Sunday, November 14, 2010

Who would have thought?

My 4-year old daugher Sophie has always been such a sweetheart. She's well mannered, polite, not hot-headed and easliy angered. Just your best kid ever, ya know. You'd never guess from the sweet pretty picture she took today, what she is really capable of (OK, my scanner does not work anymore and I don't think I am supposed to scan this type photo anyhow, so the rotten quality picture was taken as it hangs on the wall!).
It is true, my middle child indoctrinated me to the unbelievable things a 4-year old can do when he is bored and mischievious. I always expected him to do those things. I was caught blindsided when she did them!

Yesterday at her naptime, I thought she was resting. It was a tad noisy at times, which is not too unusual. She likes to sing and read books and sometimes play with her babies. She's always done these ON her bed though. She was such a stickler to my rule of "Stay in Bed", that it's been next to impossible to get her to go to the potty at naptime. When I went in to get her up (by then she had actually fallen asleep), I found half a box of diaper wipes and tissues everywhere. I found her in this velvet Christmas dress (above pic) that was only out of the closet yesterday so we could see if it fit before pictures today. And I found her with about 1/4 cup of seasalt all over her and her bed, conveniently matted and clumped everywhere with the wipes. Lucky for her, the salty mess wiped off the dry clean only dress easily. It was a royal mess, requiring washing of all the bedding and animal friends, etc. I was mad, but more shocked that she did that. She tried to tell her dad that she didn't do it. It was a pink bear named Sofina who lives under her dresser. Creative. Maddening, but creative. I know, I know, you are scratching your heads, wondering why the Hell there is seasalt in her room. (sigh...) She has a steam vaporizor that was used a month or so ago when she had a nasty cold & caugh. It takes a pinch of salt (so I keep a small cup on her tall dresser just for that). She was tickled to tell her brothers after the fiasco that she got introuble for (just) eating salt at naptime. If only.

Today was a different ballgame. She had been quiet during naptime, or so I thought. I have a monitor in my basement studio so I can hear her if she needs anything, and I heard nothing. I thought this to be a good sign. Wrong. At 3:30 I went up to get her up, and was a good 5 paces from her door and I could smell the unmistakable scent of Vicks. You guessed it, the Vicks that we rub on backs and chests when we have a cold. The scent of menthol permeated the upstairs. It was like a menthol factory explosion when I opened her door. You'd have thought that one of the boys might have mentioned the smell. But no. Lord, can they be obtuse sometimes. Oh God, I thought, as I opened her door. She may be asleep on her bed, but this has to be bad. I was so right. She'd gotten into the contents of a basket that used to sit on her dresser. It is gone now! She had slathered 3+ ounces of Vicks all over herself. If that was not enough, as I rummaged through the assorted and squeezed empty tubes on her bed as she still slept, I discovered two tubes of hydrocortisone creme, all gone. Another tube and a half of anti-bacterial ointment. Empty. And the grand-daddy of them all -- two tubes of Desitin, empty and creamed all over her, from her toes to her ears. It was the slimyest, most disgusting, super sticky, greasy mess I could have imagined. I had to bite my lip so as not to laugh or cry. I had to call her dad up to see and experience the utter shock. Just to smell what I smelt was shock enough. He had the joy of putting her into a bath and discovering just how much soap it took to remove her afternoon of mischief. Do you have any guesses???...I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that it is two hours later and she needs a bath. Her skin shines, and she could hardly get her pants on. At least today, Sofina did not come out and get blamed. I wish I knew what has come over her. These behaviors are so unexpected. I remember a few years ago, hearing a story from my sister-in-law about her neice. Little Helen was younger than Sophie when she smeared desitin on the family dog. I never thought that would happen here!

I have cleared everything important and medical out of her room. Gone are my great grandmother's stitcheries, and the pottery bassinet that had flowers in it given to my mom when I was born, and to me when she was born. Gone are all the baby blankets I made for the kids, and special photographs. I removed her pearl necklace and a bracelet from Italy. She was my little angel that was capable of having very nice belongings until now. Obviously, the little chair she has used to climb and get things with is gone, as are every possible medication. Gone is my trust!

So now that you all have had a great chuckle, I will show a couple things I did this week. Here's Sandy's quilt for a friend of her daughter. It is batik fabrics, but she didn't want the quilting to be a bit formal or traditional.
And Kathleen brought me this 123"x104" a couple weeks ago. Lucky for me, she's a master at making her quilts very square or this might have been the nightmare that my daughter's been! I posted on this earlier this week, about my thread dilemmas. The YLI threads I chose worked marvelously! I love how the trilobal variagated poly looks on the top, and it sewed so well.
The top is a regular flower garden. My choice of Woodlands pantograph, which is leafy, seemed to be a good choice. I just couldn't stitch flowers on this quilt which is nothing but flowers.
Here's a looksee at the back, where the pattern is more visible.
In closing, here's my stats for this quilt...
14 bobbins of 40 wt cotton - that is approx 0.44 miles just in the bobbins!
This panto pattern stitches out at 12682 stitches per row (2 rows per panto pattern)
10 repeats of the panto pattern for the entire quilt
253640 (approx) stitches total for the quilt (or 25364 inches of quilting for the entire quilt if you believe that!)
I am trying to keep some stats for each panto so I can better estimate my time to quilt as well as thread usage per pattern.



6 comments:

Trudi said...

Oh dear! What can I say, but I'm so glad mine are over that stage. When we were in the Netherlands in Military Housing, my son then 6 or 7 watched his little sister 2 or 3 use crayons to do a great rendition of the Red Arrows Smoke along the living room wall. Not so bad, except it was a textured white wall paper! I'm not sure who I was more mad at! LOL I hope things improve soon :)

Amy said...

Bless your heart. Hang in their Mom! Been there, done that.

Monica said...

LOL...you got off easy. When my son was about your daughter's age he decided to sneak off with a pair of scissors and cut the plug off my alarm clock WHILE it was still plugged in! Luckily he was not hurt but it scared the dickens out of him...and put a hole through the blades of my scissors.

It's amazing what they can do/get into when they're not being watched like a hawk.

Vicki W said...

Excuse me, but if she was sleeping in such a state why are there no photos for us? You must remember that it is your responsibility to preserve these special memories to share with her future spouse and other guests at the wedding.....and to show us.

Please do better next time! lol!

Strlady said...

I agree with Vickie. Pictures Please!! LOL! I had the visual on the desitin/vicks mashup. UGH!

Nyshma told me she recieved the quilt on Saturday but didn't have much time to take good pictures. The VW logo was excellent. Thanks!

Ivory Spring said...

Margaret, thanks for the heads up. Mine little one is going to be two soon. :)

Beautiful quilting!!! You do amazing work!