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Friday, September 20, 2013

How Did I Get in Your Tummy?

The kid: After you and dad were married how did you get me?
Me: What do you mean?
The kid: After you and dad got married. How did you get me?
Me: You grew in my tummy.
The kid: How did I get in your tummy?
Me: Hmm...that's a good question.
The kid: Probably I grew from your skin in there?
Me: Um. I don't know.
The kid: What's in there right now?
Me: My uterus.
The kid: What's a ute-re-us?
Me: Look! That squirrel is flicking it's tail at us.
The kid: Where!?
Me (silently): Phew.

Although I am 100% on board with giving her a true and age appropriate answer, just what the hell would that be? I'm pretty sure she's not looking for a biology lesson here. We've had lots of conversations lately regarding who is older than her, who she's older than, why is she older and why is she younger.

She's trying to figure out her timeline in relation to everyone else. That is pretty cool for a 3-3/4 year old.

But, honestly, I still don't know what to tell her about conception. We could lie to her or scare the crap out of her. But I'm guessing there's probably something in between that would allow her to just think quietly about it.

Maybe this:

The kid: How did I get in your tummy?
Me: Well, Mama had too much wine and Daddy thought it would be fun if we...look! That squirrel is flicking it's tail at us.

That would be a lie, because that's not even remotely close to her story. How about this:

The kid: How did I get in your tummy?
Me: Do remember the movie Dumbo? Remember all the birds with big long beaks and big long necks who flew and flew and then dropped all the babies off to their mamas? That's how we got you!
The kid: But I thought I grew in your tummy?
Me: Look! That squirrel is flicking it's tail at us.

Lies! All the options are some sort of lie. Last one:

The kid: How did I get in your tummy?
Me: I ate a Jane grape. It grew and grew and grew inside my tummy until I felt like I had to take a giant poop. I went to the hospital and pushed and pushed, but it wouldn't come out. So the doctor cut me in half and removed you.

Yup. I think that would cause some quiet reflection. And possibly some minor trauma.



Monday, September 16, 2013

Sunflowers

Just sunflowers that were fun for the kid to plant and watch grow.

Our lives changed a little last week. It might sound really minor to say "my kid started preschool," but I don't handle change gracefully. One day at a time, right?





Sunday, September 8, 2013

A Kid's Gallery Wall

Some kids have room for all their toys in their bedrooms. Some kids have a separate play room. Some kids have a whole finished basement to keep all their crap. My kid lives in a tiny house. She has no toys in her bedroom. Instead she has a corner of the living room. She doesn't have her own bookshelf. Instead she has the two bottom shelves of our bookshelf. The basement is full of crap for sure, some of which is hers, but it's not a play space.

And we chose to live in this small space with a kid, so it's ok. I don't mind all the kid clutter most of the time. However, this kid is showing some early signs of hoarding, specifically when it comes to her drawings. She truly has a hard time letting them go. Little does she know, we are keeping some of the best ones for a memory book. But she has been taping other works of creativeness all over the place including on the teak television cabinet - eek!

It was time to give her a display space of her own.
I bought the RIKTIG hanging clips from IKEA. They are located in the window covering section, not the picture frame section in case you are looking for them. I didn't buy the wire from IKEA, because I planned to use up some of my yarn stash. I know this isn't a new idea, but our challenge was finding an appropriate wall to use. Again, we have a small house and there isn't space on the kid's bedroom walls that she can reach.
So we decided her art gallery should be on our...gallery wall! We put those frames up soon after moving in 8 years ago. Although everything there is still important to us, the content could use a refresh. But that's not the point. The point is, the kid now has a place to hang up whatever she wants on those wires.
These pictures show exactly how she hung things up. But here is a confession: I reorganized things and then took another round of pictures. Wrong. So wrong that I deleted every single one of those "staged" photos. I mean, the whole reason we placed the wires low to the ground was so that she'd have control over how things were placed. Bad mommy!



ps. This hallway doesn't photograph well, mostly because I don't know what I'm doing. But also because it is tiny and there is no natural light.

pps. Here are a couple of pinterest links to some much prettier projects with the same end goal as mine: framed wiresframed arthangersIKEA hack



Saturday, September 7, 2013

Kinko's, Blockbuster and Overalls

I was thinking about Kinko's yesterday. I don't know why. Does Kinko's even exist anymore? Wait a minute while I check...

It appears that Kinko's is still a thing, but the stores are within Fed Ex locations? Hmmm...

So I was thinking about how often I went to Kinko's in the late 90's and how today's college kids probably don't even turn in paper anymore. Then I thought about what I must have looked like all those times I went to make copies.

It was the late 90's, so I'm pretty sure I was wearing Doctor Marten's, overalls and flannel. What ever convinced me that wearing overalls was a good idea, I'll never know. But I wore the shit out of those things.

Then I thought about other things that were popular in the late 90's, like Blockbuster and Dido. Why did Blockbusters always smell like feet? And Dido...yeah...

I'm pretty sure the 90's are forgettable, unless that's when you went to high school and college.