Embossing

Awake

I woke up from Turtle shaking her head* at 3:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Since I was also so very hungry, I decided to just get up.  And that is why I'm blogging at 4:32 in the A M.

*Turtle get yeast infections in her ear.  When it flares up, the shakes her head from side to side, presumably in an attempt to make the itch go away.  I cleaned her ear thoroughly.  I also cleaned a poop present Eddie left for us.

Crafting

I don't know what has come over me, but I seem to have this intense urge to create something.  I don't know what it is I want to create, nor do I recall having any such urges at any other time in my life.  I want to sew, I want to emboss, I want to make things.  It's the weirdest thing.

As such, I made all the thank you notes I sent this year. Embarrassingly, I don't think I even sent thank you notes in the past few years.  This year, I sent so many, that I started to lose track of what notes I'd already sent.  Suffices to say, if you happen to be one whom I should have thanked and I didn't, sorry.  If you happen to be one whom I over thanked ... sorry?  I don't know the protocol.

I took pictures of some of the thank you notes to show y'all the embossing that I'm so gaga over.  Some of them are not the most attractive things, but I didn't let that stop me from sending them!

This was my favorite.  That right there is an embossed ladybug.  Oh yeah.

This was to showcase Avery's art work. 

Doing the border was surprisingly difficult. The flowers are there because the corners were not well planned.

Another embossed ladybug

Embossing up close.

There were several other variations, but I didn't take pictures of all of them. The general theme is that I did most as a narrow, single piece of card stock, like the top one. Anyone who remembers our wedding invitations will know that I'm drawn to this layout. Our invitations were really, really simple.

Sewing

Christie and Henry came for a play date on Monday.  It was after Avery's first real swimming lesson (sans parent-in-the-pool).  I chose this time to try out my fancy new sewing machine with a fancy stitch.  Yeah, that didn't go so well.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I had to unclog the thread from the machine.  Christie ended up having to play with Avery and Henry while I sat there trying to figure out how to fix things.

Swimming

Avery's swimming lessons - the two she's had so far - have gone great.  She is one of four girls and one boy (that boy being Henry) in the class.  I'm not sure what I expected, but I know I left the first class very happy with the instructor and very happy with the pace of the class.  Avery had a great time.  Not shockingly, she needed no coaxing to participate in class.  Maybe next time I'll take my flip and get some video.

Helping

Avery has been helping me to cook dinner at night.  She does really well at following directions and not spilling things.  However, what she really loves is to wash dishes.  Yep, you heard me.  The only snag is that she likes to wash even the clean dishes.  She'll stand there washing dishes for a solid 15 - 30 minutes (which for Avery is a long time to do any one, independent activity).  She always ends up without clothes since she doesn't like when her sleeves get wet, even if it's just a drop of water.  Then she wants to put her apron back on, which results in the scene below.

This reminds me of that scene from Uncle Buck where Macaulay Culkin is washing the dishes.

Maturity

D has observed that Avery seems to have had a leap in maturity over the past week or two.  I have to say I agree.  For example, I decided we needed to do something about her excessive milk consumption.  I've tried many things before, and have ultimately failed because I find it very hard to say no when she's asking for something relatively healthy.  Also, it's just not a battle I was willing to fight.  What has ended up working wonderfully, and cut back drastically on milk consumption, is telling her she can have as much milk as she wants, but unless it Quiet Time Milk or Night Time Milk, it will be served in a glass rather than a sippy cup.  I expected some sort of backlash to this new rule, but she found it sufficient that she's still allowed sippy cup for QT and NT.  The other times, she'll say, "Please can I have milk please ... in a glass!" Yes, she says please at the beginning and the end of requests when she's concentrating on getting a "yes" from us.  I believe this is because I tried to get her to say, "May I have some milk, please?" and she wasn't used to saying "may" and it ended up replaced with "please."  I am not going to nitpick that point for sure!

Another area of progress is bed time.  She's more willing to go back to bed/floor (she falls asleep on the floor at the top of the stairs about 75% of the time) when we ask her to.  She is also sporadically sleeping the whole night in just her bed.  The other day, I woke up to find Eddie in the bedroom.  I figured D let Eddie in; D thought I let Eddie in.  Turns out that Avery was awake and playing with her toys outside of our closed door, but when Eddie asked to go in, opened it to let him in, then closed it again to continue playing.  She also asked to make another sleeping chart.  We lapsed on that method a while ago - even though it was fairly successful.   This time, I didn't even say what the prize would be.  It seems earning the star is motivation enough.

Another area where her willingness to cooperate has me thrilled: shampooing and conditioning of her hair.  Despite her love of water in the pool, laying down in a tub or getting water dumped over her head resulted in so.much.drama.  Over the last month, though, she's been willing to lay down in the tub and swish her hair around to get her hair washed.  The other night, I put the shampoo on her head and asked her to rub it in.  She did and then rinsed it on her own.  Same thing with the conditioner.  Before that, while she had the motor skills to shampoo/rinse, the desire to do so was simply not there.