Top Ten Activities that Don't Involve Cleaning

I spend a lot... a lot... of time cleaning, but that's not very interesting to blog about. So, in lieu of fascinating tales about scrubbing, I thought you might be mildly entertained by some of Meg's and my other activities.

1. Put glitter on shoes. She had a pair of worn-out Sunday shoes, so I painted them with turquoise craft paint and turquoise glitter glue, with silver glitter glue for the touches. It turned out surprisingly well, though the craft paint cracked in a couple places, so I touched those up with turquoise nail polish. Then, I had a pair of hot pink flats in dismal shape, so I touched them up with permanent marker (red, since I didn't have hot pink) and kraft glue and pink glitter. They aren't done yet, due to a severe glitter shortage.

2. Put glitter glue on dinosaur coloring pages. Using glitter glue is not to be confused with putting glue and glitter on things, an activity to be undertaken only with great care and trepidation, because if you put glue and glitter on anything, it'll be on everything. Meg wasn't even in the room when I glue-and-glittered the pink shoes and she got glitter all over her face. Though, small girls may just have a magnetic attraction to glitter. Glitter glue, on the other hand, comes in little squirt bottles and is almost tidy.

3. Tickle Kate. You might have trouble with this if you don't have a Kate, but it's so satisfying. She grins and giggles and generally sparkles brighter than glitter, which is saying a lot.

4. Do something with the semi-forbidden drinking straws, the pretty much forbidden yarn, the theoretically controlled scotch tape, the kid scissors, and rubber bands.

5. Build a bow and arrows. Today, for instance, we built a bow out of a paper towel tube and a belt. It only shot invisible arrows and somehow wasn't all that satisfying. Then we made a better bow out of her inflatable horse, a rubber band, and the rarely permitted straws. I fletched straws and they were pretty awesome.

6. Make up your own words to whatever you're singing. Today Meg rejiggered the "Timmy Time" theme song to become a Franklin the Turtle theme song.

7. Line up toys. We've been doing this for about three and a half years now and it never gets old. We have some new variations. Now we like to line up Little People animals for Kate to grab, line Imaginexts up just out of her reach for her not to grab, and line dinosaurs up precariously dangling off of things.

8. Embellish a boring shirt. I recommend sparkly fabric paint (see glitter glue, above, but you have to use the kind intended for fabric). I also recommend fabric, lace, and the cunning use of scissors - though maybe not all at once. Today I cut off the ugly neckline ribbing off a t-shirt and it not only looked better without ugly ribbing, but somewhat astonishingly, it actually fit better. The only trouble with this activity is that soon you run out of boring shirts.

9. String beads. The trick to this is to only have awesome beads in your stash, and then the creations will turn out gorgeous and look high-end and quite wearable and possibly even giftable. Plastic pony beads always look like plastic pony beads, which is why I let Meg use my nicer beads. Sometimes. She made me a rather cool necklace the other day out of brass wire and big pink beads that looked like it might have come from Anthropologie.

10. Hang out while Jonathan computes. You never know what might turn up.

Me: Why are there people yelling in Spanish?
Jonathan: It's Italian. I don't know. And one of them is waving a sea bass. ::reading the news story:: "He was eventually ejected by Deputy House Speaker Luigi Di Maio after failed attempts to make him stop waving the fish."

Quotes

"It slipped through my mental fingers like greased lasagna." Jonathan

I was narrating Meg. "A small burrowing mammal..."
Meg was outraged. "I am not a burro!"

Jane the invisible mousie, it turns out, has watched the Sonic the Hedgehog show, which I didn't even know exists. I said she was very avant-garde.
This puzzled Meg. "Jane's not a guard."

Quotes from today

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Tell me the story about the antarckatists and the bomb!!" Meg
Note: this is the Paulsgraf case. From law school. About anarchists who bomb a train. It's one of her favorites, and sometimes a Judicial Wookie makes an appearance.

"Meg, can you put the spices back in the cabinet for me?"
"This sounds like a job for the AMAZING MEGGIE!"

"Oh look, a whole bookstore full of books appropriate for Meggies. I'll go shopping."

My daughter can lick your daughter

And I mean that in the most literal sense. Kate is currently deeply interested in everything and everyone that crosses her path, and the best way to find out about it is mouth-first. So many textures! So many flavors! So many delicious friends! Cold marble countertops feel wonderful on the gums and wooden blocks get slightly softer when they're all wet. When you lick Mommy's shirt or jeans, she often makes interesting noises and jumps.

A couple of days ago I accidentally dropped a bat, the stuffed animal kind, onto her head. She leaned over in a spirit of inquiry and -- what else? -- gently licked it.

Meanwhile, Kate is great (an update)

Kate turned six months old at the end of last month (yikes!) and is doing great. She's growing like a crazy girl and I just retired her six-months size outfits. She likes eating, and she likes playing, and she likes people, and she's happy to sit and watch the commotion, and she's happy to be held, and really the only thing that she doesn't like is great big horrible diapers; as who would?

She feels that she should eat whatever we're eating, especially pizza, and does her best to intercept every bite while I do my best to outwit her, so yesterday I started her on solid food. If you can't beat 'em, invite 'em? It confused her - wait, Mom is letting me eat this stuff? Give me that spoon! She still tries to shove her mouthfuls forward with her tongue, but these things take practice.

She likes to sit up. She's getting pretty sturdy and wants to play while upright. She can pull herself back up when she leans forward, but she can't sit up if she falls backwards. She can't roll over yet, but if I put her on her tummy she can scootch round in random directions and backwards. She struggles with forward motion (we all struggle with forward motion), because there's nothing more aggravating than getting further away from the toy you're aiming for. Personally, I like having a daughter who stays where I put her, but I'm not getting too comfortable.

Stomping and kicking

Meg emerged from her dress-up corner in her knight's helmet, a breastplate, and a pair of pink wedge heels with bows on the front. She informed me she was here to fight a monster and instructed me strictly not to talk to it, look at it, sing to it, or go near it; and thereupon she went and stomped it into submission with her shoes. The pink was clearly camoflage.
 
She wandered off and came back a minute later with a stick unicorn, neighing energetically. Monsters take a lot of minding, as do mothers. "Mom, are you not doing any of the things the instructions told you not to do?"
 
...

Meg was telling Jonathan something and made a Horse and His Boy reference.
"...just like Rabadash kicked the Grand Severe. What a bully!"

Fireworks by association

"Mommy, we should have fireworks." Meg
"I'm sure they will on the Fourth of July."
"The Fourth of July?? That's - that's - AMERICAN!"