A Rapunzel Dress from Goodwill Clothes

I prepped for this post a little while ago.  It's late.  My camera broke, other life stuff happened, but now I have this awesome Chromebook computer to share how I made Ivy's treasured Rapunzel dress.  Yep, for Halloween, Ivy wanted to be Rapunzel.  I decided to make a dress for her that would be warmer and less commercial than a purchased Rapunzel dress.  Here's how I did it.

• Skill level:  Easy/Beginner
• What I used:  A sewing machine; 1 purple long-sleeve shirt (The Children's Place, found at Goodwill); 1 adult size Medium tube-top maxi dress (Old Navy, found at Goodwill).
• Time commitment:  ~1 hour to go from A to Z:

First, I put the maxi dress on my daughter, up to her underarms.  I pinched the fabric at the seam until it seemed like it would be a comfortable fit.  Then I sewed from the top of the 'pinched' area the same width through the smocked section, and then slowly trailed it off about 1 foot down the dress (not the whole length of the dress).  Finally I cut off the excess.

Next, I laid out the maxi dress and the purple shirt together to create a vision of the final look.  I pinned the top of the smocked/blue dress to the purple shirt at ~1-inch intervals.  HINT:  It helped to line up the seam of the maxi-dress so it's in the middle of the back, because the way I cut off the excess made a nice train.

Then, I sewed (all still right sides out) the smocked dress to the purple shirt.  I used white thread and kept the seam at the very top of the smocked area, on top of another white-ish area so the thread would not stand out.  I sewed around the whole dress twice for strength.  Then I turned the dress inside out and cut off the excess purple t-shirt (the part below the smocked part that nobody would see... although you could leave it on for extra warmth.)

The last step was to cut off all the extra fabric at the base of the dress.  I had Ivy try the dress on, and just eyeball the level we liked.  Then I cut off the excess and hemmed the dress.  The maxi-dress had a lining, and I just hemmed the lining along with the dress.  The lining was not the same width, however, so it made it look a little wavy.  You  may want to hem the dress and lining separately.

Voila!  A long-sleeved, warm, thrift-store, up-cycled Rapunzel dress that my daughter loves, and still wears long after Halloween!  It's versatile enough that she occasionally wears it to school.

 

10 Ways Parenting is like the Peace Corps

So I was in the Peace Corps - the "toughest job you'll ever love."  Next to parenting, that is.  It occurred to me this week, staying home with my son who has a mysterious fever-causing illness, how similar my life is to when I was in the Peace Corps.  Here's how:

1. Children, often partially naked and hungry, are watching my every move making me feel like a big fish in a little glass bowl.  
2. When driving distances , I often find myself eyeing good spots for places to pee by the side of the road.  (But for the kids - not for myself, so that's a small difference.)
3. I never feel fully clean...  except for the two minutes during or right after a shower, and then the feeling quickly dissipates.
4. There is an ongoing theme of illness - some diagnosed, some mysterious, often causing fevers and diarrhea and vomiting.
5. I get to learn several new languages!  The language of parenting, some sign language (of the baby variety), and each of my children's' unique words for things that until recently only I could understand.  It's not French and Kabiye, but it's close!
6. Sometimes I feel like I'm forging through the parenting landscape with nothing but a bicycle and a book.  Before I had "Where there is no doctor" but now I have "Where there is no super nanny" and at least one partner who's got my back!
7. You can never have enough batteries, duct tape and stuff to wash your hands.  
8. Gift giving has climbed the ladder to a more important place in my life.  Birthday parties galore.  Rewards for job well done.  I'm not used to this.
9. It feels like constant problem solving.  "How am I going to get my gas canister to town when the market isn't until Wednesday and there's no way to find a taxi?" is very similar to "How am I going to navigate around Target if I need a huge bag of dog food and the baby demands that I carry him on my shoulders?"
10. I learned that the feelings of wanting to run away or hide, and shower everybody in sight with love and affection are not as far apart as you might think.

I am now fully convinced the guy who crafted the Peace Corps slogan was also a parent and thus the similarities.  Now I must go tend to my naked 2-year-old asking for food.

Life Has No Script

Ok, so duh.  Life has no script.  But I'm the type of person who would LOVE it if there were a script.  In fact I try to make life have a script... well my life, anyway.  I try to think through 'how everything will go.'  Who will say what, who should say what back to them, where somebody will go when, and how it will all look like.  Did you know I basically scripted our whole wedding ceremony?  And I guess I scared our preacher into not deviating from the script because boy, he sure didn't.  (Hi David if you're reading this!)


I like to know what's going to happen next.  I like to have imagined all the answers, all the possibilities and planned for them.  And in the end, I want everybody to be happy with themselves and with each other.  Which usually requires a script because otherwise, real life happens and that gets icky.


So the past few weeks have been a challenge for me.  A lot happened in a short time period and I didn't have time to script it all.  I had to - yikes - go with the flow.  It started with a big conference at work, put on by yours truly.  It was the most scripted of all.....  but once the clock struck 8 and we kicked it off, it still felt like walking a tightrope without a safety net.  And though the evaluations were positive, I still feel 'eh' about it, wondering if everybody was truly happy with the day?


Then Ivy's birthday part(ies) and recital weekend extravaganza.  We put up the bounce house, got some food, invited people and - bam - let it just happen.  Without an agenda.  I was totally uncomfortable.  But the reviews were good!  Yay?  Then came the recital and family visits. None of which was scripted...  anything could happen!  People could say or do things that might hurt each other - oh no!


Enter anxiety.


But rest assured this is a personal problem.  I've been pretty very good at not scripting life for my kids.  At not scheduling everything or being a controlling, helicopter parent, worried about the impact of the least little unanticipated disappointment on their precious molding minds.  And I'm starting to learn to let go of control by watching them.  Little by little.


My kids are teaching me how to grow.


On the first day of Ivy's recital during her ballet performance, Ivy totally went off script, got confused and ran off the stage in the middle of the performance, followed by 2 other girls.  (This is the kind of thing that would have terrified me and kept me up all the night before, worrying about the mere potentiality of doing this on stage.)  But they got it together, were ushered back on stage.  Totally unscathed.


And you know what?  Everybody was ok.  And that unscripted part was the most precious.

Clip Clop Mama Rides Again

I'm not sure I've ever explained why I changed my blog title to "clip clop mama." I'm not sure I even know myself, but I'll try to explain it for fun and see where this goes.

Way back when Ivy was two, in the summer of 2010 (soooo long ago in toddler years), she learned how to say flip flops, only it came out "clip clops." She was enthralled with her clip clops. We bought her several pair. I remember sitting on the floor with her in Babies R Us trying on these blue flip flops, trying to find ones that would fit her fat little feet. They were the only pair left in her size - it was towards the end of summer. We bought them, but - like the others before them - they wouldn't stay on or hurt or feet. But she persisted, wanting to wear them despite the pain because she loved them so much. She would walk stiff-legged in them, like simply wearing them was special and also treacherous. Mostly we wound up carrying her while she proudly admired her clip clops.

It was, as I'm prone to say, the most adorable thing I've ever seen.... until it was topped a second later by the next adorable thing she did. In our house, clip clop stuck. I called my flip flops clip clops. My husband calls flip flops clip clops.

She's grown a little since then. She can almost say her 'f's and I haven't heard her say 'clip clops' since last summer. But I will forever call them clip clops.

This forever name change for our beloved summer footwear of choice is a stark reminder, to me, of how much I love my kids. How amazed I am by their very being. I wanted children from the time I knew what the word meant. I named Ivy 10 years before she was born, even getting a tatto in her future honor. I imagined having a child would change my life. That it has, even in ways I never could have imagined.

She, as my first born, changed my world, my perspective, my heart.... and what I will forever call my summer footwear of choice. Clip clops.

Post-note: The saga continues. Last night, we read a book called Clippity Clop, about a horse who gives piggy back rides to all the animals on the farm, all at once, and then flips them into the hay for fun - and they shout, "again!" Ivy says: That's you mama, like when you give me and baby Roy horsey rides! Yep, that's me. Clippity clip clop!

Scientific(ish) Parenting: Potty Training Success

There are no perfect parents. For those of us trying to be mindful, strategic,
successful parents (hopefully all of us), this is a hard pill to swallow. Maybe
it's just me, but I like to think that there are people out there who've figured it out. Somehow, that idea
gives me hope that I, too, will figure it out.... or that "it" is "figure-out-able."

However, I also know there are no right answers, no golden gooses, no silver bullets, and no more good analogies for me to use in this sentence. We all do the best with what we've got. There seems to be a lot of stretching of the truth on parenting websites. Pish posh, I say, to reports of perfect children sleeping through the night from day one and always sleeping in their own bed. Pish posh, I say, to reports of potty training 13-month old with narry a soiled diaper to be had again. Pish posh, I say, to reports of children demanding to eat vegetables at every meal. Such reports, and others like them, just serve to make the rest of us turn green with envy and wonder what we're doing wrong.

In the midst of all this pish-poshing, and in the spirit of "doing the best with what we've got," I've decided to periodically post a "scientific(ish) parenting" post in which I create a graph reflecting a
parenting reality as we have come to know it.

Click on the graph to see the enlarged version - It is graph #1: Potty Training Success. I believe it reflects a reality of our parenting. We set our goal and learn something about how to get there. We try something - usually involving praise, candy and fruitless convincing! If it doesn't succeed like you had hoped, try again. Something new this time.

It took Big Sis probably 1 year to learn to use the potty, from age ~2-1/2 to a little past age 3. We still have occasional accidents, but they are few and far between now. In the end, all us 'adults' did was lay the foundation. She had to decide for herself when the time was right!

Semi-Homemade Aurora Crown

My child so badly wants to be a princess some days.  Today was one of those days.  We have princess decals in her room and she always points to either Belle or Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and says - When I grow up, I'm going to have that hair, and that dress, and hold that thing (a fan) and have a crown like that and be a princess.  It is perhaps the cutest thing ever, since the most recent thing my children did that was the cutest thing ever, like 5 seconds before that.  So today we indulged her a little and made a crown!  And okay, we were both a little bored.... 4 days at home!  A pleasure, and a challenge!  So I googled "aurora crown" and we found this simply adorable pattern.  However, we didn't have craft foam or jewels.... so, enter tin foil!  Here's what we did:  1) Trace the template in the pattern on card board.  Cut out!  2)  Cover it with glue and wrap with tin foil ("silver" as Big Sister called it) 3)  Find a head band that she never wears and glue the 'silver crown' to it, held in place with clothes pins for ~30 minutes 4) In the mean time, make 4 "jewels" by covering diamond (or whatever) shaped pieces of cardboard with tin foil.  Crayons worked okay for giving the 'jewels' a hint of color.   5)  Glue the 'jewels' on the 'crown' in your desired pattern.

Presto create-o!  An aurora crown that Big Sister has worn all day!  And we didn't have to purchase a single thing or make a trip to the craft store!

Pulling the Santa Card

Picture of me, taken by Ivy - Summer 2011

It is official.  Threes are more terrible than the two's.  I love her dearly but Big Sister has taken an interesting turn lately.  It all started with a bad report at school.  She had scratched another little girl and gotten time out.  Time out?  My child?  We had just had Parent's Night where her teacher raved that she never has any problems with our angel!  Perhaps my daughter had her super radar far-away hearing aid on that night and heard it....  and decided "I'll show them!"  Her first time out was the next day.

Then the next day, she got sent to (wait for it...) the director's office.  Her little yellow behavior school bus went from green to yellow to RED!!  The details are foggy now...  it involved scratching several times, and laughing when she had to sit in time out.  Today was the fourth day we've gotten such a report.  No more trips to the principal's office, but time out nearly every day!  What is going on?? 

We've made her apologize to the teacher each time (again), and she's grounded from the iPhone and special things like watching movies and playing on the computer.  She doesn't seem to care.  We talk about it (maybe too much), she says she doesn't know why, and gets upset and looks like my precious tears-streaming-down-her-baby-face angel.  (Her teacher says it's because she wants whatever they have and gets mad when they won't bend to her will).

I am reminded of a line from Tangled.  "I can't help but notice you seem to be at war with yourself." 

While it's maddening that nothing we do or say seems to have an impact, it does seem like she's having an internal struggle too.  Trying to figure out right and wrong, what to do with some feelings she has - like when she wants something but can't have it, how to resolve that.  It's tough to be on the parenting end of this because you need to accomplish all of the following:  discipline your child, help her understand and resolve her feelings about things, figure out how to help her behave when mom and dad aren't around - and protect her current and future victims.  As if she'd listen to us.  Hah.

Tonight I pulled the Santa card.  "He's always watching you, and he only wants to give toys to children who are nice to their friends- not little girls who scratch their friends."  (Oh yes I did that, and I cringe now.... I don't want her thinking she's a bad girl.)  But she's too smart, she's not buying it.  "He can't see me from far away."  Ever the realist, I played the Santa card and it fell flat.  Got any ideas?

Positive Princesses? Perhaps.

My daughter is three.  What can I say?  She loves princesses!  Specifically, the Disney variety- but we have some 'generic' princess movies she likes too.  WAIT - what?  We let our child watch movies?  On a TV??  I understand that some parents don't allow kids to watch TV and we do try to limit it since we understand that research shows that screen time may turn tots' eyes turn to jelly and their brain into goo.  So far, on less than 2 hours a day ( the recommended limit I believe), no sign of jelly or goo.  Plus - no shows with sex, guns, drugs, violence or cussing.  But bring on the rock-n-roll! We're good.  Moving on.

We have approximately a thousand movies.  Maybe less.  I got a sweet deal on VHS tapes on Craig's List.  She has diverse taste, but Big Sister will usually choose a Disney/princess or Barbie/princess movie.  I struggle with the Princess movies and the whole capital-P Princess phenomenon.  I too loved them when I was little but I have grown up and it's hard for me to not see the negatives:

• The motif of an absent biological mother and and evil stand-in-mother figure, usually a stepmother or witch of some sort, set against a bumbling, arrogant or otherwise flawed mostly-absent but wealthy man.
• The consistent theme of marriage being the girl's ultimate dream, goal and the 'happy ending' of the story - usually at the age of 16!!??!!
• Somebody else having control over the girl-slash-princess's freedom
• The clear depiction of beauty=good, ugly=bad, or just defining a certain look as being beautiful (long flowing straight hair and dress, perfect skin, youth....)
• The woefully underdeveloped "prince" characters
• The portrayal of animals as talking.  Animals don't talk!  Dragons don't exist!  Clearly I'm KIDDING - these are great parts and if anybody finds a magic wand please let me know I want one!

Is this really what I want my daughter to be learning about the world and how it works?  On the other hand, do I want to endure the battles that would ensue if I eliminated princesses from her world? 

No, and No.

So I've decided that it is my job as parent to explain these shortcomings to MY SON AND DAUGHTER (despite their puzzled facial expressions) and also point out the positives about the princess stories.   Positives you say - what are they?  Funny you ask.  I've thought about a few:

• Ariel (the Little Mermaid) is curious about the world, has a rebelious streak and has a great imagination, telling stories about the objects she collects.  Also she saved the prince's life, instead of the other way around.  She is perhaps my favorite.
• Snow White is a survivor.  She ventures into the woods, makes a life for herself without help from anybody (the dwarfs weren't much help at all) - and emphasized proper hygiene.  She's an honorary Peace Corps volunteer and public health worker if there ever was one.
• Belle loves to read and speaks two languages.  She also loves her father very much.  (Again, where are these girls' mothers???)  Other than that, her story is - in my opinion - among the worst.  Enslaved by a beast until she loved him?  Gross.
• Cinderella is a toughie.  She is kind to animals and to everybody.  She embodies 'turn the other cheek' which is a good skill to have sometimes. 
• Sleeping Beauty is tougher still.  She walks in the woods and sleeps a lot which are good for your health.  That's all I got.
• Pochahontas, however far from the original, has a lot of good lessons.  Protect water, trees and animals.  Stand up for what you believe is right.  Learn about and value other cultures.  And it doesn't have the marriage-as-a-happy ending thing.
• Rapunzel is brave and adventurous and goes for a thief instead of a prince, whose life she saves at least once.  I like this girl. 
• Also, Princess Fiona in Shrek 4 is awesome.  A mom-of-triplets turned leader of the anti-dictator rebellion.  My hero.

The other princess movies, we don't own or I haven't watched enough.  I'll put it on my long to-do list!  Right below "Invesigate good role-model type movies for boys that my son can enjoy" (am accepting ideas!) and "Make sure my kids grow up to be kind, thoughful, brilliant, family-oriented but independent people."  Check!