I did it, I caved in

I got a twitter.

And I'll admit it, my main reason was that I want Wil Wheaton to notice me :)
and maybe the Bloggess.

NerdyHippieMama

Holding myself accountable

For some reason, living in my parents' house has turned my messiness into some illogical way to claim my space. They want cleanliness, they impose their desires upon me in every other part of the house, so my own room turns into a complete disaster. I really mean complete.


This is the area by the door, also the changing area and garbage area.



This is the perpetually open closet (there's so much stuff coming out of there that the doors can't actually close, the broken-zippered storage thing where I keep all of our bedding and towels, and the huge pile of stuff on top of the dresser. There's an awesome hand-felted dragon up there, which is currently the protector of the disaster >.<



And this is next to my bed, where everything tends to fall or be thrown. And a little bit of the never-used crib. It's only really up to show off the awesome bumpers and quilt that my mother made. I'm actually perversely proud of the fact that it hasn't become a place to hang or dump things.

I've really gotten lax. Sure, River has a great play area, but our room is a disaster. There are things piled on every easily accessible surface, while those that take a little more work to get to are completely bare! And I KNOW River prefers cleanliness. She was the kid who insisted on throwing away the holiday wrappings before playing with her new toys!

Stretch Marks!

This picture makes me SO Happy! I have (at least outwardly) been so proud of my stretch marks. I mean, I know my body has changed a lot, and that makes me self-conscious, especially when being sexual, but I really feel like my stretch marks are these awesome battle scars. They show how much my body is capable of, and that's a lot!

Still, when getting down and dirty, it's hard to get myself to think that saggy boobs and tummy are things that make me stronger...

Today was one of those days where nothing was going right.

I spent most of the day feeling like I just needed to cry and get it all out,
but I couldn't manage to get a moment alone,
so I never got a chance.

Sometimes I think I should wear random band-aids on me all the time,

River likes to point at them, say 'owwie', and give them kisses.

Play Area

So, to make a long-ish story really really short, I got fired yesterday via TEXT MESSAGE! Anyways, I was expecting to work today, so I had nothing planned and didn't want to leave the house for fear of spending any money. Thanks to that, I finally got to check off one of my blog to-do's, and put together a little tour of River's play area!

For those of you (if anyone actually reads this) who follow my life, I'm currently living at my parents' house. I've been here since December 2010, when my life fell apart thanks to my soon-to-be ex-husband. I'm being blunt and honest when I say that my parents are not very child-friendly people. They are quiet, clean, scheduled people and children are often none of those things. This is why they only had one, and this is why it's been very hard living at home again. Their constraints always manage to make me feel like a teenager again. I just want to argue, yell, and do stupid things in the name of rebellion.

Anyways, all of that aside, here is the tour via collages made on Photobucket.com, sorry for the repeated picture :/

After much arguing over there being ANY child toys in common space, they finally relinquished a small corner of the living room under the condition that the toys were to be kept out of sight unless they are currently in use. My grandmother had given me an awesome old shelving unit with these yellowed, cracked bins. Two of the bins were salvageable, but I'm glad to have the shelves free for other things. There is also a toybox and a dress-up chest.

On the top of the organizer there are three bins from Ikea with some of their circus toys in them. I love toys that foster creative imagining! The book I referenced in my last post (Your Brain on Childhood) talked about finding toys that are 80% child and 20% toy. This means no talking flashing plastic crap that tells a child what to do or what is happening. For example, a keyboard should play what keys are pressed, not a prerecorded tune. The circus set is a little further towards 60%/40% since it dictates that they are members of a circus, but it's still more about the child's imagination than the toy.

Also on top is an owl play clock (an awesome estate-sale find) and River's one-year book from winkflash.com

(The bins are labeled: Coloring Supplies, Cards, Felt Food, Musical Instruments, Small Stuffed Toys, Alphabet Blocks, Ring Stacker & Shape Sorter, and Blocks.)


Living with the parents is certainly not all bad. My mother salvaged the needlework on the dressup bin and gave the bin and some costumes to River as a Hanukkah/Christmas gift this year. She also had the toy box in the basement, full of fabric, and gave it to me to use for River (and also as part of her quest to clean out the basement and get rid of a lot of fabric). She painted lizards on the back and bottom.

I love that River is still too small to get into the toy box on her own. It lets me hide special toys for when she's getting tired of what she has access to, and also gives me a place to dump things that don't otherwise have a well-labeled bin to call its own.

Of course, while taking pictures, River decided that it was a good time to play with all the toys I had just cleaned up :) She also demanded to wear the wings that normally hang on the trellis with my leafy wings. I think Elmo pants, a strange Japanese padded shirt from the Salvation Army, and monarch wings are the coolest!

At the top right she's riding her awesome rolling bumble bee (another resale find), and on the bottom she's decided that playing with a plastic tube she found in the garbage and a magnet are way more fun than all the awesome toys she has. I agree.

After some spinning, getting frustrated with the wings, and then vacuuming with the popper vacuum, it was time for some art! Also, I know it's kind of cheap, but I love this effect :) Also, since the paper was so big and she didn't want the box of crayons on top of it, she had to keep getting up and walking back and forth to get crayons.

Next on my tour list is a tour of my bedroom... once it stops looking like a bomb went off in here. It's really horrible, but I have all of my necessary possessions (other than food) stuffed into one room, so it's a bit cramped.

Pictures!!!

After my camera dying slightly and my long-term dissatisfaction with its picture quality, I finally caved in and bought a new camera.

Know what this means?

PICTURES!

River is 20 months old

She loves making some silly faces! This one is her "boob face"... according to her. yeah.

Not that you can see much of the background, but these pictures were taken at Family Grounds Cafe in Chicago, IL, and Nibbles Play Cafe in Wheeling, IL. They are some of our favorite places!

I'm a big fan of free play time and think that it's more important for child development than most people give it credit for.

(I really need to do a book review of Your Brain on Childhood, by Gabrielle Principe, it was great! And a review of the two places that the pics were taken.... I should start a todo list)

TV, Attempt to Slow Down, and the Increasing Need to Leave the House!

I've been keeping River and myself very busy lately! Every day has been filled with either working, errands, or adventures. We've done something involving considerable (2 or more hours in the car) driving every weekend for the past six or more weeks.

This weekend I wanted some time at home without any plans, so I purposefully left Friday and Saturday completely blank in my planner (other than a reminder that I need to do laundry, which is currently sitting downstairs being forgotten about >.< ). I'm regretting it!

River's obsession with Sesame Street has led to every moment at home being a battle to get her away from the TV. I can either give in and get things done with the time that she spends zombified, or I can fight her.

To give her credit, she's not a total zombie. Yes, sometimes she gets that glazed look in her eyes where I can tell that her brain has stopped working, but very often she's up in front of the TV dancing or pointing to body parts or otherwise "interacting" with Elmo and the other characters.

I've been finding myself, very often today, thinking of errands that I could devise even though they aren't completely necessary or of places we could go just for a change of scenery and a bit more separation from the TV. I think we might be going out today...

My Little Performer

River seems to have gotten a lot of her father's personality traits. Normally, I would attribute that to nurture, but her father took a nice 7 month break from being a parent (though, to give him credit, he is now reemerging as, if not a parent, a sort of uncle-figure).

It's so strange to see her start being loud and silly to get a person's attention. She loves having every person in a room watch her. She's purposefully silly and loud and fantastic.

I'm just glad that I can see these traits as something I loved in her father instead of just reminding me of the pain he caused.

V-Day

My daughter has a valentine.

I don't.

Maybe I'll ask Elmo.