Leafy

Yep, we are blessed with a bounty of kitties. We don't have to do all the work to spin our own spinner when it's our turn at Hi-Ho Cherrio, what with the kittens around--
--and our fat, lazy Ballantine keeps us from having to read all the bad news in the newspaper:
Unfortunately, she also likes to lay on the comics, the drive-in movie times, and the garage sale listings, but that's the price you pay, I guess.

In other news, Willow woke barfing at 3:00 this morning. She felt better, fortunately, after just three or so hours of being VERY ill, but I still kept her in bed all day (thank GAWD for Netflix's Watch Instant--Willow had her first exposures today to Meercat Manor, Blue's Clues, Kipper, AND the Wiggles), and she's been sound asleep, I'm hoping for the night, since about 5:00 pm, poor kid.

Syd, of course, absolutely basked in being the only kid on call today. The constantly-running television soon paled in comparison to a set of parents able to completely focus on her (although probably asking her if her tummy hurt or if she felt like throwing up a little too often to be quite normal). She hung out at the drop-off laundromat with Matt (this is the first time we've tried it, and I'm a little squeamish about it now after Matt described in detail the burn-out employee who will likely be the one to wash all of my panties), and helped him clean the kitchen, and there was a lot of wrestling worked in there somewhere, and this afternoon she and I went to the park all by ourselves, and I pushed her in the swing for as long as she wanted.

We brought Sydney's bucket to collect leaves, because I've been wanting to do leaf rubbings with the girls for a while now. Not necessarily to learn all the parts of the leaves or anything just yet, but mostly to admire the shape and the form and to see the detail, all that good stuff.

Unfortunately, it's been too long since I've brought out our huuuuuuge Strathmore sketch pad--it's too big for the girls to get out independently, and I guess I just don't think about it very often--and Sydney was way more interested in just drawing than in doing any particular project. Don't you find that kids have to spend a lot of time, I mean a LOT of time, exploring any specific material or medium before they're ready to manipulate it in any kind of actual "project"? My kids are that way, at least.

So Syd and I spent a lot of time drawing with crayons on our huge sketch pad, and then, just because I'd been looking forward to it for a few days, I made some leaf rubbings myself:
I forgot how freakin' fun they are, but they are FUN! And very satisfying, especially to someone who can't really draw a lick. My goal now is to offer the girls the sketch pad a LOT in the next couple of weeks so that we can try leaf rubbings again real soon. I was thinking, though--wouldn't something like this make a cool Spoonflower print?

Black and Pastel

There were wildflower walks to go on:
(along with a wildflower encyclopedia, of course, so that I can knowledgeably mis-identify each flower); some wandering jew to propagate:(it's pricey and a bit unnecessary, but I occasionally buy these propagation gel container kits because it just makes it that much easier to do this project with two wriggling and impatient girls), and, of course, five kittens to adore:
but in the past couple of days the girls and I have also had time to develop a newfound love for pastel crayons. I've offered pastels to the girls a couple of times before, when they were younger, but I think that they were too young to appreciate the sometimes subtle difference between the pastel crayons and regular crayons, and the pastels were also a bit delicate for my boisterous artists.

However, we aquired another used set from Grandma Bangle (as opposed to our first used set, which was an old one of Matt's), and this time the girls were very stoked, especially at the color saturation, I think.

The girls also really like to use their pastels with black cardstock:

Not construction paper, and not textured cardstock, but plain flat cardstock or Strathmore black drawing paper with pastels is a pretty sweet combination.

P.S. I did some research, and what we have is apparently soft pastels, not hard pastels. I'm totally putting this set of 60 pastels on my wish list for after our used set of 10 has finished being worn down to itty little nubs.

The LOLCats Live at Our House

We clearly all needed more chaos in our lives, so enter the litter of foster-kittens. Five kittens, to be exact, although an exact count at any one time is extremely unlikely. Two look like this:
Two look like this:
And only one looks like this:She's also the bruiser of the bunch, outweighing the others at a whopping one pound. We'll probably have these babies for a month, until they're old enough and weigh enough to be able to be adopted, and then we'll bring them back.

Lots of people are actually pretty horrified when I tell them about our regular influx of foster-kittens. They're all, "Oh, won't the girls be broken-hearted when the kittens go back?" No, it's totally a reasonable question, and I don't know, perhaps my kids have hearts of ice or they're just exceptionally oblivious, but Matt and I have never even so much as implied, through word or association, that there would even be the slightest of possibilities that we could actually keep these kittens. They are our visitors and our guests, and guests ALWAYS go home eventually. So I don't know, maybe a more clued-in kid would figure out what's really going on, but it works for my kids.

Here's my list of reasons for why everyone with kids should absolutely foster:

1. Kittens are cute, fun, and entertaining. They make kids happy.
2. Caring for kittens and handling them appropriately are useful skills to learn--they teach kids that having a creature under your care requires a lot of work and a lot of self-restraint.
3. The kittens will need to go back in two weeks to a month, which is about as long as it takes for the novelty to wear off, anyway.
4. Kittens need to be put in foster families at first, because they're very susceptible to stress, illness, and the development of bad habits at the Humane Society.
5. Fostering kittens makes them more adoptable, because they will be litter-trained and very well socialized, especially towards children, and are far less likely to develop bad habits.
6. When it's time to return the kittens, saying goodbye to creatures that the children loves teaches them that we can't always keep what we love, that love carries on even after loss, and that pleasant memories comfort us and eventually become what is important.
7. Expending love and care on creatures that the children know they will eventually give to someone else teaches them the skill of service, that we should also work for the benefit of others, even if we won't ever meet them.

And, finally, 8. Sleeping with a kitten is an experience everyone should have:

At least a few million times before you're six years old, especially.

I Bought the Farm

My little girl was so busy writing her name (upside down AND backwards, oddly enough) all across the back deck----that she did not notice me busily photographing something just behind her that she would have otherwise been VERY interested in me photographing: I bought this set of farm embroideries from Andrea Ceramics, and I am THRILLED with them. There are 12 embroideries in the set, including a rooster: A horse:

A cow in a barn:

There's also a goat, a pig, a scarecrow, a sheep--all the best farm animals, Willow would tell you. Ideally, I'd like to use my secret kid-at-Montessori time to incorporate these into a farm-themed quilt for Willow for Christmas, perhaps.

In other words, it will join the dinosaur T-shirt quilt and the denim Valentine quilt, also DEFINITELY to be done this fall and winter (ahem).

A Few Colored Pencil Rolls Before the Semester Starts

Each August, before I return to two brand-new classes of freshman composition students, I have to spend a good amount of time getting my head back into the game, as it were. It's always a very difficult transition for me--all summer, I've been a full-time stay-at-home momma of two bright and happy girls, with ample time to play and learn with them and to play and learn on my own, and to watch late-night movies and eat take-out with my Matt. Starting next week, and for the most part of the next eight months, I'll still be a full-time stay-at-home momma by day, but for two full evenings a week I'll also be teaching. On those days I'll have a quick change-of-kids with Matt as soon as he gets home from work, and I won't be home until late. I'll answer student emails every day, and spend most of the girlies' Montessori time grading papers and planning lessons. Office hours are another tightrope-walk of organization. So is taking a shower, frankly. And I won't even get into how mentally and emotionally exhausting teaching is--if you're a teacher, then you know. If you're not a teacher, then I imagine it's like the mental aspect of playing sports--very focused, very in-the-moment, lot of thinking on the fly, lot of power dynamics, etc. Anyway, exhausting.

Ask me later in the semester, and I'll tell you that I love teaching. I'll tell how how grateful I am to the director of the composition department here at IU, who has, for the past three years, consistently scheduled me for evening classes so that I CAN be a stay-at-home momma by day. I love my identity as teacher, my positive contribution to the world and all that, and seriously, teaching these young adults how to think and write clearly and cogently is a HUGE positive contribution to the world at large.

Anyway, I'll tell you all that AFTER I've gotten my head back into the game.

Until next week, though, it's still summer. There's plenty of time to start a fire without a permit in the backyard, and roast things both savory--
--and sweet----and to eat those things up, yum:And there's plenty of time (at least there WAS plenty of time--starting today, I am not permitting myself to sew a single thing until my syllabus and first week's lesson plans are finished) to nail down a new pattern for colored pencil rolls made from upholstery fabric:I worked these out mostly like my upholstery crayon rolls, although colored pencils are so tall that the roll needs a tie enclosure, not elastic, and a narrower top pocket. In my next batch, too, I think I might add 1/8 of an inch to the pencil pocket widths, although the width works out well for these Crayola colored pencils: And upholstery fabric? Just generally rich and delicious:

I've got one upholstery colored pencil roll up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop right now, but I mean it--no more sewing until this syllabus is written.

And the babies desperately need matching pajama pants and kimono-style tops that are awesomely identical to the infant kimono tops in so it's, like, an emergency.

Retro Read-Aloud

By now, y'all probably know what I tend to like: I like handicraft/DIY, I like a dirt-cheap good deal, I like thrifting/garage sales/dumpster-diving, and I loooooooove learnin' with my babies. I make my own panties (sometimes). When something goes on Manager's Special at Kroger, I buy ALL of it and throw it in the chest freezer. I will wake up earlier on a Saturday than I will on a weekday, just to sneak out of the house and hit a couple of 8 am garage sales (today I bought two skeins of yarn for the littles, and although I REALLY wanted the spinning wheel, which was 250 dollars, I did not buy it). I consider it the height of a good time to make Spanish-language flash cards for the girls, or to read to them from the encyclopedia.

I'm a dork, yes, but a happy one.

When two, or even three, of my passions come together into a sort of holy combination, I achieve super-dorkdom, a joy and enthusiasm that my daughters will, one day, put into the memoirs that they will write about their strange childhoods and their crazy Momma. Thus imagine my joy, imagine my enthusiasm, when I learned that the children's department at our public library was selling off its entire collection of VHS and cassette tapes.

VHS tapes? I don't have a VCR. But cassette tapes? I have that player.

We're talking children's music. We're talking audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction. And because it's the children's department, most of all we're talking picture books and read-aloud cassettes. They're used, so I'm thrifting. They're hella educational. And at 25 cents per item yesterday and 10 cents per item today, they are way dirt-cheap.

It's super-dork heaven.

On Friday, I bought 44 picture books with read-aloud cassettes, 18 audiobooks, and 4 music cassettes. For 35 dollars. Today I went back (of course), and I didn't count my haul, but since Matt was with us and so I could concentrate on shopping (not mediating fights and picking up knocked-down merchandise and shouting across the room for little people to stop running, etc.), I was able to look more at the fiddly fine-printed music cassettes, and I spent 11 dollars.

And look what I got!I'm putting aside all the audiobooks of more than two tapes to bring out for long car trips, stuff like The Mouse and the Motorcycle(and all its sequels), The Secret Garden, The Boxcar Children, Alice in Wonderland, and other awesome stuff. I also might bring these out when the girls are a little older to listen to independently here at home.

But in their collection that they can choose from independently right now are other audiobooks of two hours or less, stuff like Little Bear and Frances and Winnie-the-Pooh collections, and Henry and Mudge, and what seems like eight thousand Hank the Cowdog titles. I hesitated for a second when Willow picked all those out, because she's never read them and I sure don't like Westerns, but then I thought, "Heck, they're 20 cents each," and let her get all of them, and yes, she has proven me wrong by spending two hours this afternoon sitting at the living room table and listening to an entire hard-boiled Hank the Cowdog mystery book, figuring out how to change the sides of the tape and then change to the next tape without my instruction.

I am the happiest, however, or rather I should say THRILLED, about the picture books with accompanying read-aloud cassettes:I'm not sure, but over the two days I think I bought at least sixty of these. And imagine, it was the children's department's ENTIRE collection, so other than the few that the girls chose before they got restless and left me to it, I had my own entire pick of some really premiere titles. And all the cassettes work (a couple that we've tried haven't been of perfect quality, but most have), and all of the picture books are, though well-used, lovingly repaired. Among the titles that I bought are several Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Runaway Bunny, Babar, The Little Red Hen, several fairy tales, and a few books of poems. Considering that nearly all of these, except for a couple that the girls snuck through, are titles that we didn't already have in our print library, it was quite a haul.

The best part, though, has been the girls' reaction to our new wealth of listening opportunities. Sure, I know a lot of it is the novelty of learning how to work my cassette player (now theirs) and choosing from nothing but a billion new books and tapes, but I think this collection really will become an important part of their lifestyle. We encourage reading books and listening to stories and enjoying music, and we sure as hell encourage doing all of this independently, and every now and then for the past two days, when I've walked through the living room and had the chance to witness this:It does make me feel very enthusiastic and joyful, indeed.

I Made Myself Some Soap

It probably wasn't that hard to guess what handicraft I was trying for the first time in my previous post. Seriously, how many craft projects involve a pot on the stove?

I bought my very first cold-process soap-making kit at a soap-making class at Barefoot Herbs + Barefoot Kids, run by The Kitchen Girls. This was way back in the winter, but with lye and all, I wanted to wait until I had a good bit of time without the girls with me to make it.

Y'all, it took me nine months to achieve that block of time.

Yeah, it's been a while since my one workshop, but my kit has instructions in it, plus all the ingredients I needed except for the distilled water (remember that part--that's important), plus I did quite a bit of reading about soap-making last winter, so all in all, IF the soap turns out in six weeks, I did pretty well for a first-timer.

I got everything to the right temperature eventually:
And I wore my goggles like a good girl:
Because, of course, I've seen Fight Club many times (I used to teach it in my freshmen comp classes), I was TERRIFIED of the lye, and it didn't help when, as I stirred it with my rubber spatula to cool it down, it turned slushy and started to hiss and fizzle, and then turned brittle-hard and began to make really loud cracking noises.

Noises that definitely didn't happen during my soap-making workshop.

So obviously, I throw off my gloves and run to the internet, searching Google for "soap lye troubleshoot*". I think my problem was thusly (but those of you who ACTUALLY know how to make soap, please correct me if I'm wrong): the oils and lye used in soapmaking are measured by weight, which is why a kitchen scale was on my list of supplies. The water, however, is measured by volume? So when I saw that my recipe called for 16 ounces of water, I measured 16 ounces in my kitchen scale, and that was about half a cup. But 16 ounces of water by volume is more like 2 cups.

And so I added in another cup-and-a-half of water and stirred and stirred, and eventually the lye uncracked and dissolved and I had to reheat the oil to get it back to the right temperature, and stir and stir to get the lye down to the right temperature, but eventually they were happy together.

My other worry is that, after I finished my soapmaking, I was reading about it some more (never do this--it's like looking in your book to see all the questions you missed after finishing a test), and one author was talking about this think called false trace, in which your immersion blender beats so much air into your mixture that it lowers the temperature of your mixture enough that the oils begin to solidify again, and you think you get a trace even when saponification hasn't finished, and so you pour prematurely. You're supposed to turn off the immersion blender frequently and hand-stir for a few seconds, which I did not do, and thus the freaking out.

But after a day to harden, don't my soaps look okay? I've got some cut into blocks: Some poured into Lego molds with a little Lego inside as a treat (see the poorly hidden Lego?):

And some poured into heart-shaped molds with a vintage heart bead inside each, although you can't see it this time:

That's about how they're supposed to look, right?

Now...anyone know a good place to buy soapmaking supplies? My kit was a one-time-only deal, but now I'm hooked, and greatly desire a lifetime of hand-crafted hippie-dippy essential oil-and-herb soaps.