Ten minute craft project

Just wanted to share my cute little sewing machine cover I made from a long unused fat quarter the other night.

It's a little misshapen, perhaps, but so is my machine, which is higher on one end than the other. And I've needed one of these forever.

I'm pretty happy with it!

Pics

A few pics from our weekend - here's Brett and Sofie all bundled up on the streets of Leavenworth. Note Sofie's cat, Little Soft Phoenix, who she takes absolutely EVERYWHERE these days. She's also holding a Christmas ornament that is a near-constant companion. I don't know why.

A great shot of the mountains from Main Street:

Dad and Brett on the horse-drawn carriage ride we took with Sofie.

Things Sofie Packed

When we go on a trip, I often hand Sofie a canvas shopping bag and let her pack her own set of toys. Of course, I also pack a few things I know she'll want but maybe not think to include - certain books, her leapfrog game, markers and crayons, her magnadoodle.

But I'm always amused by what she chooses. Here's what she packed for this weekend:

• Four stuffed animals
• One catnip mouse
• Two letter-shaped magnets
• One colored pencil, brown
• One ring from one of those stacking baby toys she hasn't played with in ages
• Three kleenex
• A roll of scotch tape
• One yard of dark blue velvet ribbon

What kind of conclusions can be drawn from this list? I'm not quite sure.

We're up at one of our favorite places, Sleeping Lady outside of Leavenworth for a few days. This is our third or fourth visit here, the last being when Sofie was about five months old. As you can see in my posts from 2007, on our last visit here in February it was 15 degrees and the snow was several feet deep. This year, it's 49, and there's almost no snow to speak of.

But it's still a lovely place, and we're happy to be up here for a few days. We brought my Dad along this time, installed him in the room next door, and are exploring the place with him. He's easy company and seems to be enjoying himself.

Poor Sofie, though. She's had a rough two weeks. Last weekend, she threw up for 48 hours. Then a few days later I got a killer sore throat that only really cleared up yesterday afternoon. Today, it's her turn again. she seemed more and more tired as the day went on, ended up laying on the floor in the dining room here "just resting", and when I finally wised up and carried her back to the cabin to check out my suspicions, sure enough. She's running a fever again and she said her throat hurt. Arg.

Luckily I travel with a bag of medical supplies, and the other good news is that mine cleared up on its own so it's *probably* viral, but still. It's no fun to be sick on vacation. She fell asleep in record time tonight and we'll take it easy with her tomorrow. With Dad here, one of us can still go out with him and enjoy the surroundings at different times of day while the other stays home in the cabin to be with Sofie, which is no real hardship. Most years we just come up here to read insanely huge piles of books and take walks and eat.

But still, I feel bad for her. Two different sicknesses in two weeks is a lot to bear for a toddler.

In retrospect, the second she showed no interest in eating a chocolate chip cookie at dinner tonight, I should have known she had the plague. Cuz this kid, she will stop to eat a chocolate chip cookie if the house is on fire. Just let me finish this mom, then I'm right behind you on that evacuation plan. Oh, and pass me some milk.

The human body, toddler version

Sofie and I had a long and amazing conversation on the couch tonight, shortly before supper, about the human body. I love three year olds. You can go from a kid who’s driving you crazy screaming because she doesn’t want to take a bath to a kid who’s quietly having a thirty minute science conversation with you in the blink of an eye. You just never know what you’re going to get.

It started because I said I had a sore throat.

“Where’s your throat?” she asked. So I showed her. And told her to swallow and feel what moved in her neck. And explained that when she eats food she puts it in her mouth and it goes down her throat to her tummy.

“And then out as POO!” she screamed in delight. Ah yes, her favorite part. This kid, she gets the digestive system.

But she seemed so interested and was in such a quiet, sit-still mood that I decided to move on to the circulatory system and tell her about her heart and what it did. She insisted that hers wasn’t beating right now, so we felt my heart. We felt her heart. We talked about what blood and veins do. She’s fascinated with veins, has been for a while now. She kept asking things like this:

“But why doesn’t the blood come out of your body?”
• “What color is blood?”
• “What are your veins made of?”
• “What are eyebrows for?”

And always returning to the central, most interesting fact for her – if you fall and get hurt sometimes blood comes out. But overall she seemed to get it. And then she asked about bones, so we talked a little about bones/muscles/skin/hair.

“Is there anything else you want to know about your body?” I asked her.

"Do bunnies have blood?” Yes, all animals have blood and skin and bones and muscles.
“All animals?” Yes, just about all of them.
“Stuffed animals too?”

So sweet. All these grownup topics, but at heart she doesn’t really know the difference between a live animal and a stuffed animal. She knows they’re different, but to her they’re both ALIVE. Why shouldn’t they have bones and blood and skin and hair like everyone else does?

An hour later, I put her to bed, curling up in her little toddler bed with her to tell her two stories about Phoenix the cat and sing her one song and then read my book next to her until she fell asleep, and just before she dozed off, she slid her arm over and put her hand on my heart, patting me gently like I pat her sometimes, then off into dreamland.

This mixture of whimsy and serious is a killer combination. I love watching her turn into such an fascinating little person, watching her learn new things and think deep toddler thoughts, and still getting those hugs and pats and kisses. Three is just about perfect.

Happy Valentines Day!

Fun in the snow

Sofie's first experience playing in deep snow was a great success. Once she got used to the fact that your feet sink, she had a wonderful time.



And, indeed, we made a whole bunch of snow-cats. This one even had a tail.


Ok, I made the snowcats. Sofie supervised.

Snowbound...

We're off on a last-minute, really short, road trip tomorrow to one of our favorite haunts in Eastern Washington - up to Mazama for one night to see some friends and take care of a little business. And although I thought we'd gotten better at traveling light in the last three years, this still involves:

• Packing two Sofie outfits each for both the trip there and the trip home, since she will inevitably throw up 2.5 hours into the trip. My little pukemonster. It took us a while, longer than it should have, to realize she was carsick and not actually miraculously coming down with the flu each time we were on vacation, but now that we know it's really just a matter of planning for it (no snacks in the car for you, kid, and hey, don't take your tarp off yet!) and then moving on.
  
  
• Engineering some kind of carseat cover that can be peeled off and tossed in a plastic bag after the incident mentioned above. Which involves something like cutting slits in a beach towel so it can be draped over the carseat. Or perhaps entirely encasing her in plastic.
  
  Ah, the things I never thought I'd blithely accept as par for the course before having a kid...
  
  
• Throwing her little toddler bed mattress in the cartop, because our hotel room has only one bed. Sounds nuts but we've done this before with great success. Who wouldn't like taking their own bed with them everywhere they go?
  
  
• Packing a big bag of boots, hats, gloves, scarves, and snowsuits because WE ARE GOING TO PLAY IN THE SNOW! Woo hoo! It's been unseasonably warm in Seattle all winter and it's looking less and less likely that we're going to see any snow here, so we're pretty excited.
  

So we'll report back on the snow and fun in a couple days!