One year later

Today I realized that it’s been a YEAR since my last pixie hairchop. A  year and a week, actually.

ZERO: October 4, 2013—after my last pixie. Sniff.

ONE MONTH: November 2, 2012

TWO MONTHS: December 23, 2012

THREE MONTHS: January 1, 2013—The Hides-All Headband

THREE MONTHS: January 10, 2013—Bang relief

January 25, 201—mini pigtails AND the Headband.

January 29, 2013: salon poof after a trim

FIVE MONTHS: March 10, 2013—baby Chase

SIX-POINT-FIVE MONTHS: April 19, 2013—annoying

[grumble]

ALMOST NINE MONTHS: June 20, 2013—another post-trim salon coif-a-doodle-doo

Fixed it, but WILL THIS EVER END?

June 22, 2012: French braid!!

TEN MONTHS: July 14, 2013

ELEVEN MONTHS: August 19, 2013—First “pony tail”

ONE YEAR AND ONE WEEK (and 4 or 5 trims) LATER: October 11, 2013—half ponytail-“bunlet.” It’s about 2-3 inches from my shoulders now. Not bad for one year, eh?

I actually figured out how to make a rudimentary collage (gasp) for the final comparison:

I downloaded Picasa to make this thing. I despise experimenting with new programs. In fact, I haven’t learned how to do much of anything new on a computer in at least a decade, so this was a major stretch for my technological abilities. Be thankful.

Summary: my hair is growing! [little by little] Hopefully soon I’ll be able to tie it all up and go back to my lifelong habit of ponytail wearing. I’ll probably let it get nice and long and flowy for a while and then repeat this whole process again in a few years. The pixie cut journey has taught me that It’s Just Hair. Hair is always annoying in some way or another, short or long or [especially] in between. So do what you want with it—it’ll grow back or go back eventually! It’s a very liberating feeling.

Popsicle sticks, cardboard, and glue

“Feeling crafty” comes in waves for me. Sometimes the waves are big and impressive; other times they are feeble and dull. I have a folder on my computer full of pictures of past crafts: cards, art projects, sewing projects, home décor, and even some particularly pretty food that I’ve made. That folder is my own personal Pinterest. It’s nice to look back and recycle ideas or be inspired for new ones.

Jay and I made these popsicle stick scarecrows together while Rose took a nap one day. He put a square blue tear by his scarecrow’s eye.

You know how there are often lame craft ideas on cereal boxes and other food packages? Well, these cartons of granola actually had a GOOD idea for once—popsicle stick covered bridges! I painted tacky glue onto the cartons and Jay and Rose placed the popsicle sticks in rows onto the glue. It was a perfect project for their little hands. Usually I overestimate their abilities and end up helping more than I planned on, but this time it worked for them.

APPLES! We were given a large heap of ‘em this month, so I went to work. The total came out to 17 pints of apple butter and 16 pints of applesauce. Suddenly, Jay and Rose started liking applesauce this year. I’ve always liked it, but it was never worth it to make just for myself. I wish we had more applesauce, but I do not wish to make it, so we’ll enjoy our 16 pints while they last.

This was my first time making straight-up applesauce, and I thought it looked pretty pale next to that rich brown spiced apple butter. But it’s all tasty! I had a dilemma though. I did my usual easy-canning technique with the apple butter: ladle boiling sauce into a hot clean jar, screw on the lid, turn it over, and wait for it to seal in 10 minutes. When I was looking up applesauce tips, I read about how this method is NOT endorsed or encouraged because there could be bacteria sealed into the jar if it wasn’t boiled after the lid was put on. I’ve read about that before, but the previous article didn’t give many reasons for its paranoid claims so I scoffed at it. Well, this time I opened all12 of the jars I had already made, dumped them into a pot, washed the jars, boiled the apple butter like crazy for 10-15 minutes, and then followed the traditional (and safe) water bath preserving method. Blah, extra work. When in doubt, BOIL IT! Thankfully, all this quality time with apples has not made me lose my taste for appley food.

We updated our cardboard family magnets at last (for the first time since I first made them 3 years ago)—adding baby Chase and Layne and replacing the ones that got lost over the past few years. I love having my family all over the fridge. Jay and Rose like playing with them too.

We did this “my place in the world” project a few weeks ago. I found the idea online and adapted it here and there. I added a clear pocket with a removable person inside to the top level so they can move themselves to different places. The plan is to draw/cut/paste pictures of each place on its circle so they have a little booklet of all their locations, but we haven’t gotten that far yet, so the pages are still blank.

 
Etsy-mooching at its finest. The shop on etsy.com that sells these lace-edged slip dress hem extenders charges twice the cost of a simple slip and some lace. So I bought a cheap slip and some eyelet lace made my own extender in about half an hour, for half the price.

I’ve got these simple, ultra-comfy dresses in 3 colors but they hit just above my knee, which is not practical for a mommy (I’m 6 feet tall, for goodness sake). Enter: layered lace city! I kind of love it. I have nothing nearly this frilly, so it makes me feel extra-specially girly.

Although I may need a feather duster, white apron, and mob cap to complete this outfit. Maybe I’ll make a black version of this slip next. [In the background, Rose was in pain for some reason or a brother].

Pre-made eyelet lace is great!

I had some left over…

Annnnd the piece de resistance:

Tissue box-TP roll Star Wars walker ship. I made it this week in hopes of persuading Jay to wreck his precious big Lego walkers that we made a MONTH ago, but it was to no avail. He will not break them. We’re talking tears and freak-out mode whenever it’s suggested. I guess it doesn’t matter too much, but it would be nice if Rose could use the blocks sometimes too. For now we cannot play with the big Legos. Sigh.

I added lots of doors and windows. If I had gray spray paint, it would look more authentic, but the flowers are a unique touch.

Now we have 3 walkers.

The trio

If we ever get a van, I think I might miss the cramming, head-bonking, and reaching involved in strapping 3 kids into the back seat of a civic. Their little faces all sandwiched in a row back there are just so sweet! And getting them in there feels like SUCH an accomplishment.

Last week when Jay, Rose, and I went to the Tri Cities for Target-Costco-Winco, we got so tired from our long leisurely stroll around Target  and the madness of Costco that we opted out of Winco. That meant a rare, painful trip to the Sunnyside Walmart this week for some groceries.

Sunnyside is 15 minutes away. Winco is 40 minutes away. When I go to Walmart I almost always end up thinking that that extra 25 minutes in the car to get to Winco would be worth it! But an extra 25 minutes BOTH ways turns into almost a whole extra hour. That seemed too hard today with the 3 small ones, so Wallyworld it was.

They were so good at the store, all things considered. Layne sat in the fold-down seat in the front of the cart, Rose rode on the end, and Jay walked beside me. After about 15 minutes in the store, I plunked Rose into the basket of the cart because she was exploring and running a little too far for comfort. I piled food all around her, and she did distracting things like chew on the end of a tube of ground meat (eew! I freaked out). Jay was such a good helper and very obedient, and he gave me hope for Rose in the future. I gave Layne my apple and she clutched it possessively, sucking and gnawing the whole time we wandered up and down the unfamiliar Walmart food isles, searching for the items on our list. As good as the kids were, I still felt rather frazzled when we made it to the checkout. While we drove home, I was very glad it only took 15 minutes. I was pooped!

I posted this picture with a caption on Facebook today, and my sister Em commented: “The only good thing about taking 3 kids to the store is how easy it is to take 2 to the store the next time!” Nailed it!

I feel like I'm getting a sneak-peak into the future whenever I babysit Layne...hoisting and herding 3 small kids around a store takes careful planning, a lot of patience, stamina, and also a sense of humor.

Thinking

This is a journal-y post that isn’t inspired by specific events and/or pictures. I plan to do one of these every now and then. If you’re in this for the pictures, sorry! This is a zero-picture post. It’s rambling—just some thoughts and updates.

My sister Em and I always joke about “the Brown brain.” When we get an idea, we LATCH on and think it to death. Twice. The Brown family loves to think things through. I’ve felt quite thoughtful lately. I love making plans! Even if I only do part of my perfect plan (or none of it), I find it deeply satisfying to concoct exactly how IT should be done. It’s the same kind of pleasure I find in a perfectly vacuumed floor. Eeek, I’m sure that reveals some scary side of my personality—controlling? compulsive? Something. What I’m trying to say is when I get an idea, I map all the options out in my head and then inevitably go to trusty Mr. Microsoft Excel and plunk the plans into a well-ordered grid formation. This summer I had such a glorious spreadsheet plan for our 3-day camping-hiking-wilderness adventure on the Olympic Peninsula. I printed it off and brought it in the car on our trip. We completely scrapped it after that first hike through the mud, but I still pull it out every now and then to look at and think to myself, “that was SUCH an awesome plan.” See what I mean? PLANS!!

I’ve been working on our Christmas spreadsheet for weeks now, and it is so much fun! Squeezing the perfect gifts into a modest budget is very absorbing work. I’m stoked for Christmas, and it’s only October! I have to keep reminding myself to do fall-ish things even while I’m getting Christmas presents lined up. Whenever I get on the computer these days, I inevitably visit my Christmas spreadsheet, if only to bask in the beautiful order and drink in all the careful, festive plans. Other plans I have stacked up are home décor plans, travel plans, birthday plans, family plans, and fall plans. Not all of them are in spreadsheets. All in good time…

Next up: General Conference!! I loved it. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I sewed (patched Jay’s pants and hemmed curtains), knitted (like 4 rows onto the scarf I started 3 years ago), peeled apples, and sometimes sat still while I watched. There were so many times throughout the 4 sessions where I felt “spiritual arrow to the heart” moments of intensity that left me breathless. The restored gospel is TRUE! That truth SHINES. I adore its simplicity. Music is powerful. Our church leaders are inspired. I’m selfishly glad that Jay and Rose gravitated to Jeff while he watched conference in the basement. I snuck upstairs and watched it on the computer in the mostly-child-free quiet. Quiet equals Spirit.

For the past nearly 2 years, I have been reading the Book of Mormon slowly. Very slowly, relishing and re-reading verses and pages over and over. I just finished reading it this week. It took me so long to get through the book that I wondered if I was being lazy. But during General Conference, I noticed how much more familiar with the Book of Mormon I felt. I recognized all the scriptures that were quoted. I didn’t just recognize the words, the verses felt like friends because I spent so much time reading and pondering small sections over and over. I didn’t have any huge earth-shattering revelations while I read the Book of Mormon this way, and I didn’t even really look up many of the references in the footnotes or write down a whole lot of notes. I simply let the words nourish my spirit. If the kids were too loud, I put my bookmark in the same spot and read it again the next day and the next until I felt satisfied with it. I’ve never read the scriptures so slowly or carefully before, and it felt wonderful. It was a quiet, pleasant understanding to receive from the Spirit that reading the scriptures slowly and carefully makes them more meaningful and brings deeper understanding.

I consider this blog my “large plates,” (general record) but every now and then I go all “small-plates” (spiritual) on here and throw it all off. No one is perfect.

FREE APPLES. Yep, friends in ag places are the best. I’ve been baking, peeling, cutting, stewing, and preserving them in various forms this month. It’s exhausting and I’m too close to it all to really feel like discussing it in depth. Suffice it to say that we will have plentiful apple butter and applesauce for the next year. When I recover, I may say more on the subject.

Ever since school started, I have been running with the double-heavy double-jogging stroller 3 days per week, with one blissful lightweight strollerless Saturday recharge run. While I detest the stroller, I have noticed that my biceps are getting buffer. Woot! Also, I looked at my shadow while I was running last week, and I noticed that my little spike of a pony tail has started waving while I run—not quite swishing yet, but definitely bouncing and waving. My hair is growing!

Last weekend, we got a treadmill off of the Seattle craigslist. We rented an SUV in Yakima and Jeff drove the 3hrs to pick it up in Seattle, and then he drove 3 more hours to drop it off at our house. Then we drove back to Yakima, dropped off the rental car, and drove home. It was a lot of driving for Jeff, but now he can run on the cold dark mornings before school in the comfort of our basement and not sacrifice his most valuable teaching tool: his voice. The treadmill is our Christmas present this year. It just so happened that we found The One on craigslist 3 months before Christmas. I have run on the treadmill once, but I do not love treadmills. I actually prefer the 100 lb stroller to the treadmill.

Jay is in a “look at me” phase. He will do the smallest thing like put his hands together and say “look at me, Mom!” over and over till I not only look, but also comment. Often I can’t tell what on earth he wants me to see. It’s tiring. Jay also gets into these crazy moods where he MUST. ATTACK. ROSE. I don’t use those periods lightly. Sometimes I feel useless—like will they ever listen to me? I do my best to explain the rules (no hitting/punching/attacking/screaming) and follow through on them, but it is rough going, and very draining. Then Jay will come over to me, hug me, and say “I love you more than anything, Mommy” in his sweet, innocent, honest voice. Talk about emotional whiplash!

Rose is little miss defiant, but I’m learning how to ride the waves of her stubborness. Instead of just tossing requests around lightly, like “Time to go potty, Rose!” (which turns into a pointless power struggle) I now do back-door bribing: “Rose, do you want to read a story? Ok, quickly go use the potty before we read this book!” I don’t like front-door bribes (if you ____then I’ll give you_____), but I’ll use the back door any time! I have also learned to be careful of how I phrase requests and how often I ask Rose directly to do something. It’s a defense mechanism. When I remember that 9 times out of 10 a simple request turns into a battle, I can remember to either carefully phrase things so that she doesn’t know I’m asking her to do something or phrase it gently so if she chooses not to do what I want, I don’t have to enforce and win (to teach her to obey) because it wasn’t an outright parental demand in the first place. Ugh, that was tiring to explain.

When school started a few weeks ago, Jeff suggested that we start a Friday family movie night tradition. So every Friday we bring dinner down to the basement and eat it while watching a Disney movie or another family friendly show. Jay has inexplicably developed a dislike for movies that aren’t Star Wars. We’re working through it, though, and the rest of us rather enjoy movie night.

Jeff is in his 3rd year of teaching now and he doesn’t have to leave quite so early to get things ready. Yay! Jay, Rose, and I are all awake to hug him goodbye most mornings. It makes the day so much better to start it out together. We switched family scripture and prayer from night time to morning this school year, and it is doing wonders for my sanity. Less steps before bedtime equals an easier end of the day when we’re all tuckered out. Now we have time to read bedtime stories every night. Scriptures in the morning, stories at night. Each morning, Jay and Rose each repeat a verse back as we read it to them, and then Jeff and I each read 2 or 3 verses and one person prays. It’s simple, but just enough for the current attention spans of the children. Quality family time. That’s what it’s all about.

Jay-style

Yesterday I was at the computer and Rose came walking up the stairs saying, “Mommy, Jay do my heer.” I looked over and sure enough, she had a very Jay-ish hair accessory crammed onto her head.

It’s from Jay’s play tool set—a plastic plank and a black screw with 3 washers screwed on the end. Somehow Jay had managed to tangle it into her hair. It reminded me somewhat of Pebbles from the Flinstones.

The stylist and his subject. It looks amazingly clean in the background because yesterday was a vacuuming day—which only happens 2 or 3 times per month. You know how I feel about freshly vacuumed floors. Nirvana.

Another day this week I didn’t accomplish much of anything except THIS glorious playroom world. It makes me look like supermom, but how the day really went was: Mommy busy around the house/on the computer/in the kitchen all day till 3pm when she finally paid her kids some attention. These buildings took about 2 hours—not all day.

I saw a quote the other day that said something like “When I smile, it’s not because my life is perfect, it’s because I’m grateful for what I have and I make the most of it.” That more or less describes how I feel about record-keeping (journal, blog, photos, etc). I try to record a good enough mix of the good and the less-good to keep it real, but I naturally want to focus on the GOOD! We all want balance in life, but let’s be honest, who actually wants EQUAL portions of bad and good? I’d rather have and remember much more of the goods than the blahs. Which is why I’m hesitant to even insert comments like “I ignored my children all day and then made up for it with 2 hours of building in the playroom.” I don’t want to destroy the joy of this good-mom moment! But in a year or two I don’t want to look back at this post and think “wow, I used to be so much better” because I neglected to insert the slice of reality into the memory. I think I’ve mentioned this topic before. Well.

ANYWAYS…

During that fun, happy moment, we built a ginormous train track intertwined with our felt road strips and the orange Hotwheels track, connecting to the felt car town. On the sides, clockwise from the left are:
1. the two Star Wars walker ships that Jay won’t let us destroy (who knows when we’ll be able to build with those big Legos again)
2. a blue version of the Ninja Turtles’ hideout (they’re all swinging from a baby chain)
2.5—hidden from view—Jay’s small block city
3. A school
4. A block house
5. Jay sitting behind his Star Wars big Lego creation (I think it’s a ship)
6. the train tracks/road combo with the Brie cheese wheel Millennium Falcon parked nearby
7. Rose sitting next to her block house (I helped/built block houses—one for Jay and one for Rose)
8. To the left of Rose’s house, there’s a box-barn full of horses but it didn’t fit into this picture.

A few close-ups for fun, and because Jay loves to look at his old buildings when they’re gone:

Jay’s house (that paper leaning against the wall is actually a printed picture of another old building we made which Jay wanted to copy).

Rose’s house (we were running out of blocks at this point, and then Jay invaded it with his medicine-bottle toy soldiers).

Jay’s “Block City.” Using his favorite library book as inspiration (Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem Block City, with pictures by Daniel Kirk), he builds these things laying down on the floor so they don’t tip over.

The ninja turtles’ lair, with all 4 of the gang swinging on the chain while their cardboard pizzas get cold in the background.

The barn, with a chain of twistie tie people hanging from the roof and a tractor pulling a load full of sparkly My Little Ponies.

The fairy tale peoples’ house, built by Rose.

And while I’m at it, I should probably post a picture of a version of the block city we finally got to destroy to build all the other creations. Jay gets very attached to his buildings, and usually refuses to destroy them for weeks at a time. It’s very hard to play when all the blocks are used up. It’ll probably be another month or so before the current playroom world gets recycled.

Some (most) days it feels like I’m spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere because every time I start something, I have to stop and go intervene in various Jay vs. Rose disputes/random undeserved attacks, but there are times when I actually accomplish tasks and enjoy my kids. These two things don’t often happen in the same day, but it’s best to look at the week as a whole, or maybe even the month. Over a week, there are days of awesome and days of toys tipping over, causing double-dramatic meltdowns.