final days

I have no photos to accompany this post, although I've taken quite a few over the past couple of days. We're down to the final hours before our exams - M's is tomorrow, mine is Tuesday, so there is no free time anymore. I'm looking forward to getting back to 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night, and maybe even the occasional nap on the weekend - what a concept. But until then I'm at the dining room table with the laptop and a couple of notebooks and endless loose papers with red inked notes scrawled across them in front of me. The kiddo has scored a great pool date this afternoon, so the house is quiet, and there's good studying going on. (Which is why I'm limiting this post to five minutes.)

We're rolling into June tonight, and with that has come the early stages of change in me. This baby is moving closer into position, and things that came easily to me for awhile are not so easy anymore. We've noticed several physical changes in the last few days, and I can tell the end is near - still weeks away, we hope - but definitely on the horizon. I've got this one last busy week, and then it is time to relax, to get things done that I want to get done but don't have to get done, and prepare myself for what lies ahead. M and I have been spending a little time each night just getting ourselves ready and it's been the relaxing center of the very busy whirlwind that is our life around it. We're getting prepared and more than just a little excited.

Wish us luck this week, and in the next few weeks to come. But expect a little bit of the lazy days of summer to finally rub off on us and make us just that... a little lazy.

thirty-fourth week

I know I missed a week, but like I said, it's been busy around here. In a few days we start up weekly monitoring (with pictures) so I'll have less of me to show and more of kid2. And, unlike me, I promise to show kid2 with a head. We're catching up on our labor and delivery knowledge in between late night study sessions and we're starting to feel a bit more prepared now. If only we could settle on a name... this baby's coming soon!

guest blogger

I mentioned in the last post that I was taking a break from the computer and blogging this week due to the high volume of study material I need to get through, but I thought I'd help tide you over with a little guest blogging from E (which of course means I'm still on the computer and still blogging, but I've been known to procrastinate with the best of them). She had a digital photography class yesterday morning at school, and we were really impressed with the shots that she took. So after school today I asked her if she'd like to post a few on the blog and she was up for it. All photo selections, cropping and the titles are by her. Enjoy. She might just get a regular gig around here.

can you look at the sky too?

wash yourself off


sleepy lily

feel how gentle the leaves are


lonely ball


those glasses


a flower is growing


fire escape

silver flowers

Photos were all taken on her own Kodak Digital Camera. But she wants to get her hands on that Nikon...

weekend projects

The three day weekend is so not-overrated. Even though we've had several things going on outside the house, we've managed to spend a lot of down time inside - particularly today in the rain. One of the projects E and I tackled involved a lot of old crayons. I remember doing this as a kid with old crayon bits from my mom's classroom, but had forgotten about it until a friend of mine mentioned it the other day. We had lots of crayon parts in bags and we spent the better part of the afternoon, just the two of us, peeling them. Next time around I'll score them with an x-acto blade first! E's party theme choice this year is an art party, and we've been slowly collecting materials from our own stashes to use for the party. The underlying theme is a "recycled" art party - we've got so many bits and pieces of things, and this kid hates to throw anything away that might seem slightly interesting in a sculpture somewhere - so we're going to have lots of stations for creating and then send the treasures off to new homes. We thought some of these homemade crayons would make nice favors, and would also be great for relief rubbings during the party. Plus, we had a party to attend this afternoon and the homemade crayons would be the perfect finishing touch.

After we peeled a million crayons we put like colors into a giant ziploc bag and mashed them up with a meat tenderizer. This seemed a lot more efficient (and easier on the fingers) than breaking each one up into small parts. And it's always fun to whack stuff.

Once we had all the crayons smashed and sorted we were ready to begin.

The instructions we were using just said to put the crayon pieces into a muffin tin - we started with a mini-muffin pan and avoided our nice, expensive ones. We heated the oven to 200 degrees and watched for them to melt - the instructions said 10-15 minutes, but it took nearly twice that for some reason. While we waited we filled up another cheaper full size muffin tin so we would have a variety of sizes.

When the crayons were fully melted they looked more uniform than we thought they would on top, so we were a bit disappointed at first. We set them on a cooling rack on the counter for ten minutes, then put them into the freezer for twenty. After twenty minutes they popped right out of the pan, but you have to have a nice soft towel out on the counter to cushion them as they fall out - otherwise they will break. The underside of the crayons were spectacular - much more mottled and interesting than we thought they might be. We basked in the glory of our success for about 30 seconds and then firecracker like pops came from the crayons as each one started to spontaneously combust. Eleven of the twelve broke apart while just sitting there, and the twelfth had a hairline crack and broke the second we tried to use it. It was terrible, and our second batch was already in the freezer, made in the exact same way. Time to hit the Internet and find an alternative set of directions. Most recipes seemed to call for a hotter oven, which really brought the melting time down. Most also called for vegetable oil or spray in the pan first to aid in release, and a slower cooling process like countertop or refrigerator. We experimented with this - the freezer was great for producing crayons that would pop right out, but the temperature differential was just too much for the crayons. Counter cooling and then a few moments in the fridge seemed to work the best, and the vegetable oil spray helped them come out (although a few needed a bit of scoring with a knife). We just threw the broken pieces back in the tin and remelted them - that's the beauty of the project - you can reuse and reuse.

While waiting for the last batch to cool this morning I decided to take out the new camera! This was the very big surprise that I unwrapped from E and M on Mother's Day - and I have had very little time between then and now to get it up and running. We've got a new memory card on order, so we currently have to use the one in our Canon, and we still need to get a case, etc... We get free classes for the camera but are having trouble finding the time to schedule them - I'm hoping once we both get our next professional exams out of the way in a week we can block out a chunk of time to do it. I'm very green on it, but so far I'm completely smitten. You'll still be seeing a lot of the Canon shots on this blog, but as I learn more and more on the new one I'll transition over. It's hard to set it down once I pick it up.

So how did the party present go over? Well, the party was an outdoor water one, so no go today in the rain. It will save til next week. Something else that will save til next week? Posts on this blog. It's like graduate school around here this week. Put the kid to bed and start studying - it's fun doing it with a partner (even though we're taking two different tests), but I found it makes us think too much about our school days and we catch ourselves reminiscing more than studying. The computer will be staying off this week, the phone conversations will be short and I'm sure we'll have circles under our eyes. But if we can make it through this last week of school and one more weekend of cramming we'll be breathing a lot easier around here soon. Wish us luck. (Just don't call us to wish it!)

***Since some of you asked - Photos 1, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are with the Nikon***

kindergarten teacher gift

This little end of the year teacher's gift has turned out to be a very fun project. We decided to do a platter that all the kids could contribute to - a gift made that more special because E's teacher is moving out of state this summer, and this will help commemorate both a great year with this class, and her time at the school. I thought about the process for awhile, trying to make it as easy as possible for all the kids and their families, and how to end up with a great final product that will be fun to display. Getting fourteen kindergartners together to paint on one plate didn't seem very practical or precise, so I had them all submit ink or pencil line drawings of their face and their best "signature". They gave me (very) detailed instructions on what color each line should be. So step one was collecting these items and throwing them all out on the desk.

Step two was choosing a nice platter and bringing it home with me, along with some very handy ceramic transfer paper. The paper looks like regular vellum but it works a lot like carbon paper - you place it on the plate, put the original drawing on top of it, and then carefully trace over the lines. But before I could start the transfer I had to get some sort of semblance of order to this thing so I started with a few sketches.

Step three: Once I had some general sketch layouts I was ready to begin.

Step four: I first cut out all the names and the faces after writing down the color choices on another sheet of paper. I didn't want to get anyone mixed up. I enlarged or reduced a few of the names on the copier so that they were all the same scale and I placed them around the plate so that the different colors were pretty evenly dispersed, and the longer names went on the sides with less of them. I then laid out the faces and determined which ones needed to be reduced to fit.

Step five: I reduced the faces and tweaked the final layout including the center logo design. I was getting pretty happy with the overall look but thought that the inside looked a little too "grown-up" compared to the border, so I had E rewrite the letters in the logo so that they had a kindergarten look about them.

Step six was the fun part. I cut pieces of the transfer paper to match the size of each sketch, and one by one I went around the plate carefully tracing over each line that the kids made. Each face was unique, and looked so much like each one of the kids. And I knew that their teacher would recognize each individual name - if there's one thing these kids know how to do (and do well) it's writing!

Step seven: Once the outside drawings were complete I was ready to trace the middle logo. You can see in the photo above the light purple lines from the transfer paper. These lines burn off in the firing process, which makes this a really fool-proof way to get an idea from paper to plate.

This morning I did step eight - I took it into the pottery studio, and took over about twenty-five of their colors and started tracing over the lines. This process was made easier on most of the colors because they had small dispensers that allowed very precise applications over thin lines. A few of the colors had to be done with a very tiny brush which I took with me. The back has a note to the teacher and is "signed" by all the kids. The colors are fairly muted in this photo - they become much purer and brighter when fired. The final product will be done later this week and we'll present it on Friday, the last day of school. I'll post photos then, as well as a link to a friend and co-worker of mine who does this kind of custom work all the time, even for out-of-town clients. If you think you might want to tackle something like this for yourself, you can give her a call. One platter is enough for me now - although I was pretty tempted to make one for myself after seeing how this one turned out!

saturday morning in the garden

Move over iris, make room for the rose.

The roses were in full bloom, and a light morning shower made them all the more lovely and fragrant. We said "good morning" to old Henry, collected spent petals and wiggled those two loose teeth whenever we had the chance. Steamy and muggy and green and pink - it's starting to feel like summer in the garden.

authors' tea

This afternoon was the last Authors' Tea at E's school. The kids had all come such a long way from that first book they published early on in the school year. This book had ten pages, and some pretty complex sentences and long words. I still love the phonetic spellings on some of the words - I'll be sad as they slowly disappear for the "correct" way.

collateral damage

I am still recovering from this past Monday. And when I say "I", I should really say "We". Monday was the photo shoot at our house and I must say, I sincerely hope that I don't have to go through something like that again anytime soon. Everyone we dealt with was very nice, and extremely professional, but man, oh man, the effort involved, all for one tiny little bathroom.

We had a busy weekend already, and didn't really have too much to do to get the room ready for the shoot. M had touched up some paint where scuffed, caulked a bit, and I polished and shined for quite awhile. I got the floor nice and clean and declared it the last floor cleaning that I was going to do during this pregnancy. (Roomba takes care of most of the floor care around here, so that's not too big a statement to make.) While I tidied up the third floor M tackled the rest of the house - and between his long list of things he accomplished, and my rather short list of things I accomplished (spattered with frequent breaks to catch my breath or sit a spell) we managed to get the place in tip top shape by midnight. However, midnight on a Sunday night does not bode well for the week that lies ahead.

It was a good thing that we went to that extra effort because once you let people into your home they can really end up in any portion of it. This included going through each of our personal closets and selecting suitable clothing for our part in the shoot (which were not the articles of clothing that we had ironed just before midnight the night before). And while the editor of the magazine told us over the phone that "the room looks so great in the photos that you submitted that we hardly need to style it at all", the photographer came into the house that morning with a printed email from said editor with two dozen "requests" from the stylist. The photo above shows you all that did not make the final cut. Out went the shower liners, the toothbrushes, the toiletries, the toilet paper (no toilet paper ever makes it into their bathroom shots apparently - let's all pretend we never really do what we do in our bathrooms). In came new towels, new soap, new toothbrushes, and shiny spray for all the appliances. Out went our toys - the globe, the buckets, the car wash and the crayons, the ABC's on the wall and the bath mats on the floor. In came new toys, which looked surprisingly like our old ones. Not sure why, but E scored because she got to keep most of them. Camera equipment was set up on scaffolding over the toilet and the camera was operated remotely from the hall because of the tightness of the shots. E performed marvelously, having to spend an hour doing various "action" shots that required her starting said action and then freezing it for the duration of the extremely long shutter speed. At the end of the day we all donned our "new" outfits to pose for a family photo, and I was strategically located to hide my 7.5 month belly. One day I'll have to apologize to kid two that he/she didn't make the stylist's cut, just like the trash can and the toilet paper. Perhaps to make up for it I'll design the most fabulous nursery ever, enter it into another year's contest and make the pages of the magazine again.

On second thought, maybe not...

...

If published as promised, the feature should be in the September issue which will hit newstands in late July / early August and I'll scan and post the cover when we get our issues.

game four

I know these are a little repetitive, but there's only so much variety you're going to get at a baseball game with 5-7 year olds. All skills are improving though, the batting is better, the balls are hit harder, and there is some sort of strategy in play on the field. So things are getting a little more exciting.

The games have a nice pace to them as well. Each game has a one hour time slot, so the teams spend a few moments warming up, then the game starts. Play continues until the air horn is blown, and since there are no inning requirements and no scoring the game is over when it's over. We had some reservations about getting the kid signed up in too many extra things, but the schedule for the season was appealing - less than two months, no more than two nights a week for an hour each, and no weekend commitments - it just seemed like a fun thing for a sporty girl. It's nice having so many other things offered at her school, like violin and studio art and cooking, etc. It makes it easier to make school nights what we wanted them to be - relaxed, family dinner, bath and reading. The occasional night at the ball field isn't much of an exception to that rule.

And here's a good shot of the bottom row of teeth on this kid. The front two are permanent teeth - she lost those on Christmas Eve and while on Spring Break vacation. The teeth on either side of those big teeth are so loose that they sit in there at an angle, and she barely bites down anymore with her front teeth. I predict a Memorial Day double header. And I'm not talking about baseball here...

mad dash

This is pretty much what our lives have been like the last week or so. Running marathon relays...

Standing still but still juggling a dozen things at one time...

...and then crashing into bed, exhausted at the effort. I'll catch you up soon enough, but I've got some yoga to do to ease these aching joints.

At least we've done two out of the three above with smiles on our face!