Here she is almost finished. It’s a tote bag from Sublime Stitching. J got it for me for my birthday. I feel like it took forever, but really, I didn’t work on it all the time. I actually put it aside for quite a few months. I’m very happy with it. I’m actually working on sewing up a lining for it to make the sides more solid.

Anyway, here she is finished.

I knew I had to make some for Bea’s hair.

I got my supplies and of course didn’t quite remember her tutorial and made a bunch. I also took pictures of the process, and I’ll post the tutorial, but really, link I posted above to the original tutorial is much easier. But, here’s mine:

You’ll need felt squares, scissors, a pen, and either needle and thread or glue depending on how easy you want this to be.

For the next step, I folded the squares in half and rounded the corners. I didn’t worry about it being perfect.

Then you can draw a spiral, like I did here, or just wing it (like I usually do) and just cut a spiral.

You end up with this fun spiral. You take the end where you started cutting and you start rolling it up. It can be a bit fiddley at first, but just keep going it will work itself out.

This is the part I like best, when the rosette starts to come together. If you used pinking shears or decorative edge scissors to cut the spiral, it’s fun seeing how it’s turning out. This is also why I wing the spiral, sometimes when it’s uneven the ‘petals’ stick out a bit and I like that.

When I’m done, is where I differ from the original tutorial She puts the tab-like end on the bottom and glues it down – easy. I don’t do that.

I sew it into place. It makes for much more work, but I couldn’t find my glue gun. I’m still looking for it because it’s probably much easier to just dab it with some hot glue as opposed to sewing it.

I’ve made a bunch. Bea will have a different one for each day of the week. I’m also planning on making some for my twin nieces to include with their birthday presents, they’ll be 5.

That’s one of my dogs, Miss Josephine. She’s doing what I’ve been doing for about a week now – laying around.

That’s right. Someone got sick. Again. This time my doctor said I has the flu. I got really lucky in that my mom offered to take the babies for the week so they wouldn’t catch it. You seriously have no idea how absolutely amazing that is to have as an option…we said yes. Only because J started back teaching on Monday.

Long story short, I didn’t have the flu. I had/have a severe uti. It, for lack of a better word, sucks. But yesterday was the first day I started feeling more like myself. That makes me happy because I miss having the babies around – the house is so quiet without them. So quiet. We’re going to get them Friday. I’m looking forward to it – and I’m sure my mom is too, as they’re quite a handful.

One of my vainer new years resolution/goals is that I want to keep up with doing my nails. I’m not usually one for make up (other than bright red lipstick), but the only way I’ve found to not bite my nails is when there’s polish on them. If I’m going to bother with polish, why not make it cute?

I bought a couple more colors, like the grey above. I’ve even read a few nail blogs – I didn’t even know they existed until I googled how to do a French manicure. There really are blogs for everything.

Also, as you can see Bea got a bit of nail polish. Normally, I’m not into any sort of make up on toddlers, but she asked for the potty and went in said potty…so I thought painting her nails was a better reward than candy. I think I picked the right treat for her as she keeps looking at her nails and saying, “blue” with a smile.

Definitely I need to take more time to do the things I enjoy – crafty stuff, knitting, sewing…

In regards to these two, Im trying to think up more projects for us to do together. They helped a bit with cookie making at Christmas time and loved it, so now I’m trying to figure out what else I can have them do. My mom had Lucien help her make potato pancakes, and she said that he really enjoyed it. I also need to be more consistent with potty training.

Spend more time with this guy…we’re thinking about looking into finding a babysitter so that we can leave the house without the babies once in a while. I don’t think we’ve ever really gone out without them – maybe 3 times, and then my mom was the sitter. Really, we don’t want to go out at nigt without them, we just want to sleep late a couple times – but I think that’s typical for all parents. We’re planning a couple goals together which I posted about on my other blog.

I also need to, finally, decide what grad program I want to apply to. Well, I know what program I would ideally like, I just need to decide if I want to travel for grad school or do something in the area which wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted. How’s that for vague and run-on?

What are some of your goals for this year?

Our first stop was my mom’s place. That’s where we would be staying for the next 5 days. My mom lives in a small one bedroom apartment where you have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom. So, you know, there’s lots of privacy. Ha. Anyway, the babies love going there, not only because grandmaman spoils them, but because every time they leave my mom’s place, they knock on her neighbor’s door and she gives them cookies – what’s not to love?

We also visited with my dad. That was going pretty well until Bea asked his girlfriend for juice and the gf said no. We ended up leaving early because 2 year old Bea had an epic meltdown. And frankly, I was happy as I couldn’t wait to leave. Things were much better when we went to Boston to see J’s dad. The babies love J’s stepmom, she was a kindergarten teacher and she’s wonderful with children.

Things got better when the babies unwrapped their Elmos. I now hate the Elmo’s and am constantly telling the babies that the Elmo’s are tired and need to nap. That makes me a terrible parent.

We went to J’s moms for Christmas day. That was fun and quiet. She had blocks so they pretty much played with blocks all day and were happy.

We went to visit friends. We visited the Springfield natural history museum which also houses the Dr. Seuss memorial sculpture garden. Bea loved it, Lucien stayed with my mom that day as he wasn’t feeling well.

Another fun thing we did was that my mom babysat and we were able to go out to dinner. J and I ended up going to the place we went to on our first day, Kashmir in Hartford. We told the waitress that we’d gone there on our first date, 12 years ago, and we think she gave us a hookup – as we got extra stuff we hadn’t ordered and the meal was a lot cheaper than it should’ve been. We now love that place for more than the funky elephant.
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So, we had a pretty good trip. We met up with a bunch of friends, ate a ton of Indian food (4 days in a row!), and the best part was that it didn’t involve taking a plane to get to and from home.

We’re happy to be home. I’m sure the dogs are happy to be out of doggy jail and the cat must be happy we’re here even though she’s been in super hiding mode.

How was your holiday?

Do any of you do boxing day? When I was little, and we would visit my grandma in Quebec we would always get up early to go shopping on boxing day. We’re not doing that today, we’re going to visit Jer’s dad.

I’m getting excited about seeing our families without having to take a plane without a bunch of layovers. We tried to plan the trip for when the babies normally nap. Bea’s asleep, Lucien keeps trying to open bags in the back seat…

So, just a couple of links I wanted to share. This one about a South African band’s response to that annoying Band Aid Christmas song. It made me laugh.

Also, my blogging friend, whom I’d love to meet on person, Elizabeth, posted something really – I don’t know the right word touching, nice, just the right thing for me to have read this morning – anyway, read it right here . Having worked in retail for many years, I always try to be nice to cashiers. That’s a job that sometimes can be downright awful during the holidays.

Oh, and can you tell I love the iPhone feature where you can have the camera face you for pictures? The babies and I have been having a lot of fun with it.

When I was reading the article, I was alternately horrified that this sort of thing was happening and also not surprised. I read a lot of adoption blogs and it seems that corruption in the adoption business is a subject that not many adoptive parents are willing to talk about. After reading the article, I think there needs to be conversations about it, but not in that way I’ve been seeing it – where families say that all adoption agencies except the one they used are corrupt. Throwing around that your agency is transparent doesn’t mean that it actually is – especially if you’re going to Congo and don’t speak fluent French or Lingala (you need to know them if you’re going to claim to have any sort of understanding of what’s going on, you cannot rely on the translator).

So where does this leave us? I’m not sure. I’d love to see someone doing research like this article in Congo. I think it would be very difficult though, not only because of the government but also because of the lack of infrastructure in the country. I think there definitely needs to be more oversight as to what’s going on. I also think that there’s shadings going on with probably all of the agencies in Congo – probably not on a scale like in Ethiopia, at least not yet. I don’t know what could be done about it.