Playing Chess with My Daughter

Please forgive my constant, indulgent photographs of nothing more ordinary than the regular afternoon chess game between me and my daughter, but one of my favorite things about being a parent

is being a parent of this particular daughter, this dinosaur-loving, horse-loving, tree-climbing, mud-digging daughter

 who reads as much as I do, who cares just as much about clothes as I do (that being not at all), who is being carefully guided by me out of the same social awkwardness that I'm still learning how to guide myself out of

 and who loves to play chess, loves it as much as I might have loved it at that age if I'd had a chessboard and these long, slow, quiet afternoons with someone beloved to play with

Your kids aren't always like you, of course. Most of the time, they're so blazingly themselves that you have to change your worldview just to understand them and parent them well. It's just sometimes, you know, that you see yourselves in them, or see yourself as you once were, and those are the times that, if you had a certain kind of life, you can heal yourself a little more by treating them in the best way that you, yourself, might have wished that you had best been treated when you were a little kid quite a lot like that.

Name/Nickname Birthday Bunting

What do you do when you want to make a name bunting as a birthday present for a kiddo who goes by her nickname?

I mean, you want the bunting to last, so what if one day she doesn't want to use her nickname anymore and only wants to go by her given name?

But what if in the future she doesn't care for her given name, and only likes her nickname?

Well, you can make her a bunting with her given name on one side--

And on the other side, her nickname:

That way, depending on the kiddo's mood, she can turn the bunting around--

or around--

--or around:

Oh, dear:

If the kid's nickname doesn't center perfectly on the back side, you can add a star, or a heart, or some other little icon. And then you apparently have to go make some for your own kiddos!

Garage Sale Find of the Week

Paper Doll Coloring Set:

For a quarter!

Our Giant Multi-Colored Play Silk Canopy

I of course didn't want to mess up the hand-dyed, multi-colored play silk canopy that I was preparing to list in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, so I let the girls' own copy, as identical as two handmade pieces can be, stand in for the official version:

And yep, that's pretty much a typical day for the play silks!

A Basketball-Sized Gameboard Made of Chalk

I've told you before, I believe, that Willow creates giant chalkboard games across the entire basketball court at our neighborhood park, games large enough that we can be our own game pieces.

Not to belabor my two favorite points to make from this or anything, but:

1) My kids are enchanting and awesome and clever.
2) Homeschool, itself, is also pretty enchanting and awesome and clever, because let me tell you, by 3:30 pm every weekday, that basketball court is full up with the big kids. All day until then, it's ours!

It's also enchanting (and awesome and clever, yes) for me to see how Will's reading and other informal studies of  her personal interests inform her games. We've studied Ancient Egypt extensively, Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece less so, and all of these giant chalk games of Will's seem to be about the journeys of ancient soldiers, and the quirky way that she's internalized them.

You're always a soldier, headed to the battlefield, which is at the finish line. On the way, however, you land on objects that other help or hinder you. Here Will's explaining the rules to Sydney, and you can see in the spaces in front of me some money, a turkey leg, a river to cross, a packed lunch, a blank square, and then another river:

Syd's passed the river, and the water horse (have you read The Water Horse? It's enchanting, awesome, and clever):

Then there's a dog, a bow, an arrow, a deer, and a river that's three spaces long:

Sometimes you can only take advantage of an item that you land on if you've landed on certain previous items. For instance, you lose a turn if you land on a river that's more than one space long, unless you've already landed on the water horse or the water dog, both of whom will take you across. Similarly, you cannot hunt the deer in this space unless you've already landed on EITHER the bow and arrow (separate spaces!) or the hunting dog (NOT the water dog).

Will likes to land on the dog, because she likes dogs:

Near the end of the game there are various arenas in spaces, and if you've got the right items--the dog for the animal show arena, the spear or bow and arrow for the hunting arena--you can win and get more money.

Of course, none of this actually matters, ultimately, since the end goal is to get to the finish line first. And so, while Willow and I take our time, throwing our sticks just a space or two to grab up all the treasure, a certain other enchanting, amazing, and clever little thing barrels up ahead and, treasureless, wins the game every single time:

And when you win, you run back to the beginning and play again!

My homemade sidewalk chalk tutorial lives over at Crafting a Green World.

A Pink, Purple, and Cream Twirly Girly Skirt

The weather has already taken a turn--a small turn, but a turn--and the younger girl is anxiously awaiting something special of her own, so I put aside my shorts experimentation (dreaming of Spring...) and turned myself, as well...

To skirts.

To be specific, to the Twirly Girly Skirt in Little Girls, Big Style, which may be Sydney's favorite book ever, and from which she wants what seems to be every single garment except for the peasant frocks.

We began, however, with the skirt, which has, I think, the best use for scraps and pieces of stash fabric, and doesn't require a pattern, to boot. Sydney chose, all independently and all, the pieces from my stash--a purple, two pinks, and a cream--and I fiddled and pieced each piece until I had the right length.

I definitely got my feet wet learning to gather, let me tell you--that bottom tier is a doozie! And yet...I now know how to gather!

Fortunately after all that gathering, the hem is a simple hem, and the waist is a simple elastic waist. The fashion show/photo shoot, is, OF COURSE, not a simple photo shoot, however, because the young miss has ideas. We couldn't just walk across to the park, nope--we had to head back to the library, where I had done Willow's first photo shoot for her Oliver + S shorts. Of course.

And then a nice stranger walked by, saw me snapping photo after photo of my babes, and asked if I'd like him to take a photo of all of us. And that's how we got a bit of a family photo shoot in, too:

They love those bear sculptures outside the public library:

They've cracked their heads there many times, but fortunately not on this day:

And then...well, we ARE at the library. Might as well go in for a while, grab a few books, maybe a computer game, before we head home:

Syd declared it the perfect skirt, and a perfect day.

We used:

Paratrooper!

Because the girls have always loved their parachute activity, ever since they were babies, and because I had a coupon, I bought us a little paratrooper from the Wonderlab gift shop:

We take her everywhere with us (and we go lots of places!), looking for new and exciting launches.

Will this work?

Kind of!

This didn't work, either:

But this will!

And then there's just some tearing around and screaming:

One of the pleasures of the homeschooled is a mid-morning basketball court all to ourselves, because the big kids are all at school.