Skipping Town

As always, our handmade gifts were the best gifts exchanged this Christmas. The lineup this year: personalized letterpressed notecards from Dad; aprons for adults and kids from Mom; tiny notebooks made from Vera Bradley playing cards from Molly; and tiny Sculpey pies and cakes, with a glass cake stand, from me.  When, you might ask, do I have time to make tiny cakes out of Sculpey. The answer is: the girls got crafty this holiday season. We did so many things together, holed up in our basement while chaos reigned above. Greta made a snowman from cotton balls and construction paper. We made clove and orange pomander balls. We made snow globes from mason jars and bottle-brush trees. We made handprint-painted ornaments for Christmas gifts. We did a lot of foam stickers. We did a few Christmas craft kits from Michaels. We cut snowflakes from coffee filters. We made salt dough stuff and painted it. We made Santas out of corks. We glittered. And we did a lot, a lot, of Sculpey. ...

This has been the longest week of my entire life. I feel like the past six days have pummeled me. I last posted on Tuesday, and the rest of the week proved to still be long and ridiculous. Wednesday morning we woke to yet another wintry wonderland, everything snow-covered, all the tree branches coated in ice. School and sitter: cancelled. Andrew worked from home, but the day was just long, long, long. I have no memory of how we spent it. I'm sure it involved coloring and dancing and the Sit N Spin, maybe the Squinkie fairies, perhaps the "slide" I make for them out of an old Ikea shelf. Yes: we did the slide. I remember now. There was a lot of jostling and arguing and pushing and it all ended very unhappily for all. That afternoon, pushed to the limit of feasible activities, I dumped the food-coloring-tinted ice cubes into a Pyrex baking dish, announced "Rainbow ice!", and left them to it. They squealed with excitement and managed to find ways to play with the...

It's been busy busy busy around here the past few weeks, but we've been having lots of fun with the holidays. We went to Connellsville for Thanksgiving, driving during the day both there and back, and Lucia and Greta were superb travelers--playing together, playing with toys (especially their Magiclip princesses and small Gingerbread Girls). We had a great week--Andrew and I got to have some shopping getaways; and we had a night out at Lynn's Bar with Molly. Lucia and Greta loved playing with Luca. Neither girl ate more than a bite of Thanksgiving dinner. We also did our Christmas celebration, since Andrew and I will be in Florida for Christmas this year. The highlight, as always, was our homemade gifts. Molly made dot-painted boxes filled with recipe cards of the best recipes she made this year; for Lucia and Greta, she made boxes of elf donuts from Cheerios; Mom and Dad created a photo book with detailed, photographed instructions on making scrippelles; and I made tin...

Where can you go where you are forced to sit for four hours—forced to sit in a lazily reclined position, eyes closed, and relax to the sound of endless highway rushing past? The answer is a Greyhound bus. And as Molly pointed out, this scenario sounds restful only to parents of toddlers. And sure; the bus is awful. While waiting at Port Authority, a woman approached the Greyhound person taking tickets at the gate next to mine. English was not coming readily to her. “My in the station! My in the station!” she said. The Greyhound person tried to quiet her. “Ma’am, what’s yours in the station?” he said. After several more exclamations, it became clear that she was announcing that there were mice in the station. “That’s the Port Authority’s problem, not mine,” said the Greyhound person. A man standing nearby said loudly, in a satisfied voice, “Welcome to New York.” And the bus has that terrible bus-smell; and people talk on cell phones; and the woman in front of me reclined her seat so tha...

Here are the nesting dolls I made this year for Mom, Dad, Molly, and Ian, for anyone who might be curious (and really, who wouldn't be). The bottoms are a bit unfinished--I took these pictures before I sanded them down. Lego Star Wars video game characters for Ian: Julia Child, Alice Waters, and Irma Rambauer for Mom: Eustace Tilley for Dad: Cariactures of Toscanini, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff for Molly:

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. I’ve been lax in my blogging, mostly because I was just enjoying the freedom of being away from a computer, with other people around to hold the baby. With two weeks of no freelancing and a bit of a lightened baby load, I did things I rarely get to do—I read books; I shopped and tried on a million things; I got a manicure. It was nice, very nice, and it strikes me that people who live near their parents have a radically different parenting experience than the one Andrew and I have. Just completely different. An experience where one can perhaps get a manicure more often than, oh, once every fourteen months. Anyway. First stop on our trip was Connellsville, where we whisked Lucia through the door and pretty much had no baby for a week. She ate hearty meals prepared and served by Grandma. She rocked in a hand-upholstered mini-rocking chair procured from the attic by Grandpa. She learned to say “Papa” (for Grandpa). She consented to be held by me only when ...