ten minutes to myself

there is a seven year-old girl inside of me

I am pleased to say that the first thing that springs into my mind when I remember 1984 is an incredible dystopian tome by George Orwell that I read in twelfth grade, but some people may remember that year as the one when our parents battled in the toy section of Sears to score one of these:

These are Alphonsine Clarissa and Glen Reuben, the two survivors of the 2010 Cabbage Patch Kid purge at my parents' house (four of their "siblings", as it were, didn't make the cut). Each of my kids brought one of my old dolls back to Saigon with us after our summer holiday. 

Over the last quarter-century, this pair has undergone a couple of changes. Alphonsine has been nicknamed "Nell" after the daughter of a friend of mine, and Glen, as it turns out, is gender-fluid. He's wearing cute hand-sewn coveralls in this pic, but I often find him lounging about in a frilly dress. This is probably because the majority of our extra outfits are traditional girl clothes. Still, the kids and I support his lifestyle choices whole-heartedly, and I've been advised that "fashion has no gender."

It's actually really fun for me to see Madeline and Sadie playing with my old dolls. The Cabbage Patch Kids and my collection of My Little Ponies are the toys that I remember playing with the most when I was little. My birthday and Christmas wish lists must have been crammed with CPK items because I know that I had a good collection of accesories: the knock-off Snuggli, a highchair that attached to a table, a playpen, a CPK diaper bag ... 

Nearly three decades later, my fondest memories of my Cabbage Patch Kid obsession are about these:

Somehow, somewhere in the mid-80s, my mom found to time to sew tons of tiny little outfits for the dolls that my sister and I had. Our dolls had fuzzy winter parkas. There was even a tiny pair of turquoise stirrup pants that matched a pair that I owned! Anyway, I think that I have to record "sewing little outfits for my Cabbage Patch dolls" as one of the awesome things that my mom has done. And they still look good on Alphonsine/Nell and Glen. 

best laid plans

See this green thing? I thought that it was the main weapon in my arsenal for fighting Second-Child Syndrome (TM). 

I was going to write down all of the cute and/or important moments in Sadie's first year in this calendar, and then it was going to become my cheat-sheet for eventually producing her a baby book equal to Madeline's. 

(Let's skip over the fact that Sadie is nearly 3.5 years old).

(Let's skip over the fact that Madeline's scrapbook was the first and only one that I've ever made, abandoned for the expedience of photobooks and the challenge of finding scrapbook supplies here in SE Asia). 

So, I'm a couple of months into Sadie's book (making it in My Publisher, of course - keep those coupon codes coming), and I'm realizing a few flaws with my "Baby's First Year" calendar plan. One of them is point form. The boxes for the days are small - it's a calendar, naturally - so I was restricted to scrawling down things like

• "really bad baby acne"
• "more head control"
• "screamed at the Canadian Embassy"

which don't really tell the story behind why I was motived to jot those comments down for November 2008. Why were those things once worthy of recording? I'm obviously missing something!

The second thing with my calendar cheat-sheet is that it's boringly generic. I should have thought things through more before buying it, or thought about just writing down Sadie stories in a notebook (which is what I did for Madeline's scrapbook). There isn't much space for recording notes in the calendar, and the space that is provided is divided up under run-off-the-mill headings like "Your sleeping pattern is" and "Your favourite toys are". 

I'm not abandoning my project, and despite it's limitations, the calendar is useful. I just wish that my memory of Sadie's first year was a little less limited, and maybe that I'd blogged more to supplement. 

Remind me to never put Madeline's and Sadie's books side-by-side, though, okay?

the best feeling in the world ...

... is wearing a shoe on both of my feet. 

My cast was taken off on Friday, and it was a huge relief. The world of proper showers, footwear, and actual traction on our stairs was re-opened to me, and I've been enjoying all of those things an awful lot. 

I was, though, unprepared to see my left lower leg and foot again. Firstly, the amount of dead skin that my leg was shedding was sort of disgusting and unreal. I've never resembled a snake in the process of shedding it's skin more in my life. Also, four weeks of immobilization did a crazy number on the muscle tone in my lower leg. I swear that my calf almost looks concave. It's frightening, to me, how weak my lower leg and ankle are. 

How ridiculous I was is now obvious, thinking that I'd get my cast off and be back in spin class the next week! First broken bone of my life, so this is a lesson that I'm learning in my mid-thirties. I'm still limping around and wondering if my foot is ever going to be less flappy.

 

those kids that I write about sometimes are still around

There is something sort of backwards about parent-teacher conferences here; I had a twenty-minute chat with my three year-olds preschool teacher (memorable comment: "Sadie applies yellow to all colours indiscriminately") yet had a mere ten minutes to cover four months of progress with Madeline's second grade teacher. 

Regardless of the brevity of the latter conference, everyone is doing fairly well. Even if I don't like how much of an informational black box Madeline's school is, she's happy to participate and her teacher has really been encouraging her reading skills. Madeline's entire grade - so, about 115 students - put on a play last week; Neverland had an astoundingly large population of pirates and Lost Boys, but Madeline sang and danced and spoke her one line in the play with enthusiasm.

Sadie is moving up from the Caterpillar Room to the Butterfly Room. Her preschool supports the multi-age classroom concept, and I think that she's the oldest kid in her current class. I am a little sad that she won't be finishing off the year with her current teacher and friends, but I also think that it will be nice that she'll be familiar with the new room and teacher before the summer break. In theory, this should make the transition back to school in August easier, right? 

 

things making me happy this week

The Big One - About three weeks ago, I took my shiny and new external hard drive out of it's packaging and backed up the files on my MacBook. The files in my documents folder, my iTunes library, photos (also: not easy to locate the actual image files when they've been imported into iPhoto), and my completed photobooks. I have Time Machine set up, but I like having a Plan B.

This makes me happy because the internal hard drive died yesterday. I kind of knew that it was coming (hence, the back-up). The thing making me a little less happy this week is that I don't have the photobook that I finished up last week on the external drive, and a couple of things that I'd downloaded from iTunes. Now, the challenge is to find a replacement hard drive for a late-2008 MacBook Pro. 

Another thing making me happy: New music! I picked up Some Nights by Fun. (what's with the punctuation?). The very first track is totally cracking me up - it's performed like it's the opening number to a Broadway show. 

And: I have an episode of Community to watch. First one. Am prepared to laugh hysterically.

And: This video of Idina Menzel performing Poker Face. Her added commentary is hilarious.

Lastly: Hopefully my cast will be off in a week. It's like wearing a warm winter boot in the middle of summer. Summer in Arizona.

 

infinite possibilities

I'm not entirely sure how the subject came up, but last night Madeline mentioned that she was now thinking of teaching as a future career option, instead of becoming a veterinarian. It's been a few years since she talked about wanting to go to veterinary school, but her dad seemed bothered by the change and remarked that she must be following my example. 

It's true that I've had many answers to the "what do you want to be when you grow up" question. I thought that was sort of normal. This is where I point out that the very first time that Chris and I hung out together outside of university, he told me that he modeled himself after Alex P. Keaton and wanted to be an accountant since sometime in the 1980's. Obviously, my husband has a different perspective and very good plan execution.

So, today I've been having a little fun remembering all of the careers that I've thought about, ever since I was old enough to start thinking about the big picture. Here's what I can recall:

• a ballerina
• Betty Rubble
• a teacher
• owner of a pet shop
• cashier at a grocery store
• a psychiatrist 
• a crime-fighting mathematician, like on Mathnet.
• a criminal lawyer
• a medical officer in the US Navy, preferably stationed on an aircraft carrier
• a MuchMusic VJ
• Shakespearean stage actor (awesome costumes, yes?)
• trauma surgeon
• English Lit. teacher
• Medieval England scholar
• Accountant
• Stockbroker
• Interior Decorator (at the height of my obsession with Trading Spaces)
• Personal Chef

And I am sure that there are more that are missing from that list. It was kind of fun, when I was little, imagining all of the possibilities and learning a bit about a lot of different things. Madeline's not even eight years old, and I'm just going to be impressed that her career aspirations are set a little higher than mine at the same age (owner of a pet store).