Cute Qwips

Madeleine’s teacher at church stopped me on Sunday and told me what Madeleine said in class the previous Sunday. The lesson was on prayer and how we begin our prayer by saying, “Heavenly Father”. Her teacher told me that Madeleine then announces to the whole class that Heavenly Father is not real to which one of her little friends in the class says, “yes he is, he’s a spirit!”. We had a little talk about Heavenly Father when she came home from church. I told her what her teacher had said and told her that Heavenly Father was indeed very real. She tried to tell me that “no he isn’t because I can’t see him”. I said to her, “Do you have a heart?”, she said she did, and I said, “How do you know you have a heart? Can you see it? Heavenly Father is the same. Sometimes we can’t see or touch something, but that does not make it any less real.”. – Wow! What a proud parent I was to find out she was spreading false doctrine at church!

Madeleine loves to blow me kisses, and they are my absolute favorites because she adds such a nice sound effect with her wind blowing the kiss. It makes me smile every time, no matter how busy I am. After she blew me a kiss tonight she said, “you can’t see my kiss, but it’s magic.”. You know what, she’s exactly right, those kisses are magic.

At 4.5

Why is it that time before Madeleine seemed to go at a snails pace and now it feels like it is on hyper speed? I despise it! I cannot believe she will turn 5 this year. Five seems so old to me. At 5 you are really no longer a baby, and then there’s that whole school thing – yikes!

I hope I can always remember how fun she is at 4.

We were at the grocery store the other day and this elderly lady came up and starting fussing all over Madeleine with how cute she was, patting her on the head, blah, blah, blah. She walks away and Madeleine says, “Uh, Mom, that grandma touched me.” . It totally had me in stitches.

Because Madeleine is so tiny she gets lots of looks anyways. She absolutely hates it when kids, obviously smaller than her will say, “what a cute baby” to her. She’ll look at me and say, “Why did they call me a baby?”. We were at the park on Saturday and I was letting her ride her balance bike (basically a regular bike, but it has no pedals or training wheels so it teaches you to balance, she just pushes off and picks her feet up to ride it) as I was run/walking the park. There’s one big hill on the backside and I let her ride down it. She was quite the head turner as she’s flying down the hill. Several people stopped me to ask how old she was or to comment how surprised they were to see a child so small balancing as she was.

Her favorite song right now is “Party Rock Anthem” because we have the Just Dance game for the Wii and she’s memorized just about the whole dance. She’ll put that song on repeat and go to town!

We talk very candidly about her adoption. She loves to hear how she was born. She knows she did not grow in my tummy because my tummy is broken. We were talking about it again one day and she said, “Mom, whose tummy did you grow in?”. Like, isn’t everyone grown in different tummies? She knows that she has a birth family that loves her so much, and I’m so happy she realizes that love is nonexclusive. My wish for her is she always remembers how special and loved she is by all.

We’ve been reading the Book of Mormon every night before bed, and she’s always the one to remind me to read. I love having her snuggled up to me in bed as she learns about the gospel.

I’m so very grateful that this special child is ours. I cannot imagine my life without her in it.

My other addiction

Since I’m full disclosure, I have another addiction.

I dream about this place. I can hardly contain myself while I’m there. The people know me there – like by name. There is no other place like it (that I’m aware of anyway).

Curiosity peaked? It’s Fabric World, yes, I’m a fabric geek like that.

As in true addict form, I spread my addiction to others so I’m less of an oddity. I tell the manager I’m ready for my advertising and commission check for the number of referrals I send to this place.

This is one of those places where it’s feast and famine, but I never leave without something. When it’s a famine, I’m still able to scrounge up some cheap notions like an 8 yard roll of pom pom fringe for $3, or buttons for a penny each. When it’s a feast, watch out! They get remnant fabrics from the fabric district in LA. Designer cottons, minky, home décor fabric. In fact on a normal basis there is nothing over $4/yd in the store – including the home décor stuff. However, when they have their really good remnant sales, it is only $2/yd. This is a no thrills store just fabric, and lots of it. I understand for many, the hunt and did thing is not there style, but for me it’s like a treasure hunt!

I hit a new low last time I was there because this stranger walks up to me and asks if my mom owns a bridal shop in Loganville (why yes she does), she said she and my mom got off tangent talking about fabric stores and that she was going to Fabric World. My mom mentioned that was one of my favorite stores and low and behold I was there when she ended up there. Caught like a deer in the headlights.

I’m usually in full manic mode while I’m there grabbing anything that catches my eye, so it took some incredible self constraint while I was there last to take some pictures with my ipod. Madeleine is always so good when we go, even though we, (I mean I) spend hours shopping. You can see her happily content buried in the shopping cart.

Because I sew a ton, and I have a little thing for fabric, it’s so incredibly difficult to have any form of control while I’m there. I can’t get fabric for that price anywhere! I get the bulk of the fabric for Madeleine’s clothes from here.

 

I keep threatening the staff that one day while I’m there I’m going to jump up on a table and start rolling around and throwing fabric like Uncle Scrooge in his money vault.

Love this place. I’ve banned myself for the immediate future, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it!

I’m a Shoe Addict–that’s the 1st step, right?

Okay, not for me. I don’t especially like shopping for shoes for me. I feel like I have gigantic feet (9 1/2), and I was always so embarrassed by them especially because I am not very tall. Shopping for shoes for Madeleine is a whole different story. I hope she’ll always keep her cute little feet. My weird feet wish for her is that she’ll end up a perfect size 7, isn’t the best shoes always a size 7?

Luckily, I am a bargain shopper. I make about 70% of all Madeleine’s clothes which works great for being able to perfectly fit her small frame, plus saves me a lot of money. However, I haven’t the foggiest idea how to make shoes, nor do I care! I get the majority of Madeleine’s shoes from the seasonal consignment sales in our area, and I scored big time last night! I spent a total of $34.50 on all the shoes in the above picture (minus the cute feet, they were priceless). The bulk of them were brand new with tags or hardly worn at all, and I got some fabulous brands (Nordstrom, Stride Rite, Old Navy). In case you were wondering, we have a thing for shiny shoes in our house.