Today...

-I am SUPER excited to meet my new niece, Avila, born yesterday afternoon!!!!

-I know Anja is coming into her role as Big Sister because she's begun saying "Mommy says..." to Greta. And sometimes she lies.

-Is Martin's first day off in his new summer schedule! We'll see today if the long days are worth it. So far, I think they are.

-I found my debit card dangerously close to the toilet.

- I MUST clean out the kiddie pool, or buy a new one for approximately $6.

- I am really happy to have great old friends like Joannie, and good down-the-street neighbors who think of me and pick up needlework books for me from the free cart at the library! Thanks, Jennifer, if you're reading this!

- I am really, really, REALLY happy that summer is here. I love summer. I might even love summer more than I love cats. Well maybe not MORE, but they're certainly neck and neck.

Condensed Work Week

Martin is participating this year in the offered "Condensed Workweek" at Ivy Tech. Instead of working his regular 8-5 five days a week, he works 7:30-6:30 and has every Thursday off. When we were deciding whether or not to do this, it seemed completely obvious that it would be nothing but good... the time he has to leave for work, when he takes the car, is the same time he has to leave in the morning to catch the early bus. So that was no change. And since he often stays a little late at work anyway (and always on Mondays), the 6:30 end time didn't seem so bad either.

But then our crazy daughters decided that they were going to start waking up at 5:00 every morning. They've done it every day this week! We try to get them back to sleep and they end up coming downstairs at about 6:00. This is very bad. Because not only does it make for ZERO morning for me and make Daddy late for work, but then I have to deal with The Grouchiest Anja in the World until 6:30. YIKES! So we're hoping this little phase improves soon. Tomorrow is the first Thursday off so we're looking forward to that. It is a nice breakup of the week.

Yesterday the girls and I had a surprisingly big and pleasant day. We went for a little walk in the morning, down to the Farmers Market and up to K.Dee's to return Kim's tuner that he left here last week. Greta was awesome for the entire walk, riding in the Mei Tai. When we arrived home though, Anja was NOT happy to be there. So instead of staying home, we walked across the library parking lot to the trolley stop and took a trolley on its loop around town. It was really fun! Anja is the kind of child for whom pointless outings were invented. She LOVED it. I don't think she said a word the entire time, but just looked out the window. Whenever anyone else was getting off at a stop, I'd ask her if she wanted to get off and she never did, but then when we got back to the library stop, she hopped off without a single protest. Greta made it most of the ride being happily occupied with my cell phone, but just as we were coming over the river she decided she'd had enough. Luckily it was only a few blocks from our stop.

After the trolley ride Greta took a nap and Anja started begging to go to the library. Martin came home for lunch and as he was leaving we went to the library. I'm never sure if Anja has fun at the library.. she loves to get the books, but she gets a little freaked out by all the other people there and yesterday it was PACKED since now it's summer vacation. She doesn't like it when other little kids talk to her. She actually is kind of a judger, I think. And once again, Greta stayed occupied with my cell phone. She calls my phone "daddy." That's pretty frightening, if you ask me.

It's raining right now but it's supposed to clear up in the afternoon. I wonder where the day will take us!

Poo Poo!

Yesterday afternoon, Greta went poo poo on the floor in the front room, and when I went in, she looked up at me with kind of a bewildered expression and said "Poo poo."

Isn't that great?! Anja and I tried our luck at having her use the potty, but nothing happened. Still! It's kind of fun! I really like toddlers. A lot. And I'm glad that Greta is becoming more and more of one because it's extra fun to be able to communicate with her like she's a normal person.

One clue that she is becoming less of a baby is that she gets to make choices. On Sunday night she chose animal jammies for bed over pink rainbow jammies. Poor Anja doesn't appreciate Greta's growing up as much as I do... she totally freaked out because SHE wanted Greta to wear the rainbows. She cried and cried and cried and I tried to convince Greta to wear the rainbows, but it in the end, I told Anja that she gets to choose her own jammies and Greta gets to choose HER own, and that maybe she would choose the rainbows the next night. (She did, but of course by then Anja didn't care.)

Anyway... since those storms moved through the other day we have had cool weather. Today I am able to wear my fabulous green sweater with the buttons sewn on. Love it!

I also realized yesterday that I didn't plant any zucchini in my garden. Hmmm.... I'm not sure how I'll survive the summer without zucchini. We still have one more garden box to bring over from the neighbor's house though, so maybe if I can find some plants I'll buy a couple.

Punk Rock Anja

Martin was recently asked by one of his co-workers to take care of a little coyote problem. To say that Martin was excited by this opportunity is an understatement. And look--a rare peek into his secret Man Room! This is only a sliver of the wreck it is... what you can't see are the horse stall mats, kettlebells and weight bars, various pieces of workout equipment and hunting paraphernalia. A funny room where I rarely go... unless it's just to drop a pile of his stuff right inside the door while I'm cleaning up. I think it's important for a husband to have a room to himself where he doesn't have to worry about keeping it clean or putting things away. To be fair, Martin often will spend a chunk of time in his Man Room organizing and cleaning up, which is fine, but it's not like he feels pressured by me to do so. Anyway, I hope he gets some of those nasty coyotes today. He was telling me about them yesterday, saying that they hang around while big animals (cows, deer, etc) give birth and then steal and eat the babies. How sick is that!?

Moving right along...

I posted last time about my new book, Carefree Clothes for Girls, and the headscarf I made for Anja. Well, Anja enjoyed looking through the book at the clothes and things, but the item she was really stuck on were the little girl model's boots. They were dark blue or black, looked like Doc Martens. She loved them. She asked to go to the store and buy some! Well, Martin looked on the internets but didn't find anything... and I thought it wouldn't hurt to just swing by Once Upon a Child and see if they happened to have anything that fit the bill, though I figured that they wouldn't. To my surprise, they DID! They had two black pair (not Doc Martens, but clunky) and two pink pair. I thought Anja would choose the shiny pink with black shoelaces, but instead she chose this nice pink pair of hiking boots.

She fell in love with the boots, and I fell in love with the thrift store price! A perfect match. The next morning the first think she said to me when she woke up was "pink boots."

I stayed up late the other night to make this dress, my first pattern project, and what I would call a success! I am hoping that it is more cute and folk-like than homemade and frumpy. I like to make clothes for my family but I don't want it to neccessarily LOOK like I'm making the clothes for my family.... if you know what I mean.

Coyote Update: He got one!

So anyway.... it looks pretty cute with her pink boots, and we are amused by her punk rockerishness. She's on track to be the youngest shopper at Amused.

And for dinner last night, we used a giftcard for a free pizza we had in our drawer. It was the perfect night for it! And the girls loooooooove pizza. I'm looking forward to making pizza with our garden ingredients in a month or so!

This morning Kim and I are playing music at the Farmers Market. I've been watching the radar and the rain seems to be breaking up a little bit for now... if it can just hold off until noon, that'll be great. Happy Weekend!

Happy Mail for Happy Crafting!

This morning Anja came in saying she'd seen a truck. We didn't realize until Martin was heading out the door to catch the bus that the truck she'd seen had been the FedEx truck delivering a package to our door. Inside? "Carefree Clothes for Girls"! I got started right away (luckily, Greta decided to take an early nap) and this is my first finished project: A cute little head kerchief for Anja! I changed it a little bit... I made it two-sided because I couldn't decide between two fabrics. So one side is a little more "dress" and one side is a little more "blue jeans" but they are both super cute. (These pictures are of the dressy side. The other is a darker blue with a large floral print.)

The scraps I was using were also just two and a half inches too small, which meant I trimmed it up, but it ended up being PERFECT. It wouldn't have fit her if I hadn't made it smaller!

And the lace was the PERFECT length, recieved a week or so ago in a package from my sister-in-law. Yay for using up scraps and not spending money!

There are so many cute patterns in this book for hats, pants, skirts, dresses... and for my Most Difficult Sewing Project to Ever Attempt, there is an absolutely precious old-fashioned looking coat that I will make for Anja for the Feast this year. I am nervous, but I think I can do it. I think.

My sister and her kids came over the other day bearing fresh-picked strawberries! I turned them into a Strawberry-Basil Granita and Greta really liked it.

And speaking of Greta, guess who slept for 5 hours straight last night!! A miracle.

Weekend Trips

We took a few day trips this weekend. On Saturday Martin and Anja spent some time together in the morning and came home with flowers for everyone because Anja wanted to get flowers for Greta. How sweet is that?! When they got home, I was making strawberry shortcakes for a cookout at my cousins' house, which was very laid back and fun, and where my sister and I played that cornhole/bags game and lost. I also ate some of that really amazing marshmallowy fruit salad stuff that is a staple at every pitch-in. That stuff is amazing.

On Sunday we went up to Fair Oaks Farm, where we'd never been before! On the way out of town we intended to go to Once Upon a Child and pick up a new carseat for Greta. Not only had she long outgrown her infant seat, but the blasted thing has a broken handle that is so annoying to deal with that it makes you not even want to ride in the car at all. And on top of that, she hated the thing and unless she was sleeping would scream for an entire trip, no matter the length. So, in order to survive a car ride that was more than an hour, we NEEDED a forward facing seat and had been putting off the purchase for long enough. However, when we arrived at OUAC, we found they didn't open until noon. So we just went to Target and got a new one. It's just like Anja's, except a new model (of course) and it has butterflies instead of flowers. She was very pleased with it for a little bit, but then she and Anja decided to switch and they've been switched ever since. So this picture may be the only picture ever of Greta riding in HER carseat.
Oh, and there is our beloved Cook Baby riding between them!

So, Martin is a member of this Indiana gun owners forum and so he does a lot of trading around with the people on there. In a roundabout way, the reason we were going up north was because I made him buy a rifle he had no intention of buying because it had a squirrel on it. It is seriously the cutest gun I've ever seen!! And how could he say no to his wife actually telling him to buy a gun!?? So anyway, instead of going up by himself (boring), he took us along, which is how we ended up going to Fair Oaks Farm.

Fair Oaks was pretty fun. We didn't ever see any real cows because we didn't make it that far. We spent a lot of time going through the museum-y part of it, then we spent A LOT of time playing outside. They have lots of these big fiberglass cows all over the place and Anja enjoyed filling their nostrils with rocks. She also enjoyed sniffing every flower on the property. Inside they have a little tiny playground where no one else was playing and the girls loved that too. It was really nice to have such a tiny area inside, and then outside everything is really spread out so they can run and frolick and always be in sight. The day was a great success with minor upsets, including me spilling our drink all over the floor, me spilling our other drink all over the table, and Greta having some serious bowel issues, but in the end it was a very happy day. And thanks to weirdo Martin and his pocket knife screwdriver, now all the wall activities in the Fair Oaks indoor play area are better secured.

Then on Monday, Martin's trading took him down south, and he took us along on that little trip too. We were going to go to this place called Leonard Springs Park in Bloomington, but the guy Martin was meeting up with advised us to head back to McCormicks Creek instead. He said Leonard Springs Road was a pretty rough part of town. So, we backtracked a few miles and ended up at McCormick's Creek, where I had never been, thanks to Martin's crappy graduating class who RUINED EVERYTHING FOR MY PERFECT CLASS all the way through school. Ugh, we missed out on so many field trips because after dealing with the nutcases in his class, none of the teachers wanted to go on the trips again.

Here is Anja on the tire swing:
Greta was still having some digestive troubles this day too (they have cleared up now) which meant we couldn't go far from the car (and diapers), and she was kind of grumpy. But we found this playground that had a cool bridge.

I can't believe how un-babyish Greta is getting. In this slide picture she looks like such a little girl! She's really started talking too--she says "shoe" in the same way Anja always has, except she makes the most hilarious face ever when she says it. I'll have to try to catch it on camera sometime.

And what would a roadtrip be without a little drama? One of our back windows is kind of broken and it slips down every once in awhile. Yesterday, when Martin shut the door, it slipped down. This wouldn't have mattered much, except we knew it was going to rain. So as the winds were picking up and we were getting ready to leave, McGyver--I mean, Martin--rigged up these "shims" to hold the window in place. A piece of advice to all you single girls reading this: Marry a man who carries a pocket knife! And if your man doesn't carry one, they make great gifts!

It was a good thing he fixed it too, because we drove right into the storms. By the time we got home, they had stopped and it was just rainy so we played outside in the rain for the rest of the evening.

A very good weekend! It's always hard to welcome back the work week. But at least tomorrow is already Wednesday!

Screamers

Does anyone else have the problem of having one (or more) children who are perfectly normal and happy, and one who just never stops screaming/whining/crying? Greta seems to have grown from a fairly happy (not joyful, but I would say average) baby into the most unhappy toddler I've ever met. I kind of can't believe how much she screams. I've spent most of my time since about Christmas feeling sorry for her and giving her many excuses. Teething, tummy aches, etc. But now I'm just getting worn down by her. And I feel so sorry for Anja... Anja, who builds things and wants to show me, but I have to shout my praise to her in order to be heard over Greta's screaming. Anja, who has become a better sleeper BECAUSE Greta spends so much time screaming. Anja who was such a difficult baby, but grew into such a GREAT toddler that we've been saying for months about Greta "just wait until she can crawl/walk/communicate. Remember how great Anja got when she hit that milestone?" And as these milestones come and go, she just becomes more and more difficult to the point where it's really hard for us to even leave the house.

Yesterday we drove down to McCormicks Creek and on the way down we stopped at the Conservation Club so Martin could shoot for a few minutes. The girls and I went toad hunting by the ponds. (We didn't find any.) On the way from the car to the ponds there is a fork in the drive that begins the exit, which goes up past the clubhouse and back around. We weren't going that way because that's not where the ponds are. Greta started up that way while Anja and I went straight and I turned back and said cheerfully, "C'mon, G! The pond is this way!" She threw herself down on the ground screaming and crying. This is the kind of sensitive she is. And she does this everywhere we go. In the yard, in the stores, in the car, at church, in the living room.

Does anyone else have this problem? And if anyone has, does it ever end?!

Less complainy post coming later, with pictures from the weekend!