Stuff That Will Not Make You Sweat Sale!

It's 82 degrees out right now and I'm still somehow surprised that I didn't sell any super warm wool baby hats.

Even more surprising:

Not one scarf sold today. What is going on here?! You're going to tell me that NO ONE wears winter accessories in 80 degree weather?

Can't be.

So after a lot of thinking and then some other things I did that might resemble thinking but really have more to do with daydreaming or being zombified, I've decided to amp up some of the non-wool type items that I have for sale.

So without further adieu...

The Stuff That Will NOT Make You Sweat Sale!!!

Organic Cotton Scrubettes $12

Perfect for removing makeup! Completely Machine Washable! Order at Ultra Cute Crochet or email me and I'll hook you up.
Free shipping for bulk orders.

Bunnies won't make you sweat:



Organic Cotton Baby Headbands!


These headbands are dyed with organic dyes and are very soft. This royal purple one is 3-9 months in size, but they can be made in any size and any color. Contact me for me info.

Slippers are perfect for cool nights and for air conditioned houses. This pair in 2T-4T is for sale right now in my shop, or contact me for ordering info.

These slippers are also available in Womens Sizes.


If you get a chance, do me a favor and promote me on your blogs? I'll give you a discount on anything you might order in the future if you do and let me know about it!

My Baby Girl, Aly Bear

My friend Aly wrote about her parents yesterday and I had the strangest reaction to her post.

I had the strangest urge to transport myself back in time, drive down south, break into her home and take her home with me.

I wouldn't make her eat cole slaw, actually , I wouldn't make her eat anything. She would just be a baby in my house, cuddled and coddled and loved. I'd make her homemade pizzas and star shaped cucumbers.

We'd share bowls of ice cream in the gameroom and watch PBS specials about hidden caves in Thailand.

We'd read The Phantom Tollbooth and A Wrinkle in Time together and I'd never let her stay up late. She'd be in bed by 9 every night and I'd wake her up every morning with a 'Good Morning Sunshine.'.

We'd fight cause I won't let her wear makeup. We'd fight cause I think her best friend is a bad influence. I wouldn't treat her like a friend or an enemy though. She'd just be my baby.

Forever and ever.

Then it dawned on me that I have enough freaking kids. There's no way I can afford the nervous breakdown another child would surely cost, let alone the time and energy I'd have to come up with to go back in time and kidnap some random brat.

Good thing Aly turned out just fine without me.

T-Shirts and Cheap Flip Flops 4-Ever!

No offense to Maxine Jane, but I am sick of talking about her.

On my birthday my mom took me shopping. As I've mentioned many times before, I don't get many opportunities to shop so I was quite excited, especially since I'm not wearing Giant Lady sizes anymore.

I won't tell you the size, because if I did and you wear that size you'll be all offended and pissed off. But I was pissed off all the time regardless of bloggers comment's about the ridiculousness of that size...so maybe it doesn't matter?

ANYWAYS I still wear a 14. Which is almost more embarrassing then a *Giant Lady* size because it indicates that although I haven't let myself go completely, I still have a rather disproportionate arse and blubbery thighs.

Don't get me wrong, I had a best friend growing up who was very tall and wore bigger sizes, although she appeared to be much thinner than me.

But alas, I am short and unless I have a freak growth spurt right now, I have no excuse.

My momma and I have been fighting over clothes for 25 years. She wants me to look nice,I just want to be comfortable. I gravitate towards jeans, jackets, and t-shirts. That's pretty much all I want.

Instead I got these two things, a lacy black cami and two pairs of capri-type jeans (one of which is a totally cool 50's inspired pair that just calls out for little bobbie socks and loafers!).

At another store I got a dress (Black with Big Grey Polka Dots!!) and a pair of shoes:


Although I loved everything I got that day, I'm sure if I were shopping on my own there would have been a completely different outcome:



And a pair of those $2 flip flops from Old Navy with the sequins? I really love them. In green. OR HOT PINK! Yay!

Oh and if I would pay a dumb ass number like $30 on t shirts (if you spend $30 on a t-shirt I don't care if I offended you...spend less money on t-shirts) I would buy myself, Jeremiah and each of the kids 10-15 t-shirts each from SnorgTees.com.

I even know which ones I would buy.

This one for Elijah:


This one for 'Rose' (but I would buy an adult medium for her, so I could wear it and she'd whine about how she never can, cause I always have it on...)



This one for Jeremiah:


And all these (and more) for ME!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU LITTLE TURD!

I had this wonderful post planned for Max's birthday today.

It was all about how far we've come together, how she's grown, what she was like as a baby...all that good natured happy birthday type jazz.

But then the day began, and at this point I'm not in the mood to celebrate Maxine's awesomeness. WHATSOEVER.

I stretched and yawned in bed. Sunlight streamed through my window onto my legs and my adorable red and white striped socks...I smiled excitedly at the wonderful sunny omen for Maxine Jane's Birth Day.

Then from her bedroom came a hacking cough and a frighteningly shaky scream:

"IT'S MY BIRTHDAY MOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!! (hack hack cough cough) GET THE BABY OUT OF MY WOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!"

Well good morning to you too, Birthday Princess.

Her siblings and I entered her room a few minutes later to tell her Her Birth Story, which is a tradition in our family. She was not pleased at being bothered by us and our loving embraces. She begrudgingly listened to the story and interjected sweet comments the whole way through.

"Grandma said I was a fat baby. You say I was small. Someone's a liar."

"20 hours isn't that long. You can count to that much, I think."

"Why didn't you just push me out then?"


She then stayed hidden from the morning's activities alone in her room for almost an hour. When she finally arrived downstairs she was wearing her meanest scowl (there are many levels of scowl for Max...ranging from the mildly annoyed scowl to the ready to cannibalize the natives scowl) and demanded that since it was her birthday she be allowed to eat...

"...black and white cookies all day long. With milk. Or juice. Can I dip black cookies in juice?"

I informed her that she wasn't allowed to have cookies for breakfast, even for her birthday. This was obviously not an acceptable outcome for Her Royal Highness for she threw herself down (which she hasn't done in a year) and hit her head off of the ground. I put her in time out for throwing a fit, during which she head butted me and made me feel dizzy for a moment.

So instead of time out I put her in bed. I released her after 30 minutes of screaming and gagging and crying.

She told me she wanted to watch a movie, so I put one on for her, gave her some string cheese and a cup of apple juice and made her a comfy nesty on the floor. I was called to the room two minutes later by a panicked Elijah. Max and Elijah had piled up the two baskets that hold the stuffed animals on top of a giant pile of library books and a kids sized coloring table. Then Max had helped Elijah climb to the top of this monstrosity and left him there, precariously balancing at the top, calling for me. Despite his distress, she had returned to her movie and was comfortably snacking and watching her movie.

So Happy Birthday You Scamp. It's only 10:15 AM...I wonder how much more joy she has in store for me today?

Max's First Thunderstorm

I’m sitting in our game room, Elijah in bed, Jeremiah sprawled on the couch next to me, yawning and comfy. The rain outside is pouring down over our street, over our small town, washing away the grimy trash, making the ugly cars gleam under the sheets of effortless water.

I am longing for Maxine, missing her spindly legs lying over my own much less spindly ones, her tiny hands looking endlessly for crevices of flesh to dig in to. The thunder and lightning are beyond my windows, filling the night with a drama much adverse to the calm of our quiet house.

Maxine hated the rain as an infant. She would cry in terror if it would hit her baby head and she would shake and cringe at the cold wet when it would touch her body.

Thinking of her great dislike of the rain makes me keenly remember her first thunderstorm. On a night much like tonight I laid a tiny uncomfortable Maxine, finally sleeping, next to me on my bed where Maxine, Rose and I would sleep every night. I dare not leave the bed, for if I moved my body from the space next to her she would wake and begin crying, the jagged spine chilling cry that haunted my days with infant Her. The lightning began to brighten our room and Rose and I counted the time between the lightning and thunder in hushed tones. Max woke to a considerably loud thunder clap and I immediately started to pick her up before she could wail. Instead of crying she looked curiously around the room, listening to the pitter patter of the rain.

I turned off the t.v. and sat with her and Rose in the dark room, lit by a small nightlight, listening with Maxine to the storm outside. When it thundered again I watched in amazement as a smile began to erase the usual scowl that painted Maxine’s face. The storm outside gathered more fury and soon the gentle rain sounds were replaced by furious winds. Max was still enthralled.

I laid her down between Rose and myself, pulled the blankets around us and soon fell asleep. It was a wonderful experience, Maxine at peace, not strangely tense, or stressed. There was nothing other than a sweet embrace and a gentle slumber, accompanied by a musical storm raging outside.

She's a Gross Brat...Or a Grossly Mistaken One?

BenFolds @adamdaymusic @erinisfordorks @bryanks @BlaineStewart @MichaelSterchak @erinisfordorks @NickCollins6 correct as well

So Ben Folds tweets @me. He took a photo from his hotel room asking what city he is in...it was Pittsburgh and I guessed the right city and the right hotel. And now we're pretty much best friends.

I guess this week's posts were supposed to be all about Maxine? We can talk about her too, if you want.

Max spends three days of every week with her Dad. Sometimes she calls me and sometimes she doesn't. I wait with bated breath for her to get bored enough to want to talk to little ole' momma.
Our conversations are pretty short, because as I mentioned last post, she's not ordinarily a big talker. She'll briefly tell me what she's doing, that no one is playing with her and usually that some horrible injustice has been done to her. Most often by one of her sisters, sometimes by a rogue cousin and just every once in awhile by her precious Daddy.

"Daddy said I was gross."

"WHAT!? Maxine, I'm sure you're daddy wouldn't say that to you. You should tell him that you think he said something mean to you and I'm sure he'll explain to you what he really said."

"I told you what he said. He said that I'm gross."

"Okay, well Maxine, you are definitely not gross. You're lovely and wonderful and smart."

"Daddy said I was gross."

Oh boy. I couldn't sway her, no matter what I said in her Dad's defense. Maxine is his baby, he adores her...I'm sure he wouldn't call her 'gross'. We hung up shortly after this dialogue and one about the fact that Olivia won't share with her.

Later I talked to her Dad about it at the tail end of a conversation regarding scheduling,

"Max said you called her gross.."

"Oh my God! She keeps saying that. I have no idea why she thinks I called her gross. I didn't."

"I didn't think you would, it's just that she is so adamant."

"I've told her a billion times I would never call her any names. And I didn't say she was gross. She must have misheard something I said."

"Oh ok. Well she seems pretty upset. You should do something about it."

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, she's saying you called her a 'brat'."

"That's totally true."

Tootsie Roll Heaven

"On Zomboomafoo it says that when dogs are puppies they are as small as a ball. But I think those guys must be cwazy...or dumb...cause it wouldn't be a puppy if it were as big as a BEACH BALL."

Max begins laughing hysterically at her own logic. I'm distracted by the crap in Elijah's diaper that I have to clean up. I don't laugh immediately, in fact, I'm hardly paying attention to Max at all. This is not okay with her.

"MOM. What the hec...I mean, MOM why are you not listening to meeee?"

She's actually got her hands on her hips and she's stomping her tiny little feet. I blankly look up from my dastardly son's ass at Max and say,

"Sorry!"

before I continue wiping. Max is not usually the most interactive of children. She likes to play by herself and makes sly comments here and there throughout the day. Chatty is not a good description of her on a usual day, but for some reason this morning she fell into the Chatty Kathy role perfectly.

"Mom. When I was on the comp-oo-ter earlier, I was playing this game on PBS Kids and there was all these cats and I had to count them. Then I won a prize for keeping all the kittens with the mom and... MOM. Are you listening?"

"Yes, Max. Computers and kittens. Very interesting."

"And then Elijah was there and I tried to show him the game and he wouldn't look and I wanted to pinch him so bad but I didn't...."

And on and on she went. I couldn't help but listen intently. This was an unprecedented amount of talk for her. If it was Olivia it would be commonplace for her to talk about nothing for hours on end, but this was Maxine Jane. Queen of the One Liners. The Quiet Scowl. The Angry Silence.

"If we go on a walk today...can we bring toys this time. Last time you said we could bring toys, but then you forgot, just like you forgot the water last night when we went to watch Jeremiah skate and we were all so thirsty and he only had a little bit of water left..."

After a while of this I became suspicious. Max is notoriously sneaky, as most quiet people are. (Sneaky Quiet Freaks!) I began to think that she may have a sugar related reason for this sudden influx of mile a minute conversation. I checked the candy stash in the pantry and didn't notice anything out of place until I was exiting and noticed a tiny tootsie roll wrapper on the floor directly behind the door. Hm.

"Maxine! Were you in the candy this morning?"

"Ummmm No?"

"Max, remember that you get in less trouble for telling the truth than for telling a lie."

"Ok. I'll show you."

Max leads me through the house to hidden piles of empty tootsie roll wrappers. Under the couch, in the baskets of the play kitchen set, under Elijah's bed, in Rose's desk drawer.

"When did you do all this?!"

"Right after Jeremiah went to work."

6:00am.

She had been eating mass amounts of tootsie rolls and hiding the evidence in every room (except for my own room, even she isn't that brazen) for two hours.

Next to each pile of wrappers was a set of two or three childrens books. I couldn't help but smile as I imagined her sitting and looking at new books in each location, snacking on tootsie rolls and stifling giggles as she chilled out in the early hours of the new day.

I suppose I should have given her a time out, but instead I gave her a stern talking to. And then she gave me a talking to that lasted almost an hour. Somewhere around lunchtime she zoinked out and crashed in front of the t.v.

I later remembered that last summer Jeremiah and Elijah had collected a huge bag of tootsie rolls from a smashed to hell pinata at a family reunion. I had brought the bag home and hid it in the back of the pantry and had promptly forgotten that it even existed. Until Max miraculously found it, months and months later.

Maxine Jane turns FIVE Wednesday and until then my posts will be in honor of her excellence. I hope you all enjoy!