Flight of the Dragon

One of my goals as a mother is to provide my kids with high quality toys that encourage independent pretend play. (that is, the kids can have fun without me directing their play).

Vincente loves dress up, and when we lived with my parents in Arkansas for a summer his favorite dress up costume included fairy wings. I had mentioned that I wanted to make him some dragon wings, but I never really got around to it.

Well, my entire immediate family came to Utah for Christmas 2011, so my mom was here to help me put together some dragon wings. Due to all the festivities (and craziness!) of having 15 people and 5 dogs in our house almost all the time, the dragon wings got postponed until Christmas Eve. I was up until about 4am working on the dragon wings, and my mom was up with me working on a gift for my sister.

They are now one of the favorite costumes in the dress up box -

The kids’ favorite thing to do when they were dressing up was having Grandma Pam play “dragon music” and then Vince would chase them around. Then they would say “Play princess music!” Grandma would happily oblige, and the little girls (there were three of them!) would spin happily around the living room. Then there was “bunny music” and “pirate music”. They are so lucky to have such an amazingly talented grandma! Now she just needs to record a CD for them so they have have her “dragon music” and “princess music” even when she’s 2000 miles away.

A Rite of Passage

A few weeks before Christmas I was working on several Christmas projects downstairs in the basement. That means my sewing machine, countless buttons, spools of ribbons, yarn, rick rack and the like were laying out in the open on my sewing table.

I’m pretty sure we were getting ready for dinner (it was in the evening) and I thought “I should probably put away my sewing stuff downstairs.” But we were busy, so I didn’t. Later, it was awful quiet downstairs, so I headed down to check on the kids.

Bags of buttons had been opened and strewn about the room, balls of yarn had been cut into tiny pieces. The sewing machine was off, but there were pieces of felt and rick rack shoved in the foot under the needle. I took a deep breath, tried not to freak out, and sent the kids upstairs so that I could clean up.

As I was picking up pieces of yarn and moving sheets of felt off the ground I saw it.

Clumps of precious, blonde, wispy, Joseline baby hair.

“Nooooo!!!”

I grabbed the hair and ran upstairs to assess the damage (which I hadn’t noticed before – probably due to the panic I had been experiencing).

At first I only noticed her pony tail (she pretty much cut the pony tail right off). It was only later after brushing out her hair that I found that she had scalped herself in the front.

A friend of mine had a similar experience and said she took her daughter to one of those cheap cut places to fix it, and they made it worse. Not wanting to make things any worse (could they even get worse?) we went straight to Cookie Cutters in South Jordan the next morning and begged them to repair the damage as much as they could.

They couldn’t do a whole lot for the bangs (we just stuck with headbands for a while), but the stories they told of kids who had done worse made me feel worlds better.

Everyone who hears about her cutting her hair has the same things to tell me, “Every kid does it at least once.” “Now she’s officially a little girl.”

Or they tell me their horror stories.

Which really do make me feel better.

At least she didn’t take the clippers down the middle of her head.

Hair grows back, right?

That’s what I keep telling myself.

Bowl Heads

Joseline is a daddy’s girl. No doubt about it. Doc gets kind of jealous sometimes. But that doesn’t stop all of them from having a good time.

He’s such a great dad – seriously, who else would pose with a bowl on his head. Gotta love a dad who loves his kids. These guys are peas in a pod.

A Mother Heart

I love these guys. So much.

I got stranded in Wyoming last night,
and I didn’t see these precious faces until this evening.
I just couldn’t get enough of them!
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There’s something really special about being a mother. Something that makes me love it.

You know what else I love?

Watching complete strangers being awesome parents.

Today at Kohls’ I walked by a young couple with a little one or two year old boy in the mother’s arms crying. The father got close to the little boy’s face, and in the sweetest voice said, “I know that’s really fun to play like that, but you can’t ___.”
(I think the blank was something about being in a crowded store and running away from mom and dad being dangerous – I was mostly out of earshot by the time he got to that part)

I just loved that the dad was so in tune with his kid – the kid did think that running around the busy store was fun! But he also needed to understand how dangerous it can be not to obey mom and dad, and not to stay near them. Overhearing that exchange in the store lit up my face. Seriously. I smiled for almost a minute afterwards. I see too many moms and dads dragging their kids around public places, snipping at them, saying mean things to their kids, or even spanking them in the middle of the store (sometimes I am guilty of this behavior – not so much the spanking part, but definitely being impatient with my kids in public places). The way this father spoke to his son was so sweet, so loving, so tender. I’m sure that little boy had no doubt in his mind that his daddy loves him and that all his daddy wanted was to keep his little boy safe.

What a great dad.

I’m married to a guy like that.

He’s a great dad.

Great dads make great kids.

That’s why my kids are fabulous.