Thank you so much for your helpful ideas and soothing words on my post about my upcoming trip. While I do not know how to make a paper chain, I really like the idea of having some way for her to “count down” until our return. So I plan to write notes to Carla every day, so her grandparents can read them to her. I will include little tidbits about where we are and what we’re doing. And I ordered some books for her to open every few days as little surprises.
Life is busy with preparations, because of course I have thrown myself into totally de-cluttering my house in response to pre-trip nerves. So here is an abbreviated randomosity for you.
- A spatula got caught in the bottom heating element of our dishwasher (she says, not knowing any of the technical terms although pretty firm on “spatula”) and melted. Our house smelled like acrid burnt plastic for a VERY long time, and our dishwasher STILL smells horrid, despite having been run through several times.
- Carla wants a tiger themed birthday this year. Great. I love tigers. But… I am not seeing a whole lot of tiger-themed accessories. Unless you want Daniel Tiger, which I do not.
- I have found a tutorial for a tiger striped cake!
- Speaking of Carla and her birthday: I have just purchased the relevant book in Louise Bates Ames’s amazing, soothing, and very helpful series about children. “Loving and Defiant” is the subtitle. Yes, yes that does describe a certain someone in a very accurate nutshell. One of the characteristics of this age is, apparently, a return to the intense ambivalence of age two. Which was helpful to know the other day when I applied some spray to Carla’s hair to help it be curly and she (defiantly) combed it out, saying she wanted her hair STRAIGHT. And then not two minutes later burst into tears because she wants it to be CURLY. Thank you, Louise, for making this a totally reasonable incident and not something that left me baffled and reeling for the rest of the day.
- No one in this household requires child safety locks on the cabinets, yet they remain on the handles, dangling, useless.
That’s all I’ve got! Tell me what’s going on with you, Internet.
Paper chain tutorial you did not at all ask for! I am on it!
Take a piece of standard-size construction paper and cut it into strips the short way. I think the short way. Yes, the short way. Like 3/4th-inch wide strips, it doesn’t matter, they don’t even have to be straight let alone the same width let alone a particular width.
If you want to write anything inside them, this is when you would do it: while they’re still strips. This is also when you’d put them in a specific order, if specific order matters.
Take one strip and make it into a loop (with the writing on the inside of the loop, if you wrote on them); use a little piece of scotch tape to keep it closed. Take the next strip, put it through the first loop, then tape the second loop closed. And so on. When you’re done, hang it somewhere, like with a thumbtack or over the top of a lamp or whatever. Then each day a loop can be torn off (carefully, if there is something written inside; otherwise, not).
This is VERY helpful and much less scary than I thought!
Nothing like a horrid smell to cloud your day/ week. Love that you were confident on the spatula term. Ha.
Tiger b-day: hmmm, pin the stripes on the tiger game? Get tiger beanie babues and hide them like a scavenger hunt- that was a hit with Carla and crew recently- once you find one or make it complicated and once you find your tiger labeled with your name, your role in the game is complete. Um, paw print cupcakes? That’s all I got.
Here: called Yellowstone today to reserve for next summer. Roped my dad into coming here to help. We each manned a phone and I had desktop and computer running. Started calling before the opening time. Finally got thru. Sat on hold for about 10 minutes. The cabins we wanted were booked the ENTIRE summer by the time I got thru. Seriously. Put a damper on my day. I reserved cabins at a less desireable location located an hour from where we preferred.
Eddie commited to college last night.
Swistle beat me to it! Yes, paper chains are VERY easy. As to the dishwasher – have you tried putting a bowl of vinegar in the bottom rack (with nothing else in there) and run a load? I would think that would help with the smell. And the pre-leaving cleaning? This is something I do every time we go away. There is nothing worse than coming home and having to clean/organize. When I get home I want to unpack and relax; not clean.
That tiger cake is going to be epic. You’re so brave to take it on! (Although it does seem less labor intensive than the rainbow cakes, actually.)
What’s going on with me is Grandparents’ Day. It’s our tenth one, I believe; my parents have made a road trip weekend out of it every time. I’m sitting here kind-of amazed by that, because of how *I* view weekend road trips: they sound so easy, so lighthearted and fun, but the feelings I get about them are stress, difficulty, and “I’d really rather stay home.” And I’m 30 years younger than they are!! Maybe it’s a burst of energy that comes with retirement? Let’s hope, or my future grandkids had better live in town…. anyway, it’s going to be a busy weekend here. 🙂
Oh GOD I live in fear of something melting on my dishwasher heating element, so much so that I refuse to let anyone put plastic/ silicone things in the dishwasher, even if they are dishwasher safe. Grosssssss burned thingssssss.