sharon van awesome

last night, with the help of some wonderful family members who were willing to turn their one child valentine’s eve into a two child affair with a darla sleepover, i celebrated valentine’s day without my salty sailor. i stepped out to view sharon van etten at the wexner center for the last few hours of love’s day. i officially fell in love with sharon.

she’s really the most adorable thing to come along since the opening credits of little house on the prairie. you know, when that littlest one falls down the hill. but i’m talking pre-blind-mary little house. does anyone know if the storyline of mary meeting a blind boy at blind school and them falling in love, marrying and having a non-blind baby was for realsies or just a plot line for ratings? what? no one else was watching syndicated LHotP after school? you were missing out. i have two words for you: Michael Landon.

but i digress.

here this will bring us back to topic. some sharon van viewing for you.

ps. i love that the opening pic on sharon’s website is from the black cat, currently. gawd, i miss that place.

a week of F

learning at home about the letter F

funny faces with our friends and fried eggs in toast

Fairies! this has to be my crowning achievement thus far as a parent. that and the fact that darla loves to watch water birth on youtube. we did days and days of fairy learning.

counting them, reading poems and books about them, drawing them, movies about them, dressing like them. we just did a comprehensive fairy lesson. i discovered that robert louis stevenson involved fairies in many of his children’s poems. the elementary school that darla will attend is named after this fantastical man and i have decided that she will enter into the public schooling system under his namesake solely on the fact that he liked to write about fairies. these little beings are no joke to me.

we drew foxes and frogs. movies about each. we read about foxes and frogs. we even found one book that involved foxes, frogs and fairies. how convenient.

i let darla pick out some flowers for the week and we reviewed the different parts of flowers.

we learned a lot about france and i tried to incorporate some french vocabulary into the week

the end result was some highly stereotyped finger art

we went out to a french bistro where darla ate butter straight from the packet like any good french citizen would

we did a lot of other things that i won’t bore you with. but i love sharing what we do so the next time you see my child spinning in circles talking in a made up language i have some proof that i’m making attempts at educating the dear child.

14Feb2012

lovely little valentine

Posted in love and happiness by ElaineMarie

love’s day in our house this morning:

yummy sprinkle french toast and lots of love for breakfast.

love vibes to you all today.

13Feb2012

why i’m glad we were sequestered for 5 days

Posted in Momma Needs a minute..., parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

well, ok, semi-sequestered.

the first reason being it was freaking cold.

the second was some much-needed momma reality check time with my daughter.

our first week without dad was a rough one given that darla got sick and required an extreme extra amount of attention at the time when i was now getting used to handling it all by myself again. timing, you are a sneaky snake and i don’t like you’re dirty tricks!

but it turned out to be a good thing for us. it helped me to slow down and spend a lot of time with her. extra time that i’m sure she needed to readjust. i take darla for granted sometimes because she seems to be unfazed by so many things that i assume she will pick up on our life shifts and adapt. for the most part she does and when she doesn’t i tend to be hard on her. i know that i need to give her some room to be a child and adjust at her own pace. it can just be really hard for me to remember when i’m trying to juggle the single-parent thing. it’s one of the many areas of my parenting with which i’m struggling.

so darla’s sickness was a blessing in disguise. it slowed us down. it led to more games, books, movies, cuddles. we had more conversations than we’ve had in a while. it’s nice that she and i can gab back and forth now.

it also showed me that if i can learn to let my expectations go she can be so very good. sometimes it can be frustrating because she seems to be really good for me at home and then with an audience she acts out. i want her to be able to behave even when she has the excitement of others around. but that’s just how she is.

and last week i came to a realization: i don’t base my child’s value as a human being on how well-behaved or well-mannered she is. i need to stop worrying and caring if other people are going to base their evaluation of her on just that. there are many that do. sometimes it’s strangers and sometimes it is people closer but in my opinion they are the ones that just don’t get it.

darla is wildly imaginative, playful, happy, loving and engaging. she will march up and talk to anyone. most of the time it’s inappropriate things like telling every table in the french restaurant about her sores that turned into scabs and fell off. but she’s not afraid to put herself out there and i love that about her so much. i love that she’s not scared. i want to foster these qualities because i think the fear of being who you are is one of the worst afflictions to our society.

so i’m hoping to take more time for the remainder of this winter for quiet days in the house, just she and i. when we can. there’s a lot of growing that she and i have to do together.

and…then again…this might just be a big rationalization of why it was awesome to stay in my pajamas all day for 5 days straight…

13Feb2012

weekending

Posted in let me let me update ya, love and happiness by ElaineMarie

how was your weekend? here’s a little bit of ours:

1. bundling 2. imma readem 3. chalkboard walls 4. ready for california 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9. valentine’s sticker fun 10 & 11. peanut butter + nutella bagel 12. drawings of “the straight and narrow path” 13. girls night in 14, 15, 16, & 17. painting pottery with cousin clare and aunt colleen at clay cafe 18. valentine’s and tokyo post card 19. pink lips 20. laundry day 21. try this on for size 22. she says she’s an ice princess.

10Feb2012

have i mentioned

Posted in love and happiness by ElaineMarie

how much i love our new neighborhood? it makes such a difference to feel safe and happy in your home while your other half is sailing around the world. ok, he’s not sailing around the world. just around one part of the world.

i feel like there is so much to explore. see this lovely gift basket of local business goodies from our friend and now neighbor diana? isn’t it lovely? isn’t she lovely for gifting us? don’t the rest of you feel bad for not giving us baskets? don’t worry, there’s still time to send them.

jk. just come hang with me in our new hood and we’ll call it even.

resolutions

how are you doing with your resolutions? well, i have actually forgotten the name of the website that is supposed to be keeping track of my progress. does that tell you how i’m doing?

i do want to report that now that i’ve completed my backlog obsession with friday night lights, i’ve gotten back to reading. books.

my first book submission to you for 2012 is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

i really loved this book. very detailed and in depth. it has a lot going on so i pretty much had to set the book down and digest for a few days before picking back up again, which can be good. i started this book at the end of 2011 and it took me a while to finish.

i have to make a comment about the universe. i did a lot of labor, birth and breastfeeding reading for doula certification in 2011. i kept trying to work fiction into the mix in between my required materials. all the fiction books i picked randomly had a main character who was a midwife or obstetrician.

i get it universe. i’m on the right path. even when i was trying to get away from reading about the ladyparts i couldn’t.

9Feb2012

turning it all around

Posted in Momma Needs a minute..., Run Da House by ElaineMarie

today has had a much better aura. i discovered a few things out of place that have seemed to put the house more in balance:

finally got my invocation of hestia up on the mantle. hestia is the goddess of the hearth and home. my invocation reads:

dear hestia, please grace this house with your presence. Grant us peace and serenity within these walls.

and i realized our sad absence of music. husfriend is usually mixing the music and i hadn’t realized i’d been overlooking that bit of our normal home atmosphere. today we’ve been spinning:

tennis – getting geared up for their show in 2 weeks. eeek. and my old faithful. rumours literally saved mealtime. as soon as “you can go your own way” started i suddenly didn’t care anymore that darla wasn’t eating her meal.

we’ve had a lot more nice, quiet moments to enjoy like this one.

9Feb2012

time out

Posted in Momma Needs a minute..., parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

mikey’s only been gone a week and i already feel like putting my head through a wall.

three is a lot whinier than two.

momma is losing her grip and her patience. it’s clear i need a new strategy. i’ve got my daily dose of peaceful parenting tips coming in from the interwebs but i’m thinking i need to add some more parenting books to my collection.

has anyone read positive discipline or dr. sears’ discipline book? suggestions? any recommendations or strong drinks you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

thanks a mil.

8Feb2012

snow day play

Posted in kiddie-do by ElaineMarie

a sick girl can still go out and enjoy the snow.

i was so thankful to wake up and see the snow this morning. for one, it meant i had a good excuse to make a baked good for breakfast. two, i haven’t been able to take darla out to play in the snow all winter. why? because we’ve had none. we had a good time watching the big kids run around for recess.

darla’s favorite activity: