Princess & the Pea

I know I've said it before, but the only thing that makes me seriously sad about not having a daughter is the lack of dolls, doll houses and twirly skirts in my life. I honestly am wondering how long before I just break down and buy my own self a goddamned dollhouse.

So, I guess it goes without saying that I want to keep this little Princess & the Pea set so baaaad.

But I won't, because it's for our favorite little princess, Lis Ana, on the occasion of her third birthday. It will be paired with the amazingly delicious, Lauren Child-illustrated version of the book (that I also want to keep for myself. I am greedy.)

I was inspired to make my set by Manda's beautiful one, which is worth every penny, but is far too rich for our blood these days.

I made the doll with the same pattern I used for the Craft Hope dolls, except with white felt for the hair (Lis Ana is a Nordic princess) and a little gold crown.

The mattresses are made from some of my favorites from my stash, and are stuffed with bamboo batting.

Can you see the little pea between the bottom two mattresses? It's a little wooden bead that I painted green and strung onto embroidery floss. It's attached to the bottom mattress so it won't get lost.

Hatched

Remember these?

Look what Josh found when he went to check on them this afternoon! Yay! Babies!

I know they just look like little puffs of fluff, but if you look in the lower right corner, you'll see a little yellow beak.

Just Keep Swimming

Dash had his first swim class this morning. His teacher was sweet and able and didn't take any shit from him. He was grumpy and tried to refuse to get back into the water after a potty break. But we bribed him and he finished the class and we were very proud and he was proud of himself, too. We were all grins until we told him he had to go again next week.

Wish us luck, won't you?

The class is only three kids. Which explains why getting into the program was harder than getting Duran Duran tickets in 1985.

I can't tell if he's squinting from the effort or if he's plotting all of our demise.

The teacher high-fived him even when he refused to do anything.

Mullet-faux-hawk

Safe and sound back on dry land.

Bread

Today, first thing in the morning, I dumped out a huge batch of compost from the composter and amended the raised beds and the garden. Then I planted poppies, two different types of wildflower seeds, some pretty annuals in the front, and cauliflower and the bell pepper seedlings we'd started indoors a few weeks ago in the raised beds.

Then I came inside and baked a loaf of bread. From scratch. Josh and I ate half the loaf with butter and strawberry jam in about 8 minutes. So I baked another one.

Listen, I don't know what kind of crazy shit I'm going to get into next. But if you hear me start talking about making my own deodorant or raising chickens in the backyard, come stage an intervention, won't you?

Oooh, what's in there?

Well, hullo!

Bubble, bubble, toil & trouble.

40 minutes later, hello gorgeous.

Get in me belly!

Why Yes, We Did Attend Another Angels Baseball Game.

Our dear friends the Villalpandos are die hard Dodger fans (booooo) and have season tickets (yay for us!) They were out of town for today's game against the Angels and so very generously gifted us with four tickets for some amazing seats.

We packed up Aunty and loaded up on Dodger Dogs (the only thing that they have over us) and peanuts and malted milks and nachos and Cracker Jacks and beer and lemonade and watched the Angels shut it down. Again.

They were giving away Webkinz to the kids. Dash doesn't know what a Webkinz is (neither do his parents) but he loves his new puppy, Floyd (named after his beloved Makenna, Hayden & Masie's pug.)

We were losing when we finally got to our seats. The look on Josh's face is all you need to know about how we turned it around.

{Confidential to Angels Management: Dash has been to four Angels games and you have won all of them. I think he's your good luck charm. Now, I would never imply that you should pay us to attend games, but we're amenable to a ticket price reduction.}

Also, Dash learned to shell his own peanuts.

Baby Clothes Quilt

Hi. I made a quilt out of Dash's baby clothes. (Well, I'm still waiting for the batting to arrive, so it's not technically done, but the hard part is over.) I do not mess.

Poot

Dash spent the better part of yesterday squeezing every last bit of air from his body out through his asshole. Seriously, it smelled like a public toilet and sounded like a family of cranky ducks had moved in with us. (Are you enjoying this post so far? You come here for the klassy, right?)

So, yesterday evening, after a particularly egregious toot, I walked in to the living room to make sure he hadn't turned himself inside out. He was fine. He was drawing:

Mama: Oh! I love your picture, Dashy. What is it?

Dash: It's my fart.

He then proceeded to narrate for me a very long and detailed story of his superhero fart and how it flies around the world to get the bad guys.

I thought about handing him some markers and asking him to illustrate his fart in color.

In the end, I thought better if it.

Disguises

We've seen the Incredibles enough times around here to know you can get sent into witness protection at any moment. So we took some time this afternoon to test out some disguises.

Old Timey Villains:

(why, yes, I did have 20 minutes this afternoon to craft mustaches out of leftover brown felt.)

The Incredible Hulk:

What do you think? It would totally work, right?

ANGELS!!!

On our way to our first Angels game of 2009

New

Well. Because I am quickly becoming a dirt-loving, tree-hugging, nature-worshiping dirty hippie, I bought a bird feeder this afternoon.

We have a couple of bird houses already, but I bought and hung them because I have a hilarious sense of humor, not because I had any expectation that they would ever come to house any birds.

So, imagine my surprise when I went to swap out the diner bird house for the new, fancy bird feeder and I peeped these inside:

At first I was a little worried that they'd been abandoned there, since I hadn't seen any birds coming or going. But we ate dinner outside tonight so I could keep an eye on our newest tenants, and I saw their mama come and go three times in an hour.

Yay Spring! Yay babies! Yay nature!

(I hung the feeder on another tree and left the diner where it was. Didn't want you to worry).

Boy

I was just digging through old emails looking for the name of a restaurant Auntie Pookie recommended and I happened upon this:

This is from the night we learned that Dash would be Dash and not Amelia. That little Post-it says "boy."

Super

Boys are awesome.

Dash on Sunday

Asleep in the car on the way to Mother's Day brunch.

Monday, after school.

(Please to notice that he is wearing flip flops--two different pairs!--in these photos. He is a Superhero, but he likes to be comfy.)

Garden Update

I won't lie. We've had some setbacks. Our second batch of tomato seeds went south, so I gave up and bought some plants. But the cucumbers are doing AWESOME, and we started some crooked neck squash, sugar snap peas & Anaheim chilies. Josh also built another raised bed to house the bell peppers I'm trying to start from seed and praying will come up. If everything in the garden comes up this summer I will have achieved my dream of gazpacho from our own soil.

Third bed! Is empty! For now!

Strawberries! Please come up and save me $5.00 a week in strawberries from Trader Joe's!

Carrots! From seeds! Can you tell I'm excited!?

Cucumbers! But very, very small!

See?!

[Edited much, much later to point out that those aren't cucumbers. They're green beans. We're quite the brain trust over here.]

Wee Garden

Hello, friends. I don't know for certain whether or not you've started a pool about when I will finally descend into twee craft insanity. But if you did, whomever picked May 9, 2009 wins.