Wow

If Jake wasn't a boy, I might think I had given birth to a clone.

Here are two pictures. One was taken today, the other was taken 35 years ago.

Terrible mommy moment

So, have you ever had one of those moments when your child is utterly terrified (or maybe even hurt), and as much as you want to comfort them and be sympathetic, it's all you can do to control your desire to laugh?  I had one of those this morning.  It was almost cartoon-like.  I was putting Jake in the car seat, and Nicole usually gets herself into the car and in the booster and can even get her seatbelt on most of the time.  But this morning, I guess something else caught her attention.

As I was getting Jacob buckled in, I heard Nicole scream.  I turned around, and saw her dangling from the bottom of the garage door!  Before I could even get to her, she lost her grip and fell.  The door was all the way up by the time she started yelping, so she probably fell a good 6 or 7 feet.  The poor little thing had scrapes on the inside of her hand, and was just trembling violently.  She was crying and was completely terrified.  She landed on her feet, and wasn't really hurt by the fall, but just hanging there appeared to have scared her almost worse than she's ever been scared before.

But seriously - think about it.  The vision of a four year old being pulled up with the garage door, and just hanging there.  I didn't see her on the way up, but I'm telling you - the brief second that she was hanging there was just hysterical.  I know I'm a terrible mom for thinking this was funny, but on the other hand, I can basically guarantee she won't ever do that again.

My latest addiction

Months ago, I made a vow to myself to not spend any more money on scrapbooking for the rest of the year.  I just suck.  I couldn't do it.  It's not because I'm lacking for supplies - I have plenty.  It's just that I'm missing the ability (vision) to take all of the papers and whatnot and use them to compose a layout that I love.  And when I'm stuck for inspiration, I wind up spending 3 hours on a single page, and I still don't love it.

I always used to use my monthly crop time with my friend (who used to be a CM consultant) to get fresh ideas and look at other people's books and get inspired again.  But she gave it up, and now I have no crop - no monthly inspiration to look forward to.  So I fixed that problem by joining Club Scrap!  There goes my vow not to spend any more money - I committed to 6 months, at $30/month.  Not terrible, but it definitely breaks my vow of no more stuff for the rest of the year.

However, here is the good news - I've discovered in the past few years that the layouts I love most have great color.  But again, not something I'm good at doing myself.  But Club Scrap has this "Assembly Line" deal, where they give you instructions for how to assemble your entire kit with no waste.  Eureka!  Exactly what I need!  And the best part - I downloaded all of the published instructions for past kits.  And even though I don't have those kits, I have heaps and heaps of paper that I don't know what to do with.  So starting last night, I dug out several 12x12 papers that I've had for (no kidding) nearly a decade.  I love them, but I couldn't figure out how to use them.  So I went through the Assembly Line instructions and found layouts using papers with patterns of similar scale, and found coordinating solids, and put together 8 background layouts.  I still don't have photos in mind for any of them, but at least I don't have the papers sitting there without a clue what to do with them.  I went to bed so happy last night that I couldn't sleep.  I think I'm going to be putting together backgrounds for probably the next month, but that's OK.  They will be new, and colorful, and completely fabulous!