motion

1)  playing baseball with her "club" aka glove, aka gardening glove, which the little dear mistakes for proper baseball attire  2) digging in the sand at the lake, which she holds in her outstretched hands while intoning "MUDDDDD" like some sort of mud/sand-loving zombie  3) oh you know, just chillin' in the pool with her ernie shirt.  i bought that super-soft vintage shirt before she was born, and now here she is wearing it.  life is crazy, man.  4) her eleven-year old friend from down the street was over as per usual, and sho insisted on hauling out the "yogas" and gettin her seven tibetan rites on!  it was sort of shocking how many yoga moves she knew off the top of her head (thanks to my mom)...complete with very serious deep breathing exercises.  5) inspecting a stone bowl: "da bunnies drink soup outta dat."  6) suddenly sho is a fearless swimmer (also thanks to my mom).  and she gets so wound up with pride that she acts like a total nutjob, complete with dance moves...

if anyone is here visiting my blogblogblog today because of my article over at offbeat mama, welcome!  it's cool to have you.  when i found out yesterday (five minutes before work ended) that it had been up for a full day already, i was sort of so excited that i felt like throwing up and/or crying.  i'm a pretty smooth operator, what can i say.  

man, i was thinkin last night that lately i have been so busy working that sometimes i forget what it is i'm really working towards.  i get up at seven, receptionist blah blah receptionist until five, then come home and play with the little dumpling until her bedtime.  (and she IS a mad fun, crazy little dumpling.)  then i haul out my sewing machine and start my second job, usually until midnight or later.  even with all that, a lot of the time when i'm hangin' with mr shosher, i'm feeling somehow guilty for not sewing or working on some other way to create an income for the two of us.  i feel pulled toward the computer to check if we've had any sales in the shop, or a million other productive things i could be doing.  but...aren't i doing all that extra work to make life better for her?  so...maybe i should be fully present during the painfully short time i have with her every day?  so obvious, so easy to forget.

anyway, in semi-related news, i just got approved for this "top baby blogs" jam.  i had an idea wherein maybe someday if people started reading my blog a lot...they could call me sir-blogs-a-lot?  yeah, definitely that too, but MAYBE i could run a few ads at some point, and shoshanna and i could live forevermore in the lap of luxury.  or at least above the poverty line.  it is a nefarious sell-out plan to be sure...but if you feel like it, click on the link below, then click on the wee owl to the left.  thanks dog, i won't pester you again.

zen's dude

a couple weeks ago, i got an email from a woman who was looking for someone to turn one of her son's drawings into a stuffed animal.  she had seen my monsters in our shop, and decided that i was her woman!  what a rad idea, and what an honor to be the one chosen!  i was pretty psyched about it, and spent a lot of time at work that day staring at the drawing of a six-year old stranger in arkansas named zen.  how cute is this kid?

 

he soon changed his request from a black hat to blonde hair, with a red beard, green eyebrows, and a yellow cape.  his favorite colors are blue and red, so i decided to use fabric with those colors for all six of the arms, and keep the legs black along with the rest of the body.  it was so much fun hard work to make this, made even more fun by how cool zen's mama jeanna is.  i knew this little dude was going to be appreciated!  here's what i came up with:

 

and then we decided that the kid should probably have a superhero cape, to go along with his little dude's.

 it took a lot of finagling to figure out how to make it work, especially sewing all the arms onto that narrow body, and a slightly panicky late-night moment when i sewed the first version of the red beard onto the black fabric face and was horrified to realize it looked exactly like that awful old racist cartoon little black sambo (haha, oh dear)...hence the more elaborate mustachio addition.  but it was good creative work, which is my favorite kind.  i really hope zen likes it when he opens his birthday present this year, and discovers the thrill of one of his artistic creations come to life.  i do believe i'd do it again...

PS - i've never done this before, but...if you like my blogblogblog, might you click on this to vote pour moi?  there are so few single mama blogs out there in the bloggin' universe, it would be kinda cool to get the word out about mine.  thank you!

weekending

it is pretty much impossible to have a lame weekend with shoshi mama by your side.  she is all that, and a bag of chips.  she is such a little bro, she is totally the kind of friend you could call to come save your party, take some flying trapeze lessons, and/or track down a chicken in chinatown.

i was realizing this weekend that one awesome part about being a single mother is that i have learned to let go of a lot of unnecessary bullshit.  like a lot of women, i used to be a PRO at making extra work for myself, whether it be crafting intricate handmade valentines for everyone i've ever met, or volunteering to bake several dozen cookies for a get-together with friends, in spite of the fact that i hate baking.  why do women do this?  i totally still do to some extent, but i've managed to put quite a (jaunty little) cap on it lately.  it feels great to have that impulse come on (sho will be going to a party for three second cousins' birthdays with her grandma today?  what elaborate bit of handmade nonsense can i spend her entire naptime slaving over?) and just SQUASH that beeyotch.  nothing, that's what!  it's awesome.  i recommend it.  

vote for me, perchance?  if you feel like it, thank you mightily.

dog wedding, you know how those go

i know i said the next pictures i'd post would be taken with my fancypants camera, buuut...well, who actually cares, let's be real here.  i did end up buying a fancy camera and i want to lick it all over.  except that would violate the immortal rules set down in the instruction manual, which run through my head every single time i pick it up: "this camera is a precision instrument.  do not drop or manhandle it."  but...you so fine, camera of mine! your viewfinder...the click of your shutter...mmmm....

anyway, my parents email me phone pictures everyday of the shenanigans of our little shenanigan while i'm at work, and today they were like, oh you know, here she is dressed up as the flower girl for a dog wedding at the moment.  how cute is that?  i tell you, the two fifth-grade girls who live on our street are always up to something cool.  i told them about my time capsule-obsessed childhood when i took them the to the lake the other day, and mere hours later one of them was on my doorstep with a blueberry box filled with various secret time-capsule related artifacts, to be stored in our basement until she enters college.  my kind of girl.

presenting the happy couple.

dude, i'm psyched it's almost the weekend!  i'm about to sew my little pants off.  ...maybe whilst sewing little pants, who even knows?  sky's the limit, it's the mutha lovin' weekend!

it's rebel time

 

yesterday i went to take a picture with my parents' camera, which i've been lucky enough to use ever since the screen shattered on my dear point-and-shoot (a sweet gift from sho's other grandma when she was a baby), and my heart sank: "lens error" it proclaimed.  oh eff!  i felt real bad and nervous about telling my parents, but it turned out okay, they're going to keep me as a daughter after all.  plus...i've decided to finally buy myself a nice camera with a lens, a canon rebel t3, the kind i've been dreaming of since i was in high school, taking black and white photos of my feet!  i remember the totally weird lab tech guy in my photo class being like, "this...is...the...very best...camera...for...shooting...large cats.  tigers...lions...oh yes."  he was a verrrry slow talker, you see.  one time he was calling out names of people who'd signed up to use the darkroom, and someone had written "amanda huginkiss" on the clipboard.  "a...man...da...hug...n...kiss?  amanda?  a-MANNNN-duhh?"    

anyway, i use a camera every day, whether for product listings in our etsy shop, pictures on this blog, or just capturing the everyday magic of one shoshanna mary, so i think it's a worthy investment.  plus, the last time i spent this much money at once was the $400 mac mini i bought for college ten years ago, which i've been using ever since.  so even though this lovely camera is at the absolute budget end of SLR cameras, it's still going to eat up almost the entire paycheck i'm getting today...but shoot, a respectable, grown-ass woman camera!  woop woop!  not to dork out, but i feel pretty proud to be able to buy myself something like this, AND support sho and myself.  super proud!  so...the next pictures you see on this here blog will be FANCY ones, taken with my very own camera. 

who knows, maybe even some of those "big cats" photos i've heard so much about....

superhero in aisle five

today during shoshi's nap, i took a break from the nonstop shop sewing i've been doing all weekend and made my girl and her teddy bear matching superhero capes.  i figure, every girl (and her bear) should have one, don't you think?  between the cape--which she insisted on wearing to target along with her pink boots--and her new tea set which has been in use basically nonstop since we got it, the cute bar has been raised pretty high around here these days.

when i peeked in to check on her during her nap, she rolled over and sighed quite dreamily in her sleep, "piizzaaah!"  i rewarded her for being such a stone-cold cutie by buying us a medium pizza from pizza king for dinner.  we watched toy story 2 and didn't wear pants, so it was pretty much the best date a girl could hope for.  

the TOTAL best part about the tea set is the brilliant flash of inspiration that came to me around naptime, when i innocently offered her chamomile "sleepytime" tea with honey.  bam!  that kid was knocked out.  i felt a little guilty...but not enough to totally do the same thing when bedtime rolled around.  she's been going through a period of taking for-freakin-ever to get to sleep lately, so this discovery just might have been my most genius moment in parenting to date.

my parents will still be out of town for most of the day tomorrow, so i've taken the day off work to hang with my crazy little naked baby-wearing tea-drinker.  

it really doesn't get much better than a three-day weekend, just me and my girl.

  

man, i cannot resist taking pictures of that shoshi girl when she's sleeping.  before her nap today she insisted on matching white t-shirt jammies for her and "dat bear" as she calls it.  regarding the flowers, my friends sara and sara (yeah plus me, sarah: 80's represent!) came over tonight, and shortly before they arrived i was seized by a martha stewartly impulse to pick them each a jar of flowers from my mom's garden.  speaking of which, my mom has made a huge bouquet for my desk at work every sunday night since i've started that job.  she is the best mama, obviously.  

1) those stickers in the top picture are by my friend erin, aren't they the raddest?  i traded her a couple michigan patches for 'em.  2) it's been real nice to be able to spread out all my projects throughout the house while my parents are outta town.  i'm definitely a big-table kind of girl.  3) little shoshi monster broke a teacup at the salvation army today so i ended up buying the entire tiny tea set.  i'm thinking it's the best $3 i accidentally spent, because she's been having dainty and elaborate tea parties all day, with "dat bear" as the guest of honor.    

both of these pictures were taken today, one of sho in a dear vintage dress prancing around sweetly, the other of her standing on a mound of gravel, an enormous filthy work glove on one hand and a pvc pipe 'telescope' in the other: "ARRR, makey!"  

when she was only a couple of days old, i remember already understanding so clearly that she had two strong sides to her personality, that she was somehow both of these opposing things at once, wrapped up in one tiny stubborn body: she was utterly sweet and totally ferocious.  it is such a privilege to be her mama, to be the one who knows her best in the world and watch day by day as she unfolds into herself.