Box of Memories

The Christmas holiday was incredibly busy around here.  We had lots of guests over a couple of weeks, all on the heels of birthday season and card making craziness.  I didn't really get much of a chance to write anything about it beyond the hunt for The Riddler and concert reviews, but there was sledding and three kinds of lasagna and homemade Indian food and lights that spelled out the word "Mold" everywhere (my brother was in charge of lights so don't ask me about it--I suggested we add more that spelled out "Mildew" and "Radon" just to make it even more festive but what do I know?) and a gigantic grey squash that turned into tiny muffins and campaign posters and telephone-pictionary and Scrabble.

Something I'd planned to post about and never got around to was my favorite gift this past year.  I finally buckled down and made a gift for Aden that I've had in mind for a while.

I make my kids' Halloween costumes every year.  My original thought, long ago, was to use the scraps from the costumes to make little toy versions of them each time and give them to the kids for their birthdays or Christmas.  That happened exactly once, when Aden was one year old, and I made her a stuffed bunny to match her bunny costume.  Then more kids, more costumes, more everything, but less free time.  So much for that idea.

But I liked that idea!  I never quite let it go.  And the thing is, Aden in particular is deeply sentimental.  She still has all of her old Halloween costumes in the closet.  I figured at this point having mini versions would give her something to hang onto that takes up less room, and maybe we can start discussing the possibility of passing those costumes along to other kids one day without it seeming as painful to her.

I dug through the sewing box and found fabric from all her past costumes, and hand stitched little versions of each stuffed with cotton balls.  I kept them kind of crude on purpose because they looked cuter.  I found blue beads to use for her eyes.  Then I got a simple box from a craft store and stained it and stuck all the little figures inside.

Aden loved it.  Actually, Aden cried when she opened it.  I joked that next time I would give her a present that made her happy, and she hugged me very hard and insisted it did.

Now, luckily for me, in eleven years Aden has been a kangaroo four times and a bat twice, so this wasn't quite as much work as it will be if I make Mona or Quinn such a box in a few years.  But it's still a good collection of little figures and I'm glad to have finally put it together.

I'm particularly pleased with the dragon:

All in a Row (Babble)

Welcome to our land of lines.  My son, for as long as he has been able to manipulate small objects, has been laying things out in rows.  I know my daughters did something like this as well, but not to the degree I see it in my son.  (Or maybe they did, and it’s been swallowed up in my memory with so many of the funny little things kids do that seem like they will last forever while they are happening, but then vanish without announcement like so much ephemera.)  As much as I know my girls laid things out carefully when they were younger (and to some degree still do), Quinn lays things out in rows with a consistency that I find noteworthy.  For him there is something compelling about laying things out in rows, and it becomes a part of every game.

This is Quinn making a store for some of his toys:

This is a typical sight on our deck:

Here’s Quinn at the Independence Day Parade laying out his candy haul.  (I don’t remember any candy at 4th of July parades when I was a kid, but my children do about as well at our local parade as they do at Halloween some years.)

This is his idea of helping me in yard:

At least when Quinn gets toys out the mess is sort of organized: 

 

I do wonder how much this tendency will translate into a personality that appreciates order when he’s older.  Not that I have delusions that he’ll keep his room neat as a teenager or anything, but you never know.  My brothers used to actually make their beds as kids, so such a thing can happen.  But I know I’m happy when I get a chance to lay out all my tools in a row at the violin shop, and I like it when my spice jars are evenly displayed on their shelves in my kitchen, so his penchant for lines isn’t foreign.  He probably got it from me.  There are certainly worse things he could have inherited!
However, this was his idea of putting away the things from the dollhouse when I asked him to pick up the living room before he went to bed, so my hopes aren’t high for too much order in the future:

In the meantime, at our house, you can count on the fact that all our ducks (and trucks and magnets and marbles….) are all in a row.