Heather's Handmade Life: Choosing to live, work and parent with happiness + creativity

An early start to the season

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Heather Laura Clarke

I have a thing where I hate being in crowds. Actually, I don’t think it’s the crowds exactly, because I can wait in a mob of people outside a concert or something, but being in crowded places where I need to accomplish something.

Like Christmas shopping.

I can’t stand being in a crowded, hot store and having to find gifts, line up with gifts, purchase gifts, etc. Everyone gets all frantic as it gets closer to Christmas. The sales clerks are impatient. Psycho shoppers start fights with them. And I always, always, always get stuck in the line-up behind someone who is demanding a price-check or engaging in a heated argument about why something isn’t on sale.

So for as long as I can remember, I’ve done my Christmas shopping really early. I start in September, usually, and aim to be just about finished by Halloween — leaving nothing for November except to buy stocking stuffers, candy to put atop niece/nephew gifts, etc. I also do a lot of the shopping online, so there’s a package or two that has yet to arrive.

My closet’s been getting pretty crowded over the last two months, as I stuff gifts onto the shelves, and drop shopping bags on the floor. The mess was driving me nuts, but I knew I couldn’t wrap until I had a couple of hours when Darling Husband was home to watch the kids, so I didn’t have to drag everything downstairs.

(You may remember from my organization series that I keep all of my wrapping paper — including Christmas paper — in our master closet, so it’s much easier to just wrap there, too.)

So this morning, I banished my three beloved family members to the basement playroom, and …

… Mama wrapped!

This meant, of course, that I had to dig out the kids’ annual Christmas gift tags.

As I’ve written about before here, our son and daughter each get four gifts from us, plus a new pair of Christmas jammies to wear on Christmas Eve.

Something you want
Something you need
Something to play with
Something to read
And a new pair of jammies on Christmas Eve

It was so much fun to put on some Christmas songs, spread out the gifts, wrap them up, and put on their special tags. C’s “Something to play with” gift isn’t quite done yet (more on that soon), so I didn’t finish wrapping by any means. And one of D’s gifts this year is an experience that he’ll get in November — tickets to Dora The Explorer concert! — so I’m going to pick up a small Dora item and wrap that up, to remind him of the concert.

All in all, a really nice way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday morning. Except now I’m going to be bursting with Christmas excitement and have a longgggg time to wait.

xoxo

A world of pure imagination

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Heather Laura Clarke

Mommy can’t yell. Her throat’s too sore.

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Heather Laura Clarke

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Seriously, am I really doing back-to-back posts on sickness? Is this what this blog has become?

Well, yes. Sickness is all around us these days, as we talked about the other day. Except this is the kind of sickness that is moving past the runny-nose/sneezing grossness, and into the long-term, is-it-ever-going-to-go-away variety of illin’.

(SIDENOTE: D is also illin’ because he’s lost one of his tubes, and won’t get another surgery until December or January, so we’re basically going to spend the next few months suffering from constant ear-fluid-related fevers, crankiness, and infections. Damn you, little missing tube!)

We all have lingering coughs. Post-viral coughs, I think is the right word for it. Poor D has always been prone to these — he actually went to the emergency room last fall because he wasn’t breathing well, and got a whopping dose of steroids and other fun stuff — so he has his own fancy puffer system for whenever one strikes.

For me, Darling Husband, and C, this never-going-away cough is new. And unpleasant. I grabbed D’s puffer and used it the other night (bad, I know) because I was getting to the hard-to-breathe stage. It helped, but it didn’t go away.

Until it did.
And it was replaced with THE WORST SORE THROAT OF MY LIFE.
Really.

When the saliva builds up in my mouth, I get nervous because that means I’ll eventually have to swallow it. And OMG it hurtsssssss. My voice is going in and out, too, so I’m trying to whisper whenever possible. Last night, I resorted to writing messages to Darling Husband on the kids’ MagnaDoodle.

I’ve been Googling “sore throat remedies” for days, so let’s try to salvage this whiny sickness post and turn it into something more valuable.

Heather’s possibly-helpful list of sore throat remedies:

Vaporizers. If you’re not too lazy to dig it out from the top shelf of your linen closet, that is. (And I’m not, I guess)
Gargle with warm salt water (possibly helped)
Drink a lot of fluids (OMG IT HURTS TO SWALLOW, so NO)
Drink warm, soothing tea (possibly helped)
Drink cough syrup to coat your throat (yeah, that lasts about four seconds, and then you cough so hard your throat is raw again)
Suck on lozenges (didn’t help)
No, suck on numbing lozenges, not those candyish lemonade-flavoured ones, idiot (oops)
Take two (2) Advil every four hours (JACKPOT!)

Yes, it’s true. The only thing that I’ve found ACTUALLY helps this asshole of a sore throat is to take two Advil liquigels every four hours. My throat will still hurt, but it makes swallowing hurt a lot less. According to the all-knowing internet, it’s decreasing the swelling (making it hurt less) and also just dulling the pain (ahhhh).

So if you, like me, have adorable but germy small children who are making you sick ALL. THE. TIME. with their so-called “preschool” (germschool) and “play group” (germ group) and “swimming lessons” (nasty germ-pool dipping), then go out tonight and buy yourself a gigantic bottle of Advil.

You’ll thank me for it when your husband is laughing at you because you’re writing about the plot of Homeland on a Magnadoodle because it hurts to talk.

** No, this post isn’t sponsored by Advil, but that would have been pretty cool. Hey Advil, if you’re reading this, can you make new liquigels that include throat-numbing properties? Or tranquilizers? IDK. Thanks.

I’m sick. We’re all sick.

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Heather Laura Clarke

Mornings with my girl

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Heather Laura Clarke

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Now that we’re finally settling into our new lives — that are officially crazy-ville with scheduled activities — I’m catching my breath and taking a second to tell you about it.

D now goes to preschool two mornings a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), takes swimming lessons on Tuesday evenings, and has gymnastics class on Wednesday mornings. Plus all three of us have playgroup at a local elementary school on Friday mornings. I KNOW, RIGHT?

Sidebar: I never anticipated being this busy with activities, but really, one of them is super-beneficial (preschool!) and another activity is an important life skill (swimming!) that D really needed to become better at. So the only real “extracurricular” is his gymnastics class, and even that is important (exercise!). I get annoyed when people comment that I’m “overscheduling” him, because I am 500% on board with kids having free time to play, not being too busy, etc. It’s two things plus school! Not nine days a week of hockey or something, sheesh.

Anyway. So my point is that D is gone for two full mornings a week, plus an hour on Wednesdays for gymnastics and 40 minutes on Tuesdays for swimming (although we have to hang around during the lessons).

And although we miss D, it’s been really, really nice to have some solo time with Miss C — something we never really got for the first 16-ish months of her life!

Yes, she wears dresses just about daily (if she’s not in a dress, she’s probably in jeggings and a cute top), and pigtails with bows and/or barrettes are also daily. I mean, are you really surprised? I’m the girl who was nutty about the thought of having a daughter someday, because bows, glitter, pink, ribbons? That’s MY JAM!

In this newfound alone time with C, I’m getting to focus more on her as an individual — not just one half of the Clarke Kids, who require constant supervision/snackage/entertainment until Mommy is exhausted.

She loves to wash her hands. Who knew what would be a big thrill, but it is. She has also started dragging the (huge! heavy!) kitchen chairs over to the sink to wash dishes with me. At first she dragged her child-sized chairs or the bathroom stool over, but they didn’t let her get high enough.

She loves to jump on our bed while I sing “Five Little Monkeys,” and she collapses onto the pillows with a big smile at the end. She is more cautious than D was at one, but still full of that awesome curious toddler energy.

Her current favourite activity is to assemble every Chapstick she can find, take off the caps, apply them to her lips, re-cap them, and carefully organize them in her “makeup case.” Then she takes each one out, pretending to count them, and begins all over again.

She amazes me every day with her intelligence. We always say we’re shocked at her speech, because of course D didn’t really talk until after his tube surgery when he was two. C says lots of words, and really understands what we say to her (wow, what a concept!). She can follow directions wonderfully. She answers “yes” questions with an “Ah-uh” sound, and answers “no” questions with a firm “Nawww!” There’s never any question about what this little girl wants.

In a way, it’s strange spending these mornings alone together. I know for my friends with just one child, they’d never think it was strange to spend time alone together — and I used to feel that way about spending time with D. No big deal.

But when you have two little ones — especially so close together — you don’t often get to focus on them individually during the hectic everyday routines. Other than at bedtime — when I spend time alone with each one, tucking them in and talking with them — C and I had never gotten much time alone together.

In these mornings together, sometimes we go shopping or run errands, and sometimes we come home and play. When D is at his swimming lesson or in his gymnastics session, we find things to do while we hang out there and wait. We colour. We people-watch. We read books.

It feels too quiet without D, but I’m getting used to it. We’re able to do things that wouldn’t interest D. We’re able to spend 20 minutes doing nothing but put on lipgloss (!) together. I get to hear her adorable little voice without it being drowned out by D’s voice.