We were sorting out her closet in a futile attempt to make room for all the clothes we knew were coming for Christmas when it somehow turned into a mini fashion show.
Although I’m still not quite sure what look she was going for.
Pimp? Heroin chic? Homeless?
Oh heck, what do I know? I’d live in jeans, sweaters, and long sleeve t-shirts (all black, of course) if I could. She could be the next hot thing in Haute Couture what with the leopard pattern (faux, as to not offend PETA), asian inspired silk pants and shoe, and the fleece robe complete with Mickey Mouse ears.
She designed it. My job was to photograph it.
“Take peek-tures, Mama.” So, I did. With my phone because the camera wasn’t handy.
I think this was the fashion model with attitude pose:
Then we got a close up of the hat and a slightly sweeter and more innocent face:
Wait – there were more models to photograph. She set up the shot just so and commanded me to hurry up.
Then a group shot designed solely, in my opinion, to show that she is clearly the most beautiful supermodel in the whole, wide world.
And then a tiny bit of goofing off with friends to end the long day of hard work.
We started out the morning like this:
Then came a quick trip to Home Depot to agonize (once again) over kitchen floor tile.
Well, not so quick – we had to detour due to yet another big rainstorm.
Which apparently tuckered her out:
(She bought the hat – well, WE bought the hat after she found it on sale for 50% off – at Home Depot of all places.)
The tiling arguments, errr – discussions, wore us out, too. So we bought none and headed home.
Where we discovered that the 30 minute catnap was plenty long enough for her but not nearly long enough for us.
She finally wound down hours and hours later and kicked back for a leisurely evening in with a comfy pillow and a favorite (and super loud) toy strategically placed just close enough to Mama to drive her nearly batty after she was forced to hear animal sounds interspersed with an electronic rendition of “Old McDonald” at least ninetythousandmillion times…in a row.
I love these days.
The toddler version, anyway.
Here she is ready to head off to daycare with her Rudolph hat. Her teachers told me she refused to take it off and wore it all day long.
Who knew that daycare had homework?
Oh wait, J knew. He knew because he picked up the sheet with the assignment, that one that he left in his truck over the weekend, leaving Ava (well, me) only a short time to to complete her project. And since I’m a professional procrastinator when it comes to schoolwork anyway, J and I were frantically cutting and gluing and stealing images from the internet at the last minute in order to make sure she didn’t go in empty handed on the day the class was learning about winter holidays important to each student’s ethnic heritage.
Oh yeah, and we had to make a flag. Thank heavens she’s from China because that made the flag ever so much easier. J handled this part – gluing yellow construction paper stars to a piece of red construction paper.
Once the flag was complete I was tasked with illustratatng the Lunar New Year on the flip side of the flag. This was not as easy as it sounds since it’s kind of hard to compress the (arguably) most important holiday of the year onto a 9×12 canvas. Not to mention, my printer was almost dead so the image quality was crap AND we didn’t have even one non-dried up glue stick in the house so we had to use regular old Elmer’s glue which was a mess. I didn’t figure out either of these things until almost midnight, by the way.
Ava did help paste a couple of the items on but she lost interest rather quickly since there was an Eggo waffle calling her name for breakfast. I finished it up, blew it dry with a hair dryer, and only then figured out it wouldn’t fit in the laminator. No time to do anything else so off we went with my apologies for being so disorganized and bearing a crumpled piece of paper with approximately 14 cups of damp glue holding everything together.
Except we were one of a very few who even bothered to complete the project so her flag was featured very prominently on the classroom bulletin board. She was pleased as punch…especially since her picture was on there for everyone to see.
However. It did raise one stupid/negative question from one of the staff members at her daycare since they took this as an opportunity to ask me questions about her adoption which annoyed me because #1 it’s happening during the most chaotic time of the morning when everyone is dropping their kids off and I’m running late as always and #2 she was asking somewhat personal questions about Ava’s birthparents and abandonment (using somewhat unpolitically correct terminology) in front of Ava’s whole class, kids and parents alike. I was pretty proud of myself for answering calmly instead of snarkily and telling her that I would be happy to discuss the relevant parts of Ava’s adoption if she would like to step outside of the classroom to do so. It was about this time that she realized she’d overstepped a bit and backed off straightaway.
Please forgive the photo quality (iPhone) and the amateurish first attempt at sharing a bit of Chinese culture. All in all, I was pretty proud of us since we’re still really new at this helping kid with homework thing. I’m sure we’ll get better with time. Or that Ava can do her own homework – I like that solution much better anyway.
I’ve always been a bit uneasy about Hoo.ters (the restaurant, people). While they do have decent wings, I just can’t get comfortable with the concept. This is no reflection on anyone who chooses to go there or to work there as I’ve certainly been known to frequent it a time or two, although not recently.
Having a daughter has definitely solidified my views on Hoot.ers (still talking about the restaurant, people). I will not take her there anytime in the near future (or ever) because I do not want her exposed to any place that requires its adult female employees to dress in toddler sized clothing while allowing the male employees to wear clothes that actually fit them. So much for equal treatment, eh? Oh wait, I guess it does require Hoote.rs (not the restaurant this time, people) to serve plates of hot wings and baskets of fries. Bona fide job requirement? I think not.
So…since J and I both love, love, love hot wings we had to find an alternative. We made them at home, we tried them at non-wing specific restaurants, we tried them at other wing specific restaurants but nothing exactly worked for us.
Until our goddaughter, Izzy, recommended Quaker Steak and Lube. Okay, maybe it was her dad that suggested it but whatever. And since all the servers, both male and female, wore inoffensive clothing we figured we’d give it a go. Izzy even brought Ava a coloring book in honor of her first visit there.
OMG. One trip and we were hooked.
The wings are good, the restaurant provides complimentary goldfish crackers for the little ones to munch on while waiting for our entrees, there are decent alternatives for kids meals other than deep fried chicken nuggets, mac-n-cheese, and fries. And, to reiterate, the wings are very, very good – especially the hot ones.
Ava thought so, too.
We’re so proud of her. She munched on her first hot (really, it was hot) wing like a pro. No celery although she did practically lick the ranch dressing out of the cup…except in the interest of full disclosure she pretty much does that anytime she’s exposed to ranch dressing (she gets that from me, by the way).