dying for easter eggs

we attacked our eggs last night. sam was quite enthusiastic (at the beginning anyway), resulting in at least one puddle of dye ending up on the floor. he had some good assistance from daddy, and we employed the "oscar method" (using regular crayons as well as the clear ones), which helped keep sam (and daddy) busy. he liked writing his name by himself—saying as he went, "A, M, Y. sammy." he's never really participated at this level before, and it's fun to see his reaction to all this easter business.

the results were fun and colorful, and sam has been asking for eggs every time we open the fridge. i hope he's still this excited come sunday.

funny note: while i was boiling the eggs before dying, sam kept looking at them and saying, "pop!" apparently this has something to do with the tiny caterpillar popping out of it's egg one sunday morning."

more fabric flowers

here are a couple more fabric flowers i made following this tutorial. the mustard yellow is wool felt, but the other is a combination of scrap fabrics i had lying around in my scrap box. i'm sort of wishing i'd have made more flower layers, but overall, i think they look nice and i've been wearing them with spring thoughts in mind.

next on the list is giving this felt flower tutorial a try (isn't it fab?) and i have another one in progress for posting later this week.

which came first—in this case, it was the egg

sam was feeling a little under the weather this weekend, so to cheer him up, we brought out our easter eggs and were finding little things to put in them (acorns, spools of thread, pennies, etc.). i thought maybe the egg needed a chick, so i whipped one up right quick on saturday afternoon.

sam seems convinced that the the chick ought to eat the egg, despite the fact that he's supposed to LIVE in it.

egg decorating

i'm saving my egg-dying activity for later this week, but sam and i have already decorated a few paper eggs.

i went and pulled some scrap watercolor paper from my studio and some paints, and sam and i enjoyed puddling some paint here and there. we let the paper dry, and while sam was napping, i cut out egg shapes and hung them up.

sam did really well, but i think he preferred the cleaning up part (where he got to play with soapy water in the sink) to the actual painting.

we may have found spring

we're starting to see new leaves on the trees and daffodils blooming in the yard. we even dodged a few raindrops and were out for a few walks last week.

sam—a two-year-old character

(doodles of sam being sam)

i was recently talking to someone about sam's current mode-of-operation, and i can only think that he is doing a lot of dealing with his personal growth and finding out where he fits into this great, wide world that he wakes into every day. there are moments of sheer independence ("sammy do it 'self.") and then there are moments when you couldn't fit a sheet of airmail stationary (do people still know what airmail stationary is?) between him and i.

there is also a lot of this-not-that—by which i mean that he will ask for something only to say "no [insert food, object, action]" the moment he gets it. for example, at bedtime it's "no mack (his favorite bedtime truck)", so i take mack out of the bed, leave the room, and be called almost immediately to put mack back into his bed. and in general, i will let him fuss for about five minutes before going in to resolve the situation—which seems to give him the appropriate amount of time to decide exactly what it is he wants (or how he wants to assert his control) before he can finally settle down to sleep. it's a pattern that has formed, a little dance we do—"yes elmo!" "no elmo!", "yes blankets!" "no blankets!"

and so around our house there's a lot of push-and-pull, small battles going on (everywhere, all day, and luckily i have started to figure out where the landmines have been placed, where i can tread with confidence, and where i need to tip-toe carefully. there are times when, watching sam make his way down the stairs frontward (no longer backward on his hands and knees), i get the urge to scoop him up and carry him because every step seems a little wobbly, a little tentative (and god-forbid he should take ANOTHER tumble down the stairs and get ANOTHER bonk on his beezer…) it's hard to be the adult, to watch without being the "hovering safety-net", to let my little trooper grow up. but i know it's also hard for sam, because there's a lot that he wants to do that he can't. when he says "no" it's because he's also hearing a lot of "no". that he can't choose to not go to daycare on wednesdays, or not return books to the library when they can no longer be renewed online. so he's staking out his territory one small battle at a time, testing boundaries, scaling a little barbed wire (that parents have been so carefully placing in his path), and finding "sammy robert norstrom" in any place he can.

more power to you, little peanut (unless it means spitting out your cereal all over your clothes—and the table, and the floor—moments before we need to leave the house, that is).

a few photos from the weekend

sam visiting with cousins (and cousins' toys) | scarlet