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Pahs and Pah Monsters
\As you know, we have a bit of a “pah” obsession going on in our house. Pahs would be Baby Bug’s affectionate name for a pacifier. We don’t call them binkys or pacies or anything like that. We call them “pahs.”
I think it started back when she was first learning to talk. She probably meant to say pacifier but shortened it to the first syllable like she did to most words back then. Probably because she was teaching me her language as much as I was teaching her mine, we adopted her word for her beloved pacifier and so it has been ever since.
Um. Well… sort of.
A while back, at Baby Bug’s two-year check up, we had a heart to heart about her pah with her doctor. The doctor said she didn’t really need it anymore. There wasn’t a problem with her having it but she was a big girl now and just didn’t need it. Baby Bug listened solemnly and gave up her pah that very day. Of course she still needed it during nap time and bedtime but no more carrying around three or four and one in her mouth every hour of the day. I though that was great and bragged about her achievement to everyone who would listen.
Then Toby left for two weeks and between missing her Daddy and her molars coming in and me just wanting the whining to stop…she fell off the pah wagon hard. Half a year later, the pahs are as much of a our daily life as they have ever been. I wave my white flag in defeat. We are embracing the pah in our household. She’ll give it up when she’s three, I hope. Or not. Whatever. I could go on and on with this subject but I have other things to blog about.
Like the Meanie Greenie Pah Monsters!
It was one of those days where the hours before bedtime waxed long and I didn’t really want to go to the boring old park AGAIN. I’m so bored of the park.
Sometimes on my way to the park, I squeeze my eyes shut and wish that some kind of amazing toddler-appropriate theme park with rides and trampolines and big blow-up bounce houses would magically appear where the old sandbox and swings and dumb winding-pipe slide is. And while I’m daydreaming maybe there would be slushie stand where you could get tequila in your slushie if you knew the right password or something. Just kidding!
Anyway! The park is boring and I didn’t want to go. It was a cold gray day and I wanted to stay inside because I’m a lazy homebody, I admit it. What I really wanted to do was play on my computer.
So I did what any laptop addict would do in my situation. I cajoled Baby Bug into sitting on my lap and “helping” me play on my computer. This is sort of tricky since she has a very short attention span. Though my adobe illustrator skills are keen, they are not quite fast enough or entertaining enough for her. I had to work fast. With her help in picking out colors and directing where the eyeballs should go, we made some monsters. Then we had to give them pahs. Because anything that is worth anything has to have a pah of course.
I printed them out onto iron-on transfer paper and ironed them onto some old muslin I had around. Then I sewed them up into little pillows except this time I filled them with rice instead of stuffing.
So now they are bean bags! Or rice bags, if you want to get technical. I suppose this means I could nuke them in the microwave and put them on my aching shoulder muscles too but that was not my purpose in creating them.
Meet the Pah Monsters. That’s Greenie, Pinky and Yellowie. Pinky is sad because he does not have a pah. Obviously. Baby Bug took to them right away (and why would she not since she helped create them) and has acted out several play-time conversations with them.
Most of her conversations have Pinkie crying dramatically and Yellowie saying “Nah nah nah, I have all the pahs!” or something like that. I know. What am I encouraging here? Anyway, they are fun and they work pretty well for tossing into holes cut in a box too.
Bean bags are great. I think I’ll be making more of these.
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watercolors and funky pants cards
We got the watercolor paints out again the other day. I LOVE watercolors. We haven’t been painting with them as much ever since I introduced the wonder of acrylic paint to Baby Bug. She thinks watercolors are for sissies now. Who wants to paint with the wimpy watercolors when there are messier, goopier, gooier paints to be had?!! So I had to hide the acrylics for a while.
Thankfully, if I seem to be having fun with the wimpy paints, Baby Bug is likely to join in the fun. So fun we did have! We blew the paint around the paper with straws and made funny many-limbed monsters like this green monster:
We painted marbles and rolled them around on the paper. That was a lot of fun. I read about doing this in an old issue of Wondertime Magazine. They have great photos that instantly sucked me in. I never even really read the directions but got the gist of what to do by just looking at the photos.
Then we painted some leaves from our neighbor’s Japanese maple tree. It was a little tricky for Baby Bug’s little hands to hold the leaf still but that didn’t really matter. She’s more about the process than the end result anyway and anything that combines her love of paint AND leaves was a win-win situation for her. I think she would have painted every leaf on the tree if I would have let her.
When we were done, we had quite a gallery of paintings to hang up on my make-shift drying line—that is actually the party lights we have strung from the rafters of our patio roof. I’ve been eye-balling the art gallery clotheslines (can’t find a link right now but I’m sure there is one somewhere) that many artistic mom-bloggers have been writing about lately but I’m a little short on wall space so the party lights will have to do. I actually liked the dangling art decorating our patio so I left it up for a couple of days.
It’s just fun to collaborate with her this way. I’m sure we’ll keep doing this for years to come but it will probably be more of a push and pull than it is right now where I just take over and do whatever I think is best.
We sliced and diced and then had some fun with the stick glue. Two hours later I made made a whole passel of fun little graphic cards. They are a little more modern than my usual fare but I like them.
I had father’s day in mind as well some sympathy cards for some relatives of ours. Toby’s aunt passed away earlier this week and I thought they might appreciate something that celebrates life but is not cliche like something you would buy at the grocery store. Toby’s got plenty of artists in his family so I think they will get it.
In fact, his aunt was quite the quirky artist herself. That’s her on the far left. Check out her pants. I didn’t know her well but I loved her because of those pants. That and her house was the most amazing house ever. I wish I would have taken pictures the two times I visited. I’m sure it’s been written up in a magazine somewhere. It’s that kind of house. She will be missed I’m sure.
So these cards are sort of a tribute to her and all the people out there who wear funky pants to weddings. I think she would have liked these cards.
