Posterchild

As my belly has become noticeably large, it has gained a lot of attention to the "3 and under" crowd in our house. Especially Maggie. Lately she likes to be "pregdent" just like mom, and a week or so ago she even kept her baby (a stuffed horse on this particular day) in her belly while we went to the store because upon urging her to remove it, she informed me that it wasn't big enough to get out yet. Also please note the B.A.C.A. tattoo she is sporting from a trip to the local farmers' market. All she needs is a candy cigarette between those cherub lips and she'd be the (literal) poster child for anti-teen pregnancy.

roleplay part deuce

so, my little "adventures in photography" session must have inspired me to try on other hats, because today i finally pulled out the new sewing machine i bought months ago and set it up. i was also inspired to make something from this cute polkadot material i bought on sale for $1/yard. and here (drumrole please) are the results:




and (ahem) i'd like to add that the little shirt being modeled by maggie was made SANS PATTERN. yes, that's right. i made a t-shirt entirely on my own. now, i know it's not perfect, in fact i had planned on this being a trial piece and i still plan on making another shirt, but i was pretty darn proud of the fact that my mock-up turned out so well. and under a sweater it's actually pretty cute:



we'll see what else i can conquer in the realm of sewing... i have gobs of fabric i buy with these "fun ideas" in mind. i still have gobs of fabric stashed away and no ideas have come to fruition (until now, of course). so, it's time to get busy. i'll keep you all posted.

Role Playing

A lot of role playing goes on at our house during the day. Maggie likes to play mom, teacher, Miss Tammy (her gymnastics instructor), doggie, princess, captain of a boat (my bed is her boat and whales and sharks swarm around us), and whatever else catches her fancy that day. Cash has only two roles that he relishes in: leach (where he [literally] sucks the life out of me) and vampire (where he bites anything in sight)- those two roles are often amassed into one painful (on my part) character.

I find myself trying to role play the part of the wife that has a sparkling clean, vacuumed house, dinner on the stove, and not a single unfolded piece of laundry- the domestic diva, if you will. Instead I usually end up playing the part of the partially comatose wife laying on the couch, waded paper towels in my fists and bits of crumbled cheerios in my hair, while my children run around half naked, ketchup smeared across their tiny faces and dirty diapers hanging off their bums...

Today I decided to try on a new "role", if you will... I decided to play the part of photographer and do a "photoshoot" with my children. This is slightly crazy on my part since a) I have no clue how to truly use a camera (you just point and shoot, right?) and b) I know highly talented photographers like Matt Clayton whom I ought to hire to take photos of my offspring. But I decided to give it a shot (ha ha, get it?), and so I stripped my kids out of their breakfast-encrusted pajamas and dressed them in some clean pants and shirts. I combed their hair, brushed their teeth, and set them on the floor of the living room where we had some semi-decent natural light coming in. And then I tried to take some pictures. And I tried to get all "artsy" using this feature on my digital camera where you select a color (I chose the blue from Maggie's jeans) and the camera only picks up that color and everything else is kind of a sepia tone. A pretty cool feature, if you ask me. So here are the fruits of my labors of the day. Needless to say, I won't be professing to be a photographer any time soon.

This is my favorite shot of Maggie, despite the sort of lackluster background:


Here's Cash's "best of":


Here's a montage of the pics of the day:


My children were naturals- meaning they acted natural in front of the camera... no shame:


And here is the pile of laundry that got ignored whilst I was role playing away:


And now I'd better go take care of the above pictured pile of laundry before my husband gets home and jumps at the chance to roleplay his favorite character: "angry, totalitarian leader"...