I can see clearly now

Rocking the popcorn ceiling



Chair rail down, popcorn gone, chandelier hanging (dangling?!)



New ceiling, new walls, awesome table

It's amazing what clean windows can do for a room! Actually, these are brand new windows and most likely the cleanest they'll ever be. They went in yesterday, after sitting out on our porch for two frigid and busy weeks, on a blessedly warm winter day.  The room looks so clean.  Now, we just have to mud, tape, and paint - kind of a grayish blue is what I'm thinking.  My husband likes the idea of blue after learning years ago on the Today show that blue suppresses the appetite.  As if he needs to watch his weight.  Huh, so, does anyone know if white makes you eat hordes of Christmas cookies and candy? Because that's what this white sheetrock seems to be forcing me to do.

the right side of the brain

In my ArtEd classes we were taught that it's best to guide young children in drawing, not tell them how to do it.  Of course they need direction, and some kids are more likely to do well if you can give an example first, but after teaching high schoolers I think that mostly applies to older kids. Older kids are more worried about new stuff because they don't want to get it "wrong", and don't want to look stupid in front of their peers.  That always made me sad to see how uncomfortable some of my students got in a class that was only supposed to be fun. It's Art, I'd say! There is no wrong way to do it! (Unless you are carving inappropriate words into the tabletop with an X-acto knife.  Or throwing the X-acto into your seat mate's thigh, causing the need for 4 stitches. True story.  And then, my teenaged friend, you are waaaaay off base.)

Preschoolers are so imaginative! T is almost open to trying something new.  He usually asks, what does it mean?, when I say Let's paint by numbers, but he jumps right in, nowhere near actually using a paint brush correctly. But I want him to try however he wants.  So, I've been really hesitant to show him how to draw things when he asks for help.  I don't want to lead him to only draw houses made of squares with triangles on top, yellow circles in the sky and horizontal green lines on the paper below. (Because that is how I still draw houses). I mean, I know, this is how 3 year olds are able to representationally draw a house, using shapes they know, but I want him to try to figure it out on his own.

 Rainbow

 Our house

My favorite, our family. The dog gets me every time. Is he the next Calder?

Amateur Photographer

Last year, T got a camera for Christmas. One of those heavy-duty plastic ones for kids, made to be dropped, stepped on, and flung across a room during a temper tantrum (which it has been). Its batteries had been dead since before we moved to KC, and after a lot of begging, I recently put new ones in. After T snapped a few pics, we realized that the memory card was full, so, begrudgingly, I found the cord and uploaded all of the images on to my computer to free up space.

Out of the 840 (!) images on there, about 800 of them were of the floor or ceiling. Or me, close up, looking really annoyed. Oh, and one was an extreme close-up of me nursing G. That one took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at. The other 39 actually had a person of interest in some part of the frame. The camera does have a flash, but no other adjustments can be made as he takes pictures, so most of them are blurry but actually kind of cool - very pictorial. And I like the fact that T took them all during a time when I was too exhausted to document the no-sleep hell I was living in. (If I included any of the ones he got of me, you'd see a crazed look in my eye. Zoomed in. Like, pupil close.) And that these pictures were taken almost exactly a year ago, with teeny G making his holiday debut, is a cool comparison to the large child who now often out eats me at dinner, which really is a feat.

Here are a few of my favorites. (Sorry, the nursing picture didn't make the cut.)

All I want for Kwanzaa is my 7th tooth

G's wish came true. So, naturally, he ate his first apple. And loved it!

I love pie

We hosted our first Thanksgiving! 25 people, including kids. I did no cooking except for pies - a pecan, a chocolate pecan (the winner of the evening) and a salted caramel apple which was a total bummer, despite its delicious and exotic-sounding name (booooo Food Network magazine. This was the second loser I've made from your pages).

I was motivated to actually put pictures up on a few walls so guests had something to look at (in most rooms). In the dining room, however, it was just sheetrock on the walls and ceiling. But that was better than dangling insulation the night before. With my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and her fiance, we were able to put it up on Tuesday night. We ooohed and aaaaahed over the gleaming, beautiful white sheetrock, which was sooooo much classier than wood paneling and wood beams. Then, my initial excitement fading, I felt like we really had no business having guests over to eat in that room. But it all turned out fine and my husband even creatively pulled out colored pencils and invited everyone to graffiti the walls before painting, which turned out to be a big hit.

Here I am looking happy because it's almost time to eat, and I've had a glass (or 2?) of wine. Thanksgod it's over!

A bust

Halloween was, that is. Both boys were sick the day of; G with hand, mouth and foot disease (which sounds way worse than I would have imagined, though the Dr. said we were lucky considering G's mouth, hands and feet were all blistered when it's not usually all three at a time) and T just feeling yucky all day, culminating with a major barf attack in his bed that night. But, we have sweet neighbors who brought candy to him so he didn't miss out. I felt it was my duty to eat most of it, however, considering he was having stomach issues and all. Don't worry, I left him a couple rolls of Smarties.

T did have fun with holiday prep a few days before, which included pumpkin painting and a witch make-up trial. The pumpkin painting came about when a playdate mom asked me what I used to teach and upon hearing art she exclaimed "how fun! you must do all kinds of fun art projects with your kids all the time!" I said "er, oh, uh, yeah, not really, I mean, sometimes" and promptly ran home to pull out whatever art supplies I could find to do something with T right that minute. Shamed, I now have a few other things in mind for the holidays (gingerbread houses = candy!).

Here's T, chillaxin' in his socks and flip-flops, rehydrating after an intense pumpkin painting session.

T enjoyed being a witch for his school holiday parade. I wanted to do more with make-up but he really only wanted the green face and I had to sneak the eyebrows on. He wore black play clothes and an old black pashmina for a cape. The piece de resistance, if I do say so, was the broom I fashioned out of a tree limb from the mulberry bush in the front yard. After sanding it and taping the edges (no sharp ends!), spray painting it and cutting up a yellow trash bag for the fringe, I showed in to T proudly. He flew into a rage, saying I ruined his "hanging stick" (wtf is a hanging stick?) and refused to use it until I threatened to give it to G to be a Sweeping Dragon instead.

My dinner

and what I'll probably be eating for the next few months, aka basketball season: one dirty martini and one bowl of generic velveeta melted with salsa alongside stale chips. I licked the bowl clean with my index finger, thank you very much. (Two martinis and I surely would not have used my finger).

And, NO, the boys did NOT have velveeta and salsa for dinner. They had highly-processed potstickers around 5pm so that I could get them to bed early so I could have my drink. Er, I mean, my dinner.

Dinner party, anyone?