Monday, December 28, 2009

And Then There Were None

I missed my sisters today. Maybe it’s the cold winter blues. Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of my friends’ lives have drifted away from my own. Maybe it’s simply because all three of my siblings moved away in such a short period of time.

I am almost twenty-nine. My closest sister is twenty-seven, the next, twenty, and the youngest is eighteen. The baby of the family left for college in the end of August, moving five hours away to the other side of our rather large state. One week later my closest sister moved an hour and a half south to take a job in Philadelphia. And then in October my last remaining sister married and is making her new home three hours away in Maryland. I’m the only one who stayed.

Everyday life generally keeps me busy enough that I don’t notice, but today I found myself feeling emotional and rather lonely for their company. I suppose I shouldn’t complain because they don’t live terribly far away. And I suppose it’s nice that we all get along and love each other to the point of missing each other now and again.



















Kneeling from left: my mom holding my daughter, my son, my daddy
Standing: my closest sister, my baby sister, me holding my baby, my little sister, my grammy
Back row: my husband, my brother-in-law, my pop-pop

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

GPS Mommy

In our house Mommy knows where everything is. Well, mostly anyway. There is that once in a while when Mommy doesn’t know where something is, but usually she does.

It has been that way for me even before I became Mommy. Back when I was just, Wife, it was that way, too. My husband constantly asks me where things are. Things that belong to him, stuff that I never touch, belongings that sometimes aren’t seen for months at a time.

“Do you know where my gray socks are? The ones with the hole in the big left toe?”

“They’re in your top drawer, Dear, underneath your Luchador mask, in the front on the left.”

Not only do I generally know where his stuff is, but I can also give detailed directions and even draw a map if necessary.

I seriously do not know if the man has major problems with keeping tabs on his stuff, or if he simply takes advantage of my talent for remembering everything for him. He had better get a grip in either case because my capacity for preserving any information for longer than thirty seconds is diminishing.

Perhaps his inability to recollect where he keeps his undergarments and such is due to the fact that he belongs to the gender known as MALE. As of late I have been leaning toward this as the likely explanation. The reason being that, as my son gets older I have been able to observe some of the following tendencies in him.

Number One: He can’t focus long enough to follow simple directions.

That little man can ask me where a particular book is, and upon looking down I locate it lying on the floor touching his foot.

“It’s on the floor, next to your foot,” I’ll say.

“Where?”

“Right next to your foot.”

“Huh?”
“LOOK DOWN!”

He still won’t see it. Really. He’s four. He speaks English better than some forty-year-olds I know. This shouldn’t be that hard.

Number Two: He’ll put something down and immediately forget where he put it.

See Number One.

Now, if that is all part of being a person of the male persuasion, then it would seem that being FEMALE would entail certain peculiarities. Peculiarities like maintaining a detailed catalogue of where everything in the entire house was last seen.

I already see potential in my older daughter for following very successfully in my footsteps. Considering the current state of decline in my mental faculties, this is a very good thing. She is only two-and-a-half, but if she puts her cup down on the living room floor behind the Christmas tree in the corner and drops a blanket on top of it she’ll still remember where she put it. If one asks her where her cup is an hour later she will point in the general direction of it and say, “It’s over dare.”

If one says, “Honey Buns, can you bring me the baby’s rattle from the couch?” She will go and get it. Ask Daddy or her brother to get it and they’d walk around in circles for ten minutes and then say, “Huh?”

In conclusion, it is my opinion, from years of observation and experience, that boys will be boys. And whether or not this is something that they’re born with or that they develop out of a deep liking for being taken care of by competent women, I don’t know. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Monday, December 7, 2009

And Some Little Girls Bite Cats

My two-year-old daughter is all upside down and inside out. If she wants to go upstairs, she says, “I want to go downstairs.” If she’s up and wants to go down, she declares, “I want to go upstairs.” When we play outside she will announce that she’s had enough by asking to go outside instead of inside.

A few weeks ago there was a little girl in the church nursery who was obviously younger than my little sweetums. I was amazed when she pointed to a nearby crib and asked to go “up.” I thought all children were as completely confused as my own. When my son was younger he used to get “up” and “down” mixed up all of the time. Apparently not all youngsters are as directionally challenged as mine are.

There are days when I correct my daughter out of the goodness of my heart because I want her to grow up and be able to communicate her desires with the other people in her world. But there are those days when I just shrug my shoulders and do the opposite of what she asks because I understand what it is that she is asking for, and because I just can’t imagine that explaining to her for the one hundred and eleventh time that she already is upstairs is actually going to make it stick.

Besides, it makes me giggle when she comes to me and cries, “Mommy, I bit Seamus!” Please understand, I don’t find it to be funny when the cat gives her a little nip (however well-deserved), but the sincerity of her voice during those tearful confessions elicits a smile from the lazy part of my brain that derives so much pleasure from her little misnomers and chooses to let them stand uncorrected.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Rosette Mini Bib Necklaces

I am currently on a bit of a rosette kick...










The lovely Lilac Rosette Mini Bid Necklace is the first to make its debut in my shop!
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