My little one had show and tell today. She decided to bring her doll, Sunshine.
Shortly after we lost the twins we had a visitor who brought Molly a new baby doll. Our visitor arrived with my niece who was about 8 at the time. She’d bought my niece the same doll. One wore pink, the other purple.
My niece left her doll here when she went home, leaving us with two identical baby dolls, where there should’ve been identical babies. Pretty tragic, right?
Anyway, I went on in the depths of my early grief to watch while almost two year old Molly played with the two of them. She’d pretend feed them, put their little pacis in their mouths and arrange the two of them on the steps just so, and then shimmy her little diapered tushy into place between them.
I received a new DSLR camera as a birthday gift from my husband that year- a consolation prize of some sort. He knew I’d wanted one so I could learn to take pictures of the twins when they arrived. I could practically see the pictures in my mind- clear, beautiful shots of their matching faces with Molly, just perfectly out of focus in the background. But I knew with two babies on the way, I wasn’t gonna be able to get that expensive camera.
So when he bought it for me, it was both kind and thoughtful, and also painful and annoying.
But there I was, taking pictures of Molly playing with her twin dolls and imagining, for just that moment, they were real.
I never showed those I pictures to a single soul. Surely they’d think I’d lost it. So here you go:
Time went on.
Molly -on the surface- forgot about the sisters she’d been expecting that never arrived.
Instead, she embraced her little sister that did arrive and grew to be the most overprotective and loving older sister imaginable.
But the time came when I knew I needed to tell Molly- to remind her, actually. I knew she carried it inside her. I knew, with the work I do it was only a matter of time till she found out on her own.
So I told her. She was 4. I wrote about it on this blog. She took it well at the beginning but four months later a close friends 2 year old suddenly died.
And that triggered her. She understood in a way that hit too close to home. The tantrums, the anger, confusion, sadness. It brought me to my knees. I brought her to therapy, it helped.
A few weeks in Molly asked if she could bring the dolls with her. The dolls. The dolls.
I said yes, of course.
That is the week she named them, Sunshine and Daisy.
And so it was.
Molly was always partial to Daisy. Always.
And my little one was drawn to Sunshine, even before Molly told her about their sisters.
That’s right. Molly told her. They talk about it among themselves sometimes. While they color together or in bed at night. In fact, my little one has almost never spoken to me about Sunshine and Daisy, she’ll only speak to Molly.
So, back to show and tell.
She brought Sunshine.
In preparing for the big day the teacher sent home some questions about the item the child planned to bring. This is what my daughter filled out:
In case you can’t read it the sentence prompts “This is why I love it” and she wrote “because it reminds me of my sister that died.”
Now, I am not going to lie… I did not want her to bring this into school. I asked her a few times if she was sure that she didn’t want to bring another doll. She was adamant. And I certainly didn’t want her to feel ashamed or embarrassed about bringing it in so I said fine.
This morning I walked her into the building and saw her teacher.
Perhaps I should give her a heads up, I thought.
So I told her about the doll and what my daughter wrote about it. She looked a bit horrified. Then I told her it was accurate. I briefly explained our loss, how Molly named the dolls in therapy and that that’s what it was.
The teacher then informed me that someone very close to her had lost twins 15 years ago. “She hasn’t been the same since.” She said.
She explained how she seemed to sort of get trapped in the darkness and never quite made it back. I told her I’ve known women like that. I told her I was afraid at one point I’d be like that. I could, from the depths of my grief, feel how easy it could be to slip and fall permanently into the dark. The habits of grief, the perspectives of grief. The colors of the darkness.
I told her I haven’t been the same since either.
I pointed to my pink hair and said “This is how I fight the darkness.” (It was morning drop off- I was barely wearing more than pajamas, let alone any full-on Muchness.)
And I realized, even to this day, even when I so rarely blog, when the talk about grief exhausts me, even when I’ve come to peace with my loss and love my life, I still need to- want to- fight the darkness. It’s everywhere.
I told her I HAD to move- in retrospect I see it now. I could not grow into this me while living in the space of that me. I need to chase the light. I need to share it, and I need to always fight the darkness. We all do in our ways.
Show and tell went ok, I think. I only heard from my daughter who said she shared about her sisters that died but it made her sad and she didn’t want to talk about it.
I’ll email the teacher for an adult perspective on how it went.
For now I feel grateful. Just grateful. For a school that doesn’t freak out about this stuff. For daughters that can share with their hearts open. For a teacher who I could open up to and responded in kindness. For a new niece, born healthy and beautiful just yesterday. For a whole lot of other little things and big things.
Every year at this time, for the past 5 years I’ve shared this video with the world in memory of my identical twin daughters, forever nicknamed Sunshine and Daisy. It’s my way of honoring them, letting the world know they existed, and thanking them for all the beauty, joy and blessings they’ve taught me to see in my life.
This year feels different. With so many changes in my life – living in a new state, I have new friends who know nothing about my girls, whose beliefs and opinions I know nothing about. I feel hesitant to share it. Vulnerable.
I don’t want to be known as the woman with two dead babies.
So I’ve been spending a lot of mental energy trying to untangle the emotions around whether to share their video this year.
Simultaneously, I find myself very emotionally drawn into the raging debate that’s been going on- that against Planned Parenthood. The attacks against them and the services they provide anger and frighten me.
After a little soul searching, I decided to finally admit how close these two subjects are to my heart, and to one another.
I know that most people in my “social circle” aren’t giving much thought to PP. They have medical insurance. They are mostly married. They are moms. They may even consider themselves “pro-life.” There is no reason on god’s green earth that they can imagine Planned Parenthood will ever be something they need in their life.
But they’re wrong.
We, as a society, need Planned Parenthood and the services it provides.
Planned Parenthood provides the tools that allow our girls to control their bodies, their choices, their future. Not by (just) performing abortions when necessary, but by empowering girls and young women (and men) with knowledge, support, compassion, general medical care and yes, birth control.
I watched someone dear to me slowly die from AIDS in my adolescence. That experience planted in me a firm knowledge that my body is my own, and it is my responsibility to protect it. Planned Parenthood gave me the tools to do so. When my primary care Dr. balked at giving 18 year old me birth control, Planned Parenthood was there. When I wanted to be sure that a boy I was intimate with was 100% STD free, Planned Parenthood was there. More than once. And let me tell you, there’s nothing more empowering for a young woman to tell her partner she expects him to get STD tested, and then be able to accompany him to get it done. It demonstrated to both of us that I knew my value and that the young men I chose to be with knew it too.
And I was only able to do that because of Planned Parenthood. Because that is what they do. They are there. For women that have no where else to go. For girls that have no one to ask for help. For mothers whose insurance has lapsed and need to maintain their basic health. For responsible young women that want to protect their health and their future.
I promise, when your daughters get old enough, if they don’t come to you for advice, (or if they do and in your naiveté you fail to provide them with what they need,) you will pray they are smart and responsible enough to go to Planned Parenthood BEFORE they become part of the 3% who use their services for abortion care.
And if you think that that will never apply to your daughter because of the type of upbringing that you’re providing, well, I hate to tell you this, but in the end, there’s only so much control you have. And it’s less than you think. And the less you think it will be *your* daughter, the less likely she’ll come to *you* (or use your insurance at a regular doctor) if it is.
Which brings me back to my beautiful Sunshine and Daisy.
How my heart aches for them. How I love and miss them- especially during this time of year.
When I got married to the love of my life I was one month shy of my 29th birthday.
I marveled at the time to a friend that, after a decade of dating and long-term boyfriends- (I was a serial monogamist) I had never gotten an STD or, thankfully, been pregnant.
I’d “made it through” my sexually active single years without any catastrophes and was now getting married. A small amount of luck coupled with a hefty dose of wise choices. All was right in the world.
Our first daughter arrived 18 months after our wedding. Perfect. We were perfect. Life couldn’t be better.
A year after her birth we conceived the twins. Oh, identical twins! Look at us! Clearly, we were chosen! We’re amazing! Fantastic! People go crazy for twins! We’d be so popular! Everyone was gonna wanna talk to us, know us, be us! I knew that must be true because all my friends who had twins regularly confirmed it. But shhhhh… It’s a specialness that only twin moms talk about in the company of other twin moms. We don’t want to make those “ordinary” moms of singleton babies jealous. …or more jealous. Obviously they’re already somewhat jealous. Duh.
And then, from the peak of our mountain, in the span of two short months, it all went to hell in a hand basket.
TTTS (Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome) first reared its head at 16 weeks. The next 8 weeks were filled with stress, anxiety, tears and twice weekly hi-level ultrasounds at a hospital a state away.
The doctors were optimistic.
Everything looked like it was going well.
And then, to everybody’s surprise, at 24 weeks they were gone.
That’s the story I tell.
That’s the story my video tells.
That’s the story the world hears.
But that’s not the whole story of my Sunshine and Daisy.
And it’s not the whole story of why I do what I do, why I live how I live, trying to stay positive and joyful and spread light to others who are struggling through darkness.
At our 23 week ultrasound, after jiggling that ultrasound wand a little too forcefully on my giant belly, after asking me if I’d eaten anything that day (“I just had an oatmeal cookie-does that count?” “Yes.” the Dr. replied) they told me that some time since our last appointment Daisy’s heart had stopped.
Immediately I knew. Without even a split second to mourn for just Daisy, I knew what it meant. We’d talked about it. We knew the consequences if one of the babies died without having had laser surgery to disconnect their blood flow from one another across the placenta. Laser surgury is often used to treat TTTS, hopefully saving both babies. But even when it doesn’t, it can usually be expected to protect the survivor if their sibling dies. We had not qualified for laser surgery. Our case “wasn’t bad enough, yet” to warrant the risks.
Until it was too late.
Because they were connected through a single blood flow across their shared placenta, deoxygenated blood, created at the moment of Daisy’s death, could find its way into Sunshine and create, essentially, a devastating stroke with catastrophic repercussions.
Because of the legalities of the 24 week abortion ban in NY we had less than 17 hours between the discovery of Daisy’s death and having to make a choice for our Sunshine.
And so we did. We made the best choice we knew to make in an impossible, devastating situation.
We made a heartbreaking choice I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
We made a choice that would forever change me at an almost cellular level.
We made the right choice. For us, our marriage, our future, and ALL our four daughters.
Although I knew technically it was one, it was years before I could refer to “our choice” as an abortion. Abortions were something that irresponsible kids had to deal with, not married women who actually wanted and loved their babies, right?
And we thankfully had the support of those close to us. I assumed anyone in our shoes would. Surely, everyone would understand that we’d made the best, most loving and responsible choice we could, right?
And the legal fight for abortion rights? That wasn’t MY fight. Certainly legislators weren’t trying to tell heartbroken women LIKE ME when they could and could not make a choice, right?
Wrong. Wrong. So wrong.
A couple of months after my loss I went to a pro-choice rally in NYC. I thought maybe I’d find people like me there. I thought maybe someone would understand. I thought maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone.
What I found were women chanting things like “Keep abortion legal…”-YES! I thought. “For any woman at any time!”– …whoa whoa whoa. Wait a minute.
Not “any woman”– and not “any time.” I thought.
I’d just lost my twins – I should’ve still been pregnant with them! They wanted me to chant about “any woman at any time” when I would’ve given all the money in the world to still be pregnant with my healthy twins?
I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I literally could not say the words. I left there numb, not knowing what to feel.
It’s taken years for me to fully understand what the abortion rights activists are really fighting for with those chants. Years of watching as legislators have slowly, manipulatively, dishonestly and frighteningly been working to chip away at our right- as individuals, as women and as families- to make these choices for ourselves.
And now I know. They’re fighting for me. And whether you know it or not- whether you WANT it or not- they’re fighting for you too.
I may be inclined to feel judgement towards a woman having a late trimester abortion for a healthy fetus (something so incredibly rare) or a woman who has had multiple abortions but I’ve learned that just as I don’t want to be judged for my choices, though I’m sure I will be, I’m in no position to judge others for theirs.
What I’ve learned is that those whose judgements actually impact our lives paint their judgements with a very broad brush. To them, I am no different than the woman who they categorically describe as “using abortion as birth control” or just “forgot” to get an abortion until it was almost too late.
So as much as another woman’s abortion story may upset me, it is my responsibility to defend her rights because to the people painting the bigger picture- we are one and the same. If her rights aren’t defended, neither are mine.
My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. She’s told me about watching, with her own eyes, Jewish people beg for their lives from the Nazis. They were so assimilated they barely thought of themselves as Jews. “Don’t kill me! I’m not Jewish!” They cried. But to the Nazis, they were Jews. And they were the first to be shot. It didn’t matter how they saw themselves, it only mattered how they were seen by those who attempted to control them.
You may think this fight for abortion rights isn’t your fight but you’re wrong. As women we have a responsibility to one another, because to those making the rules, we’re all the same. Just because you can’t imagine needing a Planned Parenthood or an abortion, doesn’t mean that you won’t personally suffer the consequences of not having access to one.
So, I’m sharing their video and I’m sharing their story. Their WHOLE story.
I share because TTTS is a motherfucking asshole and I want anyone who knows anyone carrying identical twins to make sure they know the risks and are receiving appropriate care.
I share it for the thousands and thousands of women who’ve lost babies or made the same heartbreaking choice that I did and feel alone, angry, isolated and helpless. You Are Not Alone.
I share it because I made a choice and that choice allowed me to pursue a beautiful life with no limits. That means pushing myself outside my comfort zones and remembering to find and create joy in my every day. It means reaching out to help others where I can, and reminding them that there is beauty in their every day too.
And I share it because among the many, many things I am, I am also a mother of two dead babies, and sharing them and the lessons they’ve taught me is how I continue to mother them.
When I gave my TedX talk nearly 18 months ago, there was something about something that I said and the questions it elicited that struck me enough that it’s sat with me all this time, and finally has a solution, of sorts.
I said in my 5-minute talk, (which you can watch a poorly done iphone recording of here,) that I lost my Muchness slowly, over many years. The loss of my twins was just the final straw that stole it completely.
The straw before the final straw was waking up one day and realizing I was a mom and a housewife living on a dead-end street in New Jersey.
After my talk, people came up to me and asked if I was still married to my husband, and if I still lived on that dead-end street, and I said yes, but I’d learned to live with it and was happy.
And I was happy. I’d created a rich, online community that fed my creative needs, I’d registered my kids in a school i’d selected in large part because I believed I’d find friends there as well, and I did, and I was no longer commuting to the blood sucking day job that had been causing my panic attacks. My home was beautiful, a creative muchness sanctuary filled with bright colors, light and positive energy.
And that sustained me… for a while.
This past year I’ve done very little to expand and explode the Muchness Movement. I simply couldn’t. Launching Earseeds and building that foundation for our family had to come first, and I’ve loved doing it.
But in so many ways it left me feeling isolated.
No time to truly connect with my “people” in my online communities.
No time to devote to sharing my own light and Muchness and inspiring others.
No time to get out and spend real human time with the friends I made in my community.
And I woke up one day, trapped in the house by the shitty weather and realized I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was not created to live and die isolated in house on a dead-end street in New Jersey.
That’s how it felt, and that was not my fate.
So here we are in San Diego.
It’s nice. Really nice.
I’m feeling motivated, organized and strong.
After three weeks without our moving truck we finally got it and started to settle in. Honestly, Earseeds comes first. It is our livelihood… but I feel like here, I’ll be able to breathe some life back into this Muchness passion project.
I said in a recent post that if you follow your Muchness you never know where it will take you and I am living proof of that. I’m following. The thing is, you have to be willing to go. Are you? If the answer is yes than surrender to it. It is so hard. grief, fear, boredom, laziness, and plain old self-sabotage will pop in with a fierce desire to hold you back. And they will. Perhaps because those things have a clear goal. That goal is to stop you. to get you into a place of NOT DOING. And that’s it, you land at point zero. Everything opposite that: love, joy, accomplishment, beauty, muchness…. they are infinite, which means they have to ultimate clear end-goal, which makes them that much more elusive and harder to chase… because you’re always chasing.
Don’t settle for point zero. You deserve the journey that comes with the chase.
Today at my in laws my kids were doing this perler bead art with my nephew.
When they were done my sister in law told him (he’s 9) to carry it carefully to the car and she’d iron it when they got home (about a 3-5 minute car drive.)
They’ve done it many times before and “she hadn’t let him down yet.” (Her response when he asked if it would work.)
I was incredulous.
We could barely get from the table to the countertop without the beads falling all over the damn place.
So I pulled out the scotch tape and covered my kids masterpieces so I could iron them when we got home. (I long ago adopted my in laws iron for crafts- I’m not sure they are aware of where it disappeared to.)
Despite my careful taping, and demanding to hold them, this disaster happened before we even got to the car:
…disappointment once again.
He skipped to the car while holding his miraculous piece of perler bead magic while mine cried and the injustice.
Two days ago Molly told me that on Monday after school she wanted to make charms. “Quick-n-easy” charms she said, as though this was something we’d done before. (we haven’t) and I immediately thought of a great little video I saw on YouTube when I was binge watching polymer clay tutorials a few weeks back.
So we made them! Quick-n-easy… and a whole lotta fun too!
Step 1:
Buy mini oreos. (big one’s’ll work too but those’ll be some mighty large charms- maybe a key chain??)
Step 2:
Find a nice, cleanly molded cookie. A lot of them have crumbles or broken edges. Dust away the crumbs and pull apart your oreo. Eat the cream and not as pretty half. Cover the pretty half in clear nail polish.
(You’ll notice mine is covered in color-changing teal nail polish. I’m really bad at following directions.)
Step 3:
Cover the dried, pretty half of an oreo with glue gun glue. Do this on a piece of parchment paper so it doesn’t stick to the table.
Step 4:
When the glue is warm and solid but before it cools fully, pop the cookie out of the mold. If you wait too long the cookie will stick and if you do it too soon you’ll burn your fingers or distort the mold.
Step 5:
Make oreo colored clay. (mine is a mix of black + red + this weird mustard color that was mixed scraps left over from a different project.)
Step 6:
Make a ball and shove it into all the nooks and crannies (I know, that is a Thomas’ English Muffin reference. It’s like I’m making a carb salad.) Then cut the excess and carefully remove the clay cookie from the mold.
Step 7:
Do that twice.
Step 8:
Look through your random jewelry findings box and select parts that would be appropriate for a charm. If you don’t have such a box, just find a precious piece of heirloom jewelry somewhere in your house and disassemble it for parts. Sandwich jewelry findings between layers.
Step 9:
Roll some white clay to make the stuffing. Flatten your ball. Make a sandwich.
Step 10:
Bake it.
Step 11:
Line them up with a bunch of real oreos and make people guess which are which. ….and GO!
On the second day of school- a day after blogging the joys of sending the kids back to school, my kid is sent home with the worst case of lice I’ve ever seen. Honestly. I thought it would be one or two little effers but those creepy disgusting things had not only shown up and moved in, they’d set up their own friggin’ zip code. They were having dance parties in the evening and sitting confidently around all the disgusting little eggs they’d arranged in a lovely polka dot pattern on her scalp – (a scalp I have recently come to learn also enjoys a slightly higher than average glitter allotment than most 6 year old scalps. Go figure.) just waiting for alllllll their lil’ baby lice to hatch and fill the empty bunks in their trailer homes.
I immediately called my super dear friend and first cousin, L’via “The Lice Queen” Weisinger.
(It ain’t much to look at (yet) (I’m eventually gonna muchify it for her) but the brilliant info inside will keep you sane in the face of a torturous battle with disgusting little bugs that live in your head. —not the ones that create negative self-talk and comparisonitis- I mean the REAL bugs…. I’m guessing you already knew that.)
I’ve been posted about this lice excitement a few times on social media and gotten so much well-meaning advice that doesn’t come CLOSE to the brilliant, non-toxic and totally manageable lice clearing and prevention process that L’via created and has been using for at almost two decades on thousands of kids all around NY and NJ. (Kids, I might add, who come and go to Israel a lot- a lovely place well known for many things, one of which is it’s wonderful hospitality to these little critters— in case you wondered why “lice ladies” always seem to be jewish, there’s your answer to that little trivia question.)
Anyway, to thank her for helping me, I am posting her book for sale here. Because her site was hacked and she hasn’t had the time to fix it. SO, if you have lice and need a foolproof, no poison way to get rid of them, this is what you are looking for.
She uses NO CHEMICALS.
NO EXPENSIVE DRUGS.
And my kid didn’t even cry once. …Though I did catch a couple of those lice wiping away some stray tears before dropping dead.
Plus, her writing style is fun and engaging, sorta like someone else you might know that she’s related to. (wink wink)
And despite all my bitching and moaning, I swear it will save you tons of headaches from trying all the other, less effective techniques. As soon as you pay the paypal page will redirect you to an instant download page for the book. There is also a secret password in the “message to seller” box so look out for that!
And just for fun, this was me and my girls last night.
We treated all our heads prophylacticaly. (My new favorite word) and it’s a good thing to, because, wait for it, I ended up finding two little fuckers in my head. And while I never (always) use the F word lightly, I only found TWO, and they were ON TOP OF EACH OTHER!!! I’m pretty sure I caught them in the act and thus avoided them laying their disgusting little eggs on my pristine scalp.
It’s like I always (never) say “When dealing with prophylactics, you can never be too careful.”
(there are so many more jokes running through my head right now but I will retain some dignity and keep them to myself.)
(PS- If you live near by and end up using her services in person, she’ll refund the cost of the book. Though if you live far away you may just wanna travel to meet her ‘cuz she’s THAT cool. Even if you don’t have lice.)
I’m not even gonna front- I am so excited to be sending my kids back to school- to the daily grind of early morning wake-ups and even to the cooler days of fall— when not everything smells like suntan lotion and my hair feels like something other than a dry birds nest or a greasy mop.
Don’t get me wrong- this summer was great but I am ready for a change. With the exception of a few blog posts and social media (FB) updates, I kinda took the season “off” from Muchness- I haven’t even sent a newsletter in months.
For the first few weeks I was beating myself up about it and then I just decided to cut myself some slack. I mean, seriously, if we beat ourselves up about doing (or not doing, as the case may be) the things we love, we stop loving them, right?
After I stopped beating myself up, I focused my attention this summer on one key business thing:
Yeah, in case you haven’t been formally introduced, meet Earseeds. (They aren’t seeds that grow out of your ears, I’ve been asked that an oddly high number of times.)
They are tiny little seeds used to stimulate acupressure points on the ear to help treat a variety of common conditions, like stress, headaches, back pain…. They are a common part of Tradition Chinese Medicine and acupuncturists use them all the time. My hubby, an acupuncturist, came up with the idea of creating kits that help people apply them on their own, in their home.
So, I started creating the art for them back in February or March. We launched the business in mid-april and have been spending a LOT of our energy building that biz this summer. I probably shoulda told you sooner, but I didn’t want you to think I was stepping out on you. 😀 But now, with school starting up again (TOMORROW!!!!!! YAYAYAYYYYYY!!!!) I, like so many of you, am looking forward to getting back into a really productive routine so I can balance more and put goals of all kinds back on my to-do lists.
The truth is, I’ve been feeling frazzled and like my heads been screwed on slightly crooked for the last few weeks while the kids were home ALL THE TIME. (there’s more to it than that- I’ll share that later…) So, tomorrow it starts. I’m gonna try to wake up early to get the kids snacks ready before the very last minute. Gonna try to get on the treadmill for 20 minutes. Just 20 minutes! How can that be so hard? I’m gonna try to sit and write for 30 minutes. It’s good for me. In so many ways. Gonna make ear seed kits for 30 minutes (truly….. each one, made with care by Mr. and Mrs. Gold- with the occasional help from the little Golden Nuggets.)
This is the first year since I was in school that September actually feels like a new beginning.
Who was it that said vacations were an over-rated big fat waste of time and money?
Oh wait.
Nobody.
Ever.
Vacations. Are. Awesome.
I should know, I took one!
My in-laws are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. That is 50 years married. To each other. Can you imagine? Honestly, whoa. That’s a lot of years.
When we got engaged I told Elie that I believe in divorce. It’s been around for eons, and it works. I told him that every 5 years I expect to get a renewal contract. That way, if I’m not interested in renewing, no hard feelings. You weren’t promised more than 5 more years. See that? Win-win!
At year 5 we were pretty much still coasting. We’re on 8 years now. I’ll let you know what happens in 2016.
OK- Vacation. Ya know where we went? Las Vegas! With the whole family! To celebrate 50 Years of coupledom! And boatlads of sparkle and Muchness. That place is like, The capital of Muchness City!!!! Holy hell, there’s a lot of Muchness there.
I didn’t take pictures.
I mean, I took a couple that I posted to facebook because I could hardly contain myself but all the while had that little voice in the back of my head telling me “Tova….. don’t post this on social media…. everyone will know you are away and try to break into your house to steal all your valuables….” (Spoiler alert: I have no valuables. I keep the extra glitter & rhinestones in the spare dishwasher. (Yes, I have a spare dishwasher…. who doesn’t?)) (Incidentally, isn’t it great when you have a parenthesis within a parenthesis and have to end with a double parenthesis? (Like this?))
I wanted to take more pictures but I kept running out of space on my phone and having to remove pictures that were already there, or videos that were taking up a ton of space… (Bye-bye Molly’s Kindergarden Graduation! I need space for a selfie!!)
So, if you have never been to vegas and want to give your eyeballs a spectacle beyond spectacles, (wow- that was so no pun intended) go there.
Out of curiosity, when you see spectacular performances by incredibly talented people doing beyond amazing things do you think to yourself “I could totally have done that if my mom woulda just kept me in that gymnastics class?”… or some variation of that…. or is that just me?
And ya know how I love some good kitch…. here’s us walking the Vegas Strip in our matching t-shirts. Yes. We were TOTALLY those people.
See that one chic with no logo on her shirt? Totally my fault.
It has been SO long since I’ve shared a craft here. I’ll bet so many of you don’t even know I do crafts. I do. I totally do crafts. Sometimes, I even write horrible poetry about the crafts I do. Because, why not?
Before I share this craft with you I just want to say for the record that when Molly turned 4 I made her an awesome Disco themed party and totally planned to blog all about it and share the pictures of the disco balls the kids made. It was total Muchness. I never shared the pics. She’s six and a half.
OK. That’s been weighing on me. Now that I got it out of my system, maybe I’ll share it… eventually.
Moving right along….
I cleaned out my garage and basement! It started as part of the curriculum of my 8 week Finding Your Muchness After Babyloss program… sort of a “clearing the clutter” part of the program, but quickly escalated to an all-out call-your-uncle-and-beg-him-to-help-you-get-the-shit-out-of-your-house event.
It culminated in this beautiful sight:
Nothing like the feeling of dumping 500 lbs. of trash in one fell swoop.
But during the clear out I found my stash of FIMO clay from back in my college days!
I loved that stuff. I used it to sculpt some masterpieces…. with which to smoke from.
(Nicotine products only. What?!?!?!? —seriously- everyone thought I was a pot head because I…well, I’m not sure why – any ideas? But I totally wasn’t. I thought it was stupid to use drugs in order to act “cool” or”weird”… I was totally those things already! Score! As an adult, I know better. )
Anyhoooo, Molly wanted to do a project and she and Liat were tired of totally ruining my patio while I recorded the horror in parental pride.
So I pulled out my fimo and the pasta maker that went with it and we got to work:
Then, Molly had the brilliant idea of filming us doing it! …but sadly, the mic on the camera wasn’t working… which in one way was good because it saved me the headache of having to edit the whole video for you. I just slapped it up on The YouTube as is, seeing as it was beyond repair anyway.
So, look at the pretty finished bowl!!
It’s missing a “tooth” at the top, but we think that just adds character.
Following this project, Molly asked me to use an entire $45 gift card she received for her birthday to buy an assortment of FIMO clay for her to make more stuff with.
I gladly obliged. So much better that than more Hello Kitty crap to fill my house. Though, she could probably make her own little Hello Kitty Figurine to match the little Kero Keroppi one I made sometime before the turn of the century.
Of course, hers won’t have smoking paraphernalia shoved up its butt.
Can I just say, I do all this … and what I’m coming to learn about my six year old is that there are things missing from this list that are just as important.
My kid yearns for organized discipline. Though she reacts like a crazy person, deep down, without even knowing it, she wants me to punish her when she mouths off or doesn’t do what is expected of her.
She needs me to stand over her like a drill sargent while I force her to clean her room and brush her teeth. Those things make her feel protected.
It is easy for me to do the things on that list above, and much harder to for me to do the things on the list I just wrote, because frankly, I’d rather just go to the movies in our PJs.
And while I think that there are way way way too many parents that need Sarks reminder, I think there are also a lot of kids like my daughter who need parents who know how to put their foot down and discipline in a regimented way that just is no fun at all in the moment, and doesn’t leave room for saying yes as often as possible.
