Clearance sale

I am trying to clear out the cupboard in preparation for demo and I saw this link. Mini-muffin tin lunches, brilliant! What a great way to get rid of all the little plastic baggies of snacks i have hanging around.

I have been in a nasty slump lately, partly from the dr messing with my meds, partly from the vicious hoard of mosquitos that come from massive flooding ruining all of Olivia and i's fun plans for the week. i think a little whimsy is just what I need to pull out of it.

Before and After

See the resemblence? Tell me this doesn't just set your heart aflutter? If I had an kabillion dollars I would just buy all this artist's works. Dreamy.

Suck It England!

So you think you can deny Martha entry? Take this, trifle-eaters! Though I feel a deep sadness at being denied the opportunity to hear "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" live, I suppose this is an appropriate object lesson on not locking Norwegian hookers in your hotel room. I mean, come on, just pay the man, that's bad karma-chameleon.

Adventures In The Great Outdoors

So Chad and I checked a major thing off our wish list this weekend which was to take Olivia on her first camping trip. I'll have photos up tomorrow when I sift through the stuff and bugs to locate the camera. I will admit to being a little nervous that this was going to be a total freaking disaster, but it ended up only being train wreck with some redeeming moments of family bonding. i will sum it up in three telling highlights

1) Olivia took the opportunity to experience nature au naturale by refusing to wear clothes whenever we were in our campsite.

2) I was feeling a little insecure about our seeming lack of camping equipment until we made a kickass meal with nothing but foil and a cast iron skillet.

3) After mercilessly mocking my husband for his desire to sleep on an air mattress, going so far as to refer to him as princess for most of the weekend, I had a much more embarrassing bourgeois moment. So what comes after massive flooding is, of course, massive mosquitoes so after my third application of bug spray, suntan lotion, and cooking smores with a four year-old my hands were sticky, disgusting, and somehow still covered in bug bites. So, naturally I freaked out. I marched to the car, dug out my bottle of Origins hand soap that my mother had just given to me as part of a very pricey birthday gift and totally washed my hands from a water pump, squatting in the mud with thirty dollar soap. You know what? I felt much better.

It wasn't my best camping trip ever mostly because we wanted to be close to stuff for Olivia's sake and that means being close to people. And you all know how i feel about people. It was a big confidence booster and next year we will be ready for a nice hike in site where there will be no people, or air mattresses.

Eternal Satisfaction of The Half-Crazed Mind

Because i don't have a counter or a tracker on my blog I never know quite who is reading this thing and I am always surprised when people come up to me and tell me that they are reading my blog. I know I should make and effort at gearing the blog toward one particular group of reader, but frankly, i am just too lazy. So all of my childless readers are going to have to endure, or skip over, my parenting post. Lately, I have been able to turn a corner with a Olivia and her crazy behavior and I am a firm believer in telling everyone that my child is a horrible beast, as opposed to those mothers that deny that their children ever misbehave and they must just be the most perfect parents on earth, and then telling everyone how I finally and eventually slay the beast.

Number one is the photo above. This is Olivia's drum teacher, Dane. At first everyone thought I was crazy to hire someone to give my daughter private drum lessons and after about a month of lessons i did too. I am telling you people, e-mail me and i will give you this kid's number because he is a gem. The last few weeks we have been struggling with olivia paying absolutely no attention and really not enjoying lessons so Dane sucked it up, went to one of his professors and got a whole bunch of new ideas and this week lessons were a dream. This is why you pay for private lessons, because in a group class Olivia would have been my problem, the teacher would have been reluctant to modify her teaching style and i would have ended up having to look for a new class, not too easy, or drop out. Total waste of money. Yes, it is worth it. Suck it up and put your four year old in private music lessons, Olivia's dancing has improved as well as her sense of rhythm and her reading ability. Dane took part of the lesson to show Olivia how to break down the syllables in her book into a rhythm. Something the musically retarded, like yours truly, would never have thought of.

Teach your kid sign language. Olivia has been fascinated with sign language after watching a cartoon about a deaf child a few months ago. I put up a lot of resistance to trying to learn it, because frankly, we were already overwhelmed with the other two languages she wants to learn. Two weeks ago I buckled and took out some books at the library, of course, and was elated at the possibilities. We have been using sign language as an alternative for Olivia to express her emotions. Olivia is incredibly emotional, and though she tries pretty hard to use her words, sometimes the impulse to hit or scream or break things takes over and once you are at that point it is a good half hour before you get your kid back again. The sign language is a great physical alternative for Olivia to use her body, important for a dancer, to express what she is feeling. Giving me the sign for angry is way better than being hit, let me tell you. Plus it has been working great to communicate when I need her to be quiet while I am on the phone, She knows the basic, I'm thirsty, I'm hungry, or typically, I'm angry that you are on the phone.

I am still working on getting her to make smooth transitions and taking less than three hours to get dressed, and then staying in that outfit for the whole day, but one thing at a time i guess.

What I Am Loving Now

i haven't done one of these in awhile so I thought I would do a quick one because of all the birthday paraphenalia.

1) Tokyo Bay watches, some are a little cheesy, but the one Chad bought me for the b-day was fabulous AND cheap.

2) These earings by Anthropoligie. Classic.

3) Murder Mysteries. Nothing says summer to me like a good mystery novel. I am considering ditching Book Theif and coming back to it in the Fall so I can read Lush Life and Into the Woods.

4) Aveeno's new SPF lotion. Fair girls like me have been awaiting the day where I no longer have to put on lotion AND suntan lotion.

5) All of the delightful kitchen accessories i found at Century House last weekend. It is not going to take me long to finish decorating this kitchen.

They Say It's Your Birthday

It's my birthday too! Well, it was anyway. Here are some pics from what we did. Olivia and I sprung for a pricey class at the University's Arboretum and got to spend the whole morning digging in the dirt to find Olivia's favorite creepy crawlies. Olivia's prize in her specimen jar? TWO spiders that she gleefully let crawl all over her while the other mom and kids cringed. It was a proud mama moment. We spent the rest of the morning wandering through the gorgeous Arboretum and encountering wild turkeys on a perfect summer day.

Then Olivia had a terrific drum lesson with Dane who brought her the bells that the Indian dancers that she so loves wear on their feet and she is still in seventh heaven. Then my hubby took me out for pizza and my favorite, lemon sorbet. He didn't even blink when I told him that I wanted sorbet instead of the fabulously glamorous dessert that he had bought from a local bakery. Then he accompanied me while I shopped in all my favorite downtown stores. All in all, a great day. When I got home I got to listen to all my great messages from family and friends, some of which were hilarious. And I found out the exact date that Angie is having her baby, which everyone in our house is ecstatic about. Oh, and the title paperwork finally came through so kitchen construction starts Monday! Thanks to everyone who made this a great b-day!