I'm right!

I don't like to use pictures of my kids' faces on my blog. I have one pic of BabyGirl in the pages a while back and that is it.

I get asked why fairly often, and the truth is that the Internet freaks me out a little bit. I just get worried about who is out there and what they know about my family and how they might use my kids' pictures.

I saw once on Oprah (how stereotypically housewifey is that!) how this guy managed to track down a little girl just from a pic her mom posted online. Now he was a professional safety guy taking the mom to task a little bit, so it wasn't just some random stalker. But just from that one pic he managed to figure out where she went to school. SCARY!

To back me up, I read this today and it verified my choice to not broadcast my kids' faces, even in my blog. It's not scary or gross, which is where my mind always goes, but it is a little creepy and certainly weird. It absolutely validates my choices.

So if you want to see my kids, you'll just have to imagine what they look like. Rest assured they are the cutest kids you can possibly imagine anyway.

Curly

My Curly has always known that her hair was her "thing." Since she was about one year old she's gotten at least one compliment on her hair per outing. It's her signature, her defining feature, the thing that gotten her called everything from "Shirley Temple" to "Felicity" to, well, "Curly."

When she was just 3 her Daddy combed her hair after putting on a leave in conditioner. She came downstairs to see me bawling into her towel, genuinely devastated over something I couldn't discern between the sobs. When she could catch her breath she wailed "Daddy combed my curls away!" Even that tiny she knew the importance of her beautiful hair.

She's had her hair trimmed a few times, but it's always been quite long. However, with summer on it's way, and swimming and heat making knots of epic size in her tresses, I gently broached the subject of a haircut.

"Okay!" she said, without hesitation.

"Really?

"Yeah. How much are we going to cut?"

"Well that's up to you." I took a breath "Would you like to donate your hair?"

"What's donate?"

"Give your hair to people who will make wigs for people with no hair."

"How come they don't have any hair?"

"Well, they are sick and the medicine they need makes their hair fall out. So they get a wig to wear made out of hair that people donate."

"How short would it be?"

"Your hair?" I asked and when she nodded, I showed her, expecting her to say "NO WAY!"

Instead she smiled and said "Yeah!"

So today was the day. In honor of her Auntie who is fighting the fight against cancer and all the others who are fighting too, my Curly cut off more than 10 inches of hair.

It looks great and we have the ponytail bagged and ready to go to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths Program.

When I tucked her in tonight she asked me if her hair would help make someone better. It hurt a little to have to tell her it would not. But when I answered her honestly she said "But it will make them feel happy and that's good too."

Indeed it is, Sweet Girl. I could not be more proud. I'm pleased to know my baby's beautiful inside matches her beautiful outside.

Today...

...I have:

fed 4 kids
combed 3 heads
dressed 2 kids
shipped one kid off to school
changed 2 diapers
been barged in on while using the restroom (Yes, I locked the door. I forgot to lock the OTHER door)
showered with one of the kids I had previously diapered and dressed.
wiped someone else's tushie while I was in the shower (don't ask!)
redressed and rediapered previously diapered and dressed kid
played 4 games of WiiPlay tanks
broken up 3 arguments
found a deal of the day
blogged

And it's only 8:45 in the morning. Oy.

little things

My kids adore Mandarin Oranges. I buy them from Costco in a giant, cost effective pack of a billion cans. But my favorite thing about them is that Curly calls them "Candarin Oranges" because, well, they come from a can. Consequently, canned mushrooms are also called "Candarin Mushrooms."

This morning StinkyMan said that "When Curly loves me she squeezes me too tight!" in a way that lets me know that he is secretly thrilled when his big sister loves him enough to even touch him, much less hug him.

Peanut is currently in love with "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and will dance like a fool whenever Husband's phone rings since that is his ring tone. Go to you tube if you have no clue what I am talking about. It's a dancing banana and a stupid song, but when you are two, anything goes, I guess.

And BabyGirl is super, super close to crawling. She's been doing the combat scooch for a couple of weeks, and last night she cried out several times in her sleep, up on all fours, rocking back and forth, getting ready to go.

I have to write these things down, or I forget. I always think I will remember and then a week later I think "Wait, how did he say that again?" or "Was that Tuesday or Wednesday?"

They are just getting so big. And I'm not at all biased when I say they get cuter by the day.

Look what I did!

I made soap! Not laundry soap, I always do that. Regular soap.

OK, so I cheated. I didn't make the soapy part of the soap. I took old soap and made new soap.

Let me explain.

You know Husband travels. And when he does I make him bring me these:

Hotel soaps are the key to this cheap and fun little project. You don't need all the same soaps or the same smells or the same colors. Hotel soaps tend to have pretty mild smells so it's OK to meld them all together and different colors look kind of cool. And if you don't have a frequent hotel visitor in your life, hit up your local freecycle group for some!

I used 12 soaps. Rather than grate them up into a powder, I kind of shaved them with a sharp knife, kind of peeling away the layers and chopping them into bits:

Then I threw in some quick oats for some bumpiness, since this batch is for some of my in laws, who are gardeners, and the oats should provide the texture to help remove dirt and whatnot from the gardeners' hands.

I oiled a muffin tin with some olive oil and put it aside.

I moistened the soap chips with some water. It's not a lot, just enough to really moisten the whole batch. Then I microwaved the whole thing for a minute. Then gave it a stir. It was still moist so I did not need to add more water. If it seemed dry I would have mixed in some more. I continued to microwave it in one minute increments until it was bubbling in my bowl.

Once it was good and bubbly, I took it and using a rubber spatula scooped the goop into the muffin tin:

The original instructions, which I got here, said that the soap should sit for a few days to let all the excess moisture dry up. For me, I found 24 hours to be good enough. When I took the soaps out of the tin they looked like this:

I plan to wrap them in little cellophane wrap with a raffia bow and a tag explaining what the heck it is. It's just a little gift for hard to shop for people.

But then I got to thinking about what a cute end of the year gift this could be. If I were going to do use this for teacher I would package together:

A small gardening shovel

A packet of Forget Me Not seeds (get it?)

A watering can

Some kind of home made garden stake saying something like Curly's Forget Me Nots

and this soap.

Seriously cute, relatively inexpensive, fun to do and meaningful.

If I didn't already have a plan for end of the year gifts I would do this. But I am going to file it away for next year. You can never have too many good, inexpensive ideas.

Uniform

I am a habitual children's clothing shopper. I look at, and sometimes buy, clothes for my kids all the time. Even on the rare occasion that I am kidless at the mall I find myself in Gymboree, BabyGap, Naartjie, The Children's Place and the kid section of any and all department stores. My latest online love is Tea kids clothing, but like Mini Boden and Hanna Andersson, it HAS to be on sale to even consider it.

But me? I have a uniform. I would say more days than not you will find me in jeans and a black t-shirt. In the summer it might be a black t-shirt and capri pants. On a super crazy day I might wear *gasp* a brown t-shirt. To be fair, the t-shirt does vary. I have a few with round necks, a few with v-necks, one with cap sleeves, even one with some cute silver buttons on it. But they are all t-shirts.

In my defense, it's not that I don't want to dress outside of my uniform. The uniform is a result of necessity. I cannot wear light colored clothing. It's dirty before I even get downstairs for the day. I have four kids. 4 runny noses, 4 dirty faces, 8 grimy hands and about a million potential spills. If I wore white or light blue or light pink or lavender I'd look like a stain magnet in about 3 minutes.

And yes I could pick other kinds of shirts, even if I did choose black. But I need something easy, something that washes up well, something comfy and practical.

In all fairness I was a jeans girl before kids, so that's unlikely to change much.

But I'd give just about anything to be on "What Not to Wear." I'd leave my uniform behind for that in a hot minute.

Do you think they'd give me some money for kids' clothes?

I used to be smart.

Today I poured Honey Nut Cheerios into a sippy cup instead of milk and apparently I put StinkyMan's shorts on OVER his pajama shorts. I didn't catch that one until after he came home from school.

I think I'm getting ditsier by the day.

Update: I also just tried to wash my hair with conditioner. Sigh.