A few new dolls

Posted on by

5

My latest batch of dolls were made for my cousins’ kids. I had a lot of fun with this group, designing some new outfit styles, crochet and felt shoes and hairstyles. I am particularly excited about the little lavender jumper on Kaia’s doll, which is fully reversible, and the hair on Tayshaun’s doll, which I tediously wound around a pen to make the curls then hand stitched in place. Lots of love stitched into these guys :)

sisters Sydney and Kaia

Kaia

Arriana

Sydney

Tayshaun

I am thinking about making a batch of dolls to try to sell on Etsy now that I have several under my belt and am becoming more confident. We’ll see. I definitely see more dolls in my future!

Lately

Posted on by

0

• Blooming everywhere
• Picnicing whenever we get the chance
• Exploring at the Shiloh Museum and the Oklahoma Aquarium
• Rennovating and fixing and tidying in anticipation of listing the house at the end of this month (!)
• Enjoying one another
• Instagramming lots of little moments that don’t always make it onto the “real” camera (jodeanbrannan, if you care to join me)

Happy Monday!

20130422-080017.jpg

Baby Steps

Posted on by

5

He pauses, carefully considering the uneven earth beneath his feet. He steadies himself then slowly, carefully, deliberately lifts one foot and takes that first step. A grin spreads across his face and he glances up at me, clearly relishing his accomplishment and my (unabashedly giddy) claps and cheers. Another step, this one faster and less cautious, then another, and another… until he is half-running, half-falling towards me. He reaches my arms just as his balance gives way completely, and he falls into my embrace. “Good job, Zeke! You did it!” I tell him, but he is already off with some new adventure in mind. It was only a few feet really, a handful of steps, but he and I are on top of the world.

He falls a lot, gets back up, tries again. And again. And again. Sometimes he makes it several steps in a row, sometimes just one. Sometimes he lands hard and it hurts (balance and protective response-aka catching himself- do not come easily for this guy), but he is undaunted.

All the while I watch him exploring the ever-widening world around him and I am amazed at his perseverence and resiliance. Every worry I have ever had for him, every tear I have cried wondering what his future will hold fades for the moment as I am reminded again how strong he is. Some would say stubborn. I think I have said it too. This kid is going places, and he’s not letting anyone or anything stop him. Maybe he will take a different path to get there. Maybe it will take him longer, maybe it will be harder, maybe he will have to get back up more often than most. Maybe “there” won’t exactly fit our culture’s skewed definition of success. But he’ll get where he’s going, of that I am sure. One step at a time.

I wonder sometimes how much I shoud write about Zeke’s development. I waiver back and forth between wanting to keep much of his story private, and wanting to shout from the rooftops how amazingly awesome my kid is. I compromise by choosing to write mostly about our ordinary, every day lives together (because really, we are quite ordinary). I don’t want him to be defined as “that kid with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum,” with all of the stereotypes that may entail, but I also don’t want him to ever feel that who is is anything to be ashamed of or keep hidden. In many ways I am quite facinated by the way his brain works and it’s ability to overcome tremendous challenges. Each accomplishment seems all the more amazing when I pause to consider everything it took to get there. My hope is always that people read my words, and see my pictures, and are insipred and encouraged (as I am likewise inspired and encouraged by the emails and comments I receive every week from individuals who either have ACC themselves or know someone who does), but I am also well aware that ACC can look very different for others than it does for my son. We are blessed. And I don’t ever take that for granted or lightly. Ever.

With that being said, I do want to include a bit of an update. I know how valuable it has been to me as a mother to read about other families on this journey with us, and I think it is important to include some of our struggles in this story along with the overwhelming good. At 17 months, Zeke is doing quite well. He is eligible for Arkansas’s early intervention program, which provides him with two physical therapy sessions per week. At PT he is continuing to work on skills like transitioning from sitting to standing, balance, increasing muscle tone, increasing his protective response, and beginning to walk. (He wears small foot braces that are basically inserts that fit into he shoes to help stabilize his ankles) He is making slow, but very steady progress in all of these areas. He seems to have a somewhat decreased awareness of his left side, probably related to his ACC, but it is more noticeable some times than others. For example, he has more difficulty catching himself if he falls to the left, and he occaisionally seems to forget about objects in his left hand. He also seems to have a somewhat increased tolerance to pain, but that may just be his stubborness! Although he picked up his first couple of words pretty early on (mama, baba, bye-bye), his speech has plateaued at this point an he really only uses a couple of words, and even those not consistently. He has been referred by his physical therapist to be evaluated for speech and occupational therapy in addition to PT.

For every thing that he struggles with though, there are so many other things that he can do. He stacks blocks, puts them in and takes them out of a bucket, gives (very slobbery) kisses, loves to share his snacks and toys, makes some pretty awesome truck noises, “dances” to music, taps out a pretty decent rhythm on his bongos or the piano, looks at picture books, chases the kitties, lights up the room with his whole-face smile, climbs, climbs some more, oh, and did I mention he climbs? ;)

But today, oh those early wobbly baby steps! They eclipse everything else. Never lose that determination, my son!

Naturally dyed Easter eggs: a tutorial

Posted on by

0

I have always used artificial food coloring to dye eggs in the past, but as my family has been transitioning away from highly processed, artificial ingredients, I started to think that there must be a better alternative. The following is the result of our expiramenting with natural dyes:


1. Gather your ingredients. We chose (clockwise from top) beets (approx 1 cup), grape juice concentrate (1/2 cup), yellow onion skins (1 cup) , red cabbage (1 cup), And turmeric (2T). You will also need vinegar, water, small saucepots, and a seive or colendar. Oh, and eggs :)
Beets = pinkish beige, grape juice = blueish lavendar, onion skins = deep orange, red cabbage = light blue (I know, right?), and turmeric=yellow.

2. Make your dyestock. For the beets, onion skins, turmeric, and cabbage, add each to a small pot with one teaspon of vinegar (important to set the dye), and three cups of water. Bring the water to a boil, reduce heat and simmer at least 20-30 minutes. Pour through a seive to remove any veggie bits, and cool. Yes, the cabbage dye looks very red. The eggs will be blue, I promise! For the grape juice, just add the concentrate to three cups of water. I added 1 tsp vinegar, but you may wish to try it without first. It seemed to me that the juice was acidic enough on its own that the egg shells became a little bit pitted after a long soak in the grape juice dye with additional vinegar.

3. Prepare your eggs. You can either dye hardboiled eggs or raw eggs, which can later be pierced and blown out to use as decorations.


4. Optional: for botanical eggs, gather a few bits of leaves, flowers, etc… from your yard. Cut a small square of pantyhose, place your flower/leaf on it, set an egg on top, wrap the pantyhose around the egg, twist and secure with rubberbands. When you dye these eggs, be sure to let hem dry completely before removing the pantyhose, or the design may smudge.


5. To dye the eggs, carefully lower them into a cup of dye so that the are completely submerged. It will take MUCH longer for eggs to dye with natural dyes than artificial. Be patient. Have another activity ready for the kiddos while you wait. I let my eggs soak anywhere from 20 minutes or so to an hour. With the exception of the onion skin dye, any longer than that didn’t seem to make much difference (Onion skin eggs will get surprisingly dark, rusty orange if left for a long time!). Just lift them up with a spoon and peek every now and then until they look good to you. They may not be quite as bright as what you are used to, and thats okay.

6. Carefully remove the eggs from the dye and place them gently on an old towel to dry completely. Don’t try to wipe them, especially if the shell looks a little pitted. You will wipe off some of the color!


Resulting colors, clockwise from top: onion, cabbage, turmeric, beets, and grape juice

Expirament with other fruits and veggies to see what colors you can come up with. Try berries, carrots, anything with a deep color. Anyone have a good green? I’d love to hear! You can also add designs to the eggs by drawing on them before dying with crayons (the wax will resist dye. I like to write a “secret message” egg for Miles with a white crayon, the message appears like magic!), adding stickers, rubberbands around eggs for stripes, etc… Have fun.

PS. Don’t throw out that cabbage juice yet! Have a bit of science expirament fun by adding a bit of baking soda to see what happens. Then a bit of vinegar. Then a bit more baking soda. I won’t ruin the surprise, but it is pretty neat! This entertained Miles for a good half hour ;)

Lately…

Posted on by

0

*

thrifted blanket thriftscore!

peekabo baby

So much potential. Nevermind that most of them won’t survive my black thumb… it’s all about hope ;)

Naturally dyed eggs. Awesomeness. Tutorial coming- hold me to it!

this kid smiles with his whole face. Love it!!!

Lately, I’ve been:

:: marvelling at their curiosity and passion to learn. It’s inpiring.

:: contemplating, more seriously than ever, the idea of homeschooling my boys

:: wondering where Spring went? March seems colder and wetter than January and February this year.

:: plugging along with the Spring traditions nevertheless.

:: spending lots of these chilly days indoors making and doing. Oh, and at the library (of course)

:: Itching to get out in the dirt of our tiny, pitiful, financially not worth it but oh-so-worth-it garden plot (and hoping a few of the seedlings we have started survive those darn cats that keep jumping on the table and munching on them…)

:: working to finish up some projects around the house so we can LIST IT! (Again, maybe with better luck this time!)

:: dreaming about our home in the country that is starting to feel like it just may be out there after all…

:: wondering how I am ever going to manage to keep the house show-ready tidy with two kiddos and three cats…

:: trying, really trying to break out of this blogging rut so I have more to present than half-coherent, random ramblings and massive photo dumps.

:: living and loving, sometimes gracefully, mostly clumsily, always passionately. And enjoying (almost) every moment :)

*check it out! I am using my 35mm prime lens and not cursing it! Photo nerds- if you have a lens that is consistantly soft or blurry, dig out your SLR manuals or google “how to calibrate a lens to your camera.” Oh, and back button focusing. Your welcome ;) This lens used to severely back focus. To the point I never used it except in bright outdoor light where I could set a tiny aperature (no fun!) but it works like a charm now! My new fav.

A St. Patricks Day sweater and an afternoon drive in the country

Posted on by

0

It wasn’t intentional that this sweater would be finished just in time for St. Patricks Day. Or that it would be so green. I have a bad habit of being distracted by pretty little skeins yarn and not really invisioning what it will look like all knitted up in a big sweater… surely I’m not only one? Oh, and did I mention it was on clearance?

Other than my less than ideal yarn choice (verigated for a sweater? really, Jodean?) and some color pooling in a few places, I am very pleased with how this sweater turned out. The pattern is the Trust Pullover from Kristen TenDyke’s Finish-Free Knits that I checked out from our local library (which has been rocking the new aquisitions lately, btw!). The patterns in ths book are wonderful, all but eliminating the dreaded “seaming up” and all the bulky, weird seams I invariably end up with in knitting more traditional patterns. I over-lengthened the arms just a tad, but better that than too short, I always say :) A very classic, well fitting pattern that I may just have to revisit someday with a more subdued yarn. Thanks to my husband, Stephen for helping me photograph it.

Details on my Ravelry Page.

These photos were all taken on a Sunday afternoon drive (sort of a tradition for Stephen and me; we fell in love over long Sunday afternoon-drive conversations many years ago. Now, the kids nap, and we drive, and talk, and enjoy the scenery of this breathtaking little corner of the world (aka Arkansas) we are lucky enough to call home.)

Bridge at the Baptist Ford church north of West Fork, AR. On of my very favorite magic-light spots

See that little house at the top of the mountain? Ahhh, what I would give to live there…

One lane bridge south of West Fork, AR.

Wee morning hour rambles and other randomness

Posted on by

0

Hello. It’s me, Jodean. It’s 4:00 in the morning and I woke up with a head cold and throbbing sinus headache and now I can’t get back to sleep. What better to do than some rambly, sleep-deprived blogging! My mind is racing with all the to-do’s on my list tomorrow and rehashing yesterday’s Mommy-guilt moments. I had no patience with Miles. He was having a particularly whiny day (one of those two time-outs before 8:00 am, pour Mama another cup of coffee kind of days…) He insisted on toast with honey for breakfast, and when I told him we didn’t have bread but he could could have a little honey on his oatmeal, he had a complete meltdown. And then, when he finally calmed down, he told me that well, maybe he could settle for just toast with honey. Seriously?!? Replay meltdown. He spent all morning snatching toys from Zeke (“brother can’t play with my toys”) and making him cry (which Zeke was already doing enough of since he has also been afflicted with the head cold), wreaking havok in my studio while I tried catching up on a couple of commissioned dolls, and finally, waking up Zeke from what turned out to be a completely insufficient half-nap. That, coupled with this sinusy, sniffly, coughy head cold thing was my tipping point. I pretty much just quit for the day. Snapped at Miles. Resorted to arguing and bargaining with a four year old and eventually just turned on cartoons and let the kids loose to make a complete mess of the house.

I hate days like that. That’s not the mom I want to be or the childhood I want my kids to remember. And so, here I sit (it is now 4:15 am) trying to figure out what went wrong. Was it the weather, cold and rainy, that kept us shut up inside all day? The not feeling so well? The stress of too many things that “needed” to be done? Was it me? Sigh. I know not every day can be sunshine and roses, and maybe we wouldn’t fully appreciate those days if we didn’t have the dreary, gray ones sometimes too.

Every night at the dinner table, we have a little ritual that we do called “favorite things.” We each take a turn sharing one of our favorite special moments from the day (Miles usually has 5 or more). It’s a simple, but great way to put the day in perspective since on even the dreariest of days there is something worth pausing and savoring. Some days you may have to search a lot deeper to find them, but the beautiful moments are always there. Last night, for some reason or another, we didn’t do favorite things, and of all days, I think we really need it. So, since everyone else is asleep I shall share my favorite thing or two here: last night after nursing Zeke I expected him to take off like the on-the-go, no-time-for-snuggling toddler that he has become, but instead he rested his head on my chest, burrowed into my arms and held me in a big bear-hug. It only lasted for a moment -after all, he had places to go and bedtime avoidance schemes to plot, but oh how I savored that moment with my not so little baby. And then there was the way Miles’s face lit up when Papa got home from work like it does every evening. That boy loves his Papa! There is always a bustle of dragging Papa around by the hand to show him the latest lego creation, or drawing, or science expirament and telling him (in the rambling-storytelling way that only a four year old can) all the days adventures. Melts my heart every time.

There. I’m feeling much better now! (well, other than the sinus headache)

In completely unrelated news, we finally had a little teeny bit of a snow the other day.


Just a couple of inches, but enough to get this Wyoming gal all nostalgic. (Oh, who am I kidding, I will have officially lived in Arkansas half my life this summer. But Wyoming runs deep. And besides, Stephen says I won’t officially be a southerner until I develop a taste for sweet tea. Which is not. going. to happen.)


Not when I am holding the camera, Goober!


Yes, his coat is a tad small. When you only need a heavy coat a couple times a year, it is really hard to justify getting a new one every season!


What? You’ve never seen a snow cat before?

It pretty much melted that same afternoon. Literally. But it was pretty while it lasted. And now I have daffodills bursting to bloom all over the yard. I’ve had my snow fix, now bring on the Spring!