Rosie the Riveter

Kate's school sent me this photo of her today:


Apparently Kate just had to try on one of her teacher's hair bows, so that is what she did!  After I had shown every one at my office the latest photo of Kate and then made it my phone screen background I got to thinking that it reminded me of something...

...Of another photo...

...I distinctly remember attempting to describe said photo to my coworker and failing miserably.  I think I said something along the lines of, "You know that war ad photo?  The one of the woman representing woman's rights?  Where she is showing her arm in a strong man's pose like this?"  [Cue Erin entering into a pose where she is attempting to flex her measly bicep muscle...at work.]

I didn't specify what war.  I didn't know her name.  I didn't even know her story, but I quickly found them all out.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Rosie:

Rosie the Riveter.

(Apparently I didn't fail miserably when describing Rosie because my coworker looked at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet and said, "You mean, Rosie the Riveter??"  Ugh, yes, thanks.  I didn't realize she went by that name.)

Rosie the Riveter.  Yes.  That's who I meant.  Kate's photo reminded me of Rosie's:

Did you know her name was Rosie?

From the blue shirt to the red/pink hair bow to the yellow background.  The similarities are uncanny, though I have to admit that Kate is much cuter and less frightening.  (Which I am extremely grateful for.)

Rosie's poster was created in 1942 as part of a series representing women who worked in factories during World War II.  Women took over a lot of the jobs that men would normally do while a lot of the men were off fighting the war.  Since production of war supplies was at its greatest demand and supply of men factory workers was at an extreme low, women took their place.

It's not just "it" that we can do, Rosie.  We can do anything!  (That will be my one and only feminist plug...for this post.  I think.)

Anyway, you can read more about Rosie here if you are interested.  There's a whole ton about her and the era in which she was created.  Perhaps this is a sign of the strong, independent woman Kate is destined to become.  Perhaps this is just another coincidence like the heart-shaped cheerio.

One thing is for sure, Little Miss Kate is one extremely lucky lady to be growing up in an age where women are distinguished closer to equals as men.  Where women have just as many opportunities and sometimes more than men.  Where it is common to hear of a stay-at-home Dad because the woman of the household is working.  It is because of many, countless strong women before her that have paved this mighty path of opportunity in front of her.

Who knows where women will be by the time Kate is old enough to read this post and understand some of the struggles in the past.  I certainly don't think Rosie sat long and hard and thought to herself about how this poster would be [apparently] common [name] knowledge in households seventy-two years later!  That, my friends, is history.

♥

PS: Did you know her name was Rosie the Riveter???

Heart Healthy

Since Cherrios are the quintessential kid food AND they promote their heart healthy benefits, we typically have a classic yellow box in our cabinet for Kate (and us) to munch on!  Nothing says childhood quite like that yellow box of Cherrios!

Anyway, the other day when Kate and I were having second breakfast we noticed that instead of the typical 'O' center that Cheeri-OHs are known for, this one Cherrio had a heart shaped center:

Cheeri-heart!

We looked through the other pile of Cheerios that we were snacking on and didn't see any more that resembled such a distinct heart shape.  So we're wondering, is this a simple coincidence - a heart healthy snack in the shape of a heart?  Or is this a purposeful creative marketing ploy to get people like me to buy another box to see if there are more Cheeri-hearts?!

You be the judge!

Dancing Queen

If you're an avid blog reader or know Kate at all, you know that she loves her some music!  It's only fitting that she also loves her some dancing too!  Tonight Kate was busting out all of her dance moves and even showing us ones that we had never seen before!  She just recently started incorporating twirling in her dance routine and it has become a fast fav!  Kate doesn't dance without a twirl or two these days!

I was so happy to be able to catch this on camera!  A few things to note before I bid you adieu:

1. Kate's dance moves include the twirl, the dizzy twirl, the Hawaiian car girl hula, the dwarf bounce, the high knee twirl, the spit-n-twirl, and the chicken wing flap.  See if you can spot them all before she spots the mark on the hutch that I need to clean off!  Thanks, Kate, for pointing that out.

2. Please ignore the dog that pops in at one point.  Even Jack doesn't mess with dancing Kate.

3. Please also ignore the semi-singing voice you hear for a moment.  Even though I had a camera in my hand I forgot I was filming.

4. I think we can add "dancing" to Kate's repertoire of words!

5. If you want another laugh, check out this music video.  It's a classic!

6. Enjoy!

The Bagging of Beans

Ever since we started on the transformation of the office into a little play room we have gone back and forth on what sort of seating we will have in there.  We debated on putting some sort of chaise lounge type of chair against the wall but the space is a little tight and we don't want to take up a ton of space with a chair that may or may not really be used.  (This is a child's play area.  Children sit and play on the floor in most cases and if that's where Kate is, that is where we are, so a chair could very well turn into decoration.)

We also wanted something cost effective (read: cheap) because it is going in a play room and the potential of juice, marker, paint, mud, chocolate, pb & j, [fill in the blank here] stains are endless.  (We don't promote eating outside of the kitchen or running rampant with dirty hands or feet, but we're just thinking realistically here.)

We happened upon the idea of putting bean bag chairs in the play room and we both really liked the idea, so we began searching for them.  We found expensive ones and not so expensive ones; boring ones and crazy ones.  We found every color, shape, and size imaginable, but it wasn't until we weren't looking for bean bag chairs that we happened upon two perfect ones: a purple polka dot one and a green polka dot one that match our purple and green colors in the room perfectly!

How cute are those chair covers?!  And they match perfectly!

They are DIY bean bag chairs so we had to buy the beans to go with them too.  Fortunately, both were right next to each other and all we had to do was pour the beans into the bean bag chairs and we had two perfect chairs.



Seems simple enough, right?!

Uh, wrong.

The beans in the bean bags were super static-y and they clung to anything and everything.  The mere act of rubbing them off seemed to create more static electricity which caused more beans to attach to whatever and wherever!  They did not let go at all unless they were rubbed with dryer sheets, which we SO ended up doing, so by the end of the bagging of these beans we were all rubbing static please un-cling these beans dryer sheets all over us to release the escaped beans.  (That genius idea was compliments of yours truly!)

We managed to unload all of our beans and fill our two perfectly matched polka dot bags to our desired beanocity.  (Bean + Density = Beanosity.)  Of course we took lots of photos and a little video along the way!

Playing with the bags-o-beans before we fill our bean bags.

Still playing...

...still playing...

...and still playing!

Uh oh.  Farm Boy is about to get rolled over by a bag of beans.

"Here, Mama.  You can hold Farm Boy while we play."

Static beans!

Bless her little heart.  Kate knew exactly where the escaped beans
should go.

And she loved being able to help manage the beans!

Jumping beans.

This blurry photo is Kate trying to rid herself of the bean attachments.

It didn't last long.

 

 Here is video evidence of the static cling these beans produced!

 



Kate thought taking her socks off would help,
but I think it may have made the cling worse!

Beans were literally EVERYWHERE!

Beaned Cleaned up and taking the bean bag chairs for a test run!

To me, Kate looks so big but so little in this picture!

And, last but not least, our iPhone favorite.

Did I mention that we beaned these bags at Mary and Tom's house?!  That may or may not have been Brian's idea!  We cleaned up very well, however, and the only beans left in the house were/are the ones we don't yet know about!  :)  Thanks for the hospitality for this project, Mimi & Papaw!

Finger Painting

Kate's Grandma and Grandpa sent over some finger paint and finger paint paper to her for Valentine's Day this year and we were all a little eager to try them out!

After lunch this past weekend we decided that it was a good time to whip those new paints out and give 'em a whirl!

Starting with our color palette.

Brian and I showed Kate how to "paint" and she was all for it!

She literally made a perfect rainbow on her first try!

Look at those hands!

She loved it!

And when she completed her rainbow, we pulled
another piece of paper out to work on a second
masterpiece!

This girl has got a creative craft gene like her Mama AND her Daddy.  (You all have seen all of the crafts that I have put Brian through and he has always been up for the challenge!  I think he secretly likes it!)

Then again, who doesn't like to make a big mess that they don't have to clean up!?

Proudly displaying the masterpiece on the fridge!

Snowy Valentine

One of the many things that I love about Columbus, Ohio is the downtown skyline.  When you are not from the area, you don't see the day to day details that downtown Columbus really embodies.  LeVeque Tower and the Nationwide buildings are notorious for changing their lights according to the season.  Around Christmas they are red and green and One Nationwide Plaza actually spells out 'HAPPY HOLIDAYS'.  In October, they are pink for breast cancer awareness month and in September, the Nationwide building says 'LIVE UNITED' for 9/11.  This is the same for many of the other buildings that help create the Columbus skyline.

Valentine's day is no different.  The buildings all have red or pink lights and there is just a little bit of love in the air that surrounds the city.  This year One Nationwide Plaza created a heart on their building and it was the coolest sign of love ever!

Love is literally in the air!

Speaking of Valentine's, we kept ours very low this year with a night in.  Kate decorated a heart shaped cut out cookie at her school so she got to indulge in a bit of that after dinner which was an extra special treat!  (And Brian surprised her with a stuffed Valentine's puppy and a card.  What a wonderful Daddy!)

Kate's cut out cookie!

Assessing the situation and determining where to take the first bite.

Yummy!

One bite and she's hooked!

Cutie patootie!

Valentine's cookie bliss!

Licking the frosting off the left thumb...

...and then the right one!

My Valentine!

We got another 3" of snow last night too adding to a very snowy winter season which I have actually really enjoyed this year!

And speaking of snow and valentine's, we also read this book called Snowy Valentine on Valentine's day.  It was the first full book that Kate sat through.  She likes quicker reads, mainly board books or flap-books, a lot more than real stories right now.  This was such a sweet story about true love and the illustrations are so cute.  It was a perfect way to cap off our snowy Valentine's Day.

We hope you and yours had a lovely one too!

UPDATE:

We've typically gotten art and holiday photos from Kate's class a little after the actual holiday, making them hard to include with "on time" posts and easy with the delayed posts you've been experiencing recently.  (We're working on that...)  This is one that we just received and we couldn't resist including it.  It was Kate participating in the Heart Toss game that her class made!

And we heart this!

What Goes Around Comes Around

We all know the expression that karma can be a bitch.  But do we know that karma can also be a blessing?

Today I experienced good karma in its purest and most rapid form I have ever experienced.

I woke up this Monday morning, showered, and got ready to go to work.  When I went out to start my car I found that my trunk was open.  No biggie, I thought, so I just closed it and got in my seat to get on the road.  Low and behold, however, my car would not start.  It turned over and over and over, all to no avail.  I figured my battery must of died because of my trunk being open all weekend.  Since Brian does most of the driving if we go anywhere, my car usually isn't used from Friday night until Monday morning which means, for this weekend, that Kate popped my trunk Friday night and it literally stayed open (read: the little light inside the car stayed on) until Monday morning.  Yep, I would say the battery is dead.

(Note: I have typically let Kate play with our car keys.  She loves to press the buttons to hear the car beep.  She also loves to press the buttons to open the trunk, unknowingly.  Brian does not love when Kate plays with our keys because of this exact reason.  I think he gave me many more reasons why she shouldn't play with our keys but that's besides the point.  I had to swallow enough pride about this when I had to walk my butt back inside, wake Brian up from his slumber, and explain that my battery had died because I let Kate play with my keys...on Friday night...)

Most people would think of this as bad karma.  But not I!  It's Monday.  Who wants to go to work on Monday?!  This was the perfect opportunity to work from home until we (Brian was involved now) got this whole battery thing figured out.

Karma One
Karma: Let daughter play with keys because she likes it despite husband's wishes. Yay for the fun!
Karma Return: (Three days later.)  Battery on car is dead because daughter who was playing with keys against husband's wished popped wife's trunk open and since wife didn't check on this AT ALL DURING THE ENTIRE WEEKEND her battery drained.  BUT, that meant wife could work from home for a little bit and that, my friends, is awesome!  (I may let Kate play with my keys all the time if this happens!  Don't tell Brian.)

Fortunately, after a little bit of stressing and few phone calls, we determined that our insurance company covers starting up your battery if it has died.  So, I was able to work from home until the insurance guy made it out to jump start my car (which ended up taking all of 2 minutes when he got here), and Brian was able to make it into work without being late and/or causing a scene.

Once my car was running, the handy dandy insurance guy recommended that I drive around for an hour to recharge the battery.

Karma Two
Karma: Must drive around for one whole hour with no real destination in sight, wasting gas.
Karma return: (Mere seconds from that suggestion.)  That's one more hour until I really have to go to work!

Since I am very much a person that likes to be efficient, I thought of a few things that I could do while driving around and keeping my car on to recharge the battery.  These things involved stopping by Starbucks drive-thru (we had a gift card), running through an automatic car wash to get all the salt off of my car from the last snow, and taking the long way into work.

My first stop was Starbucks.  I'm not a coffee drinker, so I ordered a Green Tea (which was AMAZING for some reason) and got up to the window to pay.  Since we had a gift card and we normally don't visit Starbucks, when the cashier told me that I had $2 and chance left on the card I asked her if she could just put it towards the order of the person behind me.  Paying it forward on something so small like that made me feel so good.  It's really, really good for the soul to do good things for other people.  I left the drive-thru, car-a-charging, happy knowing that I was just saving somebody two bucks off their order.

And I headed to the car wash.  I decided to get the mid-level car wash.  It was $8.  I tried to scan my credit card and the machine wouldn't read it.  I tried again.  Still nothing.  The car wash attendant came out and scanned some magic card that he had dangling from his neck and waved me through.  He said since the machine was acting up to not worry about it.  The car wash would be on the house.  WH-WHAT?!  Yes, I just got a free car wash!  I literally felt like I had just won the lottery, folks!

Karma Three
Karma: Paid it forward at Starbucks by handing off the remainder of my gift card to the unknowing stranger in the high-end SUV behind me.
Karma Return: (The time it takes to drive from Starbucks to the car wash.)  I GOT A FREE CAR WASH that was four times the amount that I had just left the driver behind me at Starbucks!!!

I was amazed at this instant good karma!  The morning started off semi-stressful because of not knowing how my battery was going to get charged but by mid-day I was on cloud nine!  I had been able to work from home for half a day, had an amazing green tea, paid it forward to a random stranger, and then got a free car wash!  Plus, the sun was shining and while it still wasn't that warm outside, the sun was out and at that point I really couldn't have asked for any more!

The rest of the day wasn't nearly as eventful as the morning, but that didn't bother me.  The fact that I had just experienced such a superb Monday morning still amazed me.

I feel like we too often refer to karma with a negative connotation.  Karma is not a bitch.  It's a blessing, and I'm hear to tell you that the sooner you can reverse that thinking, the sooner you can reap the karma benefits.  Pay it forward.

(Side Note: I considered heavily titling this post "Karma is a Bitch" but opted out of the curse words in such a title on our family blog.  I don't think Brian would quite approve of that...wink!)

Toddler Time

Since pulling the little trampoline up from the basement was such a HUGE hit, we decided to take Kate to Toddler Time at our local Sky Zone.  Sky Zone is a big indoor trampoline park with lots of trampolines, dodge ball, and even a pit of foam cubes to jump into.  Toddler Time is offered an hour before normal hours on Sunday, and it's so cheap - $10 per kid, $1 per adult if you are walking on the trampolines.  These fees cover your sky socks!

Fancy, huh?

Kate is very observant, so when we first arrived at Toddler Time she was a little hesitant to just jump right in and start bouncing around on her trampoline square.  (Each toddler was supposed to be assigned an individual square, but you know how that goes.  Controlling a toddler in a room full of trampolines is nearly impossible...unless that toddler is Miss Kate Madeline.)

She stuck by Brian and I and just took it all in.  She watched one little boy bounce, bounce, bounce, and then fall right on his bottom.  She watched one little girl literally running across several trampolines.  She watched another little boy jump on the wall trampoline (yes, there are trampoline walls) and bounce directly on the floor trampoline.  It was, in Kate's world, pure chaos, but very stimulating nonetheless.

Brian and I sat on either side of her trampoline and she started walking back and forth to each of us, still very intrigued by her surroundings and very hesitant to let either one of us out of a 3' reach.  Once she got a bit more comfortable, she started exploring more and warmed up to the idea that we were here to have fun!

Toddler Time chaos!

Just taking it all in with Mommy!

Walking across the trampoline!

Safe zone with Daddy!

It's a big, big world out there!

Still observing.

I love how everything around Kate in this photo is a blur.  You can
tell that she was literally just observing and watching!

Back in the safe zone!

Getting a bit braver!
See the trampoline walls!?

Then again, better play it safe.

Watching all these pint-sized people jump endlessly is tiring!

Venturing off!
Pinky over on the right is seriously tuckered out!

Feeling comfortable!

This was after she warmed up a bit and captures everything we experienced: observation, trampoline walking, and chaos!

So comfortable that Kate decided she wanted to take her socks off,
which meant we would not be able to stay on the court and jump.

So we walked over to the dodge ball court while we re-dressed.

Kate loved playing with the dodge balls.

Do we have a sports fan like her Daddy?!

Unfortunately, adults were not permitted to jump during Toddler Time.  I guess that makes sense.  But the trampolines looked like a ton of fun!

Sky Zone, we will be back!