Present

As I mentioned, it was Ryan’s birthday last week. He’s 7 months younger than me, but looks at least 12 years younger. One day we’ll even out.

So Ruth and I made him his first official gaudy birthday present, which he will have to love and feign excitement about.

Ruth loves her some play-doh, so I thought we could make something out of it. What is better than glittered, sparkly paper weights as her first gift? Oh, it makes me giggle. Paper weights.
I broke out the dough in his favorite color and got everything ready for her. Her strained smile reminds me of my mom before going to see Les Mis.

Buttons were added carefully.As were gems.

Oh boy, I love it when she gets slack-jawed and sticks out her tongue while doing things. This means she’s serious.
And the end result. Not bad… if you’re going for that gypsy bridal gown kind of look. They’re proudly (at least that’s what he says) sitting on his desk at work.

Ruth then spent another ten minutes just playing with jar lids. (Notice the tongue again.) Learning how to screw things on and off has been her latest endeavor. It scares me.

About a month ago, my neighbor Jeran offered to watch Ruth so I could organize at home…. and I went bizerk. The shelves over our dining table housed our ‘How-to’ books, middle-school fiction books, random bulk foods, and last but not least, homeschooling material… because I literally cannot pass up anything homeschool related at garage sales.

We’re not even certain that’s what we’re going to do, but I’d still like to have it all on hand just to teach anyway. It included a 12 book science set (teacher manuals and student manuals), along with tapes and projector slides. Why. Why must I keep these? They’re probably teaching that the earth is flat.

Anyway, I spent a full hour hauling those bad boys along with other material upstairs… huffing and puffing and hoping I don’t go into labor. Jeran said my face was really flushed when I came back. But I was happy because it opened up room for my slowly developing craft/paper weight-making shelf. Thank goodness for old spaghetti jars.

Could I leave it like that, though? No. As Jeran puts it, when you’re pregnant, you want to organize the world.