Our favorite CDs around the house are by Harry Connick, Jr., who I love with a white hot passion. Um, I mean, I think he’s pretty handsome. Anyway, we do a lot of dancing to Harry…here’s a little taste of my son’s dancing skills:

I made all these fun iron-ons of superheroes - admittedly, I stole all the images off of the internet - and put them on t-shirts for my kid. Just like his super cool Thomas cape, he cries his face off if I try to put the shirts on him. Here’s an example. I put this shirt on him, he wears it all the time. Then, he looked down and saw Aquaman.

But I’m working on some new stuff. I’ve been making these cool little bags…I may even get around to putting some in the Etsy shop I opened 20 years ago. I also finished a little table topper convergence quilt (from a Ricky Timms book) and I’m over halfway done with the hand quilting on my snake charmer quilt.

Summer is almost over and we’re about to start our journey to being able to use the gym. I think this is going to involve going to the gym each day and sitting in the kid’s club (day care) for at least a half hour until my son is comfortable. I’m tempted to just get some fitness equipment in my house. In fact, we sold a treadmill a couple years ago!

But my kid needs socialization, so we’re going to suck it up. Even if it takes weeks! Its not like I’m working out now, anyway, what’s a few times of going to the gym and not working out? No biggie, right? Well, we’re waiting for summer to be over because then all the big kids will be back in school. Then the kid’s club won’t be full of fast and wild 7-10 year olds.

Any motivational words? I could use them. And a box of wine.

Did I tell you that I made it to the gym the other day? We got up on a Monday, had a small breakfast and headed to the newer gym that just opened near my house. I brought William to the kids club - their little babysitting facility, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the kids club at the new gym is almost twice the size of the one at the older gym. There were a lot of kids, but because of all the space, everyone seemed happy and occupied - coloring, playing dinosaurs, watching Dora. William walked right in, picked up a bull dozer and started playing. I headed out to the floor and had a nice 45 min. workout. I jogged and walked on a treadmill, used the ellipticals, did a bunch of crunches and girl pushups and stretched. It was wonderful.

I went to get William and he seemed happy, albeit ready to go.

The next day, we get to the gym and we’re heading into the main doors and he moves behind me and gives me a little shove, saying, “you go, mommy, I’ll stay here.” Um, what? Then he says, “I’m not going to the gym anymore.” We went inside anyway where he proceeded to scream and cry like I was pinching him or pulling his hair or something. Very dramatic.

Well, it’s not like gymnastics where we can just stay even though he’s crying. For the sake of the three care providers and the 10 or so other kids in the kids club, I felt obligated to get my crier out of there. Thereby giving in to his tantrum. Ugh.

My only option at this point is to go at night once my husband gets home. This plan is kind of crappy because I don’t ever feel like going at 8 pm and it’s very easy to make excuses.

Nonetheless, I’ve got some weight to lose…I need a plan.

As a family, we have alligator eyes and bird stomachs. Or bird bank accounts. Or a bird garage, that can’t possibly hold all the crap we buy our kid.

He often says, “Target is great!” You know what that means? It means we go to Target and buy toys TOO much. That kid is so spoiled. Today, we went to Toys R Us, and there was a sign on the wall when we walked in that said, “hurry, we have Wii’s in stock today!” I almost bought one.

My kid is 2. I don’t think he can play a Wii yet. I’m not sure why we don’t have any self control, except the fact that he’s such a good kid. He’s not bratty, he always says please and thank you, he genuinely loves all of his toys - for at least 10 minutes, anyway.

The other day, there was a garage sale down the street. The guy was selling off his Matchbox collection, and he had a huge box full of unopened matchbox cars. We bought a few, and left. William was thrilled. He played with those cars and trucks all day. My husband had a golf game that afternoon, and decided to stop back by the yard sale on his way to the course to see if there were any cars left. He gave the guy $40 and bought the whole box. There are probably 70 cars in that box.

What the hell are we going to do with all those cars?

We’ve been giving him a new car everyday. His “suprise” - he hasn’t seen the box, but he knows the suprise comes from the garage. Today, he said, “mom, let’s go in the garage and get a surprise.”

Crap. He’s onto us. Now, both Target and the garage are “great!”

Next, he’ll have a trampoline, a sandbox (even though there’s perfectly good dirt in the flower bed, a bigger plastic pool, a picnic table (have you seen the cute one at Target? With the bugs?)…you see where I’m going with this.

The poor house, that’s where.

My Moo cards arrived this week! I really love the packaging. I think that sleeve around the box would make an excellent quilt design. Here’s a sampling of my cards…I got the pack of 100, with 10 different photos from my flickr.

On the back, they have my name, number, email and website. Pretty cool. I also got a fun little carrier for them, but the picture is blurry. Trust me, it’s cool.

William has been doing lots of painting lately. He’s really getting more imaginitive. I mean, all the paintings kind of look the same to me - masterpieces, of course - but he says things like, “Look, Mommy, waves! A bird! A whale! A road!”

Today, we took him to a cool little barber shop on Main Street and got all of his sweet messy hair cut off. I was a little sad to see it go, but he does look pretty great with shorter hair too. He didn’t cry at all - probably because of the orange lollipop he had a death grip on throughout the entire process. His second lollipop ever.

And I’ve been hard at work stitching up some Wee Wonderfuls stitchettes. For Pauline: I’m using 3 strands of floss for most of them - sometimes less strands on their eyes or mouths. My backgrounds are 10-inch squares of mostly white cotton. I plan to copy dontcallmebecky’s awesome quilt eventually.

And finally, my hexes are pinned, and I’ve already appliquéd the big one and three little ones down. Not in this picture. But they’re coming along great. I’m excited that the whole project will be done by hand. Hand pieced, hand appliquéd, and eventually, hand quilted.

So that’s it for me. What’s happening with you?

That’s right, I’ve been in Oklahoma. I took my little baby and we flew out to see Gramie and Papa. I know I’ve been absent for a little while, but I wasn’t in drug rehabilitation or detox or something. No, I was visiting my parents - and it was great! All except for the day we left. All our flights were cancelled, so we got rebooked on another airline leaving 7 hours later, only to have our second leg delayed 4 hours. We got lucky and caught an earlier flight, but it came into a different airport, so I still had to drive to the first airport and pick up my luggage at 1:30 am. LONG day, hauling around a 2 year old and all his accoutrements. Lucky for me he’s such a good boy.

Anyway, we had a great time with my parents and that’s what matters. I got to meet my new future step-sister in-law, William got to spend lots of time with Gramie Sandy and Papa Bob, get his face licked off by their little dog Chica, and I even got to go to a fabric store where the fabric was almost 1/2 the price as it is here! Pictures coming to flickr soon!

Well, we just returned from a mini vacation, and yet, I feel unrested and ready for another one.

Today was an interesting day in the world of parenting a 2 year old. Gymnastics started today - we were very excited, with my son saying, “nastics…cool!” all morning. So we go, and there are about eight other 2-3 year olds in the room, all with at least one parent. The teacher starts the music (itsy bitsy spider) for the warm-up. William and I go to sit on the mat in the circle, and he starts to wail. He squirms around and gets a death grip on my neck and won’t let any part of him touch that mat. And so, that is how we conducted our first gymnastics class…45 minutes of neck gripping and “let’s go door!” with him pointing fervently toward the exit.

Next, because gymnastics was considerably more stressful than I had imagined, we headed to his favorite park. We played happily in the pristine (raked twice a day!) sand with the bucket, shovel and castle for about 20 minutes. A cute little boy about William’s age wanders over and picks up his monster truck. No biggie - we start to all play together, and the boys mom comes over and we start chatting. She’s really nice, I tell her about gymnastics, she said she went through the same thing, etc.

Then William starts projectile vomiting chocolate milk and watermelon all over the perfect sand.

The nice lady says, “uh oh, he’s sick…come on honey, let’s leave him alone,” and they hightail it to the opposite side of the park. Meanwhile, William pukes two more times, soaking a good three square feet of sand. I frantically start scooping the pink sand into the buckets and carrying it over to the trash. 15 bucket and castle-fulls later, I believe the sand is once again kid ready.

He threw up one more time in the car as we were pulling into the driveway. Luckily, it stayed in the car seat. Then, he threw up crazy yellow bile after his nap. Scary stuff - this is the sickest he’s ever been (knock on wood!) We’ve been so lucky with sickness, we don’t even know how to act!

Anyway, he’s sleeping well now. No fever, just a little dehydrated and lethargic. Poor little guy.

I think there must be a lovely Pigeon Forge cabins with my name on it somewhere far far away.