My Solace

Costumed

Yeah, so I'm late getting these up, whatever. The kids had a good Halloween. They went trick-or-treating with their Daddy. When they came home, I made popcorn and we all watched Frankenweenie. The old one from 1984.

(While they were all out, I did a tea leaf reading. But that's a story for another day.)

She's lucky I'm an artist

My view has always been that no canvas or wall is truly big enough for my vision. My daughter shares this. Mere paper? No. That won't do. She needs walls. She needs to climb on furniture to make the faces big enough. She's lucky that her momma understands her vision. 

I tried to capture some of her work, but it just doesn't come across in pictures with the same impact as in real life. Her work is bold and striking and raw. I can definitely see the early influence of Seuss and the Minions coming through, but her voice is her own.

That first image is one of my favorite of these pieces. It has been a while in the making. She will work on it in chalk, wiping it away over and over until she gets it right. Then she'll set in down in graphite or (washable) crayon. 

The final image is the start of her mural in her brother's room. It greets him upon waking. The top is higher than his head. 

Bea's Hair

This is old news for my facebook friends, but for my blog readers, here's something that happened recently. Bea's hair had become a monstrosity. It had a life of its own and would not be tamed. I had taken to calling her Tatterhood because she was generally disheveled and impossibly scruffy looking. I mean, look:

I did not add a vignette effect to this; The light naturally comes in that way.

It was starting to dread up and had inevitable foodstuff at all times lodged in it. De-tangling it was a long and screamful process that left us mad at each other for extended periods. So it just had to go. She was ok with it, surprisingly. I made the mistake of letting her see Tangled when she was 2 and she's wanted butt length hair since then. But lately she's been begging for an "Amby haircut."

This is what she got:

One of the best decisions of my life.

Portraits By Beatrice

Do you get all awkward when people take pictures of you? I do! And it's really silly because I feel totally comfortable in front of a camera when nobody else is around. All the pictures of me you ever see on here are self-portraits.

Until now.

Beatrice decided she wanted to take pictures of her own mama. I think she's a natural. She made me feel totally at ease and we just had fun! For a 4 year old, she's pretty good. I wasn't even nervous about her handling my camera...

Tomatoes!

It's been raining too much for us to have the best crop this year. But still, some good cherry tomatoes have grown in our little backyard garden. Bea is so into this. She harvested some this morning and already ate her favorite one! Here she is bright and early.

There was a fat little bunny in the garden this morning. I saw him when I was fixing the coffee and hollered out the window. He ran off, but came back a few minutes later. Guess we'll have to put up a scarecrow. 

Little House, Little Girl, Little Dress

One day last week, I got a wild hair and went up in the attic. I got down all my fabric scraps and found that they entertained the kids for HOURS. While they were thus occupied, did I catch up on chores? Did I do something pressing and necessary? Nope.

I made Bea a dress and pinafore.

Kids need play clothes afterall and she's pretty much outgrown last year's shorts, omg they're tiny! I prefer to avoid normal kids clothes as they are covered with characters and logos. Ugh. So I can go to Buy Buy Baby where they sell adorable gender neutral clothes (see Bea model them here, here and here) for really not that much dollars. But still a lot compared to yard sale prices which are pretty much my speed.

Or, or. Or I can make them Fraulein Maria style from old drapes and bedsheets and requisitioned garments. As I do occasionally for myownself.

So I made the pattern for the bodice out of muslin and fitted it to her with room to grow. A dress and pinafore are perfect for a little kid like Bea. She can play hard and not worry about messing anything up because the pinafore protects the dress and said pinafore is of a patterned fabric. Try getting a stain to show up on it! It's a lot cuter than standard kids' clothes and relates to the book characters she's grown up with from those of Beatrix Potter to Laura Ingalls Wilder to more recently George MacDonald.

Being Naughty

Beatrice and I saw a girl in a video doing gymnastics.

"Why is she doing gymnastics?" asked Bea.

"She likes doing it," said I. "A lot of people have something they really love doing. When they do it, they feel very happy. I love playing piano. When I play piano, I feel very happy. What do you like doing, Honey? What makes you feel happy?"

She was very quiet for a few beats, chin tucked into her chest as she thought. Then very seriously and gravely, she said,

"Being naughty."

Four

Do you remember being four?

I do. It's pretty vague, but I remember bits and pieces, like snapshots.

That's when we moved from the trailer onto the farm. That's when Hudson got born, bringing the total number of kids up to 4. I played with G. I. Joes and spent most of my time outside. Pretending was a big thing for us. I was afraid of cows, but overall the world was a good, safe place and things always turned out fine. I had a child's faith in God and my parents.

From my parents' accounts, I was excessively silly, optimistic, eager and empathetic, but I don't remember those things. However, those very words are the ones my closest friends and family use to describe me now!

My point is that when we are very small children, we are already ourselves. We gain a lot from life experience and education and all that good stuff. But our basic identity and personality are already there.

This is on my mind because on Friday, Bea will be four years old. I see a lot of interesting traits in my daughter. Beatrice is a wild thing in so many ways. She appreciates the value of good manners and does her best to behave, but is independent. Fiercely so.

She creates environments  It's something she's always done and she has particularly developed this skill since we've relaxed about room tidiness. She'll pull her mattress onto the floor and move the bed out from the wall and spread linens around and makes piles here and there so that her room is divided into various regions. It looks like a tornado swept through, but she likes that. She's into tornadoes. And volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes.

Another interesting thing about Beatrice is her loathing of clothing, lol. She prefers seamless garments. Like Gandhi. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I make her be modest if we go out, because I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, but around the house, I let her go like this:

Beatrice is inventive, curious, stubborn and silly. That's how she is now, that's how she's been these four years. I expect that as an adult, those will still be some of her defining characteristics.

Out Takes

Yesterday, Miss Beatrice played model for me. We got through about 10 garments in under half an hour, a feat made possible by James pressing play and Am drinking an unlimited amount of raw milk.

All these little looks will be up in the shop soon, along with lots more. These are just some out-takes. The ones we really use won't be so blurry.

It's neat to be able to look back at earlier modeling pictures of this girl and see how she's turning into such a kid. As opposed to a baby. Those cheeks are slimming already!

Mama-mode

Weekends are busier than weekdays for me, but I'm ok with that. Time is flying super fast with so, so much to do and I certainly don't want to look back and feel that I missed important moments. But, boy, am I ready to get through with school already! I want it to go by at a nice clip like this, full speed to graduation! 

Most of my days are spend with long stretches of not thinking about school at all because I am in mama-mode 100%. If I get distracted by thoughts of school or -heaven forbid- try to work on school, the kids pick up immediately that I am disconnected from them. And then they act out. 

But if they get my full attention, it's smooth sailing. Like today, so far. They are learning constantly and it is mostly because James and I take the time to answer all the many questions. "Mama, talk about tornadoes." I hear that about 15 times a day. (I was going to say a hundred, but 15 is the literal average.) Mama-mode time is mostly spent sitting at eye level with Bea or Am a foot or less away from my face intently explaining all kinds of things about our world and partly spent teaching them how to do chores. 

(Having chore help was definitely a factor in deciding to have kids!)

It's funny to think about all my friends at school* who think they really know me, but haven't seen even a glimpse of who I am as a mom, who I am primarily.

*excluding Beth of course

What She Wore :: Frida Baby

I only titled the post that way because I have "Santa Baby" stuck in my head. (Possibly thanks to a friend who reminds us all on facebook that Christmas-song-time is coming up [not that he hasn't been listening to those songs all year].) Anyway, back to the post. Beatrice has this amazingly fun outfit that she likes to wear for dress up. Yes, that's right, she wears clothes sometimes. But only sometimes. (See flickr page) I made the skirt and James took the pictures.

The skirt goes all the way to the floor and she calls it her Laura skirt. Like Laura Ingles. We read that earlier this year. We started The Chronicles of Narnia last week, but it didn't work. Her eyes just got too darn big with wonder while I kept tearing up due to an excess of nostalgia. It's fine. We'll wait a few years until Amby is ready to join us. For now we'll stick to My Father's Dragon. 

That Bird Finger

Some of you newer readers may not know that this time last year Beatrice was recovering from a broken finger and surgery to set the bone. She was in a full arm cast for what felt like ages. Well, today, she had her final appointment at the Hand Center. Her finger is fully healed and growing right on track. We are so happy!! And she's had a whole year practicing holding that one, adorable finger up in isolation.

Did you think I was going to show you the picture of the three year old flipping you off? Too bad.

Thanks

Thank you all for your supportive and encouraging comments regarding my sweet three year old.

This week, I have worked on being patient and sticking to my guns. Mama gave me the Supernanny book which has a lot of ideas for lovingly dealing with behavior issues. We (James and I) have a few tactics we are using. Primarily, I keep a close enough eye on her to detect the makings of a tantrum before it hits and head it off. Redirect! I have also spent a $h!t ton of time playing, chasing, singing, dancing this week and I have upped the number of reading lessons.

Things are getting better.

Beatrice This Week

This pretty little three year old has given me a run for my money this week. I feel completely drained.

Tantrums, I guess you would call them. But they are usually not over anything at all. For example, one began when she was served a dinner that she was particularly excited about. She laughed until she cried and then just got out of control. The tantrums last from 10-45 minutes. She gets so hysterical that all the normal forms of discipline/consequences only make it worse. She won't be cuddled or hugged. She's fallen and hurt herself during the tantrums and has run into the road. She lashes out at the rest of us.

Today I felt like I was really at the end of my rope. I just held her, despite the thrashing and sobbing. I sang her hymns and rubbed her back. It's heart breaking to want to help your child, but not know how.

Only one thing in the world has worked to calm her down and I'll be damned before I go through that again. (It's telling her a Thomas the Train story that I had to make up on the spot about Thomas delivering sunglasses to all the engines on the Island of Sodor to keep Sir Topham Hat from becoming quite cross. Ugh.)

I'm going to try to get her in to the pediatrician Monday. We are staying home all weekend to work on this. Then I will stay home all next week if I need to. Whatever it takes to get back on a good routine and an even keel with happy, healthy kids.

If you are parent, please share any insight you may have in dealing with this kind of situation.