Toddlers are weird, and other news

So today's evidence that toddlers are just plain weird? Sofie, clutching her gloworm (which she has recently named GayGay) to her chest, standing in the middle of the dining room crying big fat tears because I'm trying to get her to stay up and play for a while longer instead of taking a nap at what seems like way too early a time.


"No! Nap! Nap!" she sobbed. How could I be so cruel as to encourage her to play? I'm such a Big Meanie.


So down she went, a full 45 minutes earlier than normal, but what the heck. Apparently she was tired. Except that she's been in there yattering ever since and no actual sleeping has commenced.


***


And what is it about motherhood that makes it so you can instantly sense whether your kid is crying in their room because they're trying to fall asleep or crying because they pooped? I have poop radar. I was sitting in my office fixing a retarded mistake I made on MiniatureQuilter's wall quilt, listening to Sofie yatter and occasionally squawk, when suddenly my brain said, "Oh hey, she pooped. You better go in there." And sure enough.


Poopdar. My super power.


***


No more migraines this week, although I did take a cautionary pill the other night when I may or may not have been having my warning blind spot. Sometimes it's really hard to tell if I'm actually having a blind spot and have ten minutes before the world explodes in my head or if I just looked at a lightbulb. But not wanting to take any chances, I used one of my prescriptions.


Last night I couldn't sleep for some reason, and ended up sitting up until after midnight watching old reruns of Sex in the City. The movie of which is coming out soon, and which I will be at come hell or high water for opening weekend. Or very soon thereafter. I no longer wear fancy clothes or really nice shoes very often, but I can live vicariously through those who do.


This Friday Brett and I have a date. An actual dinner date, with Sofie left at home to play with one of her favorite other-mamas. We debated for a while trying to fit in a movie too but I'm actually dying to just have a long, leisurely, not-in-a-rush-to-get-somewhere-after dinner at a grownup restaurant - in this case Brasa, downtown. With tablecloths that little hands are not constantly almost pulling off the table. Maybe with actual candles. And wine. And - gasp - dessert. It's going to be great.


I should also mention that I had a very nice mother's day! Brett and Sofie gave me several cards (apparently Sofie couldn't decide between two and gave me both) and also a gift certificate to the Quilting Loft, a swanky fabric store in Ballard. We all went out to breakfast at our favorite diner and then had a nice day of lounging around and playing. I even got to take a nap. What more could I have asked for?


That's all for now.

One quilt retrieved from the ether

Tulip quilt, finished, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

Was I ever relieved today to hear that the tulip quilt (above) finally arrived in Brazil. Apparently it took a long detour through Costa Rica, where it was beset by a pack of wild dogs who chewed some holes in the package and then taped it all up again, and it made its way to its new home bearing a "Damaged in Transit" stamp and various doggie footprints. (Ok, I'm kidding about the dog part.) The envelope was a mess but the quilt itself was just fine!

No word on the churn dash quilt which went out at the same time -- I suspect it got there but its recipient isn't answering any inquiries from me or the swap organizer. But I mind that a lot less than I minded the idea of my little tulip opus being lost in transit!

*whew*

Next time I send to South America I'm going to follow my friend Mike's advice and use DHL.

Spring Doll Quilt Swap

Spring Doll Quilt Swap, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

Just yesterday I received my Doll Quilt Swap quilt in the mail from the very talented Marianne Smith, along with a nice bag of goodies for me and Sofie. Is this not the cutest thing ever? And perfect for a garden-aholic like me. :)

She mentioned in an attached note that the green flowered fabric is a vintage tablecloth, which I think is super cool.

I love it Marianne -- thank you so much!!

Update

Not a lot happening this week. I've been having migraine clusters this week -- one that lasted over 36 hours, followed by a day off, followed by another one that struck last night and has lingered through part of today. Bleah. So I'm not getting a lot of anything done other than just managing to keep up with Sofie and do some minimal house upkeep.

Migraines are an odd thing. I get the full aura kind, where you have big huge visual disturbances preceding the actual headache -- either bright flickering rings, blind spots, or (a new one for me this week) double vision. Yay. The visual distortions last twenty minutes and then the headache kicks in. And if you catch it early enough in the visual stage and take your prescription, you just MIGHT lessen the headache.

So it's always a race. Like last night, when I was two blocks away from home letting Sofie "take a walk" (a veeeeeery slow affair) when the blind spot hit. I actually had to pick her up, tuck her under an arm and sprint home to try to get a pill in time. I try to keep one with me but I don't always succeed. Now I'm stocking up again -- all my bags, coat pockets, etc. Because my brain is probably going to ambush me again any second.

Makes me feel like my brain isn't working right. Which, technically, it isn't. But it's a disturbing idea, that.

On other fronts, here's a little bit of quilting news. Two things in progress right now, although neither is progressing very fast. First, here's an update on the log cabin quilt -- I showed a bit of this a week or so ago, but have since finished the top. It's on the pile of stuff that needs to be quilted:



I haven't measured this but it's something like 3 x 4 feet. I'm not sure if I like what I did with the borders, echoing the log cabin design like that. But it's a finished top and it's pretty and it'll be easy to quilt.

I'm also working on getting borders on the little quilt below and finishing it up -- this is the first thing on the work pile right now. It's for MiniatureQuilter, my Internet quilting friend who sent me the beautiful pineapple quilt earlier this spring in exchange for a piece of applique from me:



So far today I put two borders on it, decided they were horrible, took them off stitch by stitch, and put on a new inner border, then decided I better take some tylenol and leave well enough alone.

It continues to be unseasonably cold here -- mid May and it's 44 degrees every morning. I've got a tray-ful of sprouted seed potatoes sitting on my dining room table waiting to be planted, not to mention a second set of tomatoes waiting to go in the ground. The tomatoes can survive, but I'm not sure about the potatoes -- the instructions say DO NOT PLANT UNTIL THE GROUND IS OVER 45 DEGREES. Which I'm sure it isn't. But they've grown nice little eyes and the eyes are turning into sprouts and they've just GOT to go in. So I guess I better get around to it by this weekend, warm enough or not.

The lilacs are blooming, finally, and all the planted tomatoes are doing fine. Both apple trees are blooming, including the one I thought I killed last year, and the herb border in the garden is doing great. The tarragon, especially, is almost knee high and just so beautiful. I'll have to make tarragon chicken soon. I planted extra chives and sage this year, and now I've got almost everything I like to cook with (rosemary, italian parsley, sage, chives, oregano, tarragon, fennel, etc) on hand in the garden. Yum.

Sorry for this sort of flat-toned entry. I still have a headache and it's the best I can do. Signing off for today...

This year's tomatoes

Hey! I'm looking at my stats, and I'm on track to hit my 100,000th visit sometime in the next two or three weeks. Woo hoo! I'll have to come up with some kind of giveaway or prize for whoever that person is. Stay tuned!

On other fronts, this weekend was the big Seattle Tilth plant sale. My friend Erica and I were two of the thousand or so people who stood in the rain lined up all around a park the size of a city block to get in at the opening bell, all because they are such a fantastic source for heirloom tomatoes and eggplants and peppers and other things that you just can't start from seed in Seattle because of the short length of the truly hot part of our otherwise long gardening year.

So, here are my thoughts on tomatoes this year:

• Last year sucked for tomato growing because the very end of the summer, when it's usually 90 degrees for weeks on end, was unusually cold and rainy, so most of the long season tomatoes never came through.
  
• Last year my soil mix sucked rocks, which didn't help.
  
• The few late season ones that did decently were the ones I had in the ground and not in pots, because they stayed a little warmer. So anything late goes in the ground this year.
  

Therefore I'm planting almost entirely early and mid-season tomatoes this year. And I've mixed a lot more compost and some lime and some tomato fertilizer in the soil in each pot this year. So that should go better.

Here are the tomatoes I'm planting this year:

Cherries:

• Isis Candy, Indeterminate, 67 days, yellow cherry (repeat from last year)
• Sweet Million, Indeterminate, 60-75, Red cherry
• Chocolate Cherry, Indeterminate, 70, Black cherry
• Sungold, Indeterminate, 65 days, Yellow cherry (repeat from last year)
• Peacevine, Indeterminate, 70 days, Red cherry

Early:

• Sasha’s Altai, 59, Indeterminate (but small), red
• Urbikany 65, Determinate (small), red
• Cosmonaut Volkov, 68, Indeterminate, red
• Langley’s Silver Tiger, 70, Indeterminate, Red/yellow
• Grushovka, Indeterminate, 72, Red (repeat from last year)

Mid:

• Tuscany Roma, Indeterminate, 78, Red
• Green Zebra, Indeterminate, 75-80, Green (repeat from last year)
• Juane Flamme, Indeterminate, 75, Orange (repeat from last year)
• Valencia, Indeterminate, 75, Orange
• Debarao, Indeterminate, 72, Red paste
• Black plum, Indeterminate, 79, black

Late:

• Mr. Stripey, Indeterminate, 80 (repeat from last year)
• Brandywine, Indeterminate, 80+ (repeat from last year)

And yes, for those of you counting, that's one more than last year. Plus four eggplants and three peppers. And scallions.

I'm not insane. Really. Although this year's growing season is off to an unusually cool start so I suppose I could be kidding myself that this year might turn out well.

File this under "Inexplicable"

So if any of you reading remember my dilemma I posted last year (oddly enough, almost a year ago today) about a strange situation I found myself in at a local mall, here's another chapter in the seamier side of urban life.

Yesterday, a group of mom friends and I gathered at a local playground for a little birthday party. There was a fancy car parked there that sort of viscerally struck everyone as “wrong” somehow. The occupant, just barely visible through the tinted black windows, never came out. For two hours, they just sat there, never opening a door or a window. Facing the kids.

Of course we all thought “pedophile” and were a little creeped but basically tried to ignore it. After a couple hours, though, I went to put something in my car (parked next to it) and noticed that I could see a woman slumped over in the front seat – head to the chest, arms splayed wide. Looking more than a little dead, to be honest.

When I told the others, one of them walked over to take a closer look through the driver's window and saw what looked like a pipe in her lap, and a bag of powder, and some kind of stove-like thing. Uh oh. So of course we thought overdose, and we called 911.

And what a horrendous experience that turned out to be. What could the 911 dispatcher be thinking? They kept my friend on the phone for almost 20 minutes and kept asking for someone to go over to the car and knock on the window, make noise, try the door, try to rouse the occupant.

Who was holding a crack pipe.
And had drugs in her system.
And who was a total stranger.
And whose car we couldn't really see into clearly.

There was no way to know for sure what kind of state she'd be in if she woke up, or what or who else might be in the car. And we had our kids with us, for pete's sake.

We did go back up to the car a few times at the dispatcher's request, including setting off my car alarm to see if we could rouse her, but finally my friend (who, bless her heart, is a tough lady and can clearly stand up for herself) put her foot down and said we all were holding babies and didn’t feel comfortable fielding any more requests and they just needed to SEND SOMEONE. NOW.

At which point the dispatcher finally seemed to come to his senses and told us to “back away from the scene” and that the police were on their way. Great advice, now that you’ve encouraged us to take our little ones right over to the scene five or six times and put everyone in harm's way.

AND -- even then we had to stick around because the dispatcher said someone had to be available to direct them to the right car when they arrived, even though we’d given them the license plate, description, and parking location. So we waited. And one of us waved the cops in.

Seriously. Is this really how these situations are supposed to be handled? This is why people hesitate to get involved when they see something like this, why people might think twice about even calling 911 to help someone they don't know. It was a fragile and scary situation and the emergency dispatcher, in my opinion, was incredibly unprofessional.

The police, to their credit, were all business. When they showed up, we watched for a few minutes from the other side of the park and then finally got out of there. The occupant was alive and even standing up by the time we left. Who knows what the outcome was. It wasn’t immediately clear if she was going to be arrested or not.

But I really wish I knew where to direct a complaint or inquiry about this. Perhaps the dispatchers of this town need a little more training in what is and isn't the job of a bystander vs. the police. A lot of bad things could have ensued from an innocent bystander's being told to go meddle in a potential drug bust. Thank goodness none of that came to pass.

I’m thinking our next outing is probably going to be indoors.

Four seasons quilt swap received!

Came home from running errands today to find a big white envelope on the porch containing my Four Season's Quilt Swap quilt, from Jessica in Oregon. What a great thing to come home to! It was a quilt I'd never seen on the flickr group where people post their work in progress, so it was doubly fun because it was a total surprise!

When I first opened it up, I saw this side of it and oooohed and aaahed delightedly for several minutes before realizing that this is actually the BACK of the quilt:



Then I turned it over and was just blown away by the beautiful, whimsical front:



Check out the closeup of the dark-haired little girl on the swing:


Also in the package was a lovely card and a little hat for Sofie with a cat face and ears. She went to bed for her nap wearing this and I don't think she's ever going to take it off:


Here's Sofie expressing her true feelings about her new quilt, which will be hung in her room:


Thank you Jessica!! We love it!

Progress on Sunny Lanes

Progress on Sunny Lanes, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

Not a lot new here, but thought I'd post this showing the design coming together. The bottom block has an error in it that I need to fix, which you can see if you look closely at the positioning of the "white" pieces.

Only thirty more (gulp) to go. It's not hard, but I'm doing this in fits and starts between a gazillion other projects, which makes it seem like it's taking forever.

Can you believe it?

I think the tulip quilt is lost in the mail. The post office estimated 5 to 10 days for delivery to its destination in South America, and it's been 15 with no sign of it showing up.

Oddly enough, it doesn't look like my churn dash quilt has reached its recipient either. That was only going to the east coast and should have taken about three or four days. It's been twelve.

I mailed them two different days. Doesn't it seem unlikely that two quilts mailed two different days would both get lost?

Hopefully at least one of them has arrived and the person just hasn't posted or emailed about it. I'd hate for the tulip quilt, in particular, to be lost.

*worryworry*

Homemade Applique Shirts

For a while now, I've been ripping pages out of catalogs and filing them under a category roughly called "Things I Could Do Myself So Why Should I Pay You $40 For A Kid's Shirt?" For real. Flip through some of the kids' clothing catalogs that come and you'll find teeshirt after tee shirt with something cute but basically simple appliqued on it selling for $40, $50, sometimes even more. Ridiculous!

So I bought a bunch of plain but nice quality $10 tees from Old Navy and have been meaning to give this a try. And today I finally did.

Take a gander at these -- and wow, let me just say this was a fun, easy, and cheap project since I already had the felt:




I have to give credit for the flower design to Applique The Piece O' Cake Way -- it's one of their applique designs which I traced and used for this shirt. Here's a closeup -- bent over a pillow a little which makes the top of the circle look strange in this shot:


The tomato and the ice cream cone were based on designs in Postcard Cuties for Summer from Bunny Hill Designs. Anyone who knows me knows I *had* to make a tomato shirt.



Materials are all wool felt. We'll see how they go through the wash. If that doesn't work so well I'll do it again with cotton and really applique it.

Signature quilt

Now that it's gone out to its new owner, I can post pictures of the final version of the signature quilt:



This is a miniature quilt that a set of moms we play with made for one of our number who's expecting her second baby in June. I pieced the top out of thirties prints, based on a much more sedate-looking pattern in Prairie Children and Their Quilts, and the six of us signed the larger white rectangles with well-wishes for R. and her family.

The top was tied by my friend Dianne and then outline quilted by me. We did the binding together.

Simple quilt, but this was a tough one, design-wise. The original quilt uses patterns for everything except the white triangles where you sign, but when I tried to recreate this using bright, thirties fabrics, the result was somewhere between nauseating and seizure-inducing. So I had to start swapping out prints for solids, or for less busy prints, and then try to get some balance between all of the colors, scattering reds and blues and greens and yellows somewhat evenly throughout. In the end it worked, but it taught me some lessons about not assuming that translating a set of period fabrics into another period will be straightforward.

Little Beethoven

Brett brought home this tiny little upright piano for Sofie yesterday. She took to it right away. Check out this wrist action:




Is she a pro or what?

She also likes the applause, of course:

Log cabin squares from old shirts

Log cabin squares from old shirts, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

My friend Erica, who's just starting to get into quilting, has been collecting old 100% cotton shirts from Goodwill and various other places around town and cutting them up into strips for scrap quilts. We met for breakfast this morning and exchanged bags of fabric we'd cut up for each other.

My goodie bag was full of 1.5 inch strips, a lot of them blue, yellow, and neutral. And I was noodling around this afternoon when I suddenly realized that's the perfect size for Log Cabin blocks. Not that I'd ever made any. But I'd always wanted to try one.

And if I'm making one, I might as well chain piece a whole set of them, right?

And thus, six little log cabin blocks were born. I think they came out really nice! And every single fabric in them except for the bright cheddar-colored center is from an old shirt.

How's that for recycling?

I'll probably make a bunch more and make a small quilt out of them.

Second swap quilt finished

Here's the second of my swap quilts that have to go out in April -- all finished and ready to be shipped, today or tomorrow:



Looks a little wrinkly, doesn't it? I need to figure out how to use my new macro lens so I can get better closeup detail on these kind of pictures.

And here's the back -- which isn't really period fabric like the rest of it but the colors go and I liked it.



Two other bits of news -- yesterday Brett let me escape the house for a few hours to go fabric shopping and see a movie. I went and saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was really great. I never used to like going to see movies on my own, but since Sofie was born it's all I can do not to run around in the lobby twirling and shouting "I'm ALONE! I'm BY MYSELF! Hallelujah!"

Lesson: If you see someone alone in the movie theater chortling and giggling before the movie even starts, rest assured it's a mom of a toddler out for a few hours of peace.

Second, last night around eleven, I closed the catdoor and headed upstairs to bed while Brett finished up some stuff downstairs. When I got up there I noticed that Max and Phoenix, our boy cats, were acting a little odd. Not upset, just odd. They were... very alert. And sitting in places they usually don't sit. And they both seemed really interested in one particular armchair that sits at the top of the stairs.

I finally put two and two together and realized something was under there. Fearing the worst (rat? possum?), I got down on the floor, lifted up the blanket that hides the underneath of the chair from view, and found this tiny little gray and white cat blinking back at me. Blinkblinkblink.

I called Brett up and we soon figured out from his collar that it was Dexter, who lives down the street a ways. He must've come in to explore and then gotten trapped under the chair by our overly watchful duo. We carefully peeled this very freaked out little cat out from under there and let him out for the night.

Bon voyage, Dexter. I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon.

Other news

Sofie's doing much better -- she's eating pretty good meals again and playing and almost back to normal, except for some remaining digestive issues and the fact that she tires out really easily. But it's so nice to see smiles again!

In quilting news, I made this top last week for the doll quilt swap I'm in, which is also due at the end of this month. This is tiny -- just 12 inches wide.

I've never made a miniature quilt this small before -- the little rectangles in each churn dash square are only a quarter inch wide. I ended up hand piecing most of it, partly because my machine was away getting service but also because it was all just so freaking small and hard to handle.


This has to get sandwiched, backed, quilted, bound and out the door by April 26th. But it'll be a quick one to quilt -- not going to do anything very fancy to it except in the border.

The tulip quilt went off in the mail today. It'll be five to ten days before it gets where it's going. Keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't get lost!

Mniature pineapples quilt

Mniature pineapples quilt, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

At the end of a very hard spell here, I got this little ray of sunshine in the mail today from a friend who blogs over at http://miniaturequilter.blogspot.com/. Isn't it beautiful! She does such tiny, careful work -- this is about 12x12, I think.

It's now hanging in a place of honor in my office/sewing room. Which oddly enough, had no quilts hanging in it until now. Time to rectify that.

Thank you so much!

Sofie 1, Mom 0

Sofie's getting better. She woke up not feeling great today but rallied a few times throughout the day enough to get down and play a little. In between these bouts, she cried miserably for SIX HOURS. The previous two days she was too sick and tired to make a peep, but now she's feeling better enough to complain and moan and be demanding. So it was a hard day.

Brett came home to find me having a total meltdown about the fact that she Will. Not. Eat. It's been three days since she had a meal, which wouldn't be so bad if she'd drink the freaking electrolyte formula that's supposed to replenish her systems, but she won't have that either. Or juice. Or anything except minute amounts of water.

I wrestled her into her high chair tonight and laid out a variety of tempting options. Pudding. Jello. Baby food. Bananas. Rice. Ham. Would she have any of them? No. Instead she sobbed and cried and thrashed and sobbed until I pretty much cried too. I feel like I'm starving her. I know it's ok if kids don't eat for a couple days, but not drink either?? How many days of this can she take?

In the end, she ate: one raisin. About ten grains of rice. A quarter of a snack bar. Add in the ten bunny crackers (very small) she ate for breakfast and that's her total consumption for the day.

Of course, once Brett walked in the door, she turned into perky, healthy kid, all smiles and play, making an apparent liar out of me when I tried to tell him how bad the day had been and why I was dissolving into a puddle of goo. "She wo-wo-won't eat!" I sobbed. "I got her pu-pu-pudding!!! What kind of kid won't eat pudding??"

He was bewildered, to say the least. Especially with Sofie happily stacking animals on his knee.

"She cried for SIX HOURS!" I said. "And she's pooping her pants RIGHT NOW! From one raisin!"

They both looked at me like *I* was losing my mind. So I gave up.

Tulip quilt done

Well, the tulip quilt is finally done, and will soon be off to a foreign land far, far away. It's hard to let this one go -- I really think this may be the nicest thing I've ever made. But it's quilted -- both hand and machine -- and bound, and labeled, and washed, and I can't think of a thing more to do to it.

Even Brett is trying to get me to keep it. Except I just don't have anything else I can send for the swap, and it's due by the end of the month.

Here's the final product:


With the strange, sky-blue and orange batik I used to back and bind it showing:


Close-up in which I was hoping you could see the little butterflies I hand-quilted in each corner of the white square -- but it didn't come out very well in this picture:


And I finally got some printer fabric and made a real label for it:


I've blotted out the recipients name in this pic since it's a BIG SURPRISE. :)

As soon as Sofie's well enough to drag to the post office, this will be on its way to its new home.

Sick puppy

Sofie is a sick, sad little puppy right now. She came down with a stomach bug on Saturday night and threw up for the next 24 hours, and has barely stirred since. We've been to the doctor and she's going to be fine, but this is the sickest we've seen her. She not only won't play, she responds to any suggestion that she play ("Sofie, do you want to read a book?") with the most pathetic little whimper. It's heartbreaking.

This could last a week or so, the doctor said, but the first three or four days are the worst. Yikes. Sofie's always bounced back pretty quick before but isn't managing to do so with this one.

Because she's had a fever and been vomiting, we covered the mattress in towels and brought her to bed with me on Saturday night, which is pretty much where she's been 24-7 ever since. Poor Brett is sleeping in the basement because two of us in this bed with a kid is just too crowded and potentially unsafe. (Brett has a strange habit of rolling over in his sleep and either stealing my pillow or burying my head under his; he says he's not trying to smother me but I'm not convinced.) But this is the third night and we're both missing each other.

Tomorrow she'll probably go back to her own bed. She made it through today without throwing up, and even ate a little bit -- five little goldfish crackers, one bite of banana, and a snack bar. That's all she's eaten in over 48 hours. The doctor found that she's lost almost two pounds; this is mostly water weight, since she's dehydrated from the vomiting. She's not dangerously dehydrated yet but my official job now is to get liquids into her one way or another.

So off I went to the grocery store and loaded up on a bunch of different kinds of juices and electrolyte drinks and even fruity soda to try to entice her to drink, but she rejected all of them and also any offers of water today, so I'm stuck with a refrigerator full of icky drinks that no one will ever drink. Instead, I spent the day shooting water into her mouth with a medicine dropper, 8 ml at a time. She doesn't enjoy this but she does swallow it, so we're slowly getting her rehydrated.

I also bought her this big mylar balloon shaped like a butterfly, because hey, she likes balloons! Not until I got home did I realize the thing is kind of terrifying. It has legs, and a probiscus, and dangly black parts. It's gigantic and looks like it might be preparing to eat you.

Waking up to find that looming over your bed in the half light of night would be enough to scare the pants off anyone, toddler or adult. So much for my mothering instincts. Sofie is having nothing to do with it, and I confess that I had to move it into the other room before bed tonight for fear of waking up and having a heart attack on seeing it.

Anyhow, it's been a tough couple days, and I feel so bad for her suffering. But I can tell she's starting to mend a little, and hopefully tomorrow will be a little better. I haven't seen a smile in days and can't wait to see one again.

Applicant cat footnote

Applicant cat #4 was here all day, first thing in the morning, last thing tonight, and pretty much all points in between, but she's keeping her distance from us humans. She (or he; Brett thinks it's a boy) looks sad and has the most pathetic meow. She comes in sometimes and walks around the first floor meowing, but only if I'm on another floor. I've found her sitting on the front porch with Max and on the back deck with Phoenix. We've made some eye contact without her running off and she almost came over to me once this afternoon.

So when I got home from yoga tonight, I wasn't surprised when I looked out the backdoor and saw the fluffy tail of our new applicant cat disappearing down the back steps. She had clearly been peeking in the cat door and wondering about coming in when I came clomping along and scared her off.

So I opened the door and went out to try to sweet talk her into joining us inside for a while. She's getting more used to me and almost came up to me earlier today.

And as I was scrunched down making comforting sounds and trying to entice her over, I glanced over to my right and saw the world's BIGGEST freaking possum, planted firmly in the middle of the back lawn, just munching away on bugs or grass or something. He was somewhere between the size of our largest cat and the labrador who lives down the street.

We looked at each other for a very long moment.

He chewed loudly, in a very cowlike fashion, completely unmoved by my presence.

"Yo," he seemed to say. "Whazzup? Toss me some wheatgrass, would ya?"

It wasn't until I picked up the hose and made like I'd spray him that he heaved a big sigh and lumbered off through the hole in the back fence. Clearly he was thinking, lady, why are you bothering me? I'm not doing anything, I'm just chewin'.

So unfortunately, the cat door had to be closed a couple hours earlier than usual and our little applicant is locked out with the wild animals for the night. But such is life.

Sleep, revisited

On other fronts, after eight months or so of really excellent sleeping habits, Sofie's started to go through what various internet folks refer to as the "hellaciously bad sleep regression" that happens around 18-19 months. She's napping fine, but bedtime has become hell.

Now our kid who formerly had the easiest and shortest bedtime routine EVER just cannot get to sleep; she screams and seems really frantic and scared when we put her in her crib and needs to be held and coddled for a lot longer before she'll finally lay down. This process can take up to two hours, depending on how upset she is. And believe me, nothing is more exhausting at the end of a long day than struggling for two hours to get your screaming, frightened toddler to bed.

We're trying to slowly ease back into sleep training, but she's just SO frantically upset that we can't quite bring ourselves to do it yet. So we hold her, or pat her back, or sit in the chair, or at a minimum just shush her from the doorway, and she tries repeatedly to go to sleep, with fits of crying in between. The good news is that it's taking a little bit less time every night. Tonight was only an hour. This may sound like a lot but not compared to yesterday night.

Once she's down, it's anyone's guess what will happen after that -- some nights she still sleeps through, and some nights she wakes up shrieking with terror two or three times and needs our help. Gloworm, it appears, is no longer up to the task of fighting off her nighttime fears by himself.

Way to fall down on the job, glow-bug. Thanks a bunch!

We're not used to this wake up schedule anymore. It sucks rocks. I drank an entire pot of coffee this morning, by myself. We're groggy and tense, and bedtime is a subject of not small amounts of dread. I'm trying to up her physical activity, make sure she gets a lot of fresh air, and otherwise wear her out during the afternoon, but I'm not sure it's helping yet.

Tonight I left just as the whole routine was starting to go to my Yoga Momma class, and I felt guilty about how intensely relieved (and almost elated) I was to not have to do bedtime tonight. It was truly refreshing to miss the whole thing just for one night.

On the plus side, I take comfort in two things:

• Every kid her age that we know is going through some version of this right now -- the ones that are sleeping ok aren't napping, and vice versa. Several are having the screaming/scared issues Sofie is, and the ones that aren't want to get up and play for two or three hours in the middle of the night. So it's got to be just a developmental phase. A quick google search backs that concept up.
  
• I'm sure it will pass. Moxie, parenting advice goddess, posits that this happens around 18-19 months and passes around 20 months and it really doesn't matter what you do. So whether we're hard core about sleep training or take a softer line and cuddle her when she's scared, it'll pass.
  
  And in the long run, Sofie likes her sleep. I trust that she'll be back to normal soon enough.

Resident cat application #4

In the long tradition of Indiana Jones, Trooper, Sebastian, and the many other wayward cats who have adopted us over the years (including a bewildering variety of vacation cats), we seem to have a new kitty auditioning for the role of "Zalkan Cat Number Four." This one, though, is interesting because there's a good chance that she might be Max and Maddie's mother.

Here's the facts of this interesting case:

1. Max and Maddie, seen above, are brother and sister. Brett adopted them and their mother seven years ago when their mother (Molly) was pregnant with them and raised all three in the house across the street.
   
   
2. After about a year of mothering two rambunctious kittens, Molly said "Enough with this crap!" and moved out. She wandered over a block and started inserting herself into the lives of a nice retired couple who live on 76th street. They eventually came to see Brett about adopting her, since she was basically living with them, and he said ok.
   
   
3. Before this was all sorted out, Brett attempted to "kidnap" Molly a few times and bring her home, throwing her into his car and driving her back to the house. Which made Molly develop a big fear of Brett.
   
   
   Since then we've seen her once in a while -- we walk by her house frequently and always stop to say hello. She's wary of us but sometimes lets us pet her and has seemed to be very content and well loved and fed over there. Brett misses her, but hey, a girl can choose where she lives, right?
   
   
4. All of a sudden, six or so years later, we started seeing little glimpses here and there of a cat who looks just like Molly -- think Max's color and Molly's long hair. Was it her? We were never sure.
   
   But the visits slowly increased and now, this strange cat is at our house morning, noon, and night, coming in the back catdoor and meowing all over the house, eating our food, and generally hanging out pretty peacefully with all three of our cats. Even Phoenix seems to like her. It looks like Molly, right down to the markings, and sounds like Molly, same distinctive meow. And Max and Maddie are ALWAYS with her, when she comes over, which I find as strong evidence that it might be their mom.
   
   On the con side, Molly is a tiny cat and this one might be a little bit too large and isn't wearing the collar we thought she wore. And she's very, very people-shy, not letting us get anywhere close to her -- possibly moreso than Molly would be.

To figure it out, we really need to get over to her home on 76th street and get a good look at her again. I didn't know her well enough to know for sure if this is her or not, and Brett's got his doubts. One good, close look at the real deal will make it apparent.

Today I got closer to her than I have before. And I have to admit, this cat might not be Molly. She looks a little too bedraggled and skinny, fur all matted up. I thinks she's homeless, whoever she is, and since she gets along with all of our cats just fine, I'm perfectly ok with it if she decides to trust us and move in. She's the best candidate of our fourth cat auditions, less crazy than Indiana, not mean like Trooper, and not likely to eat us out of house and home like Sebastian-the-thirty-pound-wonder. (Sebastian abandoned us after we had a kid -- he has twin toddlers at home and was clearly looking for a second home WITHOUT the pitter patter of little feet.)

But seriously, what are the odds -- two long-haired, orange cats with white feet, both female, with a strange-sounding meow, both hanging out in our neighborhood? Ever the romantic, I'm still hoping it's Molly, come home to live with her kids in her old age. Because how cool would that be?

Hearts Doll Quilt

Hearts Doll Quilt, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

Finished the doll quilt I made for a friend's little girl... Here's a quick picture before it went off to its new home.

The hearts, which were die-cut, shrunk a little and pulled some of the outline stitching I did out of shape on the back, but it still came out nice. I have another 3x3 version of this underway -- top's all made but it needs to be pinned and quilted.

No Mom, take a picture of ME!

No Mom, take a picture of ME!, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

Miss Sofie says, "Stop taking a picture of that quilt and take a picture of ME! MEMEME!!"

Quilting withdrawal

Well, two days into having no sewing machine I have:

• Finished the binding on one of the two hearts doll quilts I'm making - as soon as it's washed and all beautifully wrinkly, the way I like my quilts, I'll post a picture. Probably tomorrow. This is a gift, which will be going off to its new home this weekend. The other one is for Sofie but it's not quilted yet.
  
  
• Finished hand quilting the squares in this small quilt, which was going to be a swap quilt but has been claimed by my husband for his cube at work. It's made from a charm pack of different flower fabrics, cut down to 2 inch squares and set in a nice leafy green:
  
  
  It still needs some machine quilting on the green parts, which will have to wait. And I ran out of green so I don't know what I'm going to bind it with. Hrm.
  
  
• Decided I need to try to redo a couple parts of the tulip quilt -- one or two places I'm just not happy with on that. Except that it's half quilted now -- I was partway through outline quilting it when the sewing machine conked out. Hrm. I think I can still fix it as long as I'm careful about how I knot it.
  

And that's about it for hand-work right now. I've got a little ironing to do on the first step of the mystery quilt, and yeah, there's my big hand quilting behemoth I haul out now and then to work on, but I'm itching to get back to the machine bigtime. Oh well. I've kind of been overdoing it lately and a break will do me good.

And I suppose I could clean my office with the free time. Or nap. Maybe nap.

Today's random bits

In no particular order:

• Things I did not expect to learn from my child, part 403: Pickle juice, when rubbed in the hair or secreted under the neck and not immediately washed off, takes on an odor eerily similar to body odor. Which I discovered while sitting with Sofie in my lap at Gymboree the other day thinking, "Man, who smells?" only to lean forward and discover it was own darling baby who reeked. Wow.
  
• Sofie has taken to sharing her lunch with Phoenix, who comes over every day when lunch begins to sit on the table right next to her high chair and wait for what Sofie calls "gobble gobble" (turkey lunchmeat). When I give her a slice, the first thing she does is rip off a piece and put it on the table for the cat, who happily eats it up. This is so cute I can hardly contain myself from smothering them both in kisses. Sometimes, like today, he then happily follows her into her room for naptime and sleeps in the rocker until she wakes up. They're becoming fast friends.
  
• Right smack in the middle of about five quilting projects, several of which have to be done this month, my machine has gone bonkers (threads breaking off inside the machine, lots of nesting problems), and I'm forced to put it all aside and take the darn thing in for service. Yikes. It'll be a whole week before I get it back. Arg!
  
  What am I gonna do in the meantime? And will I get my two swap quilts done by the end of the month with this interruption? Will I have severe withdrawal? Stay tuned to see.
  
  Luckily I'm done with step one of the mystery quilt, and step two shouldn't be coming out for another week or so, so that will hold.

It's a beautiful day, in the 50s and sunny, and we're going out to play soon. As soon, that is, as the kid and the cat wake up from their naps. Any minute now.

Strangeness

Has anyone written a parenting book called "Your Almost Two Year Old: They're Just Strange, So Get Used To It"? Cuz I'd like to buy a copy.

Every day, Sofie becomes more and more funny and odd; she obviously has complex, rich big-kid thoughts inside her head but is still unable to share them with us. She's trapped by her 18-month-old vocabulary and the fact that she can't say any words of more than one syllable. She can't really say things like, "Well mother, I'm reacting oddly to your attempts to take me out into the world today because I'm concerned about whether I might have left my blanket over my dinosaur's face, back in the crib, and I'm worried that he might be scared of the dark. Maybe we should go back home and check."


Until now, she's been very straightforward. I didn't always know what she was thinking, but I could usually make a pretty good guess. Now, I sometimes feel like I have no idea what's going on in there.


For example, child of mine, can you explain to me what is with the squeezing-your-eyes-shut-and-pretending-you're blind routine? You shut your eyes and reach around blindly with your hands to find your breakfast food, then cram it into your mouth. You close your eyes when we have to wait in line at the post office, only to open them when we get up to the clerk. You pretended our friends weren't at breakfast with us the other morning for an entire hour. What's up with this? What does it mean?

Why do you say that yes, you want to go to Gymboree, only to burst into tears when we pull into their parking lot and shake your head "no no no" the whole time we're walking up to the front door? And then sit in my lap and say you don't want to play for the first ten minutes we're there, then say nononono when I ask if you want to leave? And then the next time we go it's the greatest place you've ever been and the most fun ever?

Why do things you've seen me do every day, like vacuuming, suddenly fill you with terror?

This is a good preparation for the rest of childhood, where I'm guessing every year your kids' minds become a little less understandable and remote. She's becoming her own person. We're becoming less this fused MommyAndSofie creature we've been for the last eighteen months, and instead Sofie, her own person, is emerging. She's separating from us, just a tiny little baby step at a time, which means we're doing our job.

Which I should celebrate. And I do. But it's bittersweet, too.