Elizabeth is 4-and-a-half. She likes Hello Kitty and she likes crafts.

My parents got her the 35th Anniversary Hello Kitty Colors pack, which contains five small plush Hello Kittys in five different colors.

My brother and sister-in-law bought her a Hello Kitty Dress Me doll, which I’d given up on because it was out of stock on Amazon, but they found her one. (We’d considered the Ty Hello Kitty as an alternative, but I think the Dress Me is way better—more like a doll in shape.)

We got her some pajamas with kitties on them and a Hello Kitty marker-by-number set, but we want to buy her one more thing. Here are some of the candidates:

This is significantly more than I wanted to spend, but a Hello Kitty dollhouse?? I think she would FAINT. Why are dollhouses SO EXPENSIVE?

Hello Kitty clock. I like it, but I had in mind something less practical.

Would she LOVE a stamp set, or would it mean she’d draw less? Would the alphabet stamp set help her when she wanted to write words but couldn’t handle the letters? or would it keep her from continuing to try her letters?

Magnetic dress-up dolls: tons of fun? or tons of pieces lost all over the house? (I’m also considering the boy version for Henry—but why is the boy version costumes instead of outfits?)

Rob just explained to me how the concept of terminal velocity could assist with shoveling. Paternity: established.

I finished my second Knitted Thing!

I used Lion Brand Homespun yarn, in the colors we had on hand. (We have a huge pile of yarn and needles and things from my mother-in-law’s house, and I’d bought the pink and yellow on clearance to practice with.) I found the yarn medium-difficult to work with because it’s all kinked and fuzzy, but I liked trying a different yarn. I cast on 50 stitches, which turned out to be kind of a lot for a beginner: it seemed to take FOREVER to make any progress. I’d intended for the 50-stitch side to be the short side of a rectangle, but I ended up making it the long side.

Rob taught me how to do stripes, so that’s what I was practicing. I didn’t plan how many rows to do each stripe or how many stripes to do of each color. I did pink and added purple, then dropped pink and added blue, then dropped purple and added yellow. Then I felt like I was done, so I stopped. The finished Thing is about 12×17 inches. I am hoping the cat will want to sleep on it, but so far she is shunning it in favor of a piece of bubble wrap. What is it with her and plastic? She’s always licking it or sleeping on it.

[Edit: Look what I found when I went out to the living room!

She accepts it!]

Now I’m working on something I hope will be a knit headband. I wear my hair twisted up in a clip, so hats don’t work. What I want is a hatlet that will go over one ear, across the top of my head (where I have always pictured a heat-venting hole, like a whale’s blowhole, ever since learning as a child that heat is lost through the head), and back over the other ear, tying…somewhere (under the chin seems too bonnetlike, behind the neck seems like it might slip off).

I started it with just a few stitches for near-the-tying-place and then wanted to increase to covering-the-ear width, and Rob and I had learned Knit One Front & Back from the Knit Witch when he needed it for a diagonal-stripe scarf, so I decided to use that. Here’s his scarf in progress:

I was glad Rob had been using Knit One Front & Back for awhile so he could watch and advise. (The best part was when I hesitated and he said “Now catch the sheep…” exactly as if tenderly coaching a young child.) At one point I realized I’d increased in the wrong place, and I said, “Oh! But I can just undo it, right?” and he said, “Yes, but, uh….” and I slipped the two stitches off the needle. Then I didn’t know what to do next. He said, “Yeah, you don’t know what to do with that, do you. Here, give it to me.”

I’m SO much more tolerant of my mother-in-law’s flaws now that she’s dead. It’s not like I see them as less flawlike now. It’s more like—well, let’s say you were having a baby, and you had HORRIBLE labor pain, and you were all, “OMG THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN I’D EVER IMAGINED, DYING DYING DYING!!” And then the baby was born an hour after the first pains began. Well, the pains were still horrible, but they were over so much sooner than expected, and so now they don’t seem as bad. It’s like that.

Our first Christmas card arrived and is an excellent test of the Christmas Card Scoring System, but I’m worried about quoting from it because OMG WHAT IF THEY GOOGLE THEIR OWN CHRISTMAS LETTER? But that’s not likely, is it? Er…is it? But perhaps someone who reads this blog has received the same letter and would know who it was and would tell them. I’m remembering when Sundry‘s dad found her blog because of searching for the recipe for a drink they had during his visit. Or I might not be remembering the details exactly right (recipe? drink?), but that was the GIST, and I spent some time searching for the post so I could get the details right and I kept getting distracted by the archives and anyway my point is that it’s better to be paranoid safe than caught sorry. But I don’t think I can help it. [Edit: Here’s the Sundry post! Thank you, Robyn!]

Normally we use the C.C.S.S. for reflecting our happiness in receiving cards: scores are not LITERALLY given. But every so often, maybe once or twice a season, we use the C.C.S.S. to demonstrate why a card is so amusingly bad. Perhaps the writer forgets that not everyone wants to hear about her neighbor’s gall bladder. Perhaps the writer forgets that a preachy Christmas letter is either preaching to the choir or else preaching to the people who made an informed decision not to join the choir. Perhaps the writer forgets that a parent’s love for and interest in his or her own children is notoriously out of proportion to other people’s love for and interest in those same children, and that adjectives such as “amazing” and “beautiful” and “incredible” and “brilliant” are best used only with the child’s other parent. Whatever the situation, the card sends its readers into tears of incredulous laughter the vast majority of cards are NOT going to provoke even if they quote a few verses and brag a little about the children.

So. This card. They get +5 for sending a card, and it falls within the reasonable idea of “pretty” and so that’s another +3. It includes a letter, which is +5. The letter is not particularly informative or interesting (their children are wonderful!—no details, just an adjective; they took an autumn walk!), but I think it tries, and I tend to award those points for any effort at all, so they can have +2 (out of a possible +3).

In the beginning of the letter they were going to get -3 for saccharine/cheery, but they crossed the line and got +2 instead for mockability.

The best part really was the “blessed/blessings” count, which was funnier and funnier as I kept finding them: eight in the letter proper, including three in one paragraph alone, and THEN, there was a postscript SOLELY for the purpose of offering another blessing. THEN I looked at the CARD, where they’d written it AGAIN. Ten blessings in all, for a grand total of 9 points lost (because the first usage is allowed as a special holiday lenience).

They also used the word “special” three times, and the word “fellowship” once (one use feels like ten). Those aren’t on the points list but I found they added to the amusing impact of all the blessings.

There were four paragraphs, and each one contained 1-2 Bible verses (including one that explained what a torment earthly life is but happily it goes by fast—how festive!), each one accompanied by a plug for the Bible: “Read the entire chapter. It’s awesome. Of course the entire Bible is amazing.” “If you want to read an exciting book this one is it!!” There was also a reminder that all blessings are theirs because they follow The Lord and because our nation follows The Lord also. So that’s -5 for preaching/piousness.

One mention of a colon-related illness, but no entertainment/informational value so that’s -1.

Let me just put on my math medal for this calculation…..their card gets 2 points. It seems like it should get more points considering how very much I enjoyed it. Perhaps crossing into mockability should be +10 instead of +2.

Oh hi, hi. Fine, fine, and you? The weather, I know! Crazy! …Oh that? The ad I’m casually leaning up against, petting in a way that calls your attention to it? Pff, it’s nothing. Just, you know, MY NAME IN AN AD.

(My name is indeed Kristen. TRUE STORY.)

The ad (this one isn’t clickable—it’s just a picture) is what they’re using for the latest paid review over on the review blog. This one involved softening two pounds of butter. I am going to have to spend my pay on bigger jeans. And more butter.

This paid review, like the last one, involves a drawing for a $100 Visa gift card. If only there was something to spend such a thing on, this time of year. Well, go enter anyway.

I would also like to call your attention to an assortment of Etsy Love posts that include giveaways, in case you are short on gifts [note from the future: posts are gone, so links are deleted]:

1. haworth handmade: choice of embroidered wood ornament or embroidered felt rock

2. Small Grapes: six fat quarters of Erin McMorris fabric

3. Relic: choice of coin bracelet or coin earrings

This is the perfect time of year to buy things for oneself. If anyone asks about the packages and bags, look coy and say, “It’s a SECRET!”

I had a terrible dream last night about Henry, and when I woke up I DID feel relieved it wasn’t true, but I also thought nauseatingly of the dream every time I looked at him so it wasn’t a “wake up and hug the children” situation, more of a lingering bad/sad feeling.

And I also dreamed I found the perfect cat for us, and so now I’m kind of sad that we can’t have that cat.

I’ve been Very! Busy! recently, and it’s making it hard to turn my attention to the children. If they need food or potty help or something practical, it’s easier—but if they need to show me a series of magic tricks, or climb on me, or make jokes, or tell me the plot of a TV show, or talk about a series of topics one sentence at a time spaced one minute apart, I’m clenching my teeth and DYING to get back to what I was doing.

I found a trick that helps: I put one hand on the child’s back or shoulder, or I hold the child’s hand, or pull the child onto my lap, or whatever makes sense for the situation—the gist of it is that I find if I maintain physical contact with the child, it’s easier to maintain mental contact.