The oldest of four children in my family, I grew up raised by a brilliant, pHd-earning (in microbiology, probably with a 4.0, too) stay home mom.  Throughout the bulk of my life, the horrible phrase most often used was “just a mom”.  Now that I am a mother myself, that “just” seems so demeaning and inaccurate and painfully wrong.  Parenthood is a HARD job.  It is an amazing and miraculous and life-altering in so many wonderful ways job, but it is a HARD job.  I love it every single day, but that doesn’t mean moments don’t often arise of self-doubt, borderline craziness, exhaustion, frustration, even anger.  Parenthood is not just a special coat that’s worn along with your every day life.  Parenthood changes your existence. Period.  At least, it should, in my opinion.

I recently stumbled upon this article called “The Inconvenience of Having Children” on the blog Conscious Parenting.  It addresses the serious misconceptions such a large part of our society has about parenthood.  A little teaser blurb for you:

I don’t know when exactly it happened, but somewhere along our anthropological journey it seems as though humans grew very disconnected from themselves as mammals.  I know that sounds weird, but follow me.  When a dog is preparing to have puppies, the dog doesn’t  start buying up books to better educate herself on how to best raise the puppies.  And I have yet to see a gorilla at the zoo ask her keeper for tips on how to best get her baby gorilla to sleep.  These mammals, though very different from humans, know exactly how to care for their young.  And they don’t seem bothered by the “inconvenience of having children.”

But humans are different.  Yes, we are mammals, but we are “evolved” or at the very least better than all those other lame mammals.  And we have very busy lives.  We have careers to manage.  We have bills to pay.  We have social lives to maintain, and we have lifestyles to maintain.  So we can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of having children…but we still have them anyway.

It’s a great blog post that honestly, and through reflection on personal experience, discusses what the author sees as part of the problem–first of all, people becoming parents who really shouldn’t; and secondly, parents not trusting their own instincts, and following advice from “experts” instead, no matter how much their deepest soul is screaming that it’s the wrong thing to do.

A dear friend of mine and I, after embarking on this life-altering journey called parenthood, decided to write a book about this exact matter.  We wanted to encourage parents to trust their instincts rather than always be wallowing so deeply in self-doubt and reliance on books and “expert” opinions. (It is quite ironic that we were/are planning on writing a book about ignoring the vast majority of books, but I digress…).  “The Inconvenience of Having Children” addresses many of the issues we have seen through our own experiences, with some humor thrown in.  The author concludes:

I don’t have any solutions to this issue.  I am just the former joe-schmo mom who use to buy baby books like a cigarette addict hoping that eventually I would get one that had the magic formula for having the perfect, easy baby.  But that book doesn’t exist.  And if it did, it would say this…

“Kids are inconvenient.  It is true.  They won’t sleep when you want them to.  They will probably eat more than you expected.  They will most likely want to sleep with you, and they will probably make a lot of noise.  But if you get over yourself, learn to sacrifice a little and quit viewing every normal thing your child does as a problem, you might just realize that kids are the greatest inconvenience you will ever have the pleasure of experiencing.”

I personally think that everyone should read this post and really think about it before choosing to have children.  Prior to being a parent, I couldn’t in my wildest imagination fathom a person who didn’t want to have children. Ever. I even got into a number of debates about it in college with non-children-wanting friends.  Now, after experiencing it first hand, and understanding the HUGE undertaking and test of patience and every other virtue imaginable, I sing a different song.  If you don’t think you want children, trust yourself and don’t have any.  If you aren’t sure, seriously think about how much of your life you are willing to change, give up, put on the back burner for your future children.  Having a child is the most amazing, miraculous experience of your life, but it is HARD.  A daily gift, too, most definitely.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to discourage all people from ever having children.  I just want people who have no business being parents, or who don’t actually parent to make the decision that parenthood is just not for them before they have kids.  Is that rude?

At the very least, leave with this inconvenient truth: parenting is a full time job.  No, not 40 hours a week.  Not even 60 hours a week, the workaholics.  It’s a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rest of your life job.  And it is amazing.  As long as you really love what you do. I’m such a blessed person in that I love my job.  I hope you do, too.

One of the skills and ideas I’ve taken from my teaching years and applied to parenting as much as possible is the avoidance of saying the word “No”.  “No” is such an overused word in our society, especially (sadly) in schools and in parenting. Its overuse doesn’t mean that kids understand and respect it more; it usually means that it flat out loses its clout.  I was introduced to this idea during my studies in graduate school, working toward my Master in the Art of Teaching, Elementary Education at Montclair State University.  During a class that by now has faded into a blur with all of the others, we read a book that still sticks out in my memory to this day.  Teaching Stories, by Judy Logan, contains many gems for teachers young and old.  The one excerpt that really stuck with me, though, is one from a chapter entitled The Story of Two Quilts:

Yes, I say. I believe in saying yes to my students. Sometimes I say no, but I don’t say it lightly, and I try to give all my reasons.  I believe that students have reasons behind their requests, and that it is important for me to learn about them in order to really teach effectively. Usually by the time I have to say no to a student’s request, I have built up a fair amount of trust with all my yesses.

She goes on to elaborate on all of the various questions from students and her simple answers of “yes”.  It is a powerful chapter, and really reveals the power of yes. I think of it often, to this day, and apply it now to my parenting.

As a parent, I have been careful from day one to limit the use of the word “no” to only serious matters–getting close to the hot oven or wood stove, stepping into a street, etc.  I have found that when I do say “no”, Maddie (usually) listens and stops what she’s doing immediately.

By avoiding “no”, it doesn’t mean I don’t draw limits or help Maddie learn right from wrong.  Instead, I just phrase my guidance differently.  A few examples: When she tries to get my attention by hitting me, I say, “Do you want my attention right now? Are you feeling frustrated? If you need me, you can just say, ‘Mommy, I need your attention!’”.    If she throws a toy she shouldn’t be throwing, like a block or a truck, instead of saying the ubiquitous parenting phrase “No! Don’t do that!”, I say instead, “Blocks are not for throwing. We can throw a ball. Do you want to throw a ball?”  I have found that it has worked wondrously for helping Maddie know what she should and should not do, while saving that powerful “No” for when we really need it.

A few days ago was a pinnacle of my momma proudness thus far, as well as a reinforcement that using alternatives to “no” and modeling alternative behavior really works.  Maddie was playing well in independent play, shopping with her new shopping cart, talking to herself as she wheeled around the playroom and kitchen.  I took the opportunity to begin writing an important email on the laptop at the kitchen table.  Previously, when I’ve been on the computer and Maddie has wanted my attention, she has used a variety of attention-getting strategies: coming up to me with a book saying “book! book! read a book!” and sometimes pushing the book into me, pulling on my clothes, saying “mommy, mommy, mommy” repeatedly, coming over to me fussing or crying, etc.  Usually, I’ll turn and tell her that if she really needs my attention, she can just say, “Mommy, I need your attention”.

On this particular day, when Maddie realized that I was on the computer and no longer playing along beside her, she came up to me calmly and said, “Mommy, I need your attention.”  I was floored. Maddie is just barely 2 years old yet the statement was clear and calmly stated. I turned immediately, huge proud grin plastered across my face, and said, “Did you just say you need my attention?”  She replied yes, and said, “Play with play dough”.  I told her how proud I was of her and commended her for her calm use of words to get my attention. I then closed the computer and went immediately to play with her.  Needless to say, that email didn’t get sent for another few hours and we had a grand old time rolling out snakes and pressing out cookies with our colorful clay.

So the next time your child wails a toy across the playroom or smacks you on the shoulder to get your attention, think twice about your reaction.  A positive, guiding modeling of appropriate behavior instead of the instinctual response of “no!” may will go a long way!

Black walked around the room, joking and talking. “Is this yoga?” he asked as we sweated through a pose that seemed to demand superhuman endurance. “It is if you’re paying attention.”

Yoga requires paying attention. The whole time.  The article was definitely a good read, but I in no way completed reading it with a changed mindset on the benefits and bliss that can be obtained by a mindful yoga practice.  Note the words can and mindful.  What the article did reinforce for me is how important it is for anyone who practices yoga to throw out their egos and leave their competitive natures at home.  The yoga studio or yoga mat is not the place to attempt the next Ninja Warrior challenge, or try to look like the girl across from you.  Yoga is not an image.  Yoga is not an exercise routine. Yoga is an internal practice, and in my opinion, the MOST important part is the breath and the awareness of your own body at any given moment. Might you improve your body image through the practice of yoga?  Sure.  Might you end up a whole lot more physically fit if you regularly (and mindfully) practice yoga? Definitely.  But still, there’s so much more to yoga. I feel like the article missed a very large portion of what makes yoga great.

 A fellow yoga teacher posted a response to/reflection on this Wreck Your Body article that seems to be spreading through the yoga world like wildfire, and it really resonates with me.  I suggest reading the entire thing, called Oh My Aching Yoga. An Important Read, by Debby Kaminsky, a seasoned yoga teacher who founded Newark Yoga Movement, among many other great ventures.  Her bio can be found here, at debbyoga.com.  Back to her article.  One paragraph in particular resonated with me and embodies my feelings about what makes yoga:

DOING YOGA VERSUS BEING YOGA.   

This is another shift I first heard from Shiva Rea and something I think the article misses. What happened to consciously breathing and when did yoga just become the asana/pose? The article focuses on asana.  Bottom line to me is if one is consciously breathing, they are practicing yoga.  I haven’t heard of someone getting injured from breathing yet.  I used to do yoga too and that meant I needed to be on a yoga mat every day practicing poses.  For the last few years, I’ve lived yoga so even if I don’t get on my yoga mat each day, I find the time to consciously breathe and feel the connection.

“I haven’t heard of someone getting injured from breathing yet.”  Right on! Whether I’m teaching ashtanga or beginner vinyasa flow, the emphasis is always on the even rhythm of the breath and the linking of each breath to a smooth and controlled movement.  This was the biggest aspect of yoga missing from the New York Times article.  Yoga is not just asana (or postures).  In fact, it is far far more, and far more complex (and amazing) than just some body movements. Yoga means “union”…  Union of the external with internal, linking conscious breath with conscious and mindful movements.  It does not mean throwing yourself upside down or tying yourself in knots your first week of class.

So, if you are a yoga practitioner or teacher, I invite you to reflect on this explosive article, as well as Debby’s response.  What are you aiming to get from your yoga practice?  Is your yoga teacher or teaching methods right for you? I know that if I ever attend a yoga class where I felt the teacher was pushing students beyond their limits, or pressuring people to do more than they thought they could, I would not return to that teacher.  Perhaps I’ve just been fortunate to have mindful, gently guiding teachers who encourage their students to listen to their bodies, move gently with their breaths, and do what feels right at that given moment.  While I have sustained a few minor injuries from yoga, I know that they were due to my ego and not because of the yoga.  Now, after 5+ years of practice, multiple teacher trainings, workshops, and intensives, and a lot of reading and reflecting on all of the limbs of yoga, I know my body’s limits. I honor them. I respect them. And I find great bliss in my yoga.

Honor where you are.  Listen to your body.  Follow your breath.  With those as your focus, I hope that you, too, can find yogic bliss.

Namaste.

What Did You Do Today?

Today I left some dishes dirty,
The bed got made around 3:30.
The diapers soaked a little longer,
… The odor grew a little stronger.
The crumbs I spilled the day before,
Are staring at me from the floor.
The fingerprints there on the wall,
Will likely be there still next fall.
The dirty streaks on those window panes,
Will still be there next time it rains.
Shame on you, you sit and say,
Just what did you do today?

I nursed a baby till he slept,
I held a toddler while he wept,
I played a game of hide and seek,
I squeezed a toy so it would squeak.
I pulled a wagon, sang a song,
Taught a child right from wrong.
What did I do this whole day through?
Not much that shows, I guess it’s true.
Unless you think that what I’ve done,
Might be important to someone,
With bright brown eyes and soft blond hair,
If that is true … I’ve done my share.

Author Unknown

Wonderstruck

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The 630 page book was read cover to cover within two days.  Can you tell I enjoyed it?   Unlike Hugo, where the illustrations and text tell the same story in progression, the illustrations and the text in Wonderstruck begin by telling two different stories.  The stories gradually meet, melding into one toward the end of the book.  Genius!

I don’t want to give away the story, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I found it uncanny and a bit surprising (causing wonderment) that the main characters in the book were deaf or partially deaf.  The friend who recommended it knew me before my hearing loss began, so had no idea that I now have severe-profound progressive hearing loss, and therefore, may one day find myself unexpectedly part of the deaf community.  There were many parts of the book where I absolutely could relate to the characters, and when the illustrations of ASL finger spelled letters spanned the pages of the book, I had to grin since I knew exactly what they said.

Another really fascinating aspect of the book was found in the Acknowledgements. The book was inspired when Selznick saw a documentary about the history of Deaf culture in America, specifically related to cinema.  He notes:

I was especially fascinated by a section about cinema and the new technology of sound, which was introduced into the movies in 1927.  Prior to this, both deaf and hearing populations could enjoy the cinema together.  Sound movies, for the first time, excluded the deaf.

This is SO true!  I think the last time I went out to a movie in the theater was 2005, when Garrett and I went to see King Kong, thinking I wouldn’t really need the dialogue much.  Even in a movie like King Kong, missing the dialogue made it not worth the $9 to see in the theater, and since then we’ve just patiently awaited the arrival of blockbusters on dvd.  Even still, we often get Netflix movies that don’t have subtitles or captions, which is so frustrating. It is impossible for me to follow a movie without the subtitles, ruling out “going out to the movies” as a form of entertainment since most hearing people just don’t want to be “distracted” by the subtitles along the bottom of the screen.  I think it’s awesome that Selznick took this inspiration and ran with it to create an amazing and moving story that can (and will) be appreciated by people of all ages.

Wonderstruck is another amazing example of Selznick’s ingenious visual-lingual story telling style, and I would highly recommend you read it, add it to your library, donate it to your local library or classroom library, and pass it along to friends.

Who wants to read it next?

I’ve never been a big New Year’s resolution-maker. I’ve dabbled with it some years, but mostly I just find it to be another thing to add to my list of self-criticism when I slip or finally give up. Last year, I decided that instead of resolutions, I would aim to live with intention. It has worked and continues to work well, despite days where I’m in a funk, which are unavoidable. The hardest thing to do is be gentle with yourself on those days–the days when you feel like nothing you do is right, you can’t win, you’re horrible for reasons x, y, z… but the most important thing to do on days like that is to be gentle with yourself. No one is perfect. Life is not always rosy. But you are always important and special and worthy of compassion.

A New Year’s blog post entitled One Last Resolution, posted on the Karma Spot blog, really pin-pointed this common human struggle and gave one suggestion: self-acceptance. The post inspired me to aim for that goal this year… finding self-acceptance as close to 100% of the time as I can (I know that full self-acceptance at every moment of every day is not a reasonable expectation for myself, so I’ll be gentle and allow myself some crappy days). Here’s an excerpt from their post:

Our society is accustomed to thinking that we will be a 10 if we lose those last 5 pounds, get that better job, nicer house, faster car or fill in the blank. We need to erase the wrinkles on our aging faces and tighten our sagging bottoms and have washboard abs to be our best.

But it is just not true.

We are all 10s—right here and right now. You do not have to do a single thing but arrive and approach everything that you do as the 10 that you are.

Try on the resolution of self-acceptance. See what the possibilities of believing yourself a 10 bring this 2012. Treat everyday this year as the special gift that it is and have a very Happy New Year.

Read the whole post, think about it, and I think you will agree that putting “I will find self-acceptance in 2012″ is a great resolution for the new year.  Believe in yourself, be gentle on those tough days, and I think you will find that 2012 will be a blessed and beautiful year!

Typically, daddy works during the day, mommy teaches yoga in the evenings, and on weekends or nights when we are together, we often swap playing with Maddie for getting things done. “Can you play with Maddie for a bit while I chop wood?” “How about you play with Maddie while I finish putting laundry away and then I’ll play with Maddie and you cook dinner?” For Christmas, we decided that we would do everything together as a full family–cook meals together, play together, dance to music together, and relax together. It was an amazing, blissful day, complete with a snowy walk around our property. There were zero toddler temper tantrums, despite a napless day (she was just too excited to sleep!), and we succeeded in spending the entire day happily together. Here are some photos from the day, and I hope that you and yours had an equally peaceful and love-filled Christmas day!

Sleepy bleary-eyed enthusiastic shopper (and her Christmas shopping cart)

Reading Frog and Toad

"Watch it!"... Fraggles! Thank you, Uncle Steven!

A snowy walk

Mommy and Daddy snow angels

Signing and saying cold and coming back from a possible attempt at a snow angel. Maddie decided the snow was too cold to lie down in it. Next time!

Our little explorer

Peace. Lovely!

The first six houses, in all their burnt edged, crooked walled, gaping cracks glory! Ready to be jazzed up and decorated.

A family Christmas Eve tradition with my family growing up was to go to 4pm Mass, then come right home for a quick dinner and then the highlight of the evening–gingerbread house decorating!  This is one of the traditions Garrett (my husband) and I decided to continue with our newly growing family.  As a kid, we always invited neighbors, friends, or visiting family members to join us in the festivities, so this year we decided to invite our new dear friends and neighbors Marie, Kate, Matthew, and Noah.

Table set for dinner

Once the houses are made and ready, all you need is lots of candy, royal glaze “glue”, and your imagination and creativity to be ready to decorate a gingerbread house.  We certainly had plenty of candy, including three different types of M&Ms, Necco wafers, mint leaves, spice drops, big gum drops, Mike n Ike, snowcaps, cookies, candy cane sticks and minis, wrapped chocolate (santas, gifts, bells), chocolate covered sunflower seeds, Swedish fish, and the list could go on.  Rather than give you a play by play, here’s a photo-documentation of the night.

Everyone getting ready to begin the fun!

Noah, Kate and Matthew in the midst of the decorating fun.

Maddie working on her house (with daddy's help).

Despite it being our guests’ first time decorating gingerbread houses (so they say!), they all created amazing houses!  It seemed like they were old pros!  We had rainbows, additions built to house gifts, adorable snowmen, a koi pond, cookie doors and windows, and fish-cicles!

A street view of the decorated gingerbread house village.

We had such an amazingly wonderful time and are looking forward to continuing this tradition for years to come!

Maddie and her completed house. Not bad for a first year!!

Here's the cover of the cookbook that was my mom's inspiration to start the tradition of making gingerbread houses, 30-some-odd years ago.

There were a few key traditions that have been around in my family for the past three decades that I knew I wanted to continue with my new growing family.  Christmas Eve, for as long as I can remember, has included the much anticipated decoration of gingerbread houses.  This is an event that has been loved by my family and friends, since different neighbors and friends join us each year to decorate houses, and it is one that I wanted to start creating with my husband and daughter.  The first step was to make the Lebkuchen, or German honey bars, that get cut and “glued” into houses.  (Recipe, copied straight from the email from my mom, included below)

I’ve seen my mom make, cut, and assemble gingerbread houses every year of my life.  Still, I was not fully prepared for what it meant to do it on my own.  This recipe is not for the faint of heart!  It really takes some muscle and determination to get the flour fully combined with the batter, the house shapes really do have to be cut immediately as the pans come out of the oven, and the sizing/accuracy of the cuts is a lot trickier and important than I thought.  It was a learning year for me, and my attempt resulted in a few slightly burnt pans, some serious structural instability, and a few crooked houses, but overall I’m really proud of myself.

Keep your strong friends and family around for this part... it takes muscle!

Cut your pieces while the cake is still hot. Seriously! Oven mitt in one hand, sharp knife in the other!

Maddie was a great helper, especially with the taste testing.

Mmm delicious! We ate all of the "scraps" and Maddie still wanted more. "Eat it!" she'd exclaim.

Assembling the houses: "This is the part that's really tricky when you only have two hands."

One house glued and ready to go (I made eight total!)

A major plus is how delicious the gingerbread tastes.  It gets crunchier and crunchier the longer you admire your house before consumption, but even when it’s teeth-breaking hard, it’s delicious!

Stay tuned for the next post about our decorating fun this year!

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LEBKUCHEN OR GERMAN HONEY BARS

This recipe, doubled, makes three 11×17 inch pans of cake

These German Honey Bars will keep 6 months in a tightly closed tin.

Heat slightly in a large saucepan

1? cups honey or molasses

¾ cup sugar

Add and melt

3 tablespoons butter

Sift together and add

About 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour: enough to make a semi-liquid dough

1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Add:

½ cup chopped blanched almonds

¼ cup each chopped citron and chopped candied orange or lemon peel

¼ teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon cardamom

2 teaspoons cinnamon

? teaspoon cloves

Add:

1½ to 2 cups more flour (this takes a lot of work! Dough is very stiff)

The dough-should be sticky to the touch. Pat it out at once into a ¼ inch thickness in buttered pans. (a buttered rolling pin helps spread the dough, which is difficult to pat out.) Bake about 15-20 minutes in a pre- heated 350° F oven (177° C). Cut out the house shapes while still warm. Miter top edges of roof sections.

CAKE AND COOKIE HOUSES

Prepare any close-grained cake such as German Honey Bars.

You will need 2 sheets of cake baked in an 11 x 17- inch pan, and a third sheet if also using cake for the foundation. The baking can be done over a period of days, but cut the cakes while still warm. Either use your own ingenuity or cut a paper pattern as illustrated below.

When ready to assemble, find an extra pair of hands, and with the help of plenty of “glue” made of Royal Glaze (recipe below), start to build. This icing, which dries hard and colors easily, makes a perfect bond for the various building elements and whatever decorations you want to add onto the house. Miter the edges where the roof halves meet. When the walls are in place, use slabs for the roof, gluing with royal glaze where the roof meets the end and side walls. Colored hard candy and gumdrops make festive decorations for the holiday house.

ROYAL GLAZE, SWISS MERINGUE OR QUICK DECORATIVE ICING (makes about 2 cups)

This icing will become very hard.

Sift:

3 ½ cups confectioners sugar

Beat until stiff, but not dry:

2 egg whites

Gradually add the sifted sugar and:

juice of a lemon

1 to 2 drops glycerin

until it is of a good consistency to spread. Cover with damp cloth until ready to use. Should you want the icing stiffer, add a little more sifted sugar: To make it softer, thin it very, very gradually with lemon juice, more egg white or water.

To make small houses, transfer this pattern to a sheet of paper half the size of the large jelly roll pan in which the cakes are baked. That way each pan of cake makes two houses. If you’ve got only smaller pans, you have to adjust the size of your pattern to the pan and make the houses a bit smaller .You might need to make a pattern that gets only one house per pan. I usually bake a double recipe of lebkuchen and bake three pans, 11 x 17 inches. Then I cut each pan to make two houses. If there will be a lot of kids who want to decorate houses, I scale down the pattern to half this size and make 4 houses per pan or any combination of bigger or smaller houses. If you are only baking for two, you don’t need to double the recipe, and you can bake one large pan for houses and a smaller pan just to nibble.

I cover a piece of corrugated cardboard or a small children’s book with aluminum foil as a base upon which to build. The pieces fit together best if the end walls attach to the edges of the side walls, then the roof is attached. Then two pieces of chimney are glued to each other and glued onto the roof

This isn’t to scale. I start by cutting the cake into quarters and then get the sides and ends to fit into two of the quarters as best I can. The other two quarters are the roof.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My notes about the recipe:

For me, 15 minutes was plenty for baking the lebkuchen; 20 minutes resulted in a burnt pan of cake.

Use 1/2 batch of royal glaze to assemble 6-8 houses.  The royal glaze should be made the same day as decorating, and can be kept in a container covered in a damp paper towel and plastic wrap in the refrigerator for a few hours if needed.

One of Maddie’s favorite books these days is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  Her daddy’s fierce and engaging reading of the book I’m sure has much to do with her fondness of it, but all the same, it was a natural choice for a theme for her 2nd birthday party.  Once that decision was made, the craft project ideas began to blossom and bloom and EXPLODE in my mind.  Soon it was clear that I was going to have to limit myself or else I’d get totally and completely overwhelmed by my to-do list, not to mention have a good chance of having a lot of unfinished projects come party time.  My final craft list consisted of the following:

1. Wolf Suit for Maddie

This one was a must. I first toyed with the idea of making a complete wolf suit using one of her onesie snap-up pajamas as a template, but since I’ve never actually made a successful full garment of clothing, AND time was of the essence, I decided to use my time-honored “cheating” trick: I bought a fuzzy white hoodie as a base for the costume.  Then I bought some white fuzzy fabric, some dark brown fuzzy fur fabric, some stuffing, made ears and a tail, sewed them onto the perfect hoodie… and viola! Wolf suit.  It came out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself!

While looking online for Max wolf suits, I decided that making wolf suits or patterns them may very well be my window into the $$…  Wolf suits of any quality start in the hundreds, $130 for a kids’ sized costume

Max Wolf Suit by TheRadicalThreadsCo on Etsy $130

and up to $610 (or more!) for an adult version!

Adult Wolf Suit $610

Either way, Madeline’s wolf suit probably cost about $40 to make, and the hoodie was $35 of that $40.  Less than 1 hour of labor, too.  I definitely made the right choice there.

2. Playroom Decor

I knew that I wanted to decorate the play room for the party, so I bought some big colored poster board and Maddie and I cut out trees.  We put them at the top of each beam (we have a timberframed house), with brown craft paper cut as trunks.  Maddie loved helping with this step.  Then, I bought some white poster board and drew Max and one of the wild things, traced the drawing with sharpie, adding shading and details as needed, and then colored with crayons. Maddie helped me color them in, and also had her own poster board for drawing.  These projects I was able to create and hang with Maddie’s help (bonus!)

3. Wild Thing Fleece Hand Puppets

Last year for Maddie’s first birthday party, I made a ton of fleece animal hand puppets as party favors.

Here's a sampling of the fleece hand puppets I made for Maddie's 1st birthday party.

Maddie still plays with hers often (they are her favorite dance partners during our “dance parties!”), so I really wanted to do something similar this year.  With the theme in place, wild things were the natural choice.  I remembered, though, the HOURs I spent cutting and sewing all of the puppets from last year, and knew that I just didn’t have the time to do that again.  Solution?  Craft project!!

I designed the puppet using the same base as last year, cut out the basic hand puppet bodies and sewed them together.  Then, I cut the pieces for the rest of the puppet, but didn’t assemble anything.  I put the pieces in zip lock plastic bags and viola–a craft project!! I did end up assembling the arms (skinny stripes seemed perhaps a bit too tough to glue for little ones), and I painted the scales on the legs as well as the line for the mouth and blacks of the eyes.  I admit, my mom helped TREMENDOUSLY in getting this cutting part of the project done, and without her help (the day before the party, I might add), the puppets may have just been a great idea squelched by lack of time.  But, we did it, and the kids really seemed to enjoy gluing the puppets together. Hopefully they enjoy playing with them, too!

Wild Thing hand puppet craft project close to completion

Here we are just getting started... crafting fun had by all!

I toyed with the idea of creating hand puppets of a few of the other wild things just to have around for playing, but due to time, I never made them.  I still might, since we’ve got a wild thing hand puppet without any friends (except a pig, 2 frogs, a dog, an elephant, and a bunny from last year’s party) here in the Wilkin household.

4. Fondant Cake Toppers

No birthday is complete without a delicious and/or cool looking cake.  The delicious part we had covered, since Maddie’s Grampy Lloyd is the best baker in Maine (seriously, no joke–once you’ve had one of his desserts, whether creme brulee, cheesecake, chocolate cake, spice cake, ANY of them, there’s really no point in ever eating a dessert from anywhere else because it will sorely disappoint).  A simple question to Maddie of, “Do you want chocolate cake or carrot cake” resulted in the obvious answer: chocolate cake. (She’s definitely her momma’s daughter!) Mmmm double chocolate cake it is!  I had used fondant once before to make a pretty awesome dragon cake for my friend Alex Bell (photo above, circa 2008), so I figured that would be a good choice for simple (ish) cake toppers.  I didn’t want to cover the whole cake since the chocolate frosting is SO good, so I figured little two-dimensional figures would be perfect.  I visited a local cake decorating supply shop, Cakes by Jan, and picked up the fondant, coloring, and an “edible pen” of sorts.  Looking at the ingredients list, I would never ever consume this stuff, but it worked for decorations.  I think my little Max and wild thing turned out just right.

Overall, Madeline’s party went extremely well.  Everyone played well, seemed to have a great time, and all of my planned activities (and the craft) went smoothly.  A definite highlight to the day was the presence of all six grandparents and great grammy at the party, which was quite a special treat. The last time all of these beloved family members were all together in one place was for mommy and daddy’s wedding in 2007!

(L to R) Great Grammy, Pop Pop, Grandma, GrandDude, Maddie, GrandPrincess, Grammy, Grampy

I plan to save all of these decorations for potential future use, and maybe the next time around I’ll be able to add a few more crafts to the mix!   I’m happy, though, with my wild rumpus party throwing, and think that I limited the crafting to a reasonable amount (which is a challenge for me!).

Believe it or not, that’s not all I’ve been up to.  But the next update will have to wait for another day…

Oh please don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so!