My boy

I'd like to introduce you to my oldest boy, S. He is 7 years old (almost 8, as I am reminded daily), blonde haired, blue-eyed and has PDD-NOS (a Spectrum disorder).
 

But, this is not all he is, he is also the child that leaves me teetering on the edge of sanity every single day.

Here's just a small list of the wonderful "quirks" that make S who he is:

1. He will ask you the same question 500 times in a single day in hopes that your answer will change in some way.

2. He will ask you random questions that no one other than Rain Man would be able to give an answer for.

3. He is wholly and completely obsessed with anything and everything related to or involving WWII, which results in constant conversation, questions, fact spouting, sound effect making and pretend play involving Germans, British, Americans and Russians.

4. He also, has a Selective Eating disorder which causes daily frustration over food (but that is an entirely separate blog there).

5. No matter how nicely or veiled you may be any answer to a request or question that results in a "No" will cause a hail storm of screaming, throwing, crying, door slamming, hitting and stomping.

6.Because of issues with our local public school S is currently being home-schooled, this alone drains me of any patience I may possess.

7. He is a whiz at math and can read to you at a 2nd grade level (he is only in the 1st grade), yet he cannot spell simple words for you, phonics is equal to a foreign language to him and trying to "test" him on math or LA techniques is impossible. He doesn't understand what you are asking of him, but if you re-word it or just hand him the papers 9 times out of 10 he'll get it right.  He just knows it, he just doesn't know how or why.

On and on I could go but I promised a short list so I'll stop there.  With all that being said, this is the child that very rarely shows affection, he was 5 before he said the words "I love you", but when he out of the blue comes to me and wraps his skinny little arms around my neck and tells me "I love you mom", all is forgiven.  I love my little guy more than I could ever hope to express to him, and yes there are days I want to pack his bags and ship him off to his grandmother, but it's those rare and oh so glorious moments when he opens up and lets me in that keep me going. I may not be the best mommy in the world, but I am his mommy and I couldn't be more proud of that fact.

Lazy Momma

So, let me just put this out there. I am a lazy Mom.  Don't get me wrong I love my kids and I provide everything they need, but if it was up to me they could spend the entire day in front of the TV or playing with thier toys in the other room.  As long as they aren't crawling up my butt every two seconds I really don't care what they are doing. Before I became a mom of 4 I loved baking and doing crafts with the kids in my family or those of my friends. Now, my kids are luck if I buy the pre-made cookie dough and throw it into the oven (yes, I know I just recently posted the birthday cake I slaved over for my son, but that's just it, it only happens on birthdays). I love my crafting, but I can no longer handle the chaos, fighting and MESS involved in crafting with my kids.  Maybe once or twice a year they can convince me to do an art project with them, but it usually ends up with me setting everything up (outside preferably) and then quietly sneaking away. I also hate any kind of clutter. I am constantly throwing everyone's stuff away, yet I let my kids destroy my house on a daily basis while I watch. I then spend the good part of the weekend scrubbing everything back to clean. Kids are exhausting, dirty, smelly little creatures.  But, even after all this I know I must be doing something right.  There isn't an hour of the day that goes by that I don't have one or more of them hugging, kissing or just wanting to sit with me.  I might not be the most active parent, but I sure am one of the luckiest momma's out there and I wouldn't give up my noisy, smelly, dirty little brats for the world.

If you sometimes feel like a lazy, messy parent here's a link to a blog I read the other day that had me laughing out loud! Mommy in Law

Moving forward with Dreams, Felt and Dinosaur cakes

Well, not much has changed here. I am still trying everything I can think of to round up the money to get back home to California. BUT, there are somethings that I have started to think about that may bring about some change.  Hopefully, change for the better.  I have decided that if I am to get through the next 9 mths that I need to stop wallowing in self pity and start trying to plan for a future thats just about me and my kids. 1st step: Get back home, 2nd step: Get the kids enrolled in school and readjusted to life, 3rd step: Get off my butt and start working off the 30 lbs I've put back on in the last 6 mths, 4th: Do something I have been dreaming about and putting off for far to long and that something is school.  As soon as the kids are back in school this coming fall I am going to go back to school myself and finally start working towards my degree - hell I might even bump it up a notch and get not only a degree but a Doctoral or PhD. Lol What's another 10 yrs huh. :)

In regards to my crafting escape, I have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks.  I finished the ABC book along with an adorable play felt mailbox with envelopes, and a felt travel playmat/hotwheels carry case.  I am currently in the process of putting together a new felt book.  This one is another counting book, but it has more of a simple design and is made using some of the softest and prettiest wool felt I have yet to work with.  I would have finished it by now but I took a break from it to plan my youngest son's birthday party.  He's four now (such a big boy, I don't quite know who gave him permission to grow up) and really wanted a dinosaur party with a dinosaur cake made by Mom.  Because of this I started searching Pinterest (another new obsession, if you don't know about Pinterest yet you are totally missing out, lol) and found a cake I thought I could recreate. So, recreate I did. It took me all day and quite a lot of shooing kids out of the kitchen with bribes of frosting, but I did it and I think it turned out pretty good.  It's not as good as the inspiration cake, but heck we can't all be cake decorating wizards now can we. D loves it though and really that's all that matters to me. Here's some blurry iphone pics of the cake.

This shot makes it look as if the top tier is totally lopsided. I promise it's not, I just happened to take the picture at a horrible angle.

 If anyone is interested in seeing the cake I tried to recreate I found it on this blog (which is a great blog, btw). LickThe Bowl Good

As for pictures of the other projects I finished, I'll have to post pictures of them later, right now I am too lazy to go fetch the memory card out of the camera. :)

Pity Party

Well, I have decided to throw myself a big ole pity party, total guest = 1. With everything going on in my life right now, I just wish one thing would work out the way I planned.  My marriage is crumbling and all I want to do is get myself and my kids back to California. I have been living the last 2.5 years feeling trapped and as soon as I see a way out, the universe finds a way to throw up a wall in front of it.  It pisses me off to no end that something as little as money is what is holding me back. It's not even a grossly huge amount either but it might as well be. I've tried everything I could think of to raise the money and I've tried selling anything and everything I can.  It's just not meant to be. How am I supposed to help my children, myself and my marriage if I can't even get out of this damn state?

Change

Changes abound in my home as of late. Adjusting to those changes while trying to keep a smile on my face is proving to be very difficult. In my stubborn denial to admit that my marriage might be at an end, I have decided to be a generous wife (probably more generous than M deserves).  As of right now the plan is that the kids and I will continue with the plan to move back to California, just now it's going to be alone. M will continue to live here and I have given him 6 mths to decide if he wants to continue with our marriage. I feel this is the only way to save my marriage, yet it also feels like a huge kick in the face. One of our biggest relationship problems is M's selfishness. So to cure this, I am going to spend mths on my own, raising 4 kids by myself and he gets to spend this time living like a bachelor doing as he pleases without anyone to take care of or responsibilities to worry about. I don't know maybe I am making a huge mistake and I should just get out now and get it over with, but for some irrational reason I just can't leave yet. Maybe I'm not as strong as I thought I was.


Well, with all this going on I have need to escape to my craft table as much as possible.  I have started on a new felt book. This time it is an ABC book.  Every page has a few lettered pockets with a little felt item inside matching the letter on the pocket.  I'll post pics as I complete more.

The end....

It's hard to image living your life any differently than you have for the past 12 years. It's hard to say "I quit" to something you thought would last forever. How is it possible to love someone with all your heart yet hate everything about them too. I love my children more than anything else on this planet and right now I have to make a decision that will change their lives forever. I know that no matter what decision I make they will blame me and hate me for it at some point in their lives, I just wish it wasn't so hard to do. Trying to decide if I'd be better off without the person I have spent the last 12 years with, the father of my children, is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Today is one of those days where I just wish I could disappear and not have to think about any of this crap.  I just want to be happy again, I just am not sure what that means anymore. I am looking at the beginning of  the end of my marriage and family?

Escape

The last couple of days I have needed an escape from all the stress in my house. Between trying to find a house in California, securing financing, dealing with my son's increasing meltdowns, pre-teen drama, my 3 and 1 year olds (who we have affectionately nick named the Tornado Twins) and wading through the mess I call my marriage, I needed to escape for a little while.  Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of leaving the kids with a sitter and spending the day shopping or at the mall so I had to resort to the only form of escape that is open to me.  My craft table. Mind you, there is not some magically force field surrounding my craft area that keeps all my children and problems from attacking me while I am seated there, but it does get me one floor above them where it takes them a little longer to track me down and the yelling and screaming isn't as loud.  So, over the past couple of days I have stolen every available moment to sit down and work on my latest project. Big surprise, it's another felt book. I decided last week that I would list my books on my Etsy store, but since I have to charge so much to make it worth wild I decided that I would whip up a smaller version that I could list at a lower price. This is what I came up with.

As you can see it's just a simple book naming the colors with a corresponding animal.  It's smaller than the others I've done (it's only 8" x 8"), there are less pages and the pages aren't as detailed, but I think it turned out pretty darn cute.  My favorite is the Fish, you can't quite see all the details on him but he was pretty fun to put together.

Now that that project is done and listed on my store it's time to decide what to do next.  I am thinking and ABC book or trying my hand at creating a felt doll.  We'll see how it goes.

The joy of felt

My most recent craft obsession has been anything using felt. Over the last couple of months I have made bushels of felt food for the kids, felt flower head bands and a felt tea set for my neice, an entire tree's worth of felt Christmas ornaments and a couple adorable Quiet books for my daughter and a friend. There is just something so satisfing about sitting down with a pile of felt, some thread and a needle and within a couple hours (or days) creating something unique and one of a kind.  I love making all these items even if it does take me weeks to finish a project.  All the hand stitching and free hand cutting that goes into these projects is very time consuming but in the end to be able to sit back and say "I made that" is a pretty cool feeling.

I have sold a lot of my past sewing and craft obsessions and would love to be able to do the same with these, but with the economy the way it is today I am just not sure that it would be able to support the time it takes for me to create these in vast amounts. Oh well, for now it's fun to do and the added benefit of an occassional custom order will just have to do for now. Well, that is until I find something else to obsess over I guess.