myself by filling buckets with stuff! Ta!

labelling and scheming

Is there anything in the world better than a checklist full of checkmarks? By 8pm I was chilling on my laptop in my clean house, freshly showered, my head covered in pincurls in an attempt to maybe get lucky and have awesome hair tomorrow, with my kid in bed. (the selfsame kid who is still not sleeping and currently rubbing her head against me like a kitty, at 9:45. But she WAS in bed… NOW she’s sitting in my lap watching me type. )

Among other things today, I sorted Nicole’s toys into plain boring buckets with lids she can’t open, then took pictures of the contents and made labels with both photographic and written aids to help those things wind up where they belong. The plan is, only one bucket may be played with at a time. Then that bucket must be cleaned up and returned to the mean troll who lives under the bridge the toy nazi me before a new bucket may be had.Another thing I was doing because I am, lets face it, crazy, is scheming to create a swing seat. I made plans even, sortof. Not like, REAL plans, from people who really make plans, as my plans have no measurements. Just vague diagrams and rambling. If you sew things maybe take a look, it sortof makes sense, yes?

  I like the Ekorre seat but it’s kind of, well, fugly. I want to make something in bright and pretty colors for Nicole’s room, without sacrificing durability. Also, do you like how I use the phrase ‘wierdie shaped bits’ in my very technical plans? I CAN HAS REAL JOB NOW??? This is why my husband makes the big monies and not me. BECAUSE EVERYONE IS JEALOUS OF ME, THATS WHY. Just like they were in kindergarten when I was singing like the Little Mermaid….