Portrait of the Artist as a Very Young Woman

First, you must consider the placement of your paint.















Then you stretch your imagination! Use the whole canvas!













Contemplate the big picture....















Fingerpainting is so...limiting. Throw your whole self into your art.

Let your Muse shine through. Our Artist, deep in concentration.

My girl is gorgeous.

This whole post? Just an excuse to post this picture.

Big Girl News

The crib is toast. Gwennie has shouted and yelled and expressed her clear preference for her sleeping on the floor, so we've gone from this:

to this:

Look at those munchable little feetsies! (That's Gwen's name for them, btw.)

Which is fine, really. I think we're going to borrow a twin bed from the Lewises, because Gwen is really long, and rolls off of the crib mattress repeatedly in the night (We bought a rail yesterday, but still.) She's more than ready - she hasn't looked back once since we asked her if she wanted her mattress on the floor. In fact, she's been telling everybody she can find about her big girl bed.

But still - remember this? Her mama is a wee bit sad.

Oh, and these footie sleepers? They're toast, too. Sigh.

Easter. No, really, Easter

The Easter Bunny, with a little help from the grandparents, was very very good to Gwennie this year. (Please ignore the weird looking creature in the window - there were no glowy-eyed animals stalking my child that morning, it's just the light off the grill or something.)
Plus, I still love me some dollar store, folks - that's a Dragon Tales coloring book, which has displaced Elmo in the current Hit Parade of Gwendolyndom. (And whose sweet little lilt of a theme song will.not.get.out of my head. It starts up within seconds of waking, especially at 3 in the morning.)

Gwen also enjoyed the bunny family, especially when it came to eating them. For the record, she likes to start with the feet first. Daddy , on the other hand, goes straight for the ears.

Mommy just likes the fact that hers was dark chocolate.

I was a little concerned that I wouldn't wake up early enough to get all the eggs hidden outside, but I did just fine. Once Gwen chose her hip outfit,

the hunting began. This was definitely the best part for Gwen, at least until we got to the Senko's party.

There's one!








And another!















After a brief discussion about which dress to wear (Gwen loveslovesloves her pink poodle dress*, but I wanted something, you know, Eastery, even if she did need a shirt underneath) we went up to see Auntie Daphne and Uncle Mark and Jessie. They throw a huge Easter Egg hunt, with bills of various denominations tucked off in corners. Gwen had her own area to look in, but she also got help from the adults after Jessie and Alan had finished up. There was ham and potatoes and all the usual feasting going on, plus jelly beans and candy. Gwen was pretty thrilled with the whole day.
And that, my friends, concludes our coverage of Easter 2009! Stay tuned for more Gwennie news soon!
*Which is a little sad, because it is too short for her now. She's growing like crazy.
PS: This Blogger stuff is cool, but it still messes around with the spacing something fierce. Please know that this post made sense when I previewed it, but I'm tired of honking around trying to get things to line up. Sigh.

Glimmers of Light

Gwennie and Daddy at the zoo, a couple of Saturdays ago. They could be looking at just about anything, couldn't they? I love these two so much that I'm surprised little glittery hearts didn't show up in the photo(it was giraffes, by the way.)

Jim had a job interview today. Startup company, only 10 or so US employees, development based in Australia. Followup interview next week, bt the CEO took Jim to lunch and is going to call his references. One question for them, he says - is Jim the go-to guy? Hell, yeah, he is.

Favorite Gwennie moment this week: Jim shaved his beard for his interview. Gwennie patted his face, giggled, and yelled,"I love my family!" as she threw herself in between us. Not so favorite Gwennie trick? Yelling the word Mine about everything. But hey, she's two. Her arm's just about better - the orthopedist took new X-rays and there's new bone there already. She's got a new splint to wear outside (in case she faceplants again, or for when, rather) but she's got the all-clear, no followup needed.

Jim's got another interview with a different company on Monday, there's a third company out in the wings, and the opportunity for a boot-strap startup that he could do part time even with a new job. I'm thinking maybe we've turned the corner. Just in time, maybe - the COBRA runs out at the end of the month.

We come out of this. Someday, we come out of this. I hope it's soon. I love my man so much and this hurts him so bad and I want us to be out of it.

Mother's Day weekend

Here's my mom, and the little person who made me a mom, caught in one of my mom's favorite baby activities.

I almost said that this was the best Mother's Day ever, but then that would leave this out:

That was last year at Happy Hollow, and it's one of my all-time favorite Gwen photos.

Plus, there's this little gem at a picnic with my sister-in-law's family. It's super-short (I don't think I knew I was taking a movie, actually - the camera was my MD present.) (Hey, look at me - I uploaded a video!)

And of course, there was Mother's Day 2006, which was when I got my best present ever: it was the day after we found out we were pregnant.

Still, this weekend was pretty dang special. And I have zero pictures to prove it. I had the camera with me - I just didn't use it.

Keidi's little girl showed up on Tuesday, so on Saturday we took some lunch over to the newly expanded family. Eliana is very small! I look at her, and I look at my big tall girl, and it's hard to imagine that she was that tiny. Then I pick Eliana up, and my arms remember, and my body starts to sway, and I think, oh yeah. I had one that was this little, and this fragile. She's so sweet. When I introduced her to Gwen, she turned her little head and really focused on Gwen's face. So cute! The little sister baby!

Then Calvin decided all the guys should go to see Star Trek, so he and Jim called Kevin to see if he could go, and Alejandro (Keidi's friend Amy's husband,) and all the girls got together after naps and had dinner together. We had all sorts of little people running around the house, and one making little squeaky grunts before falling asleep again. I love our little group.

On Sunday, I got to sleep in, and Gwen brought me a Happy Mother's Day balloon which she promptly proclaimed was hers. We had breakfast and hung out and eventually went for a hike. The thing was, I had a bigger day planned, and then we downscaled, and at the last minute I decided I didn't want to deal with the camera, so I left it in the car. We were just a Henry Cowell, after all - we go there all the time. But we went down a different trail, one with a massive hill that we haven't been on since Rosie died. Then Gwen wanted to see the creek, so we went down to the little clearing where Rosie used to wade. And stayed there, because it was cool and pretty and private. Gwen threw rocks in the creek to the see the splash. I threw sticks in the creek to watch them float downstream. Jim climbed up on a log to watch us. Gwen kept chattering away, doing her little running dialogue about everything she does and sees. There was a little breeze, and it was green and sun-dappled and fantastic. I really wished I had brought my camera, but it was kind of nice to just relax and enjoy the moment, too. Gwen figured out the she could wade in the stream. She found a stick that was much longer than she is, and she kept throwing it into the creek, fetching it, and throwing it in again. Having a dog first really was good training. It was a great afternoon, with Rosie's spirit right there with us - I swear I could see her smile.

These are pictures from the Friday before Eliana, some of my favorite moms ever...

Shanon and Danny

Stacy and Ryan

Keidi and Adessa

Me and my girl

Easter roundup, pt 2 - Dying Eggs

Gwennie luurrrvvvvs herself some Easter. It's nearly Mother's Day, and she's got both her new bunnies out and they're all looking for Easter eggs. (Mama, on the other hand? A little tired of stepping on plastic eggs. Even if they do morph into baby turtles or trains on occasion.)

But from a toddler's perspective, what's not to love? No scary monsters, no doorbells to ring (for the life of her, Gwen did not understand why those people didn't ask her in, already.) There's this fun game where you look for bright colored objects, and then when she realized they had candy in them? Whoo to the capital Hoo!

Plus, we went to dye Easter eggs and Uncle Scot's and Auntie Kathleen. Visiting them rocks Gwen's world anyway, and this time there were presents and messes to made as well. Auntie Kathleen found an apron for her, and off we went.

First, there was the careful observation part. You dump the what in the where?

Oh, I see. Put the egg in there!

I can do that. Mama and Daddy may have to save me from dumping dye everywhere, but I can do that.

Here's all of us getting started.

Uncle Scot gets his crafty on. His egg was definitely the star of the show - multiple layers of colors, finished off by dabbing pink spots on with a QTip. But did I take a picture of the finished project? Oh no. But I did enjoy eating it.

Daddy did a pink one.

and here we are finishing up. No actual clothes were damaged, which was a win.

Gwen is pulling her hair out because we ran out of eggs to dye.

Wow, you have to really like us to plow through all these pictures. What can I say? We're cute.

Easter roundup, pt 1 - BC Hunt

Our first Easter activity was an Easter Egg Hunt at my old stomping grounds, Redwood Elementary. It made me a little sad to be back there; I have such great memories of my first year teaching there. And it was such a beautiful school. It still is, but the gardens and the playgrounds are breaking down. It's been 6 years after all.

We had the usual crew there for the hunt and a picnic - Gwennie, Ryan, Adessa, Daniel, plus Elijah and Jaden. There was an Easter Bunny who fascinated Adessa and deepy disturbed Ryan. Gwen wasn't thrilled with him either. She wanted to check out the hen and the chickens.


And hunt for eggs! Gwen, turn around! The eggs are in the classroom!













That's better. Gather them up!














Oh, look! Something shiny - I mean, round and bouncy!













Danny had the hang of it.













Ryan brought his usual attention to detail to the task.

















I have no idea what I did to make Adessa look so supermodelish.

Then we ate our picnic, played on the old playgrounds, and went home.

Kaboom

I have Easter photos. I have new snow photos (thanks, Kathleen!) And zoo stuff. But, my friends, things keep happening around here. I have more breaking news, although there are no bones this time.

There are trees. Trees falling in the rain and blocking in the neighbor's kid's playdate. Trees falling and making the manly men* of the top of Grace Way use little wimpy chainsaws** to clear the tree out so the poor little girl could go home.





Ok, it was only one tree, which wasn't really a tree, but more like an overgrown bush. But it had three trunks, and two of them crashed last night. In the middle of a little rainstorm that left white spots on my camera when I tried to document the manly men and the wimpy chainsaw.





And there was a child with a cast who was out in the rain watching the manly men and the wimpy chainsaw and the fallen tree until she said, "less go inside, Mama!" and then, "but what about me? You wanna take camera of me?" because she's two and talks like that.

As if I was going to post without a picture of her.




My new view. It's still pretty good, but hooboy, the front of the house is going to bake this summer. We're going to have to take down the third trunk, too - it's toast. Hello, telephone pole! Let's be friends!













Poor tree. Poor yard.











*That would be Jim and Bruce. They made it look good, baby!
**Bruce claims it's Karin's chainsaw (which a. now I want my own chainsaw, and b. oh, sure, Bruce. Thanks for the help!)