Little Helpers

Phaedra loves it when I let her sit on my lap while I sew. She seems to have finally learned that she quickly gets put down if she plays with the dials on the sewing machine. Right now, she can’t resist the pins. She loves reaching into the box I have sitting on the sewing machine for pins I remove. I even paused now and then to let her take the pin out of the fabric I was sewing.

I love sharing these moments with my girls. I remember going to my Grandma Wallace’s house as a girl and seeing all the things she and my Aunt Kathleen were making. If I got bored, they would hand me some aida cloth, a dull needle, and thread and let me make whatever I wanted, stopping their project to help me from time to time. I so hope my girls get interested in making things.

Phaedra doesn’t have an extremely long attention span for watching me sew, which is probably good. I have a hard time having her on my lap while I work on some of the more difficult parts of a project. When I stopped to take her picture on my lap (hence, the extreme close-ups), she thought I was trying to take pictures of the pins she was holding. She would hold up pins, one by one, saying, “Take picture of diss one, Mommy?” When she isn’t on my lap, she is nearby, playing, dancing, reading a book, or singing a song. I love how she likes to play near me, so I feel as if we’re spending time together even if I’m not completely focused on her.

Eleanor is quite attentive when I work on something, too. I haven’t taken pictures of her helping me. (I think she’s sick of my camera.) She hovers when I cut fabric, asking me for scraps. Then, she wants to hand me the pins when I pin the pieces together. And sometimes, when she’s really interested, she asks me to hand her the pins when I take them out while I’m sewing so she can put them in the box for me.

I am so excited for our homemade Christmas this year. I’m trying to make all the gifts we give except for Santa and what the girls give each other. Maybe on a year when I get an earlier start, I can help them make each other presents. That would be fun. I have a few projects done, but I still feel like I have a mountain of work ahead of me. I have some doubts as to how much I’ll actually get done. I’m mostly worried about the ones I want to do for Grant and the girls, because I’m not sure when I can actually work on them.

The Loot

Saturday, after trunk-or-treat and visiting grandma, Grant took the kids home to bed, and I went with some friends to the “Nightmare Factory” here in town. The Oregon School for the Deaf has been putting on a haunted house as a fundraiser for years. This year, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition swooped in to help update their basement and their haunted house. Read more about the Extreme Makeover visit HERE, or watch the episode featuring the Oregon School for the Deaf HERE.

As I was driving to the haunted house, I got a text from Grant, who was in the process of putting the girls to bed, saying, “Your youngest has a death grip on her bucket. She is telling me at the top of her lungs, ‘I need mine bucket!’” I laughed so hard! I can totally picture her little face as she told her daddy to back off.

While it was really fun to go, I think it would have been scarier if it hadn’t been quite so crowded. With the people in line so close in front of us, there was really no guess work about where someone might jump out at you. No element of surprise there. The 40min. we waited in line in the rain is the reason my friend, Laurie is sporting the slick hairdo and I look like I’ve been drooling (some rain dripped under my jacket). The pirate behind me is Lindsay, the friend from Grant’s work who invited me (through Grant volunteering me) to go to the haunted house, and next to her is Marcus.

After that, hot chocolate was in order. Laurie and I went and got hot chocolate, and it wasn’t until I was back in our driveway that I remembered I was going to go buy some toys to trade the kids for their candy.

The girls didn’t get much time to munch their candy on Saturday because we had so many activities going on, and then it was time for bed. So we decided to let them have as much candy as they wanted to during the day (as long as they weren’t going to make themselves sick), and then we would trade their candy for a new toy.

I had heard of this idea from my sister in past years, but it just didn’t sound as fun to me. In past years, Eleanor would have some candy here and there the first few days, but then I would put up her bucket and only give her some if she remembered to ask or if she earned it in some way. Usually, she forgot about it quickly, and I didn’t have to worry about her eating way too much candy (plus, her daddy ate a bunch of it for her). This year, Eleanor was much less likely to forget about her candy, and Phaedra just wanted more, more, more!

After breakfast on Sunday, we let the girls have their buckets and told them the deal we were going to make. I had some fun taking pictures of them going through their loot. (Daddy had let them spend the night in their costumes as jammies.)

They both had said the first candy they wanted to eat was a sucker.After the first picture I took of Phaedra with her suckers, she kept asking me if I wanted to “take picture mine sucker?”Eleanor loved asking me what each candy was called.

They had plenty of candy. Phaedra kept asking for suckers, sucking on them for one minute, and then putting them in the garbage. Their candy-fest was interrupted by church, so they weren’t stuffing down candy all day. When we got home, we ate lunch and then told the girls they could choose five pieces of candy to keep in their buckets and the rest they put in a bowl. Eleanor got a My Little Pony in exchange for her candy, and Phaedra got a ballerina princess doll that is similar to one Eleanor got for her birthday that she’s been coveting. She calls it a “bannoweena.” I love it!

I was a little worried about the exchange, but they seemed really happy. We weren’t exactly prepared for trick-or-treaters that day because we usually skip out on Halloween to a grandparent’s house. (Halloween is one of Grant’s less enthusiastic holidays, to say the least.) After all the fun on Saturday, we just felt like staying home, so we actually passed out some of the girls’ candy to trick-or-treaters. It didn’t phase the girls a bit; Eleanor was excited to hand it out. We only had about 4-5 groups stop at our house, so there was plenty left for Daddy.

Halloween Recap

We had a fun Halloween this year. For the first time ever, I made the girls’ costumes. I was pretty unsure of what I was doing, but I had Eleanor patting me on the arm the whole way through, telling me, “Mommy, you’re so clever.” That certainly helped me to keep going even when I had no idea what I was doing.

Eleanor wanted to be Word Girl, and it wasn’t too hard to convince Phaedra to be Word Girl’s faithful sidekick, Captain Huggy Face. I think they looked so cute!

I got their costumes done on Friday and let them model for me a bit just before it started getting dark. Since Halloween was on a Sunday, we did our celebrating on Saturday. We went to the church for a carnival followed by trunk-or-treat. My mother and Grandpa Gary met us there to be in on the fun.

What really made it feel worthwhile that I made their costumes was watching Eleanor at the carnival. She had been waiting so long to dress up as Word Girl, and she was enjoying it so much. Even with all the fun activities they had, each time we finished a station, she had to zoom around in a big circle like she was flying. I think she enjoyed flying around the gym floor more than she did playing the games and winning prizes.

It cracked me up to watch her try to eat the doughnut on a string.Phaedra liked choosing prizes.

I know this picture is blurry, but I had to have an example. She was supposed to be trying to throw the beanbags through the holes of a jack-o-lantern face cut out of a big board. She didn’t even really look where she was supposed to be aiming. She just plopped the beanbags in a pile about 2 feet in front of her and then went over to choose a prize. She did this twice. The third time she dragged me to this station, she just went straight for the prize bucket without even feigning interest in tossing the bean bags. I guess we won’t be signing her up for softball anytime soon.The one time I got to take their picture together while they were posing for Grandma. I think I need to have Grandma there the next time I want them to cooperate for pictures. My thumb-sucking Huggy Face.

Eleanor won these vampire teeth and was really curious to see how they looked.

Eleanor wanted her face painted. Grandma tried to talk to her about what she was going to have painted on her face, and Eleanor told her, “I already know what I want, and I’m going to tell her” (indicating the girl painting faces). When it was her turn, she sat up there and said, “I want it to be pink and make a circle.”After watching her sister get her face painted, Phae decided she wanted hers painted, too. This picture doesn’t really capture the look of trepidation she had on her face the whole time it was being painted.

Cute little ladybug.

I didn’t take any pictures of trunk-or-treat. It was dark and raining, and the kids wore their jackets over their costumes. I was glad we had been able to show off their costumes at the carnival at least. Phaedra wouldn’t let anyone touch her bucket until it started getting too heavy. Then, she let me carry it for her, but she was really conflicted about it, changing her mind over and over.

After trunk-or-treat, we went to Studio Grandma and Grandpa’s to show off costumes and enjoy some celebration there.The girls got to decorate their own cookies. Phaedra was so impressed that she got to hold the knife to spread her frosting.Eleanor loved the yellow sprinkles and covered most of her cookies with them.

Phaedra just loved shaking on those sprinkles!

Happy Halloween!