i've been working on my evil laugh.

Autumn (sitting in the living room with a pen and paper): Mom, how do you spell "mwah"?

Me: Moi? Are you trying to write in French?

Autumn: No, I'm trying to spell "MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!"


Sometimes we worry that if she ever gets superpowers she'll be a villain.

at the patch

We got to the farm late this year so the pickings were slim, but we managed to come home with a few decent pumpkins. I was just looking at pictures from our trip here last year, and I couldn't believe how small Autumn looked! She has grown so much.
She really needs to cut that out.
Look at that. Who does she think she is, getting all huge and stuff? Does she think she can just keep growing until she's not my baby anymore? The nerve of that kid, I swear.



Who am I kidding? She'll always be my baby girl.

level 5

Happy 5th birthday, sweet girl! We love you so much!

i like bugs

my hero (or, why my daughter threw forks at a boy in church)

Autumn disappeared into my craft room yesterday afternoon and insisted that I stay out until she finished her super secret project. 20 minutes later she came downstairs wearing this.
A Spiderman mask. She made it all on her own, complete with an elastic band to secure it to her heroic little head.

Thanks in no small part to Adam (remind me to post photos of his comic collection one day), Autumn has a profound love for comic book superheroes. She has seen just about every Marvel and DC hero movie that has come out in the last year or so (The Dark Knight being the exception, as it's not as child friendly as the others). Just about every day you'll find her fighting crime, rescuing civilians, or sometimes just flying around the house and showing off her "moves."

She has a very strong belief in doing the right thing, sticking up for those who can't stick up for themselves. She has no interest in doing what is expected of a little girl, and instead always follows her gut instinct to do what she feels is right. I think this is something that children naturally know how to do, and it only goes away when we teach it out of them.

Once a month or so we take Autumn up to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with my grandmother, also known as Grandma Honey. On those Sundays she takes Autumn to church with her, where she attends the Sunday school program. One such Sunday resulted in that other "proudest moment" I alluded to in a previous post.

Grandma Honey: Well, we had a little incident at church today.

Me: What happened?

Grandma Honey: I'm not really sure exactly what happened but Autumn had a fight with one of the kids.

I sigh, a little embarrassed that Autumn was misbehaving in church, and turn to my child.

Me: Hey Autumn, did something happen at church today?

Autumn: Yeah I throwed some forks at a boy.

Me: You...threw forks? At a boy?

Autumn: Yep, I throwed them. They were just plastic ones!

Me: And why did you do that?

Autumn: He was a mean boy and he was hitting the kids and yelling at them.

Me: Did you tell an adult that he was being mean?

Autumn: Yeah I telled them but they just didn't do anything and he just kept being mean so I got some forks and throwed them at him and he stopped.

We still swell with pride every time we tell that story. How can a mom be mad at that? The kid stood up for herself and protected the innocent. When the authorities wouldn't intervene, she took the law into her own hands, and she kicked ass.

Truth, justice, and the American way. That's my girl.

First stitches

I'm not the sort of mother who gets all teary eyed and gushes to everyone she meets every time her child accomplishes something. I don't call everyone in my address book when she learns to spell a new word or gets a good progress report from school. Of course I am proud of her and I tell her that, but it's not often that I feel the need to brag to others. I'm just not that mom.

But this? This I'm going to brag about.

Autumn is embroidering. Embroidering! The craft nerd in me is rejoicing. We owe this in part to Amanda Soule, who gives some excellent tips for teaching children embroidery in her book, The Creative Family (highly recommended book, by the way). She suggests using burlap and a blunt needle, which worked out perfectly. All I did was thread the needle and hand her the hoop and she took to it like a natural. I figured she would just make a few practice stitches to get the hang of the process, but instead she decided to make a picture.
It's a car! Oh, I'm sorry, not just any car, but a Jeep, according to Autumn. Aside from asking me to change the thread and tie knots, she did this all on her own. I plan on framing it and hanging it in my craft room.

In more than four years of being a parent, I can honestly say this is one of my proudest moments. The other proudest moment involved vigilante justice and plastic flatware, but that's a story for another post. My kid is so awesome.

Autumn's favorite joke

Autumn Blogs: When I was at the doctor

Yesterday I went to the doctor. The doctors were so nice. They got some of my blood out from my arm with a tiny needle that hurt a little bit. I holded still on Mommy's lap and they poked me with the needle. My blood got sucked into a little pipe and they gave me a cool band aid. It had little black ducks on it, I think.And then they gave me a sticker! After that we left and got ice cream at the mall. It was chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. I bought a movie at the mall. It was Barbie Mariposa. My blood thing is feeling better now.

Cough. Sniffle. Ugh.

Don't worry, I'm not dead (yet). January was pretty much a wasted month, 3 weeks of which was spent hacking up a lung (Adam), sweating out a fever (me) and spreading germs (Autumn). So I haven't had much to blog about, unless you'd all like to read about just how much snot a single preschooler can produce in a day, or how poor sweet Adam actually volunteered to sleep on the couch so he wouldn't keep me awake with his coughing. We've been a pretty miserable bunch, to say the least, but we're (mostly) fine now.
I was finally feeling well enough to sew something, so I whipped up a new nightgown for Miss Little in a flannel she picked out herself. She said she wanted jammies with "a Dinosaurus Rex" on them.
Doesn't she look thrilled? I guess the grumpiness hasn't completely worn off yet. The pattern is McCall's M4497, altered to lengthen the top into a dress. It was a quick, easy sew, finished while the prehistoric princess napped.
Dinosaurs are her latest passion. It all started when we took her to the Science Center to see the "Dinosaurs Alive! 3-D" IMAX film. Now every weekend she begs us to take her back to see the huge skeletons and dig for fossils for the millionth time. She has officially proclaimed dinosaurs to be as cool as dragons, "because they growl and stomp their feet."
I love all her various interests, and the unwavering excitement she shows for each one. Whether it's dinosaurs, pirates, fairies or baking, she greets every new opportunity to learn about and interact with our world with such wonderful enthusiasm.

Thank you to everyone who left comments on Autumn's guest blog entry. She was so thrilled to see that people were reading her story. I'd like to make her presence on my blog a regular occurrence, maybe a monthly guest blog entry. She had so much fun creating a story to share and acting it out (all her idea, by the way). I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

I'm off to down some Dayquil, but before I go, great big HUGE congratulations to Frank and his partner on their freaking adorable little ball of cuteness. He is precious.

Guest Blogger: Autumn

"The Cowboy Had a Horse"

by Autumn (as dictated to Mom)

Once upon a time there was a cowboy, and he was riding his horse. He just stopped and got off of his horse for a minute and fed some pigs.
Then he found a shell on the ground. The shell came from the ocean. It was blue. He put it in his pocket for safe keeping.
Then he found a bottle when he was going to the beach and there was paper in it. It was a letter!
It said

Dear Cowboy,
I know you have this bottle and you opened it and I know you're reading it.
Love, Mommy

Then the shell just moved! It had legs and very sharp claws that snapped up and down. It had brown eyes. And when the cowboy was looking at the shell he thought it was a crab from the beach! He took it back to the beach and put it in the water.
Some fishies were swimming in the water when he was putting the crab in there. Then he saw a splash coming right at him! And when he saw it again it was a fish! When it got more close to him it smacked him with his tail! He put it back in the water. Then more fishies came and they just knocked him down! And do you know what they were? Sharks! They were fighting.
The cowboy ran away back to his horse and he rode it again.

The End!

Girl at Work (or, musings of a feminist mom in a personality-smothering world)

For a while now Autumn has been begging us for her very own tool kit, so when I found this on sale for $20 after Christmas--at Joann Fabrics, of all places--I had to pick it up for her. It came with tons of realistic looking tools, nuts, bolts, a vest, hard hat and tool belt, and even a length of caution tape. One thing she asked for that wasn't in the kit were pieces of wood to work on, so I covered some scrap cardboard with wood grain contact paper. Autumn was thrilled and she is now hard at work in the kitchen, hammering and sawing away.

CAUTION: This is the part of the blog post where I go off on a tangent that has little to do with the original topic.If you haven't figured it out, Autumn isn't exactly a typical 4-year-old girl. She'd much rather build something or visit the science museum than play with Barbie dolls or wear a princess costume. She likes superheroes, dragons, pirates and sharks, while her female cousins prefer Cinderella, jewelry and tea parties. We try hard not to push gender roles and stereotypes on her, and let her decide on her own what she is interested in. She often chooses, with no prompting from us, what most would consider "boy" things, and to the dismay of some family members we have done nothing to discourage her.

She does like some "girly" things. She doesn't own any Barbies (instead she plays with her mommy-approved Groovy Girl) but loves Barbie movies, in which Barbie always plays a strong, confident role and saves the day. The one Disney princess she seems interested in is Ariel from The Little Mermaid. On last summer's Florida vacation Adam's mother signed all of the girls (Autumn and three cousins) up for the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, a beauty parlor where they would receive Disney princess makeovers complete with hair, makeup, a costume and photo shoot, without my knowledge. By the time I found out it had already been paid for, so I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. My little tomboy was going to be slathered with shimmer and lip gloss. I had to grit my teeth and remind myself that if I want to be a truly open minded parent I needed to let Autumn give it a try and decide for herself. When the makeover day came each girl got to choose which princess they'd like to look like, and Autumn chose the Ariel makeover. She was whisked away by her "fairy godmothers" and primped, polished, glittered and fluffed for the next hour or so. About halfway through I actually had to step outside and cry, but in front of her I tried my best to be enthusiastic. By the time the godmothers were done with her my little girl had been transformed from thisto this.Oh. My. God. Can you say pageant queen? I think someone hid my kid in a broom closet somewhere and replaced her with this Bedazzled tiny person. Well, she had a lot of fun being Ariel for the day and still likes to wear the costume (sans makeup and body glitter), but despite my fears she is still the same old Autumn. I will admit that she did look cute, in a slightly horrifying way. If she chose eyeshadow and tiaras over foam swords and pirate hats I certainly wouldn't love her any less, but I am glad that she's the way she is.

We are feminist parents. Unfortunately, for most people this is a dirty word that conjures up images of angry, bra-burning, man-hating, hairy women who want to take over the world. But I can guarantee that this is definitely not the case. I shave my legs and wear skirts. I love and respect the men in my life. I have never once used the word "womyn." I believe in true equality. I believe in respect for both sexes. I believe in equal treatment in schools. I am against forcing children into gender roles and snuffing out their true identities. I am against the objectification and dumbing down of women in our society. I want my girl to grow up knowing that it's okay to be true to herself and ignore the status quo. I want her to feel confident and empowered and respected as an individual. Sadly I know that this will get harder as she grows older. All we can do is try our best and send her out into the world with our values instilled in her and hope that it sticks.

Bee Movie. And costume. And snacks.

Ever since we saw Bee Movie a few days ago Autumn has been obsessed with bees and their honey. As soon as we got home from the movie theater she rummaged through her dress up box to find a suitable bee costume. The closest thing she could find were some fuzzy pink antennae, fairy wings and a too-small black and yellow sock hop dress, but it was good enough for her. Now we've been asked to address her as "Autumn Bee Princess" whenever she wears this creative getup.
She tried honey for the first time and now wants to eat it every day. Whether that's because she actually likes it or because she just wants to be more like a bee I'm not sure, but at least she's trying new things. She eats honey and peanut butter sandwiches, apple slices dipped in honey, honey on bagels and, once, just a spoonful of the stuff. I had to draw the line at letting her drink it straight from the bottle though. While searching the 'net for honey related recipes I found a simple sweet treat over in the archives of Kids Craft Weekly. They're called Honey Joys, but Autumn likes to call them Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes, after the catchy Wiggles song.I'll admit I was a little skeptical about how good these would be, as I usually am when trying a new recipe. But they tasted fantastic and were so easy to make. I'm posting the recipe here along with a warning: they are VERY addictive.

Crunchy Munchy Honey Joys
4 cups corn flakes
1/3 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon honey
Melt butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan over medium high heat until the mixture starts to bubble. Pour over corn flakes and have your little Bee Princess or Prince help stir until completely coated. Spoon into paper cupcake liners and bake at 150 degrees for 10 minutes. If your oven is like mine and only goes down to 170 (what's up with that?), bake for 10 minutes anyway. It really doesn't matter. Allow honey joys to cool and let the addiction begin!Happy munching!