thrifted and gifted

Most of our baby toys, clothes and furniture are hand-me-downs from various family and friends with now big kids whom have outgrown the stuff, and one of our favorites is the Leap Frog fridge farm…

Make that child 2 years younger, blonde, female, with a lot less teeth and 15 pounds lighter, make the walls blue, the refrigerator black, and the fridge magnet a little more worn in with a tint of yellow, some food crumbs shoved into the speaker and a tadpole at the top instead of duck and I could have totally taken this picture myself.

So this magnet, you put the animal pieces in and it sings about horse butts and cow heads. It’s catchy, happy, sing-songy and when you press on the tadpole above the barn it says in a loud high-pitched voice,

“Hi!! I’M FARMER TAD! LISTEN TO MY BANJO!!”

Poor Farmer Tad sounds phlegmy like he has a cold. And after hearing and repeating Farmer Tad a few hundred times now, I have unintentionally perfected the voice of Farmer Tad. I say it every time I open the fridge. “Hi!” I say it when I’m making my coffee. “I’m Farmer Tad!” I say it in my sleep. “Listen to my banjo!!” It’s gotten a little out of hand but it is what it is.

So a few months ago when I was pulling out Summer’s next size up bag of hand-me-downs that I had sorted before she was born, I was shocked at the 500 freaking pairs of size 9-12 month ugly hot pink or neon green stretchy cotton baby pants with purple flowers and weird floating kitten faces on them that were given to us, and I wondered who in their right mind would have bought them all because damn they were so not cute. So I bagged them all back up and stuck them somewhere in the back of a closet in the basement right next to where the spiders and creepy crawlies party. And now that I have a crawling 10-month-old on my hands, I am full-on kicking myself in the buttcheeks because damn it, I need stretchy cotton pants and as long as they’re long enough I could give a flying frack if they have poo-flinging monkeys on them as long as they keep her knees protected and warm, and I can’t for the life of me find the bag.

So yesterday morning I hit up the thrift store for a pair or two of stretchy pants that Summer could wear to the Cubs game later that afternoon. And of course there were no good pants because I can never ever find what I’m actually scouting out at a thrift store, but as I was looking, I found cute top after cute onesie after cute dress, all previously loved by other babies, each for $2 a pop. And before I knew it my arms were getting full. Ah, but then the books began calling out my name, and then I walked past the jewelry that caught my eye, and I gazed longingly at all of the pretty bright-colored glass vases, and on and on, I was sifting and strolling and spending way more time there than I had originally planned.

And as I was just about ready to peel myself out of there with arms full of everything besides cotton stretchy baby pants, it happened. I heard him. He said hi. He said his name was freaking Farmer Tad. He told me to listen to his mother effing banjo. He. Was. Right. Behind. Me. He began playing the familiar twangy tune of She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain. And while I had my suspicions that it had actually happened years ago, this was the moment now frozen in time when I realized I had officially lost my mind. His banjo played loudly in my head. My armpits started sweating. I looked around for other shoppers to see if they were hearing it, too but there was no one else around to make eye contact with. There was no one else to hear it, and I was alone in my crazy. And then, all of a sudden, I breathed a deep, cleansing, satisfying sigh of relief as I turned to the next aisle and realized that some little kid had found a newer, cleaner version of Farmer Tad’s fridge farm for sale with fewer crumbs in the speaker and a less yellowy tint to it, and the kid had pressed the magic button.

And so it was, Farmer Tad’s twin was sitting in a ziplock baggie with his farm friends on an endcap in a thrift store for who knows how long and when I showed up he had called out to me. So I grabbed him, took him to the register, haggled with the cashier and got her down to $4 because Farmer Tad was missing a duck butt and a pig butt making it impossible to create a silly Farmer Tad horse duck or a cow pig. And now as we speak, Farmer Tad #2 and his fridge farm family are on their way to Michigan to taunt my sister and the twins from their refrigerator, because I truly believe that everyone should be able to enjoy the sweet sounds of Farmer Tad’s banjo at all times.

2 year anniversary

This time 2 years ago, I was browning my shoulders on a sunny beach in St. Thomas smiling at my shiny new husband of 2 days over the rim of a mai tai glass with a cigarette my hand and a deliriously happy Cruzan rum-induced twinkle in my eye.

My plan was to put on my wedding dress every year on our anniversary for fun and clean the house or hang out in the backyard or whatever (considering my dress has been in the ocean, a pool, the sand, a suitcase, squeezed out and hung in the back of a closet, she’s probably not getting preserved), but those plans changed when I knew I would have been lucky to even get her over my sausage fingers last year on our anniversary…

This time last year I was 8 months pregnant when we celebrated. Traditional 1-year anniversary gifts are paper and so Scott got me a really sweet message in a bottle that went along with our wedding theme. And what I got him was so unbelievably amazing that we both blacked out when I gave it to him because neither one of us can remember what it was now.

This year we celebrated our 2 year anniversary by dropping this little one off at my parents’ house and going out to dinner alone.

(I’m trying to break the record for longest baby in an infant carseat. Don’t tell anyone but I’m actually waiting for the day she can sit herself down in it, strap herself in, and walk herself to the car with the seat already attached to her butt.)

So continuing with the gift year by year theme, traditional 2-year wedding anniversary gifts are cotton. I thought and I thought and I had it – for the backyard I bought him a hammock made of cotton rope. The only problem was that the box was heavy – way too heavy to bring in from the car by myself. And because there was a big fat picture of a hammock and the word HAMMOCK!! PSSSST – THERE’S A HAMMOCK IN HERE!! in big bold print slapped across the front of the box, I couldn’t exactly have Scott bring it in the house for me, either.

….hmmmm, hang on, orrrrrrrrrrrr could I?

Yes, yes I could. And I decided to be super helpful by taking lots of super helpful pictures while he super helpfully walked around scaring the neighbors with a sweatshirt tied around his super helpful hubby noggin….

Fun fact #483: when someone has a sweatshirt tied around their entire head and you say, “smile!” they actually will….

I wrapped it up all pretty and then we exchanged gifts. And I swear to Jebus, this guy doesn’t know me at all.

He got me…

wait for it…..

a hammock.

A mother. frickin. hammock.

And I do believe that the best part of my hammock is that I didn’t have to tie a sweatshirt around my head for it. Man, I love my husband.

can I borrow your towel?

If you’re a mouse or a rat, I’m not scared of you. In fact, you may at one time have been one of our ratty roommates living under our kitchen cabinets in Wrigleyville. Well, that is until you started eating my chex mix and I had you evicted. Hey, if I don’t get to eat for free, neither do you.

If you’re a snake, you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone and we can both live happily together. Not together together, but you know what I mean. Alone, capiche?

If you’re a bird, I have a friend who is absolutely terrified of you because you circled around her head and then stole an entire sandwich right out of her hands with your 5 foot long razor-sharp beak and dagger-like talons as she remembers from when she was little. I, however, don’t mind you, I grew up with one of you in my family room and I still consider you ok in my book, even after I watched you bite a chunk out of my sister’s face.

Spider? Pshaw, as long as I have a nice big wad of tp between the 2 of us so I don’t feel you between my fingers when I dispose of you properly, we’re all good. Oh, and if you’re a big fatty hanging out in the corner, I may just leave you be if you keep eating the rest of your little buddies. 1 spider, fine. 10 spiders? EFF. THAT. For the record, I’ve seen the movie Kingdom of the Spiders where the whole town is covered in spider webs at the end. That’s what I’m trying to avoid here. Scott may beg to differ and say that I actually am scared of spiders but come on, when he’s home, I’m making him do it. That doesn’t make me scared, that makes me resourceful.

So little things, creepy crawlies, I can handle them for the most part. I think I’m more afraid of g-g-g-ghosts and I’m totally not kidding. But 2 nights ago, I lost it. I even did the dance. You know, the dance….

1. start running in place
2. kick your own buttcheeks really quickly over and over
3. shake your limp hands up and down
4. make crazy eyes like you’re about to cry
5. do the Chandler smile…

like this…

or this…

or maybe this…

 yeah, yeah, just like this…

My family – we’re big fans of the Chandler face. Anywho, so ya, you know the dance I’m talkin bout. And what would cause me, someone who is pretty unphased by rats, blah about snakes, friends with birds and whatevs about spiders, freak out like a psycho?

There I was Wednesday night minding my own business.

I took a shower.

I got out of the shower.

I grabbed my towel off the rack on the wall.

I dried myself off.

My front.

My back.

My hair.

My face.

I wrapped my towel around me and folded it over at my chest.

And all of a sudden, I feel something.

On my leg.

It felt big.

Hairy.

It came out of my towel.

It

Was

Running

Down

My

Leg.

I look down and what do I see?

This.

Hairy.

Mo.

Fo.

And you are totally making the Chandler face now, too. And I haven’t taken a shower since.

it’s fun to stay at the…

Having some more fun with baby magnets over here :)

 

bitty baby in white

People, today I am a proud little mama. Last week I drew my first dress pattern with the help of a little baby body, a tape measure, plain white paper and a pencil with a big fat eraser on the end. And this past weekend I made my first dress with a 2 layered the skirt and binding tape along the edges and a real working zipper that I somehow managed to sew on straight and right side up and I have no idea how I pulled that one off. Here she is, my baby in her baptism dress:

good puppy

When you own a dog or two…

…phrases like ”what a good puppy!”…

…and, ”such a sweet doggie!”…

 will come out of your mouth…

…a few million times.

So when the day comes…

…oh, and it will come…

…when you look at your baby…

…and hear yourself say…

…”you’re such a sweet little puppy,”…

…er…

…don’t react…

…just pretend…

…you were talking to the dog…

 …and change the subject.

a little bit of this, a little bit of that

Life has a funny way of speeding up and then slowing down, up and down, fast and slow, yet all the while always actually moving at the same pace. So many things going on, all of them like little flashes of light that flicker quick and then are gone, leaving memories in their shadow. 

We had a beautiful weekend and a pretty breezy Easter day which came and went so quickly, though I tried my hardest to soak it all in. Scott headed out to his first Cubs game of the season while Summer and I got all dressed up in our pretty flowy floral prints and went to church with my dad where hundreds of others followed suit, overflowing the church to standing room only. We stood in the back with lots of other families with kids and I was so proud of my perfectly quiet girl who was content eating puffs, watching the people, and literally humming along to the songs which was the prettiest little sound I’ve ever heard. After church, we went and hung out with Nanna for a bit where there was a little lamb waiting for my little monkey…

 

Then, given the fact that we had beautiful weather and nowhere to be, Summer and I walked around the lake by our house where we saw a snake that stopped me dead in my tracks for a moment, we quacked at some ducks, and because I didn’t come prepared, we fed the geese some banana flavored puffs that I had shoved in my pockets after they fell on the floor at church a few hours earlier. Luckily, the geese didn’t seem to mind.

Once my pockets were empty, we continued on the path and eventually came to a pier that stretched out over the lake, turned under a covered bridge and then looped back around on the other side to dry land. I thought it would be fun to take the pier path with the stroller but after getting far enough to where it wouldn’t make sense to turn around but not far enough to be able to see the end, I quickly decided that nope, no sir, it wasn’t fun in the slightest. All of a sudden without warning, my hair began whipping wildly and stinging me in the eyes as the air screamed in my ears and my flowy floral shirt threatened to fly over my head because for some unforseen reason the wind was 3,000 mph stronger on the pier. It took all my strength to stay upright and keep the stroller moving forward while practically pushing my entire body against it backwards and I’m really glad strollers have straps to keep baby in because she probably would have gone flying across the lake otherwise. I know we must have looked absolutely ridiculous to anyone on the land path considering there was barely a light breeze over there and we were wrestling with an invisible wind storm 20 feet away. And once we made it to the other end, for me, someone who likes to get lost just to discover new places and find my way back, my lesson that day had been learned - sometimes it’s actually better stay on the beaten path. Who knew? 

Once we made it all the way around the lake and back to the car, Summer and I hit home to relax the rest of the afternoon away in the backyard on a soft blanket in the sun. This little one definitely inherited my love for adventure and curiosity of new things – you stick her in the middle of a boring old blanket and she’ll insist on making her way to the fun stuff…

It was one of those perfectly unplanned, wing-it kinda days with nowhere to be and no agendas to follow and it was so great just spending it however we chose, just me and my girl. That is, of course, until she tried to stick a dandelion in her mouth and I went to grab it from her, missed, and BINK! I accidentally poked her in the eye. There were lots of tears. She might have cried a little, too, though I can’t be certain because I couldn’t actually hear anything above my own sobbing.

I’m sorry, punkin, I’m so so sorry. Although she’s forgotten all about it by now, you can just call me Mama Bruiser. Or Big Mama FAIL. Sigh, while I know I definitely have it slightly better than the guy I work with who was playing with his son and throwing him up into the air onto the bed and broke his own son’s arm, I think it’s safe to say that this time around I’m definitely not winning mother of the year. I’m sorry punkin, I’m so so so so sorry.

Her baptism dress is coming along slowly. The shell that I posted before has been cut up, revamped, and discarded already, though it definitely helped me figure out a thing or two about making an actual wearable dress. This is as far as I got with this one before deciding to scrap it and start over…

I ended up buying a backup dress from Children’s Place just in case (I’m obviously not dead-set on her wearing all white)….

And I hit up Joann yesterday for new fabric, bias tape, satin ribbon and a zipper to start fresh on a whole new dress after measuring between armpits and across her chest. I drew up my own pattern modeled somewhere between the backup dress and another beautiful one I saw at a children’s formal wear store I walked through last weekend that I can’t stop thinking about. And during this whole process, I’ve learned that I sew like I cook. I can follow a recipe, I can follow a pattern, but if you ask me to just kind throw stuff together and make it work? Fuggedaboutit. So last night I got started on dress #2…or would it be dress #3 by now? Either way, I cut my pattern and I cut my pieces.

And that’s it so far. And this dress. It will happen. It may happen 7 different ways before the baptism. But it will happen. And I apologize to any future boys that I may give birth to because after having the option of buying 10 dresses by now but insisting on doing this my way, oh ya, I will make all of my future children wear this dress to their baptisms, too.

No luck on the job front for Scott yet, though he has found interesting ways to keep himself occupied in the meantime. I spy with my little eye a very handsome Nacho playing basketball…

My honey’s done gone and become famous or something.