Cleopatra

This is my latest project. A Halloween costume for Landon's teacher. Cleopatra. This was the inspiration:


This is the result. I hope it has some resemblance...

It was a lot of fun to make and now onto the next!

Je t'aime Etame

This past week I met a French-speaking lady from Liberia. When I tell her my daughter's name, she says, "oh, that means love in French". Really? I took French I say and doesn't "amour" mean love? No, she says, like "I love you". Oh, Je T'aime! Of course! It means I LOVE YOU. What a treasured revelation.

This all fits together so nicely. Anyone who knows me well knows I love everything French. It is perfect that her birth mother named her this and makes me even more happy we decided to call her by her given name.

Rest Time

Landon needed a rest time towel for school. So I took it on as a project and created this miniature blanket out of flannel. He says it's much softer than the towel he had before. Plus, there's a secret word in there I told him.



See it? It's in the stitching...



He actually rests at home too, sometimes, after all his energy is expired for the day.

Weber's Farm

This past Monday there was no school for Landon so I took the kids and headed to Weber's Farm, on the outskirts of Baltimore and very close to us.


Etame loved the little kids activities


This turkey was angry or mean or hungry. Doesn't it look like a Star Wars character in the face?



The slide, a perennial favorite



Etame liked the goats from a distance. She liked the bunnies the best, and really did not like the chickens. She ran from them.



How cute?


For the scrapbook


And this is how our day ended. Etame was quite angry with Landon as she did not want to share "her" apple cider slushie with anyone. We will have a strong-willed little miss in our house, I feel it coming on.

Why I am Scared to Fly

I haven't always been fearful of flying. No, I haven't always been scared of going up 10,000 feet in the air soaring above the clouds. In fact at one point growing up, I even wanted to become a pilot. I loved the feeling of take off and the control over a big aircraft and everyone on board.

No, now I have a different reason for being scared:


Kids. I shouldn't really blame them. It's just that everything is more complicated, stressful, and cumbersome with them in tow.

When I used to fly with just Landon, it wasn't all that bad. And even when Etame was an infant she would sleep. Then, the flight back to Oregon for Easter '09 happened. The infamous airport story whereby Trisha was nearly handcuffed and locked up (or so I thought would happen) at BWI for having a toy gun in my bag. Ugh. It was horrible, mortifying, and completely without my knowledge. I had been given the bag from a good friend who also has a 5yo son and it had not been completely emptied. Really. Cue to alarms going off, 6-8 transit authority police, supervisors, and all of the lines shut down in security while they held up a toy cap gun in front of my face so everyone could see, telling me that this was not funny and it was a federal offense.

I got through it but not without emotional scaring. Hence the reason I have never written about it on here perhaps. I vowed from then on to search every nook and cranny of every bag I carried. Of course this was all opened again when I received a $250 fee in the mail this week from the TSA. Seriously. As if the public humiliation was not enough.

The last flight we took, we were yelled at as everyone was de-boarding by a slightly "off" man. It was almost equally bad with what he said. I won't repeat it here.

So now you can see my fear. I dread flying. I hope it gets easier. I'm thinking of renting an RV and driving out to Oregon next summer. Really. Seriously. Days in the car may be easier than 10 hours of being in a confined area with strangers.