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I am way behind in my postings! But I suppose before I get too backed up and overwhelmed, I guess I should just start with today! Starr organized an Easter Egg Hunt at Owl’s Head park. Everyone brings goody filled eggs, they get hidden and then the kids run off to search for them. I never did this as a child and am glad Sienna had an opportunity to experience this. She had a blast! I don’t know why I was surprised that she basically understood what to do, although she was a bit slow about grabbing the eggs. She made out pretty well but of course some of the older kids were faster so they got more eggs. I also made cupcakes from a recipe I got off of Paris Pastry (I did not do the cute bunny decoration). The cupcakes came out huge as I got confused (she had said she halved the recipe but posted the full recipe, she changed the wording after I inquired!) but still delicious! Sienna ate a whole one!

Some eggs hiding

Waiting to start!

Grab ‘Em Sienna!

Not a bad stash!

Waiting to dig into the cupcakes!

Yum! Sienna and Phoenix chowing down!

A close up of the cupcakes!

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What a crazy week it as been! All routines and regularly scheduled play dates went out the window last week but all for good reason! Sienna’s grandma was in town! We were just a quick stop for her as she was on her way to Bangkok to visit Liz and her family for a month! We were glad to have her for 2.5 days, especially Sienna! There was some excitement with Air Jamaica losing my MIL’s luggage! UGH! Another reason to hate Air Jamaica, as if this incident wasn’t enough! Thankfully, they found it (it was left in Kingston!) and sent it on the flight that arrives at 10pm Monday night. And it arrived at our house at close to 5 the next morning (after a 2:15 am phone call!)I had a mixer Monday night so was pleasantly surprised to come home at 11:30 and find Yves and my MIL still up. They were waiting for Air Jamaica but finally gave up at midnight.

We did some shopping at Ikea and Target and Kohl’s while she was here. You’ll have to check out Yves’ blog for photos. I didn’t take any! Yves drove her to the airport on Wednesday afternoon and she arrived safely in Bangkok (via Hong Kong) the next day or so…My parents came back from Denver Tuesday evening so there was quite some back and forth to the airport!

Besides going to the mixer, I managed to make a quick stop at a craft swap meetup to unload some of my unused craft stuff (and get some more to replace it so it didn’t really help to clear up space!, finished up a couple of crafts and go to the dentist! Then there was Tommy and Maureen’s wedding on Saturday. So things have definitely been a little crazy! I’ll have some photos of crafts and the wedding this week as I think things will be back to normal again.

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Warning! Mushy mother stuff in this post!

As each day passes, I feel more and more grateful and thankful and lucky that I have this time to spend with Sienna. She is such a good girl and a marvel and a wonder and she has helped me stop and look at life instead of just whizzing on by it. It is so amazing to see her grow and learn and to just be. Of course not everyday is all sunshine and roses! There might be times I want to scream out loud (or even quietly) or times I wish to be left alone to craft or shop or just laze around. I am not a saint after all! But honestly, I can’t see my life without Sienna. And I look forward to crafting with her and shopping with her and just being lazy with her. Being a parent is really fucking hard but as the cliché goes – it is worth every minute of it. And you really don’t truly understand it until you become a parent yourself. And it might not be evident right away either. It really is becoming more apparent lately. I guess because she is becoming more of a personality and we are beginning to see ourselves in her or maybe it’s just that the initial shock of becoming a parent is starting to wear off. HA!

I’m mostly writing this post as a reminder to myself for those days I might want to scream or want to be left alone to craft or shop or just be lazy (or when she becomes a teenager and I wonder what I have gotten myself into all over again – shudder!!!) And to remind myself that there are those out there that are not as fortunate. I know this little girl whose mother probably needs a reminder like this. I may not know the whole story but from where I can see, this mother doesn’t seem to spend more than a couple of hours (if that) with her daughter on a daily basis. Understandable for a single working mother. But then she shuffles off her child to someone else to take care of every weekend. Every weekend!  I don’t know when she spends any significant time with her own daughter. That is sad. I don’t think she realizes she’s missing the wonder and amazement and excitement of seeing your own flesh and blood develop into a real person. To see your child mimicing what you are doing and want to be like you. To see her learning and seeing your morals being instilled – and carried out! – by her. Hopefully one day soon she will realize what she is missing and change her attitude and realize you can’t pick and choose when you want to be a mother to your daughter. And hopefully this little girl won’t get tired of waiting for her mother to be her mother. This reminds me of a sad story told to me by some other moms. They were in the playground with their kids one day and a little girl came up to them practically begging for food because she was so hungry. It turns out her mother was busy making out with her boyfriend on the bench to pay her any attention! The unfortunate aspect of both these situations is it’s the little girls that will be suffering the most and that makes me cry.

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This is what greeted us when we woke up this morning! Uh, Happy Spring!
But it cleared up by the time we headed to the library. Still no sun tho! And just this past Wednesday it was 60 degress and Sienna was happily swinging in the playground (on a big kid swing too!)

Edited to add: the sun did come out later! Right around 2ish.

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This week I haven’t much mojo in the creating department (only bits of crocheting) but the last couple of weeks I was doing well! First off, I made another photo pendant for Starr’s birthday, as I mentioned here. This is only the 2nd time I did a double pendant. I hope she will wear it and help test it out for me! I’m still not completely satisfied with the whole thing (process/outcome) but just have to keep at it in order to find a solution.

And here are some swaps. The Zakka Cherry Blossom swap was actually last month or so. I had such trouble with it! Turns out lots of people did and my partner enlarged her pattern! Wish I thought to do that! Mine came out bad and I was too frustrated with it to try again so I  felt bad for my partner and I included lots of other goodies for her. She has yet to rate me on this but I’m not pushing her since I know it was so bad!

Here it is shown closed and the inset photo shows the bottom. And here is what I received!

So much nicer!
Here’s another sewing swap for an Origami bag. While this came out better than the Zakka Cherry Blossom bag, I still wasn’t super happy with it! My partner likes mermaids.

I also made her a business card holder in matching fabric (which I want to make for myself as well but in different fabric!)

She gave me a heart and said she loved them! Whew! Here’s the one I received! Pretty cute!

And I hosted a crochet/knit potholder swap and this is what I sent to my partner. (I should be receiving mine soon!) My partner likes cats. I also included a dark green heart potholder that I did not take a photo of. Her fave color is dark green.

One of the bookmarks I made for a bookmark swap. This one is using crochet thread (you do not even want to see what I got in return! I swear, looks like it took her less than 5 minutes to do! So disappointing! UGH!)

And here are a couple of things I made for the Unbirthday swap #5. (Remember the stuff I got here?) My partner likes knights, Superman and Greenman.

And remember the owl stuffie I spoke about in exchange for doing the carved Geill stamps? Here it is! I am so in awe of these stuffies and have not ventured into doing one yet…

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Saturday we made a quick stop at Toys R Us to pick up a bike helmet for Sienna before going to the playground and lunch at Five Guys (see Yves’ post on that). We got back later than usual so putting her down for a nap was unsuccesfful so we went outside to try her bike and helmet! We stayed out for about an hour. I think it will take a few tries before Sienna can really get the bike.

The helmet is a little too big so it helped to have her hat on underneath.

Yves did a lot of pushing

Skippy hung out in the car

Yves was making a few adjustments on the bike so Sienna strolled away

Sienna came back to give some assistance

Forget the bike! Look at the cool tools!

And going back to pushing the carriage! She loves pushing that thing!
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Yesterday was Sienna’s 2nd birthday! I can’t believe how time flies! We did not have a big blowout party for her (I will not feel guilty! I will not feel guilty!) but as usual, my parents bought her a cake from a chinese bakery. Can you believe they did not have Elmo but only Big Bird? Don’t these Asians know who Elmo is? Besides the fact that he is RED (considered a lucky color in the Asian community). In any case, I bought these little Elmo icing decorations at the craft store to put on there. Only 1 fit! The cake was a mixed fruit cake and while the actual cake was moist and soft and the icing wasn’t too sweet, they were really stingy with the fresh fruit! Damn recession! We bought her a Sesame Street Medical kit, little Ernie, Elmo and Cookie Monster figurines, a Little People tractor set and a Sesame Street coloring book and crayons (washable!) Yves has a cute video he took , see his blog here. My parents told me they were going to get her a tricycle but came back with a bigger bike with training wheels! I am not sure how fast she will learn to ride. We still have to get her a helmet. She was really excited for the bicycle!

Blowing out her candle

Where’s the fruit?

Her face is red from Elmo

Presents!

My parents bought her a singing dogs birthday card that Sienna kept playing over and over again. Gee, thanks Mom and Dad!

Showing off her card

Excited for her bike!

We have to put air in the tires! Man, I am so not ready for this!

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The weekend before last I did some more carvings for 2 swaps. Well, one was for a tag on the Quality Crafts forum on swap-bot and one was a personal swap with Orit. Orit made some nice comments on my carves on flickr and when I went to check out her flickr stream, came across these delicious looking Israeli chocolates! A private swap was soon set up! I sent hers out on the 3rd of March and have not received word that she got them yet. I am pretty sure she doesn’t read my blog so will post the photos here.

She wanted something with either a bird or a tree. This was the first one I did. I finally tried out the PZ Kut. This is the A grade. I love it! I actually prefer the B grade, which is ever so slightly rougher surface, which I used for this stamp:

I just love how this one came out! I love the B grade so much, I placed another order! In my original order, I also ordered the A and B grade with the orange but have not tried it yet. I’ve read on other blogs that the orange gets a little blinding when you are carving.
Then on the swap-bot Quality Crafters forum, I joined in on a tag (someone lists a few items, you pick one you want and then you list a few items-I tagged someone for an owl stuffie, he will show up in a future post as he is just too adorable to leave out!) and someone tagged me for a personalized stamp carving. Her daughter’s name has a unique spelling, Geill (pronounced Jill), so you can imagine how hard it is to find personalized things! This is the first one I did (on grade A):

At the very last second, I slipped and made a tiny nick on the top of the G. I tried to ignore it but couldn’t so decided to carve another one (in a different font of course!). I did send both stamps anyway. This time I used grade B:

And because these blocks are thinner than the other ones I’ve used, I decided to mount them on some wood I’ve had for ages (for mounting rubber stamps before the invention of the acrylic blocks and EZ Mount).

A few weeks ago, at the last minute, on one of my ‘days’ off, I jetted out to midtown to check out a Japanese bookstore, Kinokuniya. It was such a last minute thing that I didn’t even tell Yves or my friend Pete, both of whom work within blocks of the bookstore (it was also a rainy and crappy day). I purchased 2 Japanese carving books and a carving block with images already printed on the block (I chose a frog for Sienna-I haven’t chosen to mar it yet!)

The 2 books is mostly just images to use for carving. Some are so cute! Here is my next carving venture, which I started yesterday. I think if I actually pull this through, it will be a miracle. I don’t know what I was thinking, there are so many details in it and tiny! Plus I’m not even a big fan of Marilyn Monroe! I just saw this image and it was screaming to be carved. Sigh….well, stay tuned! I’ll post the finished product sometime in the future!

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This is about the 4th time we have taken Sienna to the Prospect Park Zoo. The last time was quite chilly and Saturday it was in the 60’s so it was much nicer. She is definitely more active and seemed to enjoy it even more than last time. I had wanted to do something special as a way to celebrate her birthday and was originally thinking of going to an indoor animal farm out on Long Island (White Post Farm) but I think the zoo was a better, closer option because of the weather. I’m trying not to feel guilty about not doing a special shin dig for her birthday. I’m telling myself that she’ll have lots of big blowout parties when she gets older. We also went to Golden Krust for lunch by the park. It was bad. I don’t know if it was just a bad day for the beef patty’s or if now we are used to better pattie’s but we’ll have to remember not to go back there again. The Golden Krust by us is far better!

Sienna pronounces this guy as “owww-wal”

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Moooo! from Lisa on Vimeo.

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Last week I had quite a bit of extra me time that I almost feel guilty, like I was abandoning Sienna! Of course, there was the Martha show on Wednesday that Yves was kind enough to take off for and take care of Sienna. See what they did here. Then on Thursday night, I went out with Starr (Nico’s mom and Sylvie’s too) and a few other moms to celebrate Starr’s birthday (hers is on the 11th, a day before Sienna’s!) sans kids! This was the first time I hung out with Starr without the kids. At first, it seemed so surreal! We went to St. Germain‘s for snacks and dessert. I ordered a side dish of ratoutoule (sp?) because I never had it before! (It didn’t look very appetizing when it came, like brown mush, but it was tasty!) Then we ordered 4 different desserts to share. YUM! I forgot my camera or else there would have been photos. UPDATE! Starr posted a couple of photos from the evening on her flickr here and here! From what I can remember, there was chocolate ganache, a pear/chocolate tart, chocolate tart and apple tart. And that is actually the order in which I liked everything. I had such a nice time with everyone and I’m going to convince Starr we should do this more often! (I’m sure I won’t have to twist her arm!)

Then Friday, my parents had lunch with Sienna and put her down for her nap while I went shopping with Jana (Emma and Leah’s mom)! This is also the first time we hung out sans kids! We went to Wendy’s for lunch (a special treat for both of us!) and then shopping at Kohl’s. We spent the whole afternoon doing that!

Saturday night we had date night (it’s usually Friday’s but since my father watched Sienna during the day, thought I’d give him a break-HA!). We went to Sahara’s on Coney Island Avenue. Each time we go (which is only a couple of times), we wonder why we come back. The food isn’t that great, mediocre at best and the crazy thing is, it was crowded! See Yves’ review here. We are sure to remember not to go back this time!

We went to the Prospect Park Zoo on Saturday. I’ll post pictures soon. I also have a bunch of crafts to share soon.

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