I've Moved

Maybe its the springtime...maybe I'm getting enough sleep to be less cynical...maybe I'm now so completely overtired that I've completely lost it. I have no idea.

In any case, I've moved and renamed my blog and won't be posting here no mo'.

The new blog is softer, prettier and a bit more down-home...a bit more like I'm feeling these days. Hopefully I'll stay that way.

Check it and redirect yo'self.
The Purple Canoe

Victory Over Gravity

Some of you know that I've been trying to overcome the confines of gravity for over ten years. While my feet are still planted firmly on the frozen earth of our island, I did achieve a small miracle during the month of February....


...we have yet to get it up over Luca's crib, but it is currently the only thing that will get him to stop screaming about the fact that he has majorly ouchy gums these days. We should all give a moment of thanks that we can not remember what it is like to get teeth.

Below are a few other hand-sewn confections. A bird and a little red canoe, both from organic cotton scraps left over from the Shubha days and filled with kapok. And no, the canoe did not take a dip in the harbor...that is in fact drool covering the stern.


And a Scandi mei tai I pieced together from this fantastic tutorial.


And lastly, for you viewing pleasure...Beans himself wearing momma's winter hat.

Maybe if I hot-glue my eyelids shut I could get some rest.

My neighbor came over a few weeks ago, took one look at Luca laying peacefully on the couch staring at the ceiling and trying to yell with his fist in his mouth (we think he may be gifted) and declared that he needed a mobile.

Oh, right. Of course he does. Babies need mobiles.

Kreg and I are trying to minimize acquiring anything a) plastic, b) battery operated and c) ugly for the babe and the mobiles that fit the bill cost enough to pay our heating oil bill for an entire month and might as well have been crafted by Calder himself.

So me, fancying myself as an artsy-fartsy type decided that I would MAKE Luca a mobile. I found this very beautiful idea on the web at spoolsewing.com.


I could do THIS. Sew some little birdies together, gather some sticks, throw the whole thing together with some fishing wire and presto...Luca would be staring up the asses of a bunch of birds in no time.

So I sewed the birds (by hand may I add), stuffed them, found some dry sticks (no small feat in Maine in January) and got ready to assemble the mobile. By this time I was starting to feel pretty good about myself...maybe I could be one of those crafty stay-at-home moms who always look beautifully crunchy, slings her baby around the house and comes up with delicious and inventive ways to cook tempeh.

And then things started to get ugly.

I realized that I was going to need a hot glue gun. For my own personal safety and the safety of others, anyone who knows me tries to keep me away from anything that makes crumbs, stains or is sticky. Hot glue is a no-no.

I went to our little local hardware store and selected a glue gun and some extra glue sticks. And the total (I'm not kidding) came to $6.66. The lady working the register nervously handed me my change and I made some flip comment about how I was probably going to glue my fingers together to try and lighten the mood. Ha-ha. I should have known.

Kreg took one look at me and that glue gun and started spreading newspaper all over the kitchen like I'd brought home a new puppy. I assured him that everything would be fine.

And everything DID go fine until I started trying to assemble all those bird-festooned sticks. NOTHING would make those little birdies stand upright.

Here's a photo of one level of my mobile. Do not adjust your screen.


In addition to the little problem we call gravity, I was using copper wire and fishing line. Copper wire is a great conductor of heat and fishing line basically, um, melts when it hits hot glue...so you can see where this went. I need not go into details except to say that I burned my fingers, there were little birdies dropping onto their heads all over the kitchen and Luca learned a few new words.

In my desperation I got onto the Internet in search of help to try and find other people who had been total failures at this project...a support group maybe? I found lots of crafty mommy bloggers who had posted photos of their beautiful mobiles and written comments like "This project was such a snap, I think I'll make three more tonight while my baby sleeps peacefully for 10 hours straight".

F@$#!

After two afternoons of hot glue madness I finally assembled something satisfying. Luca loves his mobile in any case...and I like to think its because it is beautiful and because it radiates totally devoted lovey-dovey mommyness. Then Kreg pointed out yesterday at dinner that Luca would probably like to stare at anything we hung over his crib.

Thanks Kreg.

i.obviously.need.more.sleep.

This is the reason why blogging is a really, really bad idea.

So poor Luca has got a majorly stuffy nose and last night when he woke up to eat he was so stuffed that he was choking and sputtering and overall having an AWFUL time of it. So, I got him up and walked him around and decided to change his diaper.

So there I am at 2:30am, standing at the changing table trying to coax this GINORMOUS booger out of Luca's nose and thoroughly enjoying myself. I was up for the challenge. Those of you with children know that there is little in life more satisfying than getting a giant piece of snot out of your kid's nose. I finally got it out and it was, what Kreg likes to call, a "booger the size of King Kong".

And do you know what went through my mind as I was working on this little project?

Have you ever picked a booger out of someone's nose at 2am?
What a great topic for a blog post!

No it isn't. No it isn't. No it isn't.
I am so sorry.

A Word About Titles - On Sock Monkeys and Presidents

Before I registered for this blog domain I Googled it just to see if someone else also had a pundit of a sock monkey brainwashing their baby.

They don't. Surprised?

However, the search came up with hits about a company in Utah, who last summer created a sock monkey doll in the form of our not-yet-to-be-president Barak Obama. An apparently innocent (although naive and fairly misguided) idea, but the NAACP and a lot of other people rightfully went totally bizerk. Oops.

Just for the record this website has nothing to do with that company or the apparent Obama sock monkey controversy. It did get me thinking though and all in all (although I understand the underlying racist connotations) I don't think a sock monkey is all that terrible a thing to resemble. After all, Rod Blagojovich looks very much like a cross between John Travolta and something that went wrong at the Muppet Workshop, Margaret Werner of the Jim Lehrer Newshour is a dead ringer for Dr. Spock's long lost sister and Dick Cheney bears a striking resemblance to Satan.

How the Monkey met his Match

My son has a sock monkey.

Its not just any old sock monkey...this one's got an attitude like you wouldn't believe. I haven't ever actually spoken with him personally, but I do know that he and Luca have long conversations prior to Luca's morning nap that usually end with the sock monkey saying something so disturbing that my poor boy ends up very grumpy.

The whole ordeal goes something like this:
I lay Luca down in his crib for his morning contemplation / nap. Luca turns to the monkey, offers the morning topic of conversation in his four month old baby chatter and away they go. Things start out friendly enough, Luca babbles away, the monkey does whatever it is he does that holds up his end of the conversation and all seems well.

I have no idea what these two are talking about, but I have a sense (call it mother's intuition) that they are discussing politics. At some point the whole conversation goes sour. Luca's good-natured chatter turns to complaints and then to protests and he usually ends up so upset that he either refuses to talk to the monkey anymore and turns away to stare out the window and chomp furiously on his pacifier OR needs his mommy to make that bad, bad monkey go away so that he can get some peace and quiet.

These are the questions I have:
1. Has a conservative republican monkey somehow infiltrated my home?
2. Is he trying to brainwash my son?

In any case the monkey and I are going to have to have a chat because he is seriously jeopardizing nap time. What this monkey doesn't know yet is that I'm a recovering intellectual turned stay at home mom, who (before I had a baby and lost 50 IQ points...more on that later) used to be pretty sharp. This monkey may have met his match.