Life is Beachy

Holy gorgeousness outside!  Spring is Spring-ing, bird are chirping, Maddie Bears are a-growing.

We had a really nice family weekend.  The beautiful weather just instantly puts everyone in a better mood, doesn't it?

(Although I must say this daylight savings bologna is messing with Madeline's psyche.  Set your internal clock, Madeline!)   

Saturday was spent on an ultimate curtain hunt, which was a success.  Then I got a random urge to build Madeline a tee pee.  (More on this when it's actually finished....soon...I hope...)

Sunday we decided to drive up to the beach and let Madeline run around like a maniac.  She yelled, "Watah! Watah!"  all the way down to the ocean.  Then she ran, and ran, and ran some more.

 Mix the beach time in with some playground playing and chocolate-chip-cookie eating, and Madeline's day was pretty fantastic.

Songs to Set Your Soul To: Week Two

I was so busy enjoying the beautiful weather and building Madeline a teepee (more on this later) that I forgot to post my song of the week.



I'd like to point out that I'm not posting these in any particular order. I just made a list off the top of my head.

Do you have a song that makes your toes tap and your heart thump?

Pom-Poms are Fun, Mumma

Madeline wasn't a fan of a bowl full of cloud dough, but she was a huge fan of a bowl full of pom-poms.

 Apparently, when it comes to neon pom-poms, messes are not a problem for Madeline.

The Ginger Gene

Until Madeline was born, I was the lone redhead in my family.  I don't belong to the milk man, so obviously there has to be red hair in the gene pool in various places, (my father's mother for example) but I'm the only one I've ever seen.  

The fact that Madeline inherited my ginger gene makes me feel like there's an extra bond between us.  It's like sitting next to a stranger in the cafeteria only to find that you're not the only weirdo in the world who eats peanut butter and mustard sandwiches.  Kindred spirits!

 It makes me happy and proud when strangers comment on the fact that she takes after her mother.

Yet, sadly for little Madeline, inheriting her Mumma's head of hair comes with some challenges.

First off, although my daughter is one-and-a-half years old, she still doesn't have much hair.  What she does have is a beautiful shade of red, but it's scraggly long in some places while still sparse in others.

It used to look like this:

Then for a long time it looked like this:

Pretty much every time we went out someone would call her a boy...even when she was dressed head to toe in pink.

Now, it's finally long enough to tease some itty-bitty ponytails out of it:
(Even with the ponytails, people still call her a boy because they are morons.)

 When we take the ponytails out, her hair stays like this until we wash it:

 I love it!

Although Madeline's hair has finally started filling in, I'm not holding my breath for a full head of hair any time soon.  When I was a baby, my hair looked like this:

Except, I'm not a baby in this picture.  I'm three.

Madeline probably has at least two more years of a her boyish locks until we need to worry about ribbons and bows.

Then somewhere around age eleven or twelve, her baby-thin hair will morph into the giant red triangle that I'm still trying to tame today.

A boy at recess once told me I looked like Bozo the Clown.  Which, I did...Ouch.  When I was in my mid twenties, another boy once told me I have hair like a burlap sac.  Which I do...ouch.

Crazy hair?  We gots it!

P.S. Eric has a pretty mean cowlick in his crazy hair, so Madeline's got that going for her as well.

Linking up with Toddle Along Tuesday this week at Growing Up Geeky.

Cloud Dough is Messy, Mumma

Madeline has been stuck inside with the sicks since last Wednesday, which makes for one serious case of cabin fever.  (P.S. We're pretty sure she has sixth disease since her temperature vanished as quickly as it came and left a lovely rash all over her body in its wake.  At least she's finally on the mend.)  On Friday afternoon, I was feeling sad for my bored baby who couldn't even enjoy playing out in the snow, so my brain started searching for a fun inside project for us to do.

Luckily, I came across the blog Tinkerlab last week, which is an amazing resource of fun projects to do with your kids.

So while Madeline napped, I whipped up a batch of cloud dough.  It's very easy to make.  You mix flour and baby oil together.  (I used two cups flour and 1/4 cup baby oil.)  The mixture has an interesting texture that I can best sum up as a blend of cotton balls, flour, and sand.  It really does look like a bowl full of clouds.  Plus, it smells really good and left my hands moisturized.  Bonus!

 I was really excited to wake Madeline up from her nap and let her dig around in a bowl of clouds for the afternoon.

Madeline, however, was not as enthusiastic.  She dumped the bowl on the floor right off the bat, poked at it a few times, looked at me like I was crazy sauce, and declared, "Mess!  Mess!" while shaking her head.

She humoured me for a few minutes, but she did not enjoy getting her hands dirty.  This is proof that although Madeline has inherited many of my qualities, she's got a healthy dose of Eric in her as well.  Mumma couldn't give a hootenanny about messes.  In fact, I really enjoy making a good mess.   Dada on the other hand?  Dada does not like messes, and apparently, neither does Madeline.

I was a little bummed that Madeline did not want to get creative with me, but oh well, there's no arguing with Maddie Bears.

I have not quite given up on cloud dough yet in spite of Madeline's reluctance.  It's just too fun.  I scooped what I could salvage into a freezer bag and I'll reintroduce it to Madeline in a few months.  Maybe she's just still too young.

 What kid could resist playing with a bowl full of clouds?!?

Songs to Set Your Soul To: Week One

I've always been able to tell if I'm going to make a significant connection to a person the first time we meet.  This has been true in both romance and friendships.  If we don't hit it off the moment we meet, we're more than likely never going to hit it off.  I've had both friends and boyfriends where this wasn't the case, of course, but none of which can be counted as being amongst the most significant relationships of my life.  There needs to be that electricity in the air.

It's the same thing with music.  There's been very few bands or musicians that have slowly grown on me.  And there are very few bands that I could say I truly love.  But, there have been songs from all genres and time periods that seem to reach down into my soul and speak to me the very first time I hear them.  Some of the songs are silly, some are sad, some are good and some are pretty cheesy.  Yet, for whatever reason, these are the songs that I find myself coming back to time and time again.  These are the songs that instantly put me in a better mood when I hear them and I blast on my car radio when there's no one else there to complain.  

The plan is to share one every Saturday for your listening pleasure.  At the very least you can have the smug satisfaction of having better taste in music than me.  If you want to play along, please comment below.

I'm starting with tonight's selection because it was just on the radio on my way home, and it got me thinking about this subject in the first place.  David Bowie is playing along on the video I chose because who doesn't need a little more Bowie in their lives, am I right?



Do you have a song that gets your heart thumpin' and your toes tappin? Want to play along? Link up below.

Snow Day

Madeline spiked a fever out of nowhere yesterday evening.  Usually there's a runny nose or bags around the eyes to let me know that the plague is a-coming.  But last night she went from her normal, happy Maddie Bear self to Mumma, I can't move in less than twenty minutes.

Sometimes when you most need a snow day, the Snow Gods hear your prayers and deliver a bounty of freezing precipitation.

This morning when I woke up to an even sicker Madeline and the news telling me I didn't have to go to work today, I did a happy dance in my heart.  I didn't really get up and do a happy dance because I was trapped in my cozy bed with a sick baby sprawled across me.  But, trust me, my heart was doing the Jitterbug.

Except for the freak blizzard that ruined Halloween, we've had a pretty mild winter in the beautiful Commonwealth of Massachusetts this year.  In fact, its' been so unusually warm recently that February vacation felt more like April vacation.  I was pretty sure we'd get through the school year without another snow day.

I'm so glad I was wrong because Madeline really needed a day to do nothing but sleep on Mumma while Mumma slept on the couch.  And that's all we did.

I didn't even get out of my pajamas today.  Yup, I'm pretty disgusting.

Madeline is still sick, so one of us (I vote Eric) will probably have to take a day off work tomorrow to stay home with her, but at least it's only one day of work missed instead of two.

Thank you almighty Snow Gods in your infinite wisdom.