An afternoon at home

“Mommy, I want to do craft!” Hannah told me.

“Hmmmm…Ok, if you sit up at the dining table, you can do some drawing.” I told her.

“I want to paste.” Sigh. There certainly won’t be any pasting at the table. I’d end up with a bunch of random, torn pieces of paper all stuck to the table.

“No sweetie, not at the table.”

“How about at my desk?” Cheeky little monkey, she always has a solution. But I can’t let her paste at her desk because Daniel is awake and he likes to eat everything he is not supposed to. Paper. Paste. Pens. Crayons. Stickers. Pencils. The list goes on. And Hannah’s desk is within his chubby little reach. Plus he stands at her desk, swiping all of her things while she’s trying to make stuff, and if I don’t let him swipe her things, he holds on to the desk, rocks himself back and forth like a madman, and makes obnoxious tantrum/whingey noises. Sometimes to the point of whacking his face on the desk. Or bathtub. Or whatever it is he may be tantruming on. Sigh.

I feel bad because I used to do craft with Hannah all the time. Before Daniel. Now it’s a bit hard.

I set her up at the table with her art supplies. Out of Daniel’s reach. She gets out her paint pens and gets her art on. Daniel is happily pushing a car around the living room floor on his hands and knees.

Painting at the table

I take the opportunity to make dinner. It’s hard to get time for that, without one whinging and the other attempting to climb up my leg whist whinging. Did I mention whinging?

Stir. Check on the kids. Chop some stuff. Check on the kids. Add to the pot. Check on the kids. Repeat.

Where’s Daniel? He isn’t pushing his car around. He isn’t getting into the drawer.

I look over towards the table. Hannah’s paint tubes are everywhere. Her hands look like half a dozen paint tubes vomited all over them. Paint tubes are all over the floor. And there is Daniel, sitting under the table eating a tube of paint. Cheeky boy.

His mouth is an interesting shade of blue. And sparkley. Luckily it’s non-toxic.

I get up to get some wipes.

As I kneel back down, he puts something questionable in his mouth. As I shove my fingers in his mouth in a vain attempt to retrieve the questionalbe item, he swallows it.  An old pea maybe? Lucky I vacuumed the day before. Can’t have been too old. I try to pick up all the food that falls on the floor when they eat, but the carpet is brown. It’s like camouflage.

I clean Daniel up and take Hannah to the bathroom to wash her hands.

Daniel follows us in, lightning fast, and shoves his hands in Hannah’s potty. He has an obsession with it. He leans over and to give it a chew. Ick. I leave Hannah standing on her monkey stool washing her hands while I pick Daniel up to avoid a probable e-coli infection.

I clean him up again.

Dinner time.

“I don’t want it.” Hannah says without trying it. She won’t even get in her chair. Like merely going near her wholegrain macaroni pasta bake with spinach, chicken, peas, corn, and carrots would give her leprosy (Aaron and I had it for dinner too. It was delicious by the way).

Daniel likes the pasta. He eats quite a lot. And then decides that he needs to sweep his tray clean with his arms. He puts his forearms on his tray and flaps them back and forth like windshield wipers on red cordial, knocking the rest of his food to the floor in an instant. Sigh.

He takes a drink of water from his sippy cup and then spits half of it back out. Just like he always does. Sigh.

I get a wipe and attempt to remove the food from all over his face.

He cries, turns his head from side to side remarkably fast, and grabs at the cloth with both hands. Apparently he likes having a face full of food.

Time for a bath.

Sassy Bathtime Pals Squirt and Float Toys

I get some wash cloths and turn the water on in the tub. I get Daniel in the bath and have to call for Hannah a million times before she comes.

Daniel thinks it’s great fun to shove his face in the water and eat bubbles. And drink the water. He coughs. Apparently it didn’t go down so well. But he does it repeatedly anyway. He finds it hilarious. I don’t, I sit there hoping he doesn’t actually inhale any of the water and drown, dreading every second.

After a while he gets a little too rambunctious and tries to stand up on the side of the slippery bath. I have a non-slip bath mat in there, but it doesn’t go right up the sides of the bath. Once (probably more than once), he hit his head on the side of the bath. He’s a bit wild like that. I sit him down, but he just gets back up again, shoves his face in the water, giggles, and then tries to climb the bath again. Time to get out….

Hannah refuses to dress herself even though she can. Instead she stands next to the change table and cries/whinges as I attempt to dry, moisturise, and nappy Daniel. Daniel is crying too. He hates getting dressed. He’s screaming and flailing and doing butt lifts, making it nearly impossible for me to get his nappy on.

I take him off the change table and try to put his clothes on. He turns into a giant pretzel, making it super hard to get his sleepy suit on. Hannah still refuses to clothe herself and is whinging in my ear the whole time.

When I finally get his clothes on, it’s Hannah’s turn.

I put her on the change table to put a nappy on for night time. Daniel pulls himself up on my pant leg, nearly pulling my pants down, looks at me with those big brown pick-me-up-please-mommy, googley eyes and cries when I don’t.

I get Hannah down from the change table and sit her on my lap to put her feet in her pant legs. Daniel thinks we’re having some sort of awesome fun piggy pile. He crawls over and excitedly stands up next to me, pulling Hannah’s hair and giggling whilst trying to get in my lap.

“NO DANIEL!” Hannah yells. Sigh.

Just a typical afternoon in the Thomson house.

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Hannah made a sticker

A while back, I was contacted by MyBinding.com  to see if I wanted to review a laminator. Hannah makes so many artworks that I thought it would be awesome to laminate them and turn them into placemats. Or playdoh mats. Or flash cards. Or something.

But then Tarragon from MyBinding brought up the great point about electricity. They are a family owned company in Oregon (U.S.A.), so the plug of the laminator wouldn’t exactly fit into my outlets. And if I used an adapter, there is still a wattage issue, and it could quite possibly blow up.

No seriously. I’m not even joking. I brought my guitar amp over here, plugged it into an adapter, hooked up my guitar, and BANG! No more guitar amp.

Sigh. No laminator.

But then she had another product for me. A Xyron Create a Sticker.

WHAT??!!!!!!!!!! I CAN MAKE MY OWN STICKERS????!!!!!!!!!

Let me just tell you a little something about kids. They love stickers. If it were up to Hannah, she’d cover the entire house, floor to ceiling, including floor and ceiling, in stickers.

Daniel loves stickers too. A little too much. Remember when he tried to eat one, choked on it, and I had to call the ambulance?

Now we play with stickers when he’s asleep. And I make sure they are not too small, and stuck on anything that he will be playing with.

To say I was excited about the sticker maker is a huge understatement. When the package arrived and I told Hannah about it, she nearly wet herself with excitement. She does this eyes bulging, neck stuck out, mouth in a 5 year old boy’s pretend smile position, half laugh/half nanny goat noise when she gets really excited about something. She was doing the the whole time I opened the box.

I let Hannah draw on some construction paper, and then tear it however she wanted.

Hannah drawing to make stickers

Then we stuck it in the sticker maker and turned the crank. And out popped Hannah’s art on the other side. On a backing, as a sticker. It was that easy.

If I let her, she’d make stickers all day.

I decided to use the sticker maker for a very different reason: Potty training. We have a sticker chart that Hannah gets to put stickers on if she poops in the potty or toilet. Not that she does, but the though is nice. I made her a very special sticker in the sticker maker.

My sticker coming out with one of Hannah’s

“Hannah, look at this!” I told her excitedly, “If you do a poop in the toilet, you can put this sticker we made on your potty chart!”

Stickers!

“YEAH!” She told me. But she still won’t poop in the toilet. Sigh.

PROS:

-Inexpensive

-Non-toxic

-No heat, electricity, or batteries needed

-Easy to use

-Would be perfect for scrap booking

-Kids love it!

-Ships internationally

-Can get backing that lets you stick and re-stick your stickers (repositionable)

-Can get backing that lets your stickers stay stuck

CONS:

-Your child will harass you to make stickers all the time

*I was sent a free sticker maker and backing for the purpose of this review. Opinions expressed are my own and were not swayed in any manner.

You can buy your own sticker maker, or a variety of other products (laminators, binders, binding supplies, shredders, etc.) here

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

There’s paint on my pants

“You’ll regret putting those posters on the wall someday when you have to clean all the blu-tack off and paint the wall!” Grandma told The Jess back in the day when she was a tween, plastering posters of ugly band members on her wall.  And ceiling.

“No I won’t!  I’ll fix it I promise!”

10(ish) years later:

“Um…we need some paint.”

The sales girl with the green fringe looked at us, unimpressed.

“We need some of this colour *holds up paint swatch* and some of this colour, and then this one for the trim.”

Everyone was looking at us.  Maybe we were ordering wrong.  Or maybe it was the fact that we were both wearing cute little sundresses in Bunnings.  Ok, it was probably because we clearly had no idea about painting.

“Do you need acrylic paint?”

“Um….”  Judging by the look The Jess was giving me, she had no idea either.

“Well the trim is shiny, but the walls aren’t.”  We’re so helpful and knowledgable.  “Where do we find painting stuff?”

Quizzical look from Green Fringe.

“Rollers and um…whatever else we’ll need.  Do we use rollers?”

$220 (of The Jess’ money.  It was her room, her walls, her damage, her promise) later, we had everything we needed.

This weekend:

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“You need to put something on the floor to protect it.”

“Grandma, I bought something for it, stop fussing!”

“Have you got all of the rollers and brushes and things you’ll need?”  Grandma means well, but seems to need constant reassurance that you are not going to accidentally kill yourself and/or anyone else/the house/the car/anything really.

“Grandma!  Go away, it’s all under control.”  The Jess was on a mission to prove that contrary to family belief, she is actually an adult.

*Gagging noise (how do you spell that?)* “Ew, this blue tack remover stuff is disgusting.  It’s getting in my mouth!” I said to The Jess.

“Maybe you should stand under it when I spray.” Good point.  But it didn’t remove the icky taste in my mouth.  It was kind of like how your mouth feels after you eat one of those cough drops that make your mouth a little numb.

The painting wasn’t so bad, but cleaning all the walls pretty much sucked.  The Jess sure knows how to ruin walls.  Not that I’m one to talk.  When I was an annoying tween, I put my ribbons (from equestrian events) all over my bedroom walls.  Not

My room growing up. This was before all of the photos on the closet started to overlap. Yeah, I know, I was still in my awkward phase....

with Blu-tack, as would have probably been smarter.  No, I used push pins.  Hundreds of them (I have hundreds of ribbons).  When we first moved into the brand new house (after living in a mobile home, ok, trailer, until I was in 4th grade.  Yes, I am trailer trash), I was specifically told “Don’t put anything on your walls!”  I listened for a while, but the white walls were just so boring.  My room needed a bit of Sheri-fying.  I started slow, one push pin on one side of the wall, another on the other side, a piece of fishing line in between, with some of my best ribbons hung on the line.  This little decoration didn’t get much of a reaction, so I put another line up.  Then another.  Then I found the fishing line arrangement all too hard and started using push pins for each individual ribbon.  It wasn’t long before every square inch of my wall was covered with ribbons (and hundreds or push pin holes).  There was no room left on my walls, so I put all of my photos on my closet doors.  I didn’t have any blu-tack, so I used brace wax (as in, wax that you put in your braces so they don’t cut up your mouth).  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that my photos have all been removed from my closet door, it’s not such a pretty sight.  With my closet door and walls completely covered, I started on my bedroom door.  I was a little bit naughty as an annoying teenager and used to take funny stickers off of anything and everything.  Yes, steal them.  My favorite was the “Doo Doo Only” sticker from a dumpster like bin at the fairgrounds that was for, well, doo doo.  My bedroom door became my canvas for my unusual sticker collection.

Ok, that was a bit of a tangent, but point of the story is, like The Jess, I too made that promise to my parents: “Don’t worry, I will fix the walls and doors!”  But now I live in a different country, so 10 years later, they are still waiting.  At least The Jess actually came through on her promise.  Plus her walls weren’t half as bad as mine.

“What kind of paint did you use?”  Grandma was fussing again.

“Um….”  I think we’ve established that The Jess and I really had no idea, we just used what Green Fringe gave us as per our request (“it has to be anti-mold, and washable”).

“The rollers are soaking in turps, if it’s water based paint, you don’t soak them in turps.”  I don’t know how Grandma knows things, but she does.

“Um….”  Jess started looking at the can.

“It’s acrylic.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.  I don’t know!”

“It says you can wash unused paint down the drain, does that mean it’s water based?”  Seemed logical to me.

“Ummm…”

“See if you can wash it off your hands easily, if you can, then it’s water based.”  Grandma’s fountain of knowledge poured out again.

“I think it’s water based.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.”  Yeah, we’re awesome.

It was water based  But if water based paint can be washed with water, then how can you wash the wall if, say, a cheeky little monkey called Hannah draws on it?  I’m skeptical.

We’re not finished yet (I will post some after photos when we are), we still have to do the ceiling and trim/molding (whatever it’s called), but it’s looking quite nice.  Next time, I will make sure I don’t pull out a wedgie (my butt likes to eat my underwear, what can I say?) when I have paint on my hands, and I will wash paint out of my hair before it dries.  You learn something new every day….