Tablet Non-Rasa

In our house, we write. The girls have their stories and letters to grandmas and I have my lists and my blogs and the book proposal revision that I am currently freaking out about, and even Matt has his on-again, off-again secret blog.

When you write, you need a lot of paper. Bookmaking is DEF on the collective to-do list (Matt has for years been on the verge of signing the two of us up for a bookmaking class at Pygmalion's, but has always been thwarted by family nights at the girls' school or classes that I'm teaching or classes that he's taking, etc.), as is a beater laptop for the girls (not exactly PAPER paper, but you know what I mean). And, of course, there's an ample supply of notebooks and blank paper and dry-erase boards and chalkboards and scrapbook paper and whatever. But we always seem to be out of that nice, wide-ruled, newsprint tablet paper that little children have learned to write on since god knows when.

So I bought us a buttload from Lakeshore Learning (I could have gotten a reasonable amount for free from Amazon with my swagbucks, but what's the point of a reasonable amount when you can buy a year's worth?). And how fun! Did you know there's kindergarten-ruled tablet paper AND first-grade ruled tablet paper (it's narrower) AND really big story tablet paper with a blank area at the top for illustration? Of course I bought it all. We're homeschooling next academic year, ya know.

So often, as I drink a big mug of coffee and read the newspaper every morning, the girls join me for some time of quiet industry (I don't know where they get that impulse--most of my own life is spent avoiding quiet industry at all costs). Sometimes they have workbooks, sometimes they have coloring pages, and sometimes they have tablet paper for the writing of stories or the catching-up of their correspondence.

Sydney dictates to me, and then I leave a space below each line for her to play at copying. I love the look of concentration on her face here:
Willow will dictate her entire piece to me, and then re-copy it onto her own paper:

I've been pointing out to her the spaces between words, but it hasn't caught on yet, so I'm sure that receiving one of her letters is like having your own little mental puzzle to work through--good for the mind, keeps you from getting Alzheimer's.

My favorite thing, however, is when a girl draws a picture, then dictates a story about it. Here's part of Sydney's writings (the illustration tablet paper is BIG, and won't all fit on my scanner) about various creatures that have crowns and thus are royalty:

If you like what you can see of her story about Ladybug Crowny, you should hear some of the adventures of Princess Kitty.

I Love Myself Some Soysage

Soysage meatballs with bread crumbs and parmesan (but not fresh basil--too expensive in the winter) from Vegetarian Times:

Delicious.

Did you know that I don't eat meat? Because I don't (unless we're on a long car trip and I'm feeling vulnerable and there are chicken strips at the Dairy Queen that we've stopped at, but really, how often does that happen?). I also try not to craft with or wear animal products unless they're recycled (I use wool roving, but I know its source, and glue? Ugh, don't get me started on glue).

Even though I loooooong to dye silk scarves with Kool-aid. Does anyone know if there's an animal-friendly fabric equivalent to silk?

You Can't Catch Bupkiss with Your Eyes Closed

The girls LOVE their new bean bags. Very importantly, Sydney loves the new bean bags, and she loves the game that we've been playing on and off again all day: I throw her a bean bag and she catches it. If she can name the number stenciled on the bean bag, then she keeps it; if she can't, then she throws it back (and I tell her what the number is and then throw it to her again later). When she has all the bean bags, she "wins."

It's a good game. We've gone in the course of one day from nearly every digit from 0 to 9 being identified as an eight to only half of them being called an eight. Of course, before you can identify the number at all, you have to catch the bean bag. And to catch the bean bag, it would really help if you opened your eyes.

Which Sydney won't:
Oh, jeez:

Seriously, I probably snapped 50 shots of the baby catching bean bags, and in every picture her eyes are closed.

See?Until...

Success!!!

Will also loves the bean bags, and here are some of the games we play:

• ordering the numbers from smallest to largest and largest to smallest
• mental addition and subtraction
• odds and evens
• two- and three-digit number building
• trying to hit stuff

I made an extra set of numbered bean bags, which is currently living in my pumpkinbear etsy shop. A third set is waiting for the next child's birthday party to which I'm allowed to bring a child's present (nope, not allowed to bring a present to the next party the girls are attending), and I'm hoping to make an alphabet set of bean bags and write a tutorial soon (yet these, I vow, will not be manipulated into serving as distractions for my book proposal revision. I VOW!!!).

And then...umm, would bean bags made for the memorization of dinosaurs, or Dremel bits, or types of legumes be out of order?

We Bow before the Disney War Machine

For a family that does not do Disney, we've actually been doing Disney quite a lot this month.

You know how I love a deal--when I found out that the Humane Society foster program that we already participate in is also participating in the Disney Give a Day, Get a Day program, allowing us to earn three out of four tickets to a Disney theme park (Sydney's too young to volunteer) by doing the stuff that we already do, and that we could therefore use our tickets at Disneyland in California, where Matt's parents live and where an early Christmas, including the much longed-for winter activity of whale watching, would be super fun...well, a trip to Disneyland is critical for American pop cultural context, don't you think?

And as if that wasn't enough...the Family Fun magazine that I adore and receive in my mailbox regularly thanks to my awesome Aunt Pam is also Disney's whore. And as Disney's whore, they always have this page of special offers for Disney crap that I don't want. Except for the offer of a free week's subscription to Disney Digital Books...

Okay, fine:
The site is pretty much what it claims to be, a huge library of digital books at three reading levels--read-alouds (with music and special voices), easy readers, and books with more words per page. Of course, every single book is about some freakin' Disney character, with the Winnie the Pooh and Bambi books being pretty inoffensive. But after the girls went so crazy for the site (tally of books read on the site in the past 24 hours: 24), I just let them read whatever they want--the tragedy that is Dumbo, all the asinine Princess and Tinkerbell books, whatever.

The cool things about the site: the look-and-listen books are easy enough for Sydney to do independently; pointing the cursor at a word in the more difficult books will read it aloud for you, which is good for Willow. The lame things about the site: the navigation in the site itself is kind of difficult, especially for a site that's meant to be used by children; the digital books don't fit entirely within my laptop screen, which is not unusually small, meaning that you have to be skilled enough to scroll or you have to live with the bottom of your book being cut off.

Anyway, it's only a week, and I'll tell you if it turns the girls into princess freaks or if I see any symtpoms in their behavior of Disney's notorious subliminal messaging. Or in my behavior? *shudder*

Bean Bags without Beans

Current work in progress:
Fabric squares stenciled with the numbers 0-9, heat-set and ready to be sewn and filled with beans. And then tossed at a child (the head is tempting, but not the head), who must name the number in order to...earn a point? Toss it back? Keep a tally? Match it to a target? I haven't thought that far ahead. Except to know that a set of alphabet bean bags will follow.

In other news, Willow just came in asking for a ponytail, and as I pulled her hair back I noticed a huge swath of pink tempera behind her ear, crusted up into her hairline like nothing so much as a bloody, scabbed, shockingly severe rash. Since the girls' school still has a nurse coming in every other day to check the entire school for headlice, I am now off to bathtime.

Tutorial: Make Bread Mold on Purpose (Because by Accident Isn't Scientific Enough)

Because life is everywhere.

Because what starts out small often grows large.

Because what happens by accident can also be done on purpose for a purpose.

Because ordinary materials can be used to make extraordinary things.

Because the five-year-old wants to do a science experiment.

1. Obtain, by any means necessary, a slice of bread:
2. Dribble three tablespoons (more or less) of water upon said slice of bread, apparently getting as much water on the newspaper that I'm trying to read as possible:

3. Put the wet bread in a Ziploc baggie (or a glass dish with a lid, if you're fussy about plastics), and hide it somewhere warm and dark. Visit it every now and then.

There, we've done a science experiment. NOW can I drink my coffee and finish the newspaper?

From Her Sketchbook

Things currently on my mind:

1. making 0-9 flashcard bean bags for the baby
2. prepping for teaching my next cloth diaper class at Barefoot Kids this Saturday
3. Must find out what paperwork is needed for homeschooling next year.
4. Should I get tested for a wheat gluten allergy? Or maybe get one of those full-body scans to see if I have cancer?
5. revising my book proposal for an interested agent who has not committed, but who has generously gifted me with tons of constructive criticism and an invitation to resubmit
6. planning our summer trip to Massachusetts--the Boston Community Solar System Trail is, sadly, off exhibit for a while, but will DEF check out Artbeat
7. Must figure out how to cut felt with Cricut without killing Cricut.
8. Crockpot recipe for nutritional yeast casserole?
9. Willow wants to make a pinball machine. Sydney wants to make more cookies.
10. laundry

Things currently on Willow's mind, as evidenced by a long morning laying on the floor working in a lined steno pad:

Santa and His Reindeer, with Happy Moon and Star Funny Person Ice Cream Cone with Lots of Toppings Our New Ceiling Fan (courtesy of Willow's Grandma Janie and Poppa, who taught Willow many new swears in the course of its installation)

I don't know how often I think about Santa or the ceiling fan, but I, too, spend a lot of time with funny people and ice cream on my mind.

Happy Half-Birthday to You

Half-birthdays are always special in our house, what with the half-cake and the cream cheese blended with the last of Cake's mulberry jam to make frosting and all the attendant pomp and circumstance:
But Willow's half-birthdays always tend to be extra-special because they always happen on that one particular long winter weekend when her grandparents, Matt's parents, fly in for a visit with the girls.

And that makes the cake taste even better:
Although the large amount of sugar probably doesn't hurt, either...

Tots on Ice

Friday was an eventful day, what with baking poppyseed cupcakes, listening to Hank the Cowdog books on CD, goofing around at GymPlay, madly scrubbing the kitchen while the girls were at school (WHY did you break, Shark steam cleaner? I HATE you!!!), and then eating a snack in the car and tootling off to ice skating.

Sydney has never been on ice skates before. Willow was signed up for lessons two years ago, but flatly refused to actually attend them, and so I consider this each girl's first real ice skating class. And let me tell you, there is no comedy like the slapstick comedy of Ice Skating-Tot Level, especially on the first day:


Sydney comported herself quite well for a three-year-old on skates still a little too big at the smallest size stocked at the rink (said another woman at the desk as I was collecting our skates--"Oh, those tiny little skates are just DARLING!"), and Will took to the ice like a duck takes to water, so they say. I have visions of hockey sticks dancing in my head.

One of the special activities in the Tot class? When you have down time, you get to color on the ice with dry erase markers!
They don't put this in the manual, but a couple of things I'd suggest if you have Tots of your own: make mittens a contractual obligation, and highly encourage the snowpants.

And bring a book, sure, but the class will likely be too hilarious for you to look away, and anyway, you have to be ready to beam and wave whenever little faces come over to peep at you and make sure that you're watching:Which, of course, you always are.

In other news, my brand-new ipod (Thanks, Matty!) not only allows me to listen to podcasts and show the girls Sesame Street videos when they threaten to fight in public, but also to take videos(!), and hence my Shethecougar (long story) youtube page. Check it out for more antics.

A Visit from a Fairy

Something very important is missing from my daughter's life today:
I know she doesn't look it, but I can assure you, she is thrilled.

We've been reading a lot about various worldwide traditions when a child loses a tooth--I highly recommend , and also asking random children while traveling what they do when they lose a tooth--and that might have addled Willow's brain a bit, because when I asked her if she was going to put her tooth under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy to take, she shouted, "YES!!! She's going to bring me a pinball game!"

Um, no, that's Santa Claus. The tooth fairy brings you fifty cents, and she puts it in your Tooth Fairy pocket:
I sewed Willow's Tooth Fairy pocket from a button-down shirt that both she and her sister had outgrown, and that was sitting in my scrap fabric stash. The buttonhole is original to the shirt, but I replaced the small blouse button with a larger, vintage shank button. The tooth stencil is from Purl Bee, traced onto grocery store freezer paper (which I do not like as much as the fancier stuff from Dharma Trading), and the W stencil is a rubber stamp image painstakingly cut out.

I have some ideas for a new, improved Tooth Fairy pocket in mind (in particular, a more realistic tooth, and a shape that is square, not oddly rectangled, etc.), which means that I'll probaby sew up one for Sydney soon and then write a tute for it.

As for the pinball game? We have the perfect Instructable picked out for that one.

And Now I Move On to Beanbags

A number of infant baby bags made from awesome T-shirts (and one sock monkeys jersey cotton sheet) are now installed at Barefoot Kids:

And now I can move on to the very important matter of sewing beanbags and painting them with freezer paper stencils.

P.S. For my fellow Cricut obsessed, the tags are made with the Indie Art Solutions cartridge, cut out of cardstock and an old history book, with the holes punched by hand. It was a toss-up between the cassette tape and the electric guitar, but I like to keep things real, and I don't play guitar.

I do, however, listen to a mad number of cassette tapes on a daily basis.

Children's Art Materials: Pop Beads are Not Trash

Sometimes you go to the Goodwill Outlet Store and you dig through nothing but trash. Sometimes, however, you go to the Goodwill Outlet Store and, well, yeah, there's still a lot of trash, but also a lot of awesomeness! On one single trip to the Goodwill Outlet Store on New Year's Day, we scored now-treasured possessions such as a huge sock monkeys jersey cotton flat sheet (part of which is now a sock monkeys baby bag, and the rest of which is destined to be sock monkeys pajamas), two Magic School Bus books (you probably have to be between the ages of 3 and 7 to appreciate the Magic School Bus, but wow! It's a big deal), a brand-new My Little Pony still in its box, two bags of Battleship pegs, a tin of antique sewing machine attachments, a huge binder of quilt block templates and instructions, and these funky little things:
I have since learned that they are called Pop Beads. You might think that I would be sturdily against some gendered jewelry-making toy, made of plastic, no less, but I have no quibble here. These things are AWESOME.

Sure, you can make jewelry, with the ring and bracelet findings that come with the set (well, our "set" was contained in an unmarked cardboard box, but I'm assuming that the contents of the box consisted of one set)--

--but this is a really cool and really versatile building toy aside from the jewelry-making components. Sydney prefers imaginative play to jewelry, and so she made all the pop beads that she got her hands on into little people, usually with funny hats. They happily join in to play with the small ponies and plastic dinosaurs.

The only negative aspect of the toy is that the bracelet base isn't sized for an adult man. But Matt gamely sported his beautiful pop bead bracelet, made for him with love, for much of last Sunday, only quoting what one horrible train-wreck mother taught her preschool daughter to say as she was getting spray-tanned and her eyebrows plucked and having false eyelashes applied and fake front teeth inserted on this one episode of Toddlers and Tiaras that we watched--"It hurts to be beautiful."

Willow in the Hundreds

Last night, hanging out at the table with me while I worked on some lists (To-Do before Homeschool: figure out local/state laws; decide on a system; make a PLAN!!!), abacus in front of her, pencil with eraser in hand, Willow completed, for fun, the following worksheet:
I'm not sure what the second graders are like over where this book publisher lives, but as a kindergartner Willow can't be THAT far behind the collective humor, and when I finally read her the answer, the culmination of her hour's work, she was all, "Secretary bird? What does that even mean?"

This morning, as I sat again at the table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, Willow suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, my math!", and ran to get her abacus, pencil, and math workbook again (said math workbook having been scavenged from the Recycling Center who knows when?). She sat down and, after I explained the first two problems as we did them together, completed the following worksheet:
With that, and as much time as possible playing with small dinosaur figures and plastic ponies, I think homeschooling will go just fine.

Children's Art Materials: Reusable Stickers

If you've ever wondered about any kind of art supply to buy for or use with your children...I have it. I've used it. And I have an opinion on it.

Reusable stickers? Eh.

In theory, they're brilliant. They're usually made of a thin plastic that clings, not sticks, to the plastic-coated play surface that's provided. So, unlike the foam stickers that we have a ridiculous amount of, you can pick these up and put them back, put them on top of each other, and then put them away and play again later.

In theory.

In fact, there are usually some things keeping this from being a really satisfying creative experience, or a really successful toy. For one thing, there's rarely a storage system in place for the stickers. So you take all the stickers off of their sticker page (which it's impossible to return them to--too fiddly) and put them all on the playset--

--and when you're done, then what? If you leave them on the playset, then you can never start your play with a clean canvas, and that hinders your creativity. If you take them off, you might as well kiss them goodbye while you're at it, because how are you ever going to find them again?

I'm also not in love with the concept of the playset at all, and the scene that inevitably comes with the stickers. You're supposed to pose the dinosaurs on their Jurassic landscape, I get that, but what if you want to do something else? Have them marching single file over a rainbow (this scenario gets played out often at our house)? Buying groceries at the Supercenter? Forget about it.

I do think that I have solutions for both of these problems, but I'll have to see if it's worth it to actually make them come to life, since reusable stickers are also prone to getting filthy and ripped as well as lost.

The idea that I'm more excited about is a plan that I have to make some reusable creative surfaces to use with regular stickers. And that's in the queu after numbered beanbags (because Sydney is still struggling with number identification) and one Tooth Fairy pillow.

A Tooth Fairy pillow! Willow's loose tooth is both awesome and gross, all at the same time. Of course, that's how I feel about almost everything involving my kids, so do with that what you will.

Baby in a Bag

Among the other things that I've been doing this week--sledding, seriously considering homeschooling the girls next academic year, cooking dinner after dinner after dinner, reading novel after novel after novel, and watching scary movies with Matt (if one can be said to have "watched" Paranormal Activity if one had one's hands in front of one's face the entire time)--I've also been sewing a part of my collection of awesome thrifted shirts into what are, I guess, newborn gowns, but what Matt and I always called "baby bags":
They're to sell at Barefoot Herbs+Barefoot Kids, our local hippie parenting store, and frankly, I can't think of a better thing to do with the Che Guevara T-shirt that just never quite fit right again after Sydney came to be.

The basic pattern is easy enough, although the lap shoulders gave me hell. After I figured out a cobbled-together pattern for them that worked, however, I made up my own construction technique that is definitely NOT the way you're supposed to do them, and that, and an outrageous number of straight pins (and plenty of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix), gets them done:
The reason that Matt and I so adored the baby bag is in the bottom hem:
Elastic! The gown is meant to be long on the baby, and so the elastic keeps it narrow enough that she can kick and kick and kick happily and not kick off her clothes, but it is the easiest imaginable process in the world to pull the gown up to change her big, cloth-diapered butt.

Of course, the baby bags that Matt and I used were lovingly gifted to us from places like BabyGap, and so they were on the cool side of baby-dom (I think I remember that one had a houndstooth pattern--woo-hoo!), but they weren't as cool as this. Just think--tie-dye! Skulls (Stolen from my own private stash of skull shirts that I'm saving up to make a skull T-shirt quilt out of, no less)!

Awesome bands!

I have a Smashing Pumpkins one, too, that I'm hoping to finish up tonight before watching The Puppet Masters with Matt.

And, um, of COURSE the Great Wall of China:

Don't tell Matt, but it kind of makes me want to have another baby, just so I can dress her entirely in clothing that I've sewn from awesome thrifted T-shirts.

Because if I was pregnant again, I'd TOTALLY have all the time in the world on my hands for sewing newborn layettes, right?

A Girls-Only Snow Day

As Matt was getting ready for work yesterday morning, I tried to get him to stay home with us. The girls, after all, were celebrating an official Snow Day. And the only thing more fun than an official Snow Day is a family-wide Snow Day.

People who are not me, however, apparently have some elusive inner quality called "work ethic," and that is the reason why Matt will never, ever, NEVER use up a single one of the approximately eight hundred sick days he has thus far accumulated.

The girls and I were sad when Matt left, but it turns out that we didn't really need him that much after all--we ate potato curry quesadillas for breakfast AND lunch, read out loud an ENTIRE chapter book), played with every single small plastic dinosaur and pony that the girls own (and that's a lot of small plastic dinosaurs and ponies), and, most importantly, played in the SNOW:

When Matt got home that night (bearing pizza, the hallmark of the guilty-conscienced), he seemed repentant and apologized for not staying home after all. And by that time I was all, "We had a great day! Your day probably sucked, and we didn't even miss you!"

Which might go further than any other strategy in getting him to stay home for the next Snow Day.

Vintage for Sale (Finally!)

Are you ever at some super-cheap thrifting place, like a Goodwill Outlet Store or a local second-hand shop or a church rummage sale, and you spy some totally awesome vintage thing that is just incredible, but that you have absolutely no use for?

And then, do you look at whatever cool thing it is lovingly, and think about how you should absolutely buy it for the nickel or dime or the other outrageously cheap price?

But then do you come to your senses, remember that you have absolutely no use for this thing, as awesome as it is, and you put it down and wander away?

Yeah, I never do that.

I have a weakness for 1) ridiculously under-priced stuff 2) vintage stuff 3) craft or DIY stuff. Don't believe me? Ask me about my Renaissance Faire dress. Or my lathe.


And that is why one of my goals this year is to seriously de-stash my stash. The Ren Faire dress and the lathe are staying, but lots of other stuff--such as, you know, every single paint-by-number that I've ever acquired at every garage sale I've ever been to, or perhaps 400 of the approximately 500 different ratty old editions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare that I keep finding (my 500 different ratty old editions of The Canterbury Tales are all staying, too)--need to either be used or wended away, big sigh.

The first two of MANY future listings in the brand-new Vintage section in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

Vintage Honeycomb Christmas Angel

I really like any and every tissue paper honeycomb decoration that I've every come across (don't know what a honeycomb decoration is? Think of those fold-out wedding bells, with the accordion paper that makes it all 3D and tacky? Love it!), and I am absolutely keeping the Santa Claus from this set that I found at the Goodwill Outlet Store, but I'm not into angels. Not even angels with blonde bobs and everything from Christmas ornaments to entire holly branches, leaves AND berries, in their hair.

Vintage Greist Presser Feet and Attachments in the Original Tin

I love sewing, and sewing machine stuff, ESPECIALLY presser feet and other gimmicky attachments, but Greist made presser feet and other attachments for Singer sewing machines, and my machines (yes, I have two hand-me-down machines, an heir and a spare) are a Bernette and a Brother.

But oh, to have a ruffler of my very own! And feet to make THREE different kinds of hems! I can hardly imagine the happiness...

Stay tuned, for the purging will continue. The volcano making kit and the Polaroid cameras are staying. Some of the crafts books are going. The stained glass scraps are definitely staying. The shank buttons are definitely going. ALL the World War II-era ladies' hats are staying. All the Farrah Fawcett blue jeans are going. The entire shell collection can stay, but almost all of the cloth diapers have to go...

Making Button Bobby Pins (with the Babies)

This is a project that I never would have made on my own.

My little girls, however, have a seemingly endless thirst for hair pretties. I have bought them any number of plain, serviceable hair bands and barrettes, loudly proclaiming each time that no, I will certainly NOT pay that much for the fancy hair pretties, seeing as how we can make them just as well ourselves.

The girls finally having noticed that, for all my talk, we have not yet actually made ourselves any fancy hair pretties...

Let the crafting of hair pretties begin.

I don't actually have
in front of me, but I remember these button bobby pins (and their simplicity), and if something can be made using hot glue, then that something can be made by me.

And the littles, who of course are permitted to wield the hot glue gun whenever they want, too: Unfortunately, I really didn't set up this activity well, and so although the girls seemed to enjoy themselves, and made button bobby pin after button bobby pin until we have to find the hiding places of more bobby pins in order to make more, I was frustrated by having to help them in the midst of my unwieldy set-up (me standing across the table from them the entire time, with the glue gun plugged in on Sydney's far side so that the cord was always in the way, and the button bins deep and full and hard to sift through), and I was too busy battling hot glue and button bins to actually get to make any of these pins, myself.

Next time, I'll sit between the girls, with the hot glue gun in front of us, and I'll set out some dishes for the more efficient and effective sorting of buttons. I've been planning a project for some time in which I encourage the girls to do the tedious sorting out of shank buttons for me, so ideally this will take place after that sorting, as well.

And yet, we do now have numerous ways for the babies to be all buttoned up now:
Which is success any way you look at it.

Handmade. Barbie Clothes! IN A MUSEUM!!!

I played with Barbies a LOT as a child. I had a Barbie car, a horse that Barbie rode, her pet dog, and even a hot tub that you could make bubble and that came with a slide. Family legend had it that my cousin Amy, a few years older than I, had once had a working Barbie washer and dryer. She apparently used it, much as a real washer and dryer are used, to ruin a bunch of Barbie clothes?

Anyway, so goes the legend.

And although both my Mama and my Nana sewed, and even taught me to sew a little as a pretty young child (I used to use my Nana's polyester scraps to sew clothing for my set of stuffed bananas, an easy prospect since they had no arms or legs), I never DREAMED of handmade clothes! For Barbie!!!

The fact that handmade Barbie clothes are in a museum now does not surprise me in the slightest.

The Indianapolis Children's Museum is currently exhibiting Barbie: The Fashion Experience. I do NOT approve of their dress-up area being tied to a child-sized fashion runway--watching toddlers work it in person is even more chilling than watching it on train-wreck TV--but the child-sized design studios, with fabric scraps that can be pinned on teeny-tiny dressmaker's dummies? Love it. The area for sketching out one's own fashion designs? Love it. The displays of Barbies and their fashions from that black-and-white bikini to the latest Project Runway designs? Love it.

And the special exhibit of Barbie clothes, made by somebody's grandmother a very long time ago?
Love it.

While I was zoning out on my ipod and browsing the exhibits, Matt was supervising the girls playing with Barbies at a Barbie-sized runway just off-stage of the real runway. He had a great view of the disturbingly large deal being made by preschoolers and parents in the hair and make-up stations--people, and adult people, no less, were getting REALLY excited about this--and a great location to eavesdrop on parents just about to send their children out onto the child-sized runway ("Go look sexy for Daddy, honey, so he can take your picture!"). It was enough to nearly send him over the edge:
Of course he didn't actually bite Barbie's head off. He practically doused himself in hand sanitizer just from touching her with his hands--he does not carry mouthwash in case of unsanitary biting conditions.