In any event, Mark and I stood there holding each other in the dining room while I tried desperately to find his scent under the stink of Vegas. Somewhere under the smoke and hotel soap was my husband and I was gonna sniff him ‘till I found it. And sniff him I did.
ANYWAY!
I missed filling you all in on some fun details in the last week, so lemme see if I can jam them all in here, in no particular order.
- Lily has learned a new phrase and I just about pee myself every time I hear it: “Oh my gosh, my sweater!” I hear her mutter as she roams around her room looking for the errant garment. “Oh my gosh! I spilled!” she cries as rushes to the bathroom to get a rag. And she says it so delicately… like it’s a fragile little phrase that will break if spat from the mouth harshly. It’s so adult and yet so childish, I just want to eat her head.
- In a fit of distraction the other day I asked Lily if she wanted me to paint her nails. She had no idea what I was talking about as I have never painted my nails in her existence and so answered, “yeah, sure” (another new phrase, yo). I let her pick the colors and she brilliantly went with blue for the fingers and a lovely shade of pink for the toes. No, I do not know the actual name or brand, I wasn’t paying attention. I actually knew a woman in England whose mother had the job of naming cosmetics. Apparently she was famous in this set for “Electric School Bus Yellow.” Whatever.
- Yesterday Lily thought it would be fun to run around after me in the dark on our property as I scrambled to make the house look less like crazy people live here. I was taking out the trash, Anya in one arm and Lily tripping after me, as I lugged a big ol’ bag of yuck out to the shed. In the past week and a half Lily has grown an inch (seriously) and this has made anything involving coordination impossible. She has fallen down more times than I can count. This time she went for a nice road rash look… on her forehead. I swear, if it weren’t for arnica we’d be investigated for abuse. Poor little thing screamed bloody murder and it was all I could do to comfort and treat her without the world ending.
- I took Lily to a five-year-olds birthday party. It was insane. Children everywhere and yet not a single injury. My friends are masters of the universe. It’s the only explanation. It made my head spin with all the whirly little people and cake and dress up clothes. Lily slipped into these little shoes and fell in love. The Women’s Studies degree in me was all, “Dude, that is SOOO not right! Take those stupid things off your child before she ends up totally subservient to some punk ass kid!” and the girly/mommy bits of me was all, “Awwww, that is so cute! Take another picture! OMG, she’s adorable! LOOK at my kid, she’s clearly the cutest one IN THE WORLD!” It was a very confusing experience.
- We were all ready to introduce solids to Anya when Mark got home (so one could stay behind with Lily if a trip to the hospital was to be… yes, I am that paranoid) but she has a cold and it’s really hard to gage if a child is having an allergic reaction when they can’t breathe anyway. We went ahead and dug out Lily’s old high chair and have started having her sit with us at meals. She is a social little thing and since eating is one of our big social activities, the least we can do is make her part of the party. She’s loving it. BIG. She sits there in her little chair banging her spoon all over the place and shrieking with glee. Very cute.
- Today we made salt dough ornaments. Very simple to make and very fun results. We haven’t had time to paint them yet, but I am very pleased with the way they turned out. BONUS: the kneading and rolling and cutting of dough kept Lily distracted for HOURS. All you need to do is take four cups flour and mix in one cup salt (I sprinkled a little cinnamon in there to make ‘em smell good while baking, but totally not required), then add in a cup and a half of water, working with your hands until you get a nice dough consistency. Roll them out and use cookie cutters or hands to make cool shapes. Make sure you punch a hole in them so you can hang them up and then bake at 250 degrees for about two hours. FAB-U-LOUS. After they cool completely you can paint with acrylics and, if you so desire, cover in clear nail polish and sprinkle with glitter. Or whatever, we haven’t got to that part yet, but I’m all a twitter with what it could be. Here are some nice shots of our work.
All done for now. Sorry for the length, but hey, I was really crazy there for a while and it’s just so nice to be sane(ish) again! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
