Plaster Fun Times

When Julia was first born, we received a gift of big wooden block letters spelling her name, which we hung on her bedroom wall.  When Madeleine was born, I looked into buying similar letters for her wall, only to find that the expense of purchasing nine letters was ridiculously high.  Instead, I painted a letter "M" for her and hung that on her wall, figuring it would suffice.

Over the course of the past few years, every time I took Julia to Plaster Fun Time, a kiddie-art joint filled with plaster figurines and wall-hangings that kids can paint themselves, I made sure to grab another of the letters in Madeleine's name.  By early winter of this year, I had reached the finish line.  All that remained to be purchased and painted was the final "E."  Piece of cake, especially seeing as Plaster Fun Time was one of the only options for a fun outing during a winter full of freezing weather and lots of snow.

Easier said than done.

We must have visited the store at least four times, only to discover that they were completely out of "E"s.  Since it's virtually impossible to go to Plaster Fun Time with both kids and leave without letting them paint anything, we instead amassed a large variety of plaster trinkets to clutter up our house.  So, despite our inability to finish Madeleine's name, we managed to collect these helpful items:

 A bunny.

 Ariel.

 A pig.

 A frog named Jaime and ANOTHER Ariel.

 A sparkly bear hugging a rainbow.

Another frog named Emily.

Yes, we most certainly do not want for useless plaster decorative items around here.  In fact, Ethan and I decided we would absolutely not return to Plaster Fun Time without proof that their "E" was back in stock.  Yesterday, we placed the call, and Hallelujah!  They had an "E!"  As if we were contestants on Wheel of Fortune, we packed the kids into the car and rushed on over.  "I'd like to buy a vowel, please!"

At long last, the name is complete, which meant we spent time after dinner last night finally getting those darn letters up on the wall.  Ethan decided to work in backwards order so he didn't have to measure out where to start in order to fit the last letter at the edge of the wall:

Madeleine didn't seem to understand.  "No, daddy, that's E!" she shouted in dismay.  "Daddy, THAT'S not how you spell my name!  First you need to do M!"

She eventually chilled out and let Ethan do his thing, growing bored of the long wait and starting to play instead.  When Ethan was finally done, it was as if Madeleine had forgotten all about the letter-hanging.  Looking up to see her name on the wall, she exclaimed, "Wow!  Isn't that AMAZING?"

The amazing view:

Because Ethan and I had both contributed to the painted letters, there is a bit of a discrepancy in the artistic skill apparent behind the paintings.  I have mentioned recently my inability to color in the lines.  If you look closely, you can see that I am not proficient at PAINTING in the lines either:

Meanwhile, Ethan got all badass artist on me and put my letters to shame with masterworks like these:

Thankfully, from a further viewpoint, the imperfections in my painting are much less apparent.

Madeleine happily went to bed in her newly personalized room, though her sleep wasn't as restful as we all would have liked.  I woke very early this morning to the sound of her brand-new croupy, bronchial cough, and I went in to check on her.

"Mommy!" she exclaimed brightly when she saw me.  "I got some COUGHS!"  Indeed, she did, and I curled up in bed with her to try and snuggle her back to sleep.  For awhile, she was quiet, and I sat listening to the sound of her raspy, phlegm-rattled breathing.  "Mom?"  she explained to me.  "I'm just SNORING."  She then settled back to her hoarse Darth-Vadar mouth-breathing.  At least for a few minutes.  Then:

MADELEINE: Mom!  Look!  My NAME!
ME: I know, you're so lucky!
MADELEINE: (thoughtful silence) Mom?  Why do you STINK at it?

That's right.  My freakishly artistic 3.5 year old daughter is a huge critic of my painting skills.  But that's okay.  She's already probably a better artist at her age than I am as an adult.  And I think it's pretty safe to say that, yeah, I do stink at it.

Julia is showing off her artistic skills in a different way today: "Mom?  I tried to, like, pick, like, a really FASHIONABLE outfit!" she proclaimed delightedly.  Here is what the little fashionista wore to kindergarten today:

Work it, girl!