Happy Chinese New Year!

For Christmas, Oma Pat gave Rudy a subscription to the children's magazine, Ladybug. We have loved reading it each month. There's always something fun and interesting to learn in it.

This month, we learned about Chinese New Year. Since it's the year of the Tiger (one of Rudy's favorite animals), I decided it would be fun to celebrate.

Lucky for me, I had just started sitting Sweet Pea, whose mom has stayed in touch with her Chinese heritage. Between the library, the internet, and Sweet Pea's mom, I got a clue about the holiday, and really started getting into the spirit of it.

This year, Chinese New Year happens to fall on Valentine's Day, so we had competing holidays. Since Valentine's Day is a one day event, as opposed to the 15 day festival that comes with Chinese New Year, I decided to focus on Valentine's Day until it had passed, and then make a big deal about the last festival in the Chinese New Year celebrations: the Lantern Festival. It is held on the first full moon of the new (lunar) year, which will be February 28th this year. We'll see how things pan out for that celebration.

Yesterday, we did a little early celebration by opening the hongbao (those little red envelopes) that Sweet Pea's parents gave Rudy, talking about good fortune and happy thoughts for the new year, and making some hand print tigers. So fun!

Rudy had no trouble figuring out what to do with these as soon as I showed him there was chocolate inside. :)

Our little family of tigers. The Daddy tiger is missing 'cause Jason wasn't home when we did the finger painting. Too bad.

Rudy growling to scare any ill spirits away from our new year.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie...

THAT'S AMORE!

Jason and I went to Pizza Pie Cafe for our Valentine's date. We stuffed ourselves with super delicious-though very high calorie- food, did some fun romantic themed mad libs, and daydreamed about our backyard. (In our dream backyard, we'll have at least one hammock, a sand box, beautiful flowers everywhere, and tasty fruits and veggies ripening in the sun. Nice, huh? We'll see how much of that we manage on a student budget. :)

Pizza Pie Cafe was so AWESOME. And with a buy one buffet (at $6.50) get one free coupon-very affordable too. They had tons of selection for pasta, salad, and pizza. The most original pizza flavor: "Spudilicious" -yes-with thinly sliced potatoes on it. Surprisingly good. Our favorite flavor: Buffalo chicken pizza dipped in ranch sauce. YUM! If you're in the area, we highly recommend a visit-coupons have been in the val-pak mailers the last few times.

On the way to dinner, Jason and I were both expressing thanks to each other for not getting caught up in the hype Valentine's Profiteers would like us to. Commercials get just ridiculous around this time-some defining 'lesser' gifts of chocolate or flowers as total flops compared to the all envied DIAMONDS.

Sheesh. Valentines is always a bit redundant for us anyway, since we celebrate our anniversary only a couple months before. Anyway, we usually let Valentines pass with a trip out to eat and a few handmade valentines and call it good. It keeps it fun, low on the stress factor, and manageable.

I think Valentine's Day is really a much better suited holiday for children. We can focus on expressing love and appreciation to our friends, family, neighbors, postal workers, and what not.

This year, Rudy's old enough to really have a good conversation with, and he has really caught on to the idea of Valentine's Day. It was so fun making cards with him, because he was able to really participate in a significant way. I suggested we make some handprints. He chose the color. (Red-how convenient.) After they'd dried, we talked about what we could do with them.

Looking through our craft stash, Rudy found some googily eyes. "Let's put googily eyes on 'em!" he proclaimed. Ok. What kind of animal do you want to make? I listed a bunch of four legged animals with tails we could turn the hand into. "An Octopus!!" Ok. How are we going to make an octopus into a valentine's card? How about a squid-would that be ok? That way we could say "You're Great-No Squiddin!" Yeah! Say's Rudy. We get started making our squids-one glue stick falling victim to Rudy's "I wonder what will happen if..." symdrome he's developed lately.

A last minute edit by Rudy to change the "You're Great to I love you" (It is a valentine, after all) and we're set.

How fun to actually be able to collaborate with this little guy! I can't believe only 2 years ago we were agonizingly trying to figure out nursing!

The Secret

The secret to cutting Rudy's hair?

Popcorn

Water

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

"Magic" Cape

Done. :)

Rudy's First Sewing Project

Yesterday was a sewing day. We (I) sewed a hat for me, a hat for Rudy, 6 bean bags and a new, larger, apron for Rudy.

The bean bags were Rudy's idea, sorta. He was getting his first lesson on the sewing machine-learning the names of the parts and how to work the foot lever. Then I showed him how the machine can make zig zag lines and straight lines. He directed me to turn as we sewed across some scraps from our hat project. In the end, we had sewn something that looked a lot like a bean bag to me, so we cut it out and filled it with some black eyed peas I've had in my pantry FOREVER. Then we made five more just like it with the rest of our hat scraps. Fun times. :)

I can't believe it's only been six months since I made him this apron! He's growing SO FAST!!!

Rudy requested one 'spike' on his hat. This is what he got.

I decided on some floppy piggies for mine. :)

Rudy's first ever sewing project!

This is what happens when you invite a two year old to join in a craft with you... :)

My Little Helper

Well...I found someone in the family who LOVES to clean the bathroom. I should have known he'd take to cleaning the bathroom as well has he has to all the other household chores. Oh to be two again--to have almost everything I do be a novel experience!

Actually...thinking about it, that's probably a pretty stressful life. No wonder these guys are notorious for meltdowns!

For any of you germ phobes out there, that scrubber is practically new. Not quite (I did just scrub the toilet with it) but almost. It's still gross to touch, I guess, but I wasn't about to get in the way of my little man's intense concentration on learning everything there is to know about scrubbing a toilet-including how the scrubber feels. :)

Now, if I can somehow preserve his gusto for bathroom cleaning until he's old enough to actually clean the bathroom, instead of scrubbing pre-sterilized surfaces, I'll really be in business! :)

The Beginnings of a Garden

I feel SO contended right now.

This afternoon, while Rudy took a mongo 3 hour nap, I putzed around in the backyard, preparing my land to produce a lovely garden this growing season.

I mostly worked on reviving the long dormant garden plot that had already been painstakingly arranged to catch the most light, and still look beautiful. I LOVE my yard!! I send thank you's to heaven (where the late owner surely is) most every time I work in the yard. I can tell how much he's put into this land over the years. The fact that instead of just letting his garden plot go to weeds, he carefully covered it with landscaper's tarp and wood chips shows his devotion to his land.

So now, probably at least decade since this land has been actively used, I can come along and enjoy a beautiful start to a garden on soil that is rich, dark, and weed free. As I pulled back the tarp to reveal the soil beneath, I was greeted with all sorts of worm tunnels, a few scurrying spiders, and the most delicious smell of just warmed, still moist spring(ish) soil. Sigh. Sometimes, I just LOVE my life.

To top it all off, my stake is doing a free 6 week gardening course, taught by someone who could totally be teaching in a college setting (seriously-he has his doctorate and everything!) I went to the first class last night and was mesmerized for the full two hours as he talked all about fertilizing, soil content and PH, and touched on watering. I'm pumped to finish this course and get started on my first real experience in caring for a plot of land all my own. Well, I guess I could share with Jason, but I think he'd be just as happy if I did all the work and he just came out to play. We make a great pair-I love outdoor work, he prefers indoor work or putzing around doing home improvement projects. If only one of us LOVED to clean the bathroom...

Remembering

I ignored my "no surfing" rule this morning. It was miserable. By 10 am, Rudy was a messy heap of whines, and I was totally stressed out about all the things I ought to be doing, according the new food storage blog I'd been reading. Bleh.

Time for some fresh air. After much persuading, we set out for an adventure. (Rudy was to the point that anything which was not his idea was met with a robust "NO".)

We made it to the park, and settled ourselves into our usual swings. Can I just put in a plug for swings? Sigh. They are heavenly. I LOVE to swing with Rudy. We sing swinging songs, chant swinging rhymes, giggle at each other as we pass...not to mention that delicious feeling of adventure I get when I'm swinging just a bit too high: the chains go limp for a moment at the top of my ascension before I 'fall' back into them and swoop down to earth. You can't help but feel better about life after a good swing. Especially on a day like today-with a bright blue sky speckled with friendly white clouds for the background.

Just for good measure, (and because our noses were a bit numb) we stopped at the library for a bit before heading home for a 'redo' on the day.

Then I remembered how important it is to me and to Rudy that I do not get sucked into some website forever while the beauty of my real life passes me by. We had a lovely afternoon together, doing what I think may be my third favorite thing to do with Rudy (swinging being number one, reading being number two): working in the kitchen. I love to work alongside Rudy. He's really becoming quite the little chef. Rudy does great cracking the eggs for me (with the occasional egg shell fishing trip), washing dishes (so long as I've scrubbed them) measuring out ingredients (with plenty of supervision), sweeping...just about everything besides actually cooking on a hot stove or cutting things with a sharp blade. He actually even peeled a carrot with me today.

Working with Rudy helps me remember to take joy in my tasks. Actually, he helps me to change my tasks into my initiatives. They no longer have value just as a means to an end, but have value of their own. Rudy reminds me find deep pleasure in simple accomplishments. It's a blast to high five each other when we finish with the dishes, or Rudy gets an egg cracked particularly gracefully.

Why do I ever fight this joyful life, thinking I can fabricate it from some especially cool post somewhere?