So we’ve spent a good bit of time in the car, out doing things, away from the house this weekend.

Cute the FIRST:

I was working in my studio, which is (now) in a smaller room off the big room in our basement. The big room has tall Ikea furniture holding many bins which hold toys. I could hear Jocelyn as she hummed and sang away as she pulled toys out – a Barbie head whose hair she could brush, some Strawberry Shortcake dolls and assorted furniture, a variety of very small stuffed animals. She hummed and played and then skipped off upstairs without cleaning up, so when I emerged from the studio and saw the toys on the floor, I called her down, saying, “Jocelyn, come clean up your toys!”

Her voice floated down the stairs to me, “Mom, I didn’t get out any toys.”

No malice, no indignation, just pure matter of fact. I looked again. Just to check. Yup, toys are indeed, on the floor.

“Well, come on down here, there are toys on the floor.”
Humming and skipping down, “OK, but I did not get out any toys!”
Arriving at the bottom of the stairs. Staring at the toys. Reiterating once more, in a calm, steady voice. “I don’t know how these got here. I did not get out any toys.”

I said nothing. I just watched her.

A beat went by.

“…….. but I’ll clean them up mommy.”

Oh yes, indeed, missy, you will!

CUTE/HILARIOUS THE SECOND:

On Saturday, Jocelyn took her hard earned $5 allowance and bought a $5 skantily bikini clad Barbie doll. She proceeded to carry it with her everywhere she went.

Ethan can entertain himself for hours with his DS, with a book, with legos.

Jocelyn entertains herself for hours with anything that she can then animate. She will very softly whisper to her dolls, or stuffed animals and have them interact with her, or others. She can play this way a long time. She’s very self conscious though and often won’t let us hear what is going on in these intricate enactments.

James was driving, and I was sitting beside him, when we heard Jocelyn tell us,

“Oops! I accidently popped Barbie’s head off!” She wasn’t upset, and in a moment reported, “I’ll just pop it back on.”

Then about 5 seconds went by when we heard her whispering to Barbie, “Stop screaming, and let me explain!”

Can you believe that???

“Stop screaming, and let me explain!”

Anthromoporphizing taken to the extreme. In her mind, Barbie was obviously screaming at the loss of her head, and Jocelyn was trying to placate her with explanations on head-popping off-ness.

Tears come to my eyes as I try not to stop laughing at that one.

AWESOME THE THIRD, AND LAST:

We got a call late Sunday night to view the house, so we piled into the car and went to Uno’s for dinner. On the kids menu they had several optical illusions, one of them something like this:

From http://www.coolopticalillusions.com/

When you move toward/away from the image, it will appear as if it is turning. Jocelyn held it on the table and moved her head closer and further away over and over, mimicking a possessed bird with a severe twitch, watching as the illusion caused the wheel to “spin”.

“I want to know how they did that!” she stated to me.

Later, I caught her busily coloring on her menu, but when I tried to show interest, she made her frowny face at me and covered up her work. I feigned disinterest until she forgot about me again, intent on her coloring. I looked and realized what she was trying to draw, and used my super special secret Parent Eyeball Telepathy to indicate to James that he should pay attention to his daughter.

He smiled, unknowing what exactly what she was working on, taking my Telepathy message as just, “Look at your cute coloring daughter,” and not seeing the depth there in. I made more urgent Parent Eyeball motions used STRONGER Telepathy to let him know he need to KEEP WATCHING HER — WAIT FOR IT!

She patiently finished her drawing, and then straightened it out on the table, and suddenly made the same bird-like motion, moving her face closer to the paper and further apart, trying to get her illustration to “move” in the same way the optical illusion had done.

James just about fell apart trying not to be AUDIBLE in his laughter and glee, and even though I knew what she was doing, seeing her actions was too much! We both giggled and laughed, much to Jocelyn’s disgust. She was VERY upset at us being a witness to her experiment and subsequent failure and let us know in no uncertain terms.

I had to try VERY HARD to not reply to her, “Stop screaming! I can explain!”

-amy

Mermaid + Merboy. Perhaps a prince! He does have a crown.

Two separate paper cutouts, with the hands glued together.

Mer-boy prince.

Mer-maid!

OMG she just kills me.

We had my brother and his family come visit us a few weeks ago. The weekend after they came, we were having the entire house interior painted, so the house was either scary “you’ve been robbed!” clean, or a mass of migraine inducing “a twister came through here!” messy (the basement).

We boxed up a lot of stuff, and had a lot of boxes around which the kids LOVED. Ethan, Jocelyn, cousin Kade & Eric built a massive box fort which sadly, I didn’t get a picture of. But I did get pictures of Elizabeth, the adorable almost 2 year old!

Look! A box!

Hmmm, something inside that box pushed it over! What could it be?

An Elizabeth?

Yup, it’s an Elizabeth!

She also likes to model Spy Gear Night Vision Goggles:

She wasn’t the only one that likes to play in the box.

Jocelyn decided to get her ears pierced about a week after her birthday. She was very nervous, but she did great! She choose Hello Kitty studs to pierce her ears with. Of course.

All these photos were taken on my android phone (HTC Incredible) and run through the Vignette app for fancy retro awesome-sauce.

She appreciates it.

Happy birthday to Jocelyn (March 10).

A week or so ago, James and I were cleaning out our guest room really thoroughly (getting this house ready to put on the market!) and the kids were also supposed to be cleaning their rooms.

We were all working pretty hard, when Ethan came in, toting a nerf gun, and announced, “When we’re done with all this work, I suggest we have the BATTLE OF OUR LIVES.”

Nerf gun battles abound at our house. We agreed that sounded like a fantastic idea.

LAST MINUTE PARENTING WINS THE DAY

Today is Dr. Suess’ birthday, and our school is honoring it with a book character dress up day. I didn’t remember until late last night, so this morning was fraught with quickly trying to come up with SOMEthing, ANYthing, for the kids to dress up with.

Jocelyn was easy — we had a pair of Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts that Ethan insisted on getting last year. Today, she went as Thing 1 (well, Thing 1, with normal hair, a pink skirt, and stripey tights.)

However, I did come up with (what I thought was) an INGENIOUS idea — I also took a marker, made a STAR on her tummy (on her skin) and said, “Now you’re a SUPER SECRET SNEETCH, with a STAR upon THARS.”

She was tickled to death!

Ethan was harder. Of course, he wanted to dress up as a Star Wars clone trooper, one of his many halloween costumes. We adamantly said NO — it’s BOOK character dress up, not MOVIE character dress up. He pointedly held up his huge stacks of Star Wars books, but we (OK it was James mostly) stuck to our (his) guns. No Star Wars. — A big reason is, we were pretty sure that wearing a clone trooper uniform all day may cause him to ACT like a clone trooper all day, and his teacher doesn’t need to deal with THAT.

All the things Ethan did NOT agree to dressing up as:

- A secret sneetch (aw MAN! can’t he see my BRILLIANCE?)
- Harry the Horrible
- Nate the Great
- Someone from the Magic School Bus books
- Ralph S. Mouse (a bicycle helmet, a little marker for whiskers, DONE)
- Captain Underpants (“COME ON MOM YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!”)
- One of the kids from Captain Underpants
- The Wimpy Kid (this one would have been hard, but he does have a promotional wimpy kid tshirt kicking around somewhere)

He finally decided on Max from Where the Wild Things Are. He wore red footed jammies to school, with cars on them — despite the fact that Max’s were plain red with a hood with monsterness on it.

Oh well!

I can’t wait to hear how it all went.

WHO KNEW THE BIRDS AND THE BEES WERE SO DAMNED AMUSING

These kids have been into baby stuff for a while – hearing the story of their own birth, hearing about how they would KICK me when I was pregnant, and they just love babies in general. Babies, puppies, kitties, bears, squirrels… baby ANYTHING. Ethan is studying all about autobiographies in school right now, so not only is he interested babies, but he is doing assignments about himself – relate a story about when he was a baby, how much he weighed, where was he born, etc.

So about a month ago, I got them this book: It’s NOT the Stork! — figuring if they were so interested, we might as well give them plenty of real information on the subject, and save us the hassle of having “the talk” with them as teens or preteens. I really like this book, it’s full of good information, differences between boys and girls – inside and out, different kinds of families, how babies are made, and has also helped put to rest some myths that I’m not certain have REALLY been laid to rest in this house: the fact that babies AREN’T in the mom’s STOMACH, and (here’s a rumor that Jocelyn clung to when she was a wee toddler,) the myth that babies are POOPED OUT when they are born.

It’s a fairly large book, with a lot of info in it, and generally they’ve kind of skipped around, settling on the parts they want to read. The pages where the sperm swim to get to the egg is a favorite, due to the cartoon characters – “hey its’ this way!” “We’ve been swimming forever!” etc. but the part that all parents dread talking to their kids about, has not really been hit on much with my kids with all their flipping through this book.

Until last night.

Ethan is our non-fiction guy, he loves to read about facts and science, so it’s been his favorite lately. He settled down with it and flipped to the pages with the sperm swimming to the egg pages, when he said, “But how does the sperm GET INTO the vagina?”

I just quietly flipped back a page or two where it covers this, and he started reading aloud. When he got to.. *ahem* the pertinent details, he stopped DEAD, looking totally AGHAST, turned and looked at me, while I sat there completely beet red. Then hollered to Jocelyn, who was sitting on the floor reading her own book to herself.

“JOCELYN! You have GOT TO HEAR THIS! The daddy puts his PENIS inside the mommy’s VAGINA!!”

They both thought it was the most hilarious and RIDICULOUS thing in the world.

It is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

After the laughter and giggling died down — I told them that I’m glad they are learning so much about babies, but that it would NOT be appropriate to talk about this kind of stuff at school. They both nodded and laughed some more.

So! It’s especially interesting that Ethan’s teacher told James this story about Ethan in school yesterday!

His class were writing up their own autobiographical information, and Ethan got to a part where he was supposed to put down how much he weighed as a newborn, in a complete sentence. He raised his hand and the teacher came over, and Ethan whispered to him, “Is it OK if I write uterus?”

He had taken my warning to heart and was concerned about being inappropriate!

WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT, KILN FIRED PLACENTA PLEASE!

Because I’m a masochistic sadist (i don’t know which is which term means what so I’m using both) I made a google alert for “used paragon kiln for sale”. So anytime google finds a hit for that search term, it emails me. Then I can get excited before remembering that a) we’re moving and big kiln purchases, however used and cheap they may be, are not a good idea, and b) i shouldn’t be buying a kiln anyway, remember that casting kit you got amy? the one you haven’t even used once yet? how about you try THAT out before spending over $500 bucks on a kiln, hmmmm??? See — I like to torture myself with emails about what I want to buy before I tell myself I can’t buy it.

Well, sadly, my used kiln google alert pretty much just turns up links to a lot of spam, which I delete and move on. Lately, my hopes don’t even get that temporary rise when I see the subject of the email.

It used to go like this:

subject: Google Alert – used paragon kiln for sale

amy: (oh. OH! maybe this is it! maybe there’s a kiln for sale somewhere that is priced so low, i can buy it and not feel guilty!)

-click open email-

amy: (god damn “Allen heath gl2400 service manual used paragon gl24 kiln for sale bigger dick.” F**k you.

~fini~

This time though, I was slightly amused that this bout of spam google found for me included “sacred fist,” “placenta,” as well as “used kiln” in all the jumble of words-trying-to-catch-the-google-search. Maybe the spammer bot was trying to lure some pagan native american home birthing new mommies who needed a used kiln to make their sacred fist placenta new moon life fajitas with.

THAT IS ENOUGH FROM YOU, MADAM!

And with kiln fired placenta fajitas, I shall bid you adieu.

- Amy

(LOOKIT THAT I DIDN’T SAY A WORD ABOUT JEWELRY!)

(THAT KILN SPAM STORY TOTALLY DOESN’T COUNT)

Here is a fairy tale by Jocelyn that I found on the art table in the last week:

The Princess

Once upon a time, there was a princess LOCKED IN A TOWER! Cause a witch locked her in it!

A prince came and rescued the princess!

And they lived happily ever after.

Yes, we need to work on the stereotypical damsel in distress and how there’s no stopping damsels from rescuing THEMSELVES, but still, pretty cute.

Oh my goodness, you have grown so fast. You are six years old now, and so capable and smart!

You have been breezing through kindergarten with excitement. Daddy and I have watched as you discovered the world of words and jumped right in. “Discovered” is really not the right word, because you discovered it long ago, but you have really blossomed. You have always been creative and artistic, the art table being one of your pastimes – When you were 3 or 4 I let you have tape, as that was the easiest way to keep you from glueing your creations to my walls. There have always been little Jocelyn creations taped up right at Jocelyn level throughout the house. Now there are notes or titles on them as well. My absolute favorite was when you took a chair from the kitchen table and dragged up to the landing between the main floor and the upstairs, facing downward, and carefully spread my red scarf on each step leading up to it, like a red carpet. Then at the bottom, you pasted this sign:

“You may come up now, she is here.”

You explained to my delight, that the chair is where the queen sits, and when the sign is up, that is when people may go up and see her. And then you promptly went and sat yourself in the throne, as it were.

Your joy and exuberance show in every dancing step you take. I apologize for constantly asking you if you have to go to the potty, because your constant dancing – even when you’re seated – make me think you’re doing the peepee dance. I gently remind you, that many times I was right, you did need to go, but when you returned, you danced and wiggled and swayed.

Ever since you were a baby and I stupidly took you to get a haircut where they must have thought you were a boy — I’ve been growing your hair out. You started your 6th year of life at your 5th birthday with lovely long hair already, and it got even longer as the year progressed. However, this presented a few challenges – the first being your hatred of having your hair brushed. And since we always bathe you at night during the week, you always have plenty of tangles the morning after which didn’t make hair brushing time any better.

And we’ve definitely gone back and forth on the length of your hair from time to time. I remember when you decided you wanted SHORT bangs and insisted that I cut them off RIGHT at the scalp. Confused, I finally realized that it wasn’t that you wanted short bangs, it was that you wanted NO bangs at all, and thought cutting them that short would do the trick. We worked on growing your bangs out after that, and they were about down to your chin when you convinced me that you wanted short hair.

Remembering the flip flops before, I gave you plenty of time to change your mind, but you really were adamant – you were ready for short hair, and you insisted that you even wanted to cut your bangs! I think it was the fact that all that hair was really getting in your way at school. I almost cried when we finally did get it cut, but I must admit, you look just cute as a button. We even got it cut again, a bit shorter a month later.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and candy, you are a strong willed girl, and rightly so! That strong will and determination I’m sure is responsible for you being the little night owl that you are – this month you’ve taken to coming downstairs a good hour after your bedtime — which is better than the times you come down 10 minutes after bedtime (complaining that you can’t sleep – Come now, honey, you barely gave it a shot). And when Daddy and I at times exert our will over you, (You must try at least one bite if you want any dessert, it’s time for shower, it’s time to get dressed, markers are NOT FOR WALLS) you have no qualms about letting us know that you are not happy either.

But it’s been a fantastic year, and I marvel at how you’ve grown. My pudgey rolly polly baby is SO tall and thin! I can’t quite see the woman that you will become in your face, but I do know she will be strong, beautiful, exuberant and full of life.

Love,
Mommy

note: I’ve been writing this for 3 weeks now and just want to POST already, but I’ll be adding photos in very soon)

It’s been busy around Casa de Panders. Monday was Columbus day, and I had it off… but no one else did. It was quite nice to lounge around the house doing nothing all day! I debated on what I would do, but with my car at the shop (it needed a new radiator, sniff) I was stuck at home and ended up cutting rings and chain mailling all day.

Here’s what I made:

Celtic Visions in copper

Jens Pind in 14 gauge (ie: HUGE) sterling silver

And here’s another Jens Pind, in 18 gauge sterling that I made last week. It’s listed in the shop now.

So, it was a pleasant enough day – unfortunately, I think I overdid it and the joints in my right forefinger and thumb are kind of aching – this is really kind of pissing me off, as I just bought new pliers that I really quite liked. I hope it wasn’t the pliers that did it.

Oh, and here’s one more picture: Any guesses as to who Jocelyn is going to be for Halloween? Someone from one of my FAVORITEST movies!

-amy

I KNOW that if I had stepped in and “helped” her with this project, they would not have turned out as AWESOME as they did.

She said, “I’m making some paper dolls, Mommy!” And make them she did.

Behold! The dolls!

#1: halloween (note the ghostie earring) #2: rocking out with headphones (note the music note) #3 ROBOTS! OMG SHE MADE ROBOTS!!! #4 normal girl

Behold! The clothing she made for the dolls!

And here are the dolls with their clothes on. I laid the clothes on the dolls and scanned them “dressed”:

#1: halloween girl now has ghostie shirt too! #3 That robot girl is lookin’ pretty boobtastic!

If you click the images, you’ll go to my flickr page where I have added a few notes to the first and second page.

Oh man. These just kill me. KILL me. I am going crazy in the best way, when I look at these! That girl. I love her.

-amy