Tattoo My Babies Like I Still Live in Arkansas

It's not even two o'clock pm, yet, and the girls and I have done so many prosaic things already:

We frolicked outdoors in the autumn chill.

We had a lovely outdoor picnic lunch, during which Sydney, who just yesterday had to have her entire lunch removed from the table until she agreed to try her slice of dried peach (Mean Momma Rule #487: You must taste--as in put in your mouth, not necessarily swallow--every single item of food on your plate. If you refuse--goodbye, plate. See you next meal!), ate all the rest of the entire bag of dried peaches.

We played on the playground, and the Willow learned a new trick:

And we did it all while tattooed up like gangstas:

For a while, I've been wanting a set of these Satetytats. It's a cool idea--when you go somewhere crowded, stick a temporary tattoo on your kid that reads "If I'm lost, call _____". I almost bought some, and then I thought, "Temporary tattoos, huh? I wonder if one can make their own temporary tattoos..."

Turns out that you can. You can buy temporary tattoo paper that can be fed through your home printer. The tattoos don't look quite the same as commercial temporary tattoos, because whereas commercial tats actually use an ink that sort of dyes your skin, these tats embed your printer ink in a medical-grade adhesive that then sticks to your skin. Our tattoos have a shiny rather than a matte finish, for instance, they tend to wrinkle a little, and they're not as durable, being designed to come off with one wash. Awesome, however, they still are.

I meant to just print off a sheet of the "If I'm Lost" tattooes, but then I got all caught up in the possibilities. Transformers tattoos for Matt!

Tats made from scans of some of the girls' favorite picture books!From my digital collection of artwork that depicts breastfeeding!WordArt of the girls' names, and some of their own original artwork!Buffy the Vampire Slayer tats, and tats from my own original photography!Oh, and the tattoos with my cell number in case the girls get lost in a crowd:Gangsta, right?

Hit the Big-Time

I sort of get paid for writing, now.

My newest gig is over at Green Options, a blogging community devoted to sustainable living. The blogs located under Green Options are each themed, and the topics range from politics to the arts to business and technology. I write under the Crafting a Green World and the Eco Child's Play blogs, and you'll be able to find me over there in each blog three or four times a week, earning some extra chump change and spewing my ever-ready opinions out to an even bigger audience--you probably didn't think I had even more opinions than the ones I unburden myself of right here, did you? Well, I do.

My first post? A manifesto, of course. And then I go off about zoos.

And what have my kids been doing while I've been posting on THREE blogs, and grading papers, and meeting with students, and washing the entire contents of our house in the sanitary cycle of the washing machine in panicked reaction to Will's pinworm infestation? Why, playing crazy games with numbers, of course!

During the Great Study Cleaning, the girls got ahold of some vintage Bingo cards I'd been saving for...something, and, always the ones with the awesome ideas, Willow cut the cards up into their individual numbers and the kiddos thought that this was just pretty awesome.

When I saw them playing so happily together with such an obvious learning tool, I tried to elbow my way on into their game with a little lesson on how to line them up in order from smallest to largest, but that lesson sucked, and it's so much better when you're just faced with a line of obscurely ordered items and you get to figure out the complicated pattern behind them for yourself:

Go see my big-bucks blog! See if you can figure out what word the Eco Child's Play editor had to correct my spelling of! See then if you can figure out exactly how many post-graduate degrees (hint: more than one) I have and I still misspell that word!

Alphabet

Alphabet:

Alphabutt:

Having kids makes life so much more awesome--disgusting, but awesome.

P.S. You know what's less awesome and more disgusting? Pinworms.

Talk me down off the ledge, people.

Babywearing 101

I taught a babywearing class today at Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids. Babywearing is another one of the million+ things that I absolutely adored about having babies, one of the many things that I'm learning to grieve as the younger of my babes grows by the day big enough to run and hike and climb by herself without needing or wanting to be carried by Mama.

What is babywearing, you ask?

It's a way of life. It's a method of bonding to your newborn, promoting a positive breastfeeding experience. It's a way of comforting and calming a person new to this world, whose only idea of security is the warmth and closeness of an adult body. It's a connection to a more traditional, less detached society, in which babies and children are included necessarily and matter-of-factly in all aspects of life.

Babywearing helps babies cry less. Babies like to be in contact with bodies; they do not like to be put down alone--this is an instinct ranging from a time in which a helpless infant lying alone would be in desperate danger from any number of predators. Some babies tolerate being put down well, but for other babies, to be put down alone is confusing, frightening, and stressful. Stressed babies don't nurse as well or grow as quickly as happy babies.

Babywearing is good for the baby intellectually. Baby's job is to learn about her world. When worn she learns about bodies, about movement/motion, about her environment, about human behavior.

Babywearing is good for the baby physically. Conforming to a warm body shape is more comfortable than conforming to a carrier or crib. Constant motion stimulates the balance reflex and the inner ear. Proper positioning is good for hip/joint development. A carried baby avoids flat head syndrome. The wearer's body temperature regulates the baby's body temperature, and the wearer's respiration reminds the baby to breathe.

Babywearing socializes the baby. The baby sees faces from near head height, learning about people and their behavior, seeing dialogue, experiencing the wearer's interaction with the world. Proper positioning allows the baby to gauge her own appropriate level of stimulation.

Babywearing is especially beneficial for special needs children--preemies, ill children, children with mental or motor delays, children who fail to thrive. It's comforting, comfortable, and good for their brains at the same time. Less energy spent crying/fussing/maintaining their own body temperature is more energy spent growing and learning and healing.

One of the great things about native-style carriers, however, is that they're mainstream enough that you have a good choice of independent crafters and WAHMs and a few businesses from which to purchase one, but they're not so mainstream that ugly and ill-sewn ones are available at every Wal-mart in the country. It's open season, then, for the independent crafter and small business, and it's nice to find a product in which this is the case.

For ring slings, I like Divas N Babes, especially this red and black one, and Chicken Scratch Slings, especially the skulls one (I think skulls belong everywhere), and this one with the skulls and crossbones all over it, on account of I like things that are awesome.

For mei tais (which, seriously, I won't correct you or anything, but is pronounced "MAY-tie"), I way love, of course, BabyHawk, especially this one with the tattoo print, but I also like KozyCarrier, especially the blue camo fabric. I bought my own pink skulls and black mei tai from MaterialNana--it's a nice thin one, with no padding, good for going and getting gone.

But one of the other great things about native-style carriers is that you don't absolutely have to buy one--you can sew these yourself. The best instructions, I think, are from Jan Andrea at Home on the Web. I followed her instructions to make the ring slings I used for myself and gave as gifts, and the mei tai I used myself.

Willow Says Vote

Although Willow is apparently a Republican now, there was a time when Matt and I could force her to manifest our own party affiliation. That time? Infancy.

Yes, four years ago today, I made a T-shirt transfer, ironed in onto a 3-6 month T-shirt, and dressed my kid in it before most public outings. Then, by popular demand, I created this adult-sized T-shirt transfer for a few good friends: If you can't force your six-week-old to stump for your causes, then who can you force?

In Which Pig-Filthy Becomes Less So

In general, I have control over about 35% of my life. A few things I am very on top of, many things I'm handling okay, and most things are just going all to hell--what I'm on top of and what is going all to hell generally shift around a lot.

For instance, currently I am on top of my teaching--I'm past that beginning of the semester slump that had me so worried for a while, I'm feeling that my students enjoy me and are learning, and if I could just keep all their papers graded and get those four kids to keep their laptops closed during class, all would be peachy. I'm also happily on top of my blog writing--I'm a writer and a photographer by vocation, and this is a creative outlet that I'd missed since my undergraduate days. Our family has managed to eat home-cooked food for most of our meals for a couple of weeks, now--that's a big challenge for us, because neither Matt nor I enjoy cooking, nor are either of us particularly good at it. The yard, which often looks as redneck as our roots, is coming together for the fall with some lasagna garden plots set up and some shrubs moved to better locations and a likelier location for yard toys--it would be nice if Matt finally hauled away the trash he cleared out of the garage on LABOR DAY, however.

Things I'm handling--the children are happy and well-parented, though I always want to spend more time with them and focus on them more. Matt and I are paying more attention to each other with our put-the-kids-to-bed-early-and-then-order-out date nights; yeah, out-of-the-house date nights would be nice, but neither of us are wired to like leaving our kiddos. I'm getting some exercise and outdoor time, although more would be much better. My etsy shop is doing okay, although just okay. I've been able to spend some good time making things for my house and my family, which is nice for the nurturing, you know.

Things that are going all to hell--well, the house is pig-filthy, for one thing. Eh, not so much the house--the girls and I do a lot of work at the living room tables, so those are spotless. The playroom is pretty neat, and the bedroom and nursery basically just need to be vacuumed. The kitchen isn't as sticky or gnat-y as it can be. My study, however...well, I've had a busy couple of crafting months, remember? Remember?Oh, dear--have you lost all respect for me now? Mind you, I can see that this is a problem. I mean, this is supposed to be my creative sanctuary, my workspace, my mental clearinghouse, and my mental clearinghouse looks like...THIS? So yeah, I dig to the bottom of my big blue bin of fabric, dumping stuff out on the floor so I can see better, and when I find what I need I don't exactly put every piece of fabric back in the bin. The girls spend the morning coloring on construction paper and don't exactly put every piece of paper away when they're finished. Will didn't put her abacus back on its shelf after doing some math work. The grocery bag is full of paper for the recycling bin. That big grey backpack is my teaching stuff. Some of the other stuff is just...stuff.

That was 9:00 am. Here's 11:00:We did not go to the wonderlab for storytime, we've not gone to play in the leaves or over to the park, we've not made beer bread or peanut butter cookies. Hell, the girls aren't even dressed. But the study's a little cleaner, especially the closet and the bookshelf, which you can't see, and the lockers, and the cubbies on the left, which I want to move out of the room completely.

2:00 pm. As I uncover additional layers of stuff, I'm having to vacuum periodically, now. The fabric from the big blue bin is now stacked neatly in the lockers where it's supposed to go, the stuff from the lockers has been moved to the closet where it's supposed to go, I've reclaimed an entire level of the bookshelf from toys to books, and gotten rid of a LOT of recycled fabric that instead needed to be dishrags or just somebody else's fabric, frankly. What I have not done is read a single book to a single kid today, encourage anyone to eat a vegetable, wash anyone's hair, or, my personal favorite activity, MAKE anything today.

4:00 pm. Still cleaning, still drudging, now sort of ignoring some neighbors with whom I'm "friendly" but not friendly (you know? They're neighbors--you have to "like" them, but do you have to like them?), I watch my kiddo raking leaves and acting generally just adorable and seasonal and picturesque through my study window. I don't go out and spend half an hour snapping photos for posterity. Who am I kidding? Of COURSE I go out and snap a million photos! She's raking leaves!!!By 5:00 pm, it's game over for the day. I've got to jump in the shower, get dressed, get my teaching stuff together, and be in my classroom logged on and ready to lecture at 5:45. I don't have much left to clean in the study tomorrow, but I REALLY want to make tied tutus instead of cleaning, so if Matt wants to get an extra lot of date-night loving tonight (Romantic loving, gutter minds!), maybe he cleaned off my desk for me and swept and mopped the floor while I'm here at school? Maybe?

Contact Paper is Awesome

So what do you do when you catch your girlies drawing on the window with markers?

Well, you tell them to go get the vinegar spray and a towel and clean up their mess, and then----um, you let them draw on the window with markers? If my kids weren't such rascals I'd never have thought of this cool idea--look how translucent and bright the marker becomes on textured watercolor paper when it's taped up to the window.

That's how you trace embroidery patterns, too, I've heard, although all my embroidery tends to be freehand machine-stitched. I envy embroidery-by-hand people, and intend to be one of them some day.

In a break from mischief, the girls and I used up the rest of my Contact paper making ornaments for our Halloween tree today. I had them paint with thematically-appropriate colors on paper that was also of a thematically-appropriate color, then I cut out two matching shapes from their artwork (with their permission), stuck them back-to-back, and covered them with Contact paper:I also let them color a few small seasonally appropriate images that I found on the Internet (the ban on coloring books is slowly being relaxed, you see, although my intellect remains stiffly against them). I cut around the images, bordered and backed them with patterned paper, and covered them with Contact paper (sensing a theme here?):I made an especially lucky find in this page of leaves, labelled. Willow has put together the concept that the color the leaf turns is based on the type of tree it is, and in a happy homeschooling moment she had me do a Google Image search for each of the labelled leaves to color, so she'd know which color birch, and sweet chestnut, and alder turned. Alder, we learned, can turn yellow:And so basically, yeah, we covered in Contact paper anything that would stand still long enough, then we punched a hole in it and hung it on the tree: I did promise the girls that sometime later this week we could drag out the power drill and drill holes in everything else that would stand still long enough--hickory shells, acorns, birch bark, sleeping Daddy--and hang all that on the tree, too, but the next two big projects that I probably NEED to do are cleaning and organizing the study so that I no longer feel shame at its appearance (a sort of mental housecleaning there, too, you see) and making tied tutus for all the wiggly little children in my life--there are a lot of wiggly little children in my life.

I think Sydney's drawing on the window again:

Tree People

We were tree people today. Tree people can spend half a day frolicking in the half-tree's worth of leaves that fall from the next-door-neighbor's maple in one day, enjoying their soft yellow awesomeness before they get all damp and gross and have to be raked over onto the lasagna garden:
Tree people can spend the other half of the day going up and down, up and down the "climbing tree" over at Bryan Park. Our Sydney made one more leap into big-girl territory by climbing all by herself higher than my head:
This rationally leads, of course, to the next milestone, which is her first tree climbing-related injury:
She is so hardcore.

Perhaps motivated by the strange message left for me on my study table while I was out of the room--
--I finished our family's Halloween bunting:
It's another one with recycled blue jean pennant flags and bias tape made from a remnant of brown cotton. I printed the letters out onto freezer paper, which I then ironed onto felt. I hand-cut out all the letters, peeled off the freezer paper, temporarily attached the letters to the flags with a glue stick, and carefully appliqued them on using the freehand stitch attachment on my sewing machine:

I'm actually really fond of the felt, which is a brand called Eco-Spun that is made from recycled plastic bottles--I'm not in love with wool felt, on account of the sheepies it comes from, so it's nice to have an eco-friendly acrylic option.

Tomorrow, the girls and I are going to explore the joy that is Contact paper when creating Halloween tree ornaments. The day after that, I think I'll break out the power drill for the exact same purpose--mwa-ha-ha!

Two New

In between drinking coffee, moving shrubs, working on a Halloween bunting for the girlies, doing laundry, eating Chinese food, cleaning house, coloring autumn pictures with the girlies, buying matte net at Joann's for 40% off (the girls need Swan Lake-style pancake tutus, obviously--I'm going to use this tutorial from Burdastyle), eating more Chinese food, and telling Willow another chapter in the story about Princess Willow who accidentally sent her daddy to the other side of the world to get her a flying horse but went after him when she realized that if he did what she told him to he wouldn't be back for years and years (adventures ensue), I posted a recycled denim and burlap bunting--

--and a set of International Breastfeeding Symbol pinback buttons----to my etsy shop. You'll probably be seeing both of these things around more this season, since I was invited to sell some pinbacks at the Bloomington Area Birth Services (I was thinking I'd donate half the price? Too stingy? Profit does tend to keep me off of welfare, however...), and I am apparently now obsessed with buntings.

More on that later.

End of the Season

And almost before it began, it seems, the entire season of craft fairs at the farmer's market is over:

Until next year...

Halloween Tree

We haven't, traditionally, been a very festive family--when you're talking about a family who has spent the past two Thanksgiving weekends at a sci-fi convention, of all places, "festive" hardly seems to apply, especially in the face of other, so much more descriptive adjectives, like "geeky" (but hey--Tasha Yarr told Willow she was cute, and Matt and I each found ourselves working out in the same tiny hotel gym all alone with Darth Maul. Is that geeky? Don't answer).

But we can change, I swear it. And in the spirit of such change, I'd like to introduce you to...
...the Halloween tree.

Yes, of course it's dead--it's Halloween! Halloween is a little more of an autumnal celebration in our family, however, with less of the witchy-ghosty-skeletony business and more of the browns and reds and leaves and pumpkins stuff. So yeah, we stuck a big dead branch from our silver maple in a pot, filled the pot with gravel from the driveway, put it on the table, and started decorating.

See? Festive!

I made these ornaments from vintage linen pillowcase fabric that I soaked in Bubble Jet Set, then ironed to freezer paper, then ran through my printer, then stitched and stuffed. They're from autumns past but still remembered:
These are some spiderwebby thingies I made one afternoon in the summer while the girls were stringing beads. They're made from bent wire and beads from the girls' ridiculous bead stash: And here's what we did today, when I wasn't screaming at the girls (combination of my bad reaction to an extra-feisty visit from Aunt Flo along with the girls' completely expected reaction to a candy corn art project gone terribly, terribly awry):
#6 plastic + a full set of Sharpies = Of course, decorating may well be the best part:
Here's to a month full of making fun stuff to hang from the Halloween tree!

Cuter Than Me

I'm ashamed of myself.

Many, many months ago, I bought three yards of brand-new shaggy red-and-white hearted faux fur fabric. I could not resist it, it was so delicious, and on huge sale, and I did have a plan for it, I swear. I'm supposed to be turning it into some nice big fluffy happy comfy pillows for the master bedroom. And so I measured out the amount of fabric I needed for two nice big fluffy happy comfy pillows, and made a little extra into a little dino for my etsy shop--

--and then put the last yard up for sale in the shop just to destash it (I'm not great at figuring out the etsy/Paypal fees, although they are minimal, so I made maybe a buck in profit--nice business practice, right?).

But look what this fabric magically turned into, less than a month after it was purchased--the cutest little teddy bear in the world! So cute, and so quick--I feel guilty that such adorable fabric is just sitting in my study when it has all that potential to be turned into awesome stuff. I have to get off my butt and make those pillows now!

I just wriggle to think of the cuteness that will result after my Strawberry Shortcake crochet patterns book wends its way to its happy new home this week.

TO DO:

23. Shaggy Red and White Hearted Faux Fur Pillows for the Master Bedroom

The Red Cross Gives Me Stuff

Yes, it is my office hours, and so yes, I should be grading stuff, but I just had a ten-minute consultation with a student about her Project #2, and that calls for a half-hour blogging break, right?

In half an hour, I can tell you that today, I baked Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Brownies with my squabbling girlies. I hosted a playdate for one of Will's little girlfriends, during which they dragged out every toy owned by either of my children, all of which had been put back in their appropriate spots by me the night before in preparation for said playdate. I sewed ornaments for our Halloween tree while watching season 4 of Numb3rs. At 4:30 pm, I took a shower. I spent half an hour looking for two tutus and one pair of ballet flats. I read some of , which is so far even better than the Twilight series (we're politely pretending that the final book of that series didn't happen, aren't we? Good). But before all that, way at the crack of 9:00 am, the girls and I took their child-sized real metal shopping cart and a big cardboard box over to FREE DAY AT THE RED CROSS BOOK SALE!!!!!
I wrote in a previous comment that I was torn between taking my girls to the children's section or the crafts book table first, knowing that while visiting one, the other would be thoroughly picked over. You know the solution to this problem? Nice old lady volunteer. She took the girls to the children's section and helped them choose books while I gave the crafts table a quick once-over, then ravaged the nature tables for plant and animal books with good illustrations for collaging. The nice old lady system wasn't perfect, as she limited them to picturebooks and her selection was a little religion-heavy (eek!), but I snuck back later and got all the cool stuff, too.

Look at the awesome morbid Santa illustration--he's all grey and dead-looking, and are those badminton birdies falling all around him? I found some other books with Christmas-y scenes, as well--we have about five ornaments in our house, and I'd like to make a ton for our tree and as gifts, maybe with an image decoupaged to each side of a die-cut or cardboard cut-out and then mod podged.

I also found a ton more records for future record bowls--ten or so old-school Disney movie soundtracks and a dozen or so Christmas albums, some old atlases for the girls to cut up when they're decorating the big maps they like me to print out for them, a couple of cheezy craft books that might have some cool projects in them and also might not, lots of vintage children's books, LOTS of books for the cutting and coloring bin (If you and your kiddos don't have a bin of outdated old books to use in art projects, you are totally missing out on some serious awesomeness), and some random kid's book with this most fabulous illustration:

I don't really knit myself, and so I don't know what to do with this fabulous illustration, but it is totally fabulous, right? I'll think of something.