January 5th

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Remember when her hair was dark?
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I tried to take pictures of more than just Gwen this past weekend but everything is gross rotten wet dead leaves outside and gloomy no more Christmas tree inside.
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Really feeling this silver/gold/pink metallic gradient manicure I did for NYE.
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At least she doesn’t put her elbows on the table…
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Taylor is all about Legos right now.
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Queen Gwendolyn.

I’ve been working hard on my goal of making at least one pair of boots per week. On the weekend I finished a beautiful royal blue pair that are actually a kickstarter reward (the backer wasn’t ready to choose her colour/size in the fall) and not for Gwen, and she’s not happy about it. She keeps trying to steal them but they are too small, something which frustrates her to no end (as does my stealing them back). I’ve also been thinking hard about boot-making. I’m so conflicted about what I want to do with regards to the business side of things. Sometimes I think I want to hustle-hustle-hustle and promote-promote-promote and see if I can’t turn this into a real, successful business. But then I think about how much WORK that would be and how much work I already have (between parenting and housework and banner orders and my actual real job that I do 50 hours a week) and I start to panic. Like the reason why I’ve been making just one pair of boots a week is because I only have the TIME to make one pair a week, if I want to make them properly. The other day I was in the bookstore with Sym, and in the baby gift section they had a new display of some little moccasin-style soft-soled shoes from a local company I’d never heard of before. Not to sound bitchy, but the shoes were SO BAD. Like the construction was just sloppy and awful, each shoe was shaped differently from its mate because proper care hadn’t been taken to ensure they actually matched and it was clear production had been rushed. Sym said “You could make better shoes than that!” and the fact is, I do. But what if I tried to make enough to sell them in stores? There’s no way I could have such careful attention to detail if I was trying to whip through dozens of orders a week! It’s been suggested that I could hire people to make the boots for me but again, how could I ensure the quality? When I was a kid my mom hired people to sew clothes for her doll business and I remember her picking up a batch of little red velour baby doll pants that the seamstress had just royally half-assed, wasting all the fabric my mom had supplied as well as the time it would take to remake them. I don’t think I would be able to deal with that, and let me tell you, leather hides cost a heck of a lot more than velour! My mom actually talked to me about it a lot and her advice was to do it only as much and as long as it was fun, and I think for me, that’s the right way to look at it, at least for now.

Now that Gwen has sort-of started talking it seems like she’s just less and less of a baby every day. I mean OBVIOUSLY she hasn’t been a baby for a long time (SOB) but the not-talking allowed us to keep thinking of her as one. No more though, she’s a big kid now. She’s very into helping around the house. She loves putting laundry in the washing machine and she’ll let us know when it’s time to put it in the dryer (although she won’t help with that because she doesn’t like touching wet laundry). She can put her own clean laundry away, almost always in the right drawers too. She’ll put her dirty dishes in the sink and loves helping to unload the dishwasher. She will wash her hands all by herself (and even asks to do it but saying “hah?” and rubbing her hands together) and sit on the potty every day (just sit though). She still has little interest in watching tv other than Yo Gabba Gabba, but she’s gotten REALLY into books recently. We read her faves (The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Dark, The Gruffalo) multiple times a day. I can ask her if she wants a hug and she’ll answer “yeh” or “nya” and if it’s the former she’ll ran over to to me to get said hug. She likes to give her toys lots of kisses and sometimes will even give one to me.

She’s also become even taller and effectively grew out of her stroller. It seemed kind of stupid to get a new stroller for a two-year-old but we don’t have a car and walk almost everywhere. She’s just not big enough to walk around for hours and hours but she’s too big to carry around for hours and hours so here we are. We ended up getting a BOB Revolution Flex, which has a height-adjustable handlebar (Taylor is very excited about this feature, being absurdly tall himself). Gwen loves it; as soon as we unboxed it and got the wheels on she clambered up into the seat and was content to stay there for the evening. Taylor tried to take her out so he could fold the stroller up and put it away and she had her biggest temper tantrum ever. I was like PICK YOUR BATTLES, MAN, WE CAN PUT IT AWAY AT BEDTIME. Unfortunately the day the stroller arrived was also the day it started raining again, and we had to order the raincover (“Weather Shield”) separately and it hasn’t even shipped yet. We were able to take her out for a couple quick strolls on Saturday but that’s all. Hopefully the cover will ship today and arrive soon because we are looking down the barrel of many months of rain here in Vancouver.

3 Replies to “January 5th”

  1. Love the pics. I agree with your Mom ..only do it if you love it, once it becomes a business quite often the love is gone. I don’t know if Sym told you but I’m going to be Grandma again. Candace is due sometime in June. So excited.

  2. Alison did the same thing when we bought our double stroller last month. We keep ours in our car but since she went with me to buy it, she begged me to bring it inside and for two days she wanted to sit in it with the seat reclined “like a baby”. Toddlers are hilarious.

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