Tag: girls

Posted on

A Conversation I Shouldn’t Have Had to Have

Emmy and I had just taken Lily to school. I left Emmy playing in my bedroom while I jumped in the shower. As I came into the bedroom to get dressed, Emmy paused in her playing and looked at me.

“Mommy, why do you have only one nipple?” she asked.

I was prepared for this question; her big sister had asked me that very same question when she was about Emmy’s age.

“I had cancer, and the doctors had to take it off,” I answered, as I started getting my underwear and bra on.

Emmy thought about this, and then she said, “Did they use a special scissors?”

How to answer that one?

“Close — the doctors used a special knife.” I suppose a scalpel is a kind of a knife.

Showing empathy with my close encounter with said knife, Emmy then asked, “Did it hurt?”

Well, I had been knocked out for the actual surgery. “No, the doctors made sure it didn’t hurt,” I told her, not wanting to go into all the pain I did feel after the surgery.

Emmy followed me into the bathroom. I smeared lotion on my face while Emmy peered up at me.

“Mom, I want to look like a kitty-cat today,” Emmy declared.

My children know what I look like. They know, and they love me just the same.

Posted on

Silly Bands Holder

Lily is the brains behind this invention. Last summer, she wanted a way to transport her silly bands on our vacation without them getting all tangled up in her suitcase. I looked around the house and handed her an empty toilet paper roll. It worked perfectly! However, that plain brown roll of cardboard just wasn’t fancy enough for my taste. So when the girls had a day off from school last Monday, we fan-ci-fied a couple of silly band holders.

Emmy’s been keeping her silly bands on a paper plate on the top of her dresser. While silly bands don’t seem to be the rage any more, kids still like them. The girls have received silly bands in goody bags for Halloween (see the bat?) and birthdays.

We gathered together our supplies: toilet paper rolls, scissors, a ruler, scrapbook paper, a pencil, paintbrush, and Mod Podge. I had Lily measure the length of the toilet paper roll, and then we added a couple of inches to our measurement. This craft was a great introduction to using a ruler! I also showed Lily how to measure the paper, draw a couple of dots, and then place the ruler by the dots to draw a straight line.

Emmy practiced her scissor skills; holding the scissors correctly and cutting on a line.

Lily is painting Mod Podge onto her piece of scrapbook paper. We wrapped the paper around the toilet paper roll. I made some slits on the excess paper at each end, and folded the tabs in, which helped the edges have more of a finished look.

I held the newly papered roll while the girls painted Mod Podge on the outside of the roll to protect the paper and give it a smooth finish. While I originally wanted to use a sponge brush, the bristles on Lily’s paintbrush gave us a nice texture. We could have made these holders even fancier by gluing a ribbon on the seam of the scrapbook paper, but as this was more of a spur-of-the-moment craft, we bypassed the ribbon. Here is Emmy’s completed holder, doing its job of reining in those silly bands!