It’s good to have Toby back so now we can get back to our normal routine around here. HA ha hahahahah! What normal routine? Just kidding. It is really good to have him back though.

I don’t think Baby Bug has shut up for one minute since he has been home. I think she saved up every bit of information that happened over the two-week span that he was gone and is now trying to tell him all about everything. When she catches her breath and forgets what she was talking about, she’ll just start rattling off about whatever she sees. (I wonder where she gets that from?)

“Daddy. Did you know that the light is bright? See the light? See the light?! That light up there on the ceiling? And the heater, it has polkadots on it. It’s warm and cozy. I like to sit by it when I’m cold. And Pouncy-wounce, he is the cat. I lub Pouncy-wounce. He had the sneezy-sneezes… He had to go to the cat doctor and get a bandaid.” etc. etc. etc.

And on and on and on she goes until she falls asleep mid-sentence. I love that she is a chatterbox but it just cracks me up sometimes. I remember driving around in the car with her and talking to her non-stop when she was little little. She would just look at me and suck away on her pacifier and I would wonder what it would be like to have her talk back to me someday. Well, I wonder no more. Now I can hardly get a word in edgewise.

If I do interrupt her, she furrows her eyebrows at me and glares at me as if to say, “Mommy you’re getting me off track. Please be quiet so I can finish my train of thought.” If I ignore her (which I often do since her chatter is so endless it can blend in like white noise after a while) she will poke me and yell, “Mommy! Hear me!”

Oh, my little dear child with the voice of a very large lion.

Toby is finding it all very charming. But then he’s only been home for a day. I give him a week and he’ll closing his office door again. It’s kind of hard to get work done when you have a running commentary going on all day long. Good thing we’re heading out to the sticks on Thursday to get ready for my nieces tenth birthday party. I think by then Toby might need a little break!

Flashlight from secretagentjo on Vimeo.

Here’s a little taste… though she toned it down a bit for the camera. Also, I apologize for the wobbliness. Bad camera holding. I know.

Click on photo to see explanation. If you don’t have a flickr membership, you should! Flickr rules.

Since I haven’t had any birthday parties to put all my energy into, I’ve funneled some of my excess brain snappage into some packaging for a Gumball Takes Over the World Kit. Now everyone can play along! Put away your iron and heat-transfer paper, I’ve done it for you!

I think my next project will be ordering some Gumball t-shirts. I haven’t come up with a Secret Agent Josephine design that I can stick with longer than a month so I think when I make the big jump into screen printing (read: pay someone to screen print for me) it will be with Gumball. The front will be his cute little mug and the back will be his butt and the daring “kiss my asterisk” slogan. I know some of my relatives will raise their eyebrows and shake their head that I’ve slipped over to the dark side but I can’t help it. I think it’s funny and I’m keeping it real.

Which by the way is totally Toby’s fault. He’s the one who told me to put an asterisk on Gumball’s butt. Brilliant, no? This also comes from the guy who photoshopped my butt into an animated giff one day to shut me up when I was complaining that I needed to lose some weight. (Read this post to get the whole story). I’m going to start a category called “Toby humor” just so you can see why I keep him around…

That and the fact that he gave my little girl the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world. She may have gotten my color but the shape and the wide-set-ness is all him. From her nose up she looks like Toby. From the nose down she’s me. Poor kid. She’s got my round face and chin and will probably grow up to have my jowls and a double chin too.

Anyway, this post is not about genetics, it’s about GUMBALL!!! I took the photo above so you can see that Gumball has been kid tested and approved! I don’t know if the heat-transfer paper is safe for teething on but Gumball as a toy, is safe and great for throwing.

As far sewing goes, these may not be seamstress approved. He is a “lumpy pillow” after all. So he’s not perfect. I just thought I’d warn you before you rushed off to my Etsy Shop to buy yourself one. If you want a perfect Gumball you’re probably better off downloading your own pdf and making your own.

ALSO! One more thing: I’ve got some valentines up my sleeve that I’m printing for my Etsy Shop. So if you’re thinking of shopping, you might want to hold off until next week.