Braiding

I taught G how to braid some time ago, and now that she's really got the hang of it, everything's turning up braids – even my hair!

Pants to Skirt

I've had this pair of maternity pants since at least BB, a pair of hand-me-downs that I've never been able to wear because they're too small: the only time I can wear them is when I'm not pregnant. So last week while Drew was out of town on business, I summoned my sewing mojo – she's been ignoring me this summer –, ripped into those pants and made a skirt (similar to these). And before the will to sew left me entirely, I managed to finish the hem. Yay!

St James, Pray for Us!

I'm a couple days late on this one...

Monday was St James's feast day, and to celebrate, Elizabeth pulled together a last-minute tapas party with the family, such fun!

After Dinner Snack

She gets this from her sisters, don't ask me why: you'll be grossed out.


With sound effects...

Personalized Coasters

Even super moms like me (mwhahaha!) have trouble keeping track of the sheer number of cups that get used – and "misplaced" – in a given day. Some days, I could swear I've washed every single cup in our cabinets – twice.

Enter the personalized cup mats. I first saw this idea a couple years ago, but only recently felt I had a great need for it, so it got bumped to the top of my projects list. Originally, I had wanted to do nautical alphabet flags (idea from here), but M's name and "Mama" presented a problem. A friend of mine has a set of ravioli felt squares (with initials) that one of her daughters made. I, however, wanted something unique to our family, i.e. not just our initials, since I'm going to the trouble of making them. While shopping for ideas, I hit upon some state outlines and thought, "This is it!", because each of us was born in a different state. Can you guess who belongs to which state?

There's even one for guests (pictured with backing fabric).

The Rounds

You can now add cardiology to my list of been-there clinics at Children's Mercy.

At M's 1-year check, the doc heard a murmur, which she thought we should have checked out. Both G and BB had murmurs when they were about this age, the then-doc thought they were nothing to worry about – and it seems they've outgrown their murmurs as expected. From what I understand, M's murmur was intermittently louder, so on Monday we had a baseline EKG done and a sonogram of the heart. She handled both tests rather well – the staff at Children's Mercy are well-versed in distraction –, and though they weren't able to get all the pictures they wanted (because she wasn't absolutely still), Dr Shah tells me that the pulmonary valve is slightly narrowed (stenosis). At present, it doesn't seem to be causing her any health problems, e.g. shortness of breath or stunted growth, and it's likely the murmurs will eventually go away. (Only 1% of kids require surgical intervention.) So we'll return in a year for a checkup, and hopefully a better sonogram.

During our wait in the exam room, M played with a wooden box step stool, dropping a number of items, like my wallet, a pen and her dress, into the top handle-hole and trying to retrieve them, which her arm was too short for. It was interesting to see that she didn't understand that her dress needed to be shoved into the hole because it was too big for it to simply drop in like the smaller items.

Defective Taste Buds

Because of her meds, which are only slightly sugar coated to disguise the bitter taste, I wonder that Z will eat a lot of things she might not ordinarily. Like cloves of raw garlic.

Tour of Parks

We had an ambitious plan to visit five parks – with kids' play structure – we'd never been to before here in Lees Summit. But the heat brought us up short at two.

The first and closest to our house was the Charles David Hartman Memorial Park. It's home to the adult softball league, so well-tended and probably very busy on game days. But of a sweltering hot Saturday, it was just us and another group BBQing. All I can say is thank goodness for the partial shading near the play structure.

The second, Williams-Grant Park, was near downtown LS. At that time of day, there was excellent shade at the swings, and a very fun looking but hot-to-the-touch pirate ship play structure. At this point, we decided to break for lunch at the Filling Station: excellent BBQ (and air conditioning).

Afterwards, we drove in search of Happy Tails Park, also an off-leash dog park with agility course, but we didn't have directions – and later realized we were in an entirely wrong part of town –, so we headed home in search of an afternoon nap.

Four Eyes

About 3-6 months ago, I started noticing BB's eyes moving independent of one another, so I suspected she might have two lazy eyes. I mentioned it to our pediatrician and she referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist, whom we saw yesterday. The process for checking a child's eyes is somewhat different than what I'm used to for my eye exams, esp the use of prisms and individual lenses: very interesting. As it turns out, BB doesn't have lazy eyes. She's far-sighted and cross-eyed due to needing glasses.

We got these cute frames, one red, one pink, over at Eyemasters. It was quite the ordeal, BB wanted pink frames with sparkles, but had to settle for these – though I adore the red ones on her – for their smaller size. Drew had a hard time believing that BB needs such a strong prescription, they're quite thick. BB, however, kept reassuring him that she could see much better with them on, that she liked her glasses very much. Now, we're left to feel guilty that she hadn't been seeing well all this time.

Redo!

I decided to redo (above) the jar lantern that we gave to Emily for her birthday, I think it turned out better than before (below, the blue looks whiter because it hadn't had a chance to dry yet), although with less of the "Moroccan" flavor to it. For one thing, my first bottle of gold paint was, I think, past its prime and didn't give as clean results as the second bottle (different brand).

Feed Me

Take Care of You

As I was making lunch today, BB told me, "When you get old, I'm going to cook for you everyday. I'm going to make you chocolate bread and fried rice and... Play-Doh."

Me: To eat?
BB: No, so I can make you a pretty [Play-Doh] ring like this one (showing me her Play-Doh bling).

Question

Cutting into our fourth watermelon of the summer, I pondered, "How are children supposed to practice their champion seed spitting skills if watermelons no longer come with seeds?"

Outside of the Box

The 5th annual Taco Bell Day, and BB and Z got their fingernails painted. We've been trying to get BB to stop biting at the skin around her nails, and I suggested we could paint some bad tasting stuff on her fingernails so she would remember not to do it. Of course she automatically thought of nail polish and was very receptive to the idea. Z just happened to be standing nearby – and G was taking a nap.

M slept through dinner, which included mostly soft and crunchy tacos,

and chips and cheese for everyone, a step up from last year when we had to share. My favorite feature of Taco Bell Day: the super easy clean up.

Kale Chips

These (pictured above, from here) were a big hit the first time we made them when my mom was here. So this week, I acquired a lot of kale – from a friend's garden and our local CSA – and went to work. At first I had lots of help with the salad spinner (for the initial drying) and the ripping, but then I lost all my helpers to snacking after the first batch came out of the oven. What they don't know...

BB: I can taste the potato chip on the "inside"!

Poor Thing

M's teething a couple of molars (on the bottom). I hope they're sharp so we can get this over with sooner.

The Arthur Weekend

Drew's good friend, and BB's godfather, Arthur came to visit us this 4th of July weekend.

We took him to see the city's fireworks display at Legacy Park on Friday evening.

Then on Saturday Drew took A on a sightseeing tour of downtown KC, while the girls and I spent the day at a friend's birthday pool party, they had so much fun! In the evening we had a nice, quiet pizza and movie night.

After church on Sunday, everyone had a nap, and then we had a backyard BBQ and set off fireworks in the drive. A and Drew were like a couple of little boys.

Us adults had a good laugh in reading the city's fireworks code (on the back of our permit), which states, among other things, that "...it shall be unlawful for any person to possess, store, handle, or use... items..., which contain wording on the caution label that is substantially similar to the following: 'warning shoots flaming balls' or 'warning shoots flaming balls and reports'..." At least half our arsenal, bought right here within city limits, contained such wording.

The girls' favorites were the pull poppers and the snaps (that you throw on the ground), probably because they were the most predictable.

It's always interesting – and startling – to see what the various fireworks do. This year's least liked was a pyramid shaped one that spun and "screamed" and then shot into the air. (BB cried.) A similar but better liked one was the Ladybug, which spun but didn't shriek, shot up into the air, did another little thing and then shot up higher into the sky. There was one with a propeller on it that rocketed towards one of the neighbor's houses and exploded in their bush. Good thing they weren't home, nor was anyone else it seems, to see us hunting around in their yard looking for the pieces. There were a couple of rather "quiet" ones, which we liked very much, that simply shot colored sparks about a foot into the air. Hands down the best one was the Fireworks Fiesta, which shot a volley of three different kinds of fireworks about 10-20 feet in the air, no ear splitting shrieks, no surprises.

Before A's departure on Monday, we took him to the original Fiorella's in Martin City for lunch: good stuff. Might I recommend the burnt ends stew.

And for dessert, we tried Peachwave for the first time for some frozen yogurt. Note: the strawberry boba topping isn't really boba, they're more like strawberry flavored salmon roe. Strange, I know, I thought so too.

We hope to see Arthur again real soon!