A Merry Maggie Dance

Music, sir, for me and my friend!

How about some Irish bagpipes, miss?

That is a merry tune!

I will do a spinning dance on this circle thing!

Four tomorrow

She got up this morning and said, “Mommy, I need to talk to you.”
She sounded troubled, maybe even a little scared. Her bedroom was still dark, since the sun was just coming up. I asked her what she needed.
“Today is my last day ever being three,” she confided.

I felt a lot of emotion at this. She wants to be big so badly, but growing up is frightening, and she does so love being small. Not being three anymore, that’s a forever change. Today is her last chance to be something she’ll never be again. Tomorrow’s all uncertain, and soon today will be gone. My little girl, four years old already! I don’t think she can believe it either. I want to keep her little always and never let anything hurt her, but I need to let her grow and make mistakes and feel pain, because it means she’ll be living and trying and experiencing everything she can at three, four, five, and all the years.

I hugged her and told her not to worry, because even if she is four tomorrow, she’ll always be Maggie.

We saw a clown! Now it’s nightmare time!

We went to a clown performance today. It was kind of by accident, since it happened as we were eating lunch in a pavilion and the show started after we’d sat down. The kids seemed excited, so I was like, “How bad could it be?” Maybe this clown wouldn’t be creepy and would redeem all clowns for me. He had hot air balloons on his vest. Harmless!

Before I explain any further, I’d like to say he had a good show. The tricks were good, he could juggle, the audience liked his jokes. The only problem at all was… the inappropriately placed balloon. I kept looking, but it was there every time! I glanced around at other people in the audience. They were laughing and clapping, not sporting wtf? expressions that indicated they too saw the inappropriately placed balloon. I took a picture just to make sure I wasn’t imagining the unfortunate position of this balloon. At the end, he had an empty bag that several kids verified contained nothing. Then he pulled a three foot yellow balloon out of the “bag” but by “bag” I mean “pants.” Yep, that didn’t help.

So I feel kind of bad blogging about this. It takes guts to follow your passion, make a routine, and get up in front of people to perform as a clown. A lot of bravery and dedication. But I guess part of putting yourself out there is risking that someone will be amused by your inappropriately placed balloon and take a picture. I’ll try to crop the face out of the picture.

I mean, this is really obvious, right? I know you laughed too.

Maggie Tales

Maggie narrates what she’s doing while she plays. It is fascinating to listen to.

She has a play kitchen and it has a few recycling bins, into which she throws all manner of toys for recycling. So tonight she was pretend fretting because she forgot her bins at her potato house (they were right beside us the whole time, of course). One of Maggie’s favorite games is to grow fruit and vegetable houses to live in. She constantly has to come up with new ones because she or someone else gets hungry and eats the old ones, or they buckle under their own weight, or burn down, or a variety of other catastrophic things. She could tell you the epic tale of each one. It’s tragic. Ask her some time.

Anyway, the bins had been forgotten at the potato house! She couldn’t go get them because she was comfortable at our house, but maybe her animal friends could go on this errand for her.
“Maybe I could send the badgers by,” speculated Maggie. She reconsidered. “No, they don’t have any legs.”
“No legs?” I asked, distinctly recalling badgers being equipped with legs. “How do they get around?”
“Their flippers and duck bills,” she replied.
“Are you thinking of a platypus?” I wondered.
“Oh, yes! Silly platypuses! They can’t go to the potato house to get my bins!” Maggie laughed at the very notion.
“Can the badgers go?” I asked, since I still remembered them having like four legs each.
“No, they cannot,” said Maggie ruefully. Then inspiration struck! “I will send the llamas to my potato house to get the bins!”
This sounded like a good plan to me, since llamas are pack animals and used to hauling stuff around.
“But the llamas won’t be able to help,” said a very concerned Maggie.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because we need five llamas and I only have two.”
“Could they take a few trips to your potato house?” I suggested helpfully.
“No,” Maggie stated dramatically, “because one of my llama friends is actually … a snake!”
I showed my surprise at this development. “Can the snake help with the bins?”
“No, goofy goof, snakes don’t have any legs!” Maggie graciously tolerated my apparent lack of knowledge about snake anatomy and its implications regarding the snake’s ability to retrieve bins. “It’s a water snake.”
I nodded, sure that the bit about it being a water snake had significant meaning, and completely unsure what that meaning was.

At this point we got distracted by something else, but that’s what Maggie conversations are like. It’s pretty cool.

Monsters and S’mores Party

Beren and Maggie have been wanting to plan a party. A Monsters and S’mores Party. According to them, the requirements would be that we:
1. Help them make costumes so they can dress up like monsters (I’m thinking masks made from paper plates and construction paper, also, possibly capes made from towels or blankets)
2. While wearing the monster costumes we watch monster movies (probably Monsters Inc. or Hotel Transylvania) from the safety of a living room tent (which we’ll make from sheets and pillows to keep us safe from monsters)
3. We will eat s’mores while doing this.

I’ve already got the thumbs up to have this at Drew and Laura’s house. So now we just need to pick a date and invite everyone. This will be a lot of fun for adults too, and we’ll need them to keep the adult to child ratio sane. Donations of living room tent supplies are welcome. The kids will bring their flashlights. I’ll bring food and some cute monster cupcakes. I still have my little table top s’mores maker. After the kids fall asleep, we can eat all the remaining s’mores. It’ll be great! Let me know if you’re interested and we’ll make some plans. I’m thinking mid to late June on a Friday or Saturday night for this one.

Kids Reaching Stuff Series

After I took a picture of Ember at the park and the angle had the unintended effect of making her look like she was going to pluck a branch off the tree as though it was a twig, I thought it might be fun to do a whole series of pictures like that on purpose. It’s harder than you might think, especially since it involves trying to pose the subject/hold him still long enough to take the picture. So here’s Beren, trying to reach the lights on the ceiling.

Silhouette

I love this picture! It’s like Beren turned into a cartoon and then made a shadow!

One more day under the ol’ belt.

I have no one to high five after the kids go to bed. Virtual high five, Internet!

Guest Blog Post by Maggie

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(This is Megan. Those are numbers, stars, and moons.)

Paint your own pottery

If any of you ladies would like to go paint some ceramics with me, we could go to The Clay Cafe in Sewickley for Ladies’ Night! It is on Thursday nights, I think. You bring your own wine, they serve you some snacks, you paint some pottery. My sister-in-law has made some really stunning pieces there. The bigger bowls she showed me cost about $40 to paint, fire, and buy. That’s actually less than I thought it would be! Think of how much the ceramic mugs and such cost at Pennsic!

They are located about an hour and a half from Morgantown, an hour and a half from Moundsville, minutes from Pittsburgh, and about an hour and ten minutes from my house. If we wanted to find a location closer to someone’s house, which we could use as a base of operations for accomplishing dinner, childcare, etc., I’m sure there are other studios like this one around.

It also doesn’t have to be for Ladies’ Night. Maybe some of you guys want to get your creative painter hats on (disclaimer: hats not supplied by me, bring your own hats). We could make sure there’d be some kid-friendly activities and bring the whole family. Or we could just make sure to go on a weekend so we wouldn’t all have to drive that far in one night and then get up for work the next morning.

Let me know if anyone’s interested. I don’t want to let the summer pass without injecting a few fun outings in here and there. Also, if you’re thinking about doing something and it looks like the kids and I might fit into the plans, give us a call! We’re up for summer fun!