First Hair Cut for the Little Lady

I feel like at some point I turned around and Harper became a proper kid.  I don't know when it happened, but it did and I'm still in a small state of mourning over the whole thing.  But she's so bright and rather stubborn... more so than I ever thought possible for one so young, but in her defense, she's got to fight for her own with Em and Coop as her siblings.  As usual, her poor little mouth has gotten 6 teeth in the last three weeks with another two coming any day.  And, for some reason, teeth mean hair and Girlfriend has grown enough on the bottom half of her head to drive this mama mad.  She wants to do everything her sister does, which includes getting her hair combed in the mornings, but each morning her fine feathers have a full amount of lint as well as tangles.  Harper can't understand why it hurts, nor does she grasp that adding yogurt to the equation at breakfast will make it worse.  So I decided it was time to take the plunge.  Today, after naps, I grabbed the largest strawberry I could (to distract her), the scissors, and a chair, deeming it Family Hair Cut Day.  Harper, of course, was first up.

 I really don't think she was too impressed by the situation.

 But seriously, she has a mowhawk from her cowlick and fuss beneath that- I was over it.

 When it came time for the actual cutting, it didn't take her long to realize that she did NOT want whatever was happening to be happening.  The face just kept souring until she was finally trying to bit her way out of the chair- no exaggeration.

 But with a little help from Daddy, we managed to get most of the longest feathers, er, hair under control.

Nope, it's not straight.  No, it's not even and no I did not intend to have layers, but there they are because she is her own person and you do what you can.  But, in the end, I have a PICTURE of the FIRST haircut, I did it, I have the cuttings in a ziplock baggie, and I'm thrilled by that!

A Friday...

It was a Friday.  Sometimes, that's all I can say about Fridays.  I don't know why I look forward to them so much since Saturday looks very similar to the other 5 days of the week, but for some reason, the knowledge that I've made it through another week is an accomplishment in itself.  Today was packed with laundry, dishes, cleaning the kitchen and the floors, then a project for the garden.  The kids LOVED the project for the garden.  I have a women's thing at church tomorrow, which means Todd is on his own with the kids for most of the day.  Because I know my husband and I know my children, I've set out some things for them to do together, one of which is to plant our garden.  So today, we made markers for the various plants.  It involved rocks and paint and more paint, and my kiddos.  What could possibly go wrong with my throw-happy nearly-3-year-old, paint and rocks???

 My mommy instincts told me that the amount of actual painting I was needing to get out of my kids might be too much, so we made it a party and invited some neighborhood reinforcements.  Between the four kiddos, they were able to paint the 12 rocks we needed before attention spans wore too thin.

I think I have the cutest painters in the world.

Seriously, even with eating his paint (yes, eating) I still love this face with his crocked smile and goofy, asymmetrical eyes.

 These were our final products.  We will soon have markers for all the plants, but I wanted to let some of the paint dry just a bit more.

 Our "To Do" list was still long though.  Todd hasn't been able to find his keys, so we needed to get new ones made, and we needed some things from the store and the hardware shop.  After naps, it was off to the shops to get all those things off our list, and because they're so cute, and it's been so hot (two weeks ago we had snow, it's been summer weather all week, go figure) I figured the kids would like a springtime ice cream for the walk home.  Todd will be home soon, dinner and baths will be seen to, and then it will be time for the kids to go to bed.  Friday isn't over.  I'm tired and I have paint all over my arms and legs, but its a Friday... a very good Friday.

Crafts, Naps and Paint

For some reason, life seems to have run away from me.  Harper is 16 months in a few days, Cooper's 3rd birthday is in less than a month, and I have no idea how that happened.  The kids and I have been working since the beginning of June to finally get the house "put together."  I have friends who will paint before they move into a place because they know exactly what they want:  where the furniture should be, where the pictures should be hung, and all those details.  I, on the other hand, have to live in a space for a while.  It drives Todd mad when he comes home to find every piece of furniture has been rearrange, replaced with something he didn't know we had, or out in the garage.  He does love how clean things get in that particular room after said event, but with our crew, the immaculate room never lasts that long.  This holiday season will mark 4 years here in South Africa for us, and almost 3 years in this flat.  I figured it was time to buck up and take the plunge.  So, right before we left, I had Todd put six nails in the wall.  Most of them were for wall hooks for backpacks and jackets for the kids, but I also hung a picture frame that I'm in love with (gotta love dumpster diving windows out of someone else's trash to hang on your wall!).  

When we got back from the States, I decided to take it one step further and PAINT.  I know, crazy, huh?  I painted Cooper's room, painted the girls' room, and painted the downstairs, well, one wall.  In order to paint, we needed to make a trip to the paint shop, where Cooper wanted a totally typical blue (yeah for easy!) and fought that Em was set on Pepto-pink.  I'm not into pink in general, and the thought of walking into a room that made me think of Bazooka Bubble Gum was just too much.  So we worked it out and got a lavender.  Not a huge fan of that either, but what can you do?  I didn't think it was a battle really worth fighting, so purple it was.  The curtains we brought back with us, which are supposedly "black out" are an aqua marine blue.  I thought they were that lovely blue that girls clothing has and is just a great, vibrant color.  Turns out, it's more marine than aqua and so we struggled to get things to match the now purple and aqua-marine color scheme. That was the point where I realized I'd need to start making things.  So I bought fabric and then realized I had no idea how to sew a blanket or quilt.  Lucky for me, a friend just had a baby and I made this one for him, and learned just about every quilting mistake possible along the way.  Now, I'm working on Harper's, hopefully with less drama the second time around.

Em loved helping me pick out the fabrics, and then arranging these into the baby quilt.  She dutifully sat by my sewing machine as long as I'd let her to put the pins in the pincushion.  It was during this time when she told me she wanted butterflies in her bedroom.  Great.  Another thing to work on.  Okay, butterflies will be there, somewhere.  Promise.  As soon as the quilt was done, I started work on other things for the girls' room.  It's taken nearly 3 years, but I finally amassed enough Crayola Crayons to do a project I've been itching to do for a very long time.  

With helpers in tow, we went to the shops to find the frames we needed, then the paint and the ribbon and all the rest.  I let both Em and Coop help paint (one for each girl) until I discovered blue on my dining room table.  Not a happy mom moment.  Then, they were relegated to just watching, but they got really excited every time I "cut" a crayon into pieces.  The hot glue gun was another first as I used to only bring it out while they were sleeping.  Coop loved to see the glue "change colors" as the wax melted with the glue. Amazing how easily amused he is.

All these projects would be picked up as nap-time started and would continue until disaster happened, like blue paint on the wood table.  For days on end, Em would rush down the stairs after waking up to see what we were going to do next.  It was rather fun as that's the closest thing this stay-at-home mom gets to a kid excited to see me.  

Then one day, as we were wrapping up all the projects and things were slowing down, I went to do some laundry and came back in to the house to find Em like this.  I guess she'd woken up from her nap too early because she wanted to do something with me, but the lure of the warm sunshine was too much for her.

I love this face, all sweet and innocent... and not asking 437 questions all at once!  The weather has been getting warmer and warmer and that always signals that it's time to head outside, into the garden and get some Vitamin D into us.  We're all excited to plant our garden, go out without seven layers of clothing and not be cooped up inside.  I hope things will settle into a pattern soon, but if the last 3 months are any indication, this hectic-busy schedule of chasing two pre-schoolers and one toddler might be our new 'normal' for a while... not sure I'm ready for so little picture taking and blogging and story telling, but I'm loving all the things I can do with the kids at this age, and every now and again, I'm reminded that even the incessant questioning isn't as bad as I think.