Who is God, Mommy?

About once a week, we read stories from Robbie's Children's Bible. It is full of colorful pictures and shortened "story versions" of scripture. A few nights ago we were reading the story of Adam and Eve. The story focuses on how Satan, as a snake, got Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit by lying to them and getting them to question whether God really loved them.

In the story there is a classic "kid rated" illustration (similar to the one at the left) with Adam & Eve, and a snake. Robbie, very seriously, looks up after the story and says, "Who is God, Mommy?"

Wow. What a Big Question. This is one of those moments you pray about, hoping that you will have the right words to say. So I start to explain to my son about how God is our Creator, our Heavenly Father. He made Mommy & Daddy & Robbie. He makes the sun shine and the flowers grow and someday we will get to live with Him in heaven.

Robbie wrinkles his brow and says, "No, Mommy. Who is God? What does he look like?" Hmm... I tell him that you can't see God - that God is not a person like Mommy or Daddy. God is like the wind, you can feel Him, but you can't see Him. You can talk to Him, but you don't hear Him with your ears, you hear Him with your heart. I realize that I am probably doing a horrible job at explaining this. I am wracking my brain trying to find a way to answer this little guy and his Big Question.

Robbie is getting frustrated. "No, Mommy. Who. Is. God???" I ask him if he remembers how at Christmas we celebrate when baby Jesus was born and at Easter we celebrate how Jesus got to live again and went to live with God in heaven. I again circle back to the whole issue of how God is our father who lives in Heaven and looks out for us on Earth.

This is not the answer he is looking for. He picks the Bible off of my lap and points his little finger at the picture of Adam, Eve, and Snakey Satan. "Mommy," he says, "IN THIS PICTURE RIGHT HERE - Who is GOD? Which one is He?"

Oh.

I tell Robbie that God isn't in that picture. He responds, "OK!" Then he smiles, turns the page and says, "Can we read the one about the big boat, now?"

"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men." ~John Locke

Ten Years

Today Sam and I have been married for 10 years.

We started dating in December of 1997 when he was a senior and I was a junior in high school. I followed him to Purdue University in 1999 and we got married during the summer of 2001. People often comment that we were so young to get married - only 20 and 21... but we loved each other desperately and also (and probably more importantly) had the same life goals.

We have our differences - he loves sports, I hate sports.

I love crafts, he hates it when I drag him through JoAnn's.

He is down to earth and dependable. I have my head in the clouds.

I am a complete nerd. He humors me. :)

Yet, we could sit and talk for hours about movies and television, quoting random lines and trivia and using imdb.com to confirm suspicions. Before we had a daycare bill, we would jump on the motorcycle and ride for hours, not talking, just enjoying the companionship and scenery. Now that we have our own family, we relish sharing experiences with our son and watching the world fresh through his adorable eyes.

My mother once said that she thought there was a little bit of chance to life when you got married young. You both have a lot of "growing up" to do and you never know how those changes could positively or negatively affect your relationship. One boy could grow into a good provider and another boy could grow into a bum... If that is true, then I feel like I have won some karma jackpot. Although we have both grown and changed, when I look in
to my husband's eyes I still see the boy I longed for and daydreamed about with the passion of youth... and I also see the man who is the excellent father and outstanding husband I adore today.

So here's hoping for another 10 fabulous years of keeping our wedding vows:

"Amanda, do you pledge your faithfulness in all love and honor, in all duty and service, in all truth and tenderness, to live with and cherish Sam in the bonds of holy matrimony, as long as you both shall live?" I do.

"Amanda, what promise to you make to Sam?"

I, Mandy, give myself to you, Sam - to be your wife, partner, and friend.

I promise to love, honor, and cherish you in the covenant of marriage, from this day forward, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, through the best and the worst, loving you faithfully, as long as we both shall live.

Superhero Room: Part 5 "The Room"

Superhero Room: Part 5 "The Room"

AKA: Come on, just show us the room already, sheesh!

(By the way, if you are interested in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4, you can link through here)

I was really excited that this little gem came in the mail today. I ordered this Superhero Cape off of etsy.com . The quality is absolutely fabulous and I would recommend it to anyone looking for this type of item. I put it away as a "surprise" for Robbie. With this new room, he has had a lot of cool surprises and I want him to really be excited for it.

So, here is the Northwest corner of the room.

Notice the superhero tin signs at the top of the room? I ordered some more online, but they haven't arrived yet. We should be getting The Wolverine, Captain America, and Spiderman really soon. I liked these signs because they weren't "scary" and intense like the modern superhero stuff. Lots of places were selling those fathead type vinyl clings, but I decided against it. I was afraid it would give him nightmares to see Batman jumping out of the wall at him. My college roommate and I had a life-size cutout of Humphrey Bogart in our dorm room that caused many a late night scream upon entering the room.... anyways....

The nightstand is actually just a little wooden crate I picked up at Michael's and spray painted black. There is a bin under the nightstand for all of Robbie's superhero action figures. You've got the Green Lantern lamp and still room for the "essential glass of water" that MUST be beside the bed to ensure sleep. The new Red Quilt and sham are really silky soft and seemed very well made.

These FUNKO Plushies were an impulse buy (also from Target) and might be my favorite thing we bought for the room. You can get lots of other characters, but at $10 a piece, I had to curb my enthusiasm and limited us to three.... but man, there are some other cuties....

Here is the southwest corner of the room. We may move these letters... We moved the coffee-table-turned-play-table from the living room into the bedroom and added some storage bins underneath.

I got the red, blue, and green bins at Target's HotSpot for $2.50 each. Can you believe they are all filled with toy cars? We also have a Thomas-the-Train Bin and a building blocks Bin underneath the table. All of these toys used to be in our living room! I took pictures of the contents of each bin and added labels.

I also added toy storage in the closet. I bought a plastic 4-tier shelving unit at Lowe's and just used the bottom two shelves. I put the other two shelves out in the sunroom. I got the red & blue baskets at Michael's on clearance. There is a grey bucket on the bottom (same one used for superheroes) from Target's HotSpot for $1.00. On the other side of the closet I bought one of those cheap "pop up hampers" to store the seemingly endless pile of stuffed animals. Plushies need to be weaned down, but I was too tired to deal with it this week.

Below is the Northeast side of the room. The blank space above the trim is where the additional posters will go when they arrive. We still have our video monitor camera up (I LOVE THAT THING) on its little shelf. My art collage is up as well. A new bright red basket for pullups that I hope we will only need for a short amount of time more.

On top of the bookcase (above) you'll see our new "Tot Clock". It is supercool. You set the "wakeup" and the "bedtime" times. The face of the clock is blue when you are supposed to be asleep and yellow when you are allowed up. It also has a button for naps (also blue) and for timeouts (red). Robbie knows that he is allowed out of his room when the clock turns yellow in the morning. To the right of the bookcase you'll see a little patch of darker blue paint.

Sam and I didn't have the heart to paint over the little marks we had made on the wall to mark Robbie's growth, so I kept the paint and turned it into a little billboard on top of one of the cityscape buildings. I painted in a little car in honor of his nursery theme.

We are probably not "done" with this room. After the final few posters arrive and go up, I may decide to change where things are or as Robbie gets older, his needs will change in the room. We'll see. But for now, I am pretty pleased with Robbie's new Superhero room and think it turned out really nice. Robbie's one complaint is that "there's not enough Batman in here, mommy... I really want some Batman...." I keep telling him that he's got a birthday coming up! In the meantime, I'm shopping around for some Batman stuff I guess! Ha!

Superhero Room: Part 4 - "The Lamp"

Superhero Room: Part 4 "The Lamp"

AKA: Well, it was a good idea at least.

(Have you read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3?)

So we have this green "banker's lamp" in our office... and I'm looking at it, thinking, maybe I could make this have the Green Lantern symbol on it! That would be cool. Right.

Using my handy-dandy Creative Memories circle cutters and paper cutter I made a newspaper mask, got out the white spray paint, and ....

OK... did you notice the gaps in the newsprint on the edges of the circle above?

Me neither... So I didn't have sharp, clean edges.

Instead I had wobbly, over-sprayed, this-looks-nothing-like-the-green-lantern-logo edges.

Crap.

So, I took a toothpick and scraped off the excess paint on the edges. The outside circle is pretty rough, but it gets the idea across, and I think that Robbie probably won't complain.

"In the Brightest Day, in the Blackest Night..."

Superhero Room: Part 3 "DECOUPAGE BABY!"

Superhero Room: Part 3 "DECOUPAGE BABY!"

AKA: I now hate decoupage and comic books

(Have you read Part 1 and Part 2 yet?)

I had these wooden letters leftover from Robbie's nursery. I had really good plans at the time to paint them in the same brown of the cars and hang them with cutesy little ribbons above his crib. Then I had a baby and forgot about them in a little JoAnn's bag in the garage. I had the idea to hand paint them each with the design of a different hero. I thought, you know, paint one red and put a little spider on it, paint one black and paint a little yellow bat signal on it, etc... then I thought about using stickers or something... then I had A GREAT IDEA! Last time at Half Price Books, I had browsed through comic books. HPB's has comic books for 25 cents - 99 cents. SO WHY NOT DECOUPAGE. Decoupage is basically applying a thin layer of glue to an item and then strategically covering it with stuff then varnishing the whole thing.

So! Supplies gathered....

Step 1: Spray Paint back sides and insides of letters and newly purchased picture frame black. This way I only need to decoupage the front side.

Step 2: Shop for comic books & buy ModPodge.

Here are some of the results.

HOLY DECOUPAGE, Batman!

O, how the Hulk wishes he kept his temper.

R you ready for some Spiderman?

As you can see above, I did Superman "B", Robin "I" and Green Lantern "E".

Robbie's "Birth Day" photo in the Flash frame.

And then there was an issue. I made Sam move a shelf he installed after the paint job and as a result we had some holes in the walls. I promised to find something we could hang over the holes so we wouldn't have to fill and repaint. I ended up making this 16 x 20 decoupage collage using lots and lots of layers of superheros.

Yes, these letters are supposed to be "whimsical".

And now I am sick of decoupage and hope that I never ever have to do it anytime soon. (Although I had another great idea using old math textbooks... maybe fall break?) If you have any interest in this type of craft, I would encourage you to watch/read some "how to decoupage" videos/info online before you start. You will get better results if you use a very thin layer of glue. Also, with regards to comic books, it is much easier to use comic books that feel like "newsprint" than the slick "magazine" style pages. You will get brighter colors with the latter but you will have to take lots of drying breaks and will most likely end up with wrinkles in your product.

Superhero Room: Part 2 - "Curtains & Valences"

Superhero Room: Part 2 "Curtains & Valences"

AKA: Don't Let the Sunshine In

(Have you read Part 1 yet?)

Has anyone else noticed the GLARING BRIGHTNESS of the sun in the early evening hours? We start our bedtime battle... umm... routine around 7:00pm. Robbie takes a bath or shower around 7, then there are jammies to put on, books to be read, etc... He is tucked in his little bed a little before 8:00pm each night. However his west wall makes the room so bright! So we decided to buy some light blockout curtains. I bought these Eclipse Thermaback curtains in Navy from Target. Let me just say that if you have kids and have trouble getting their room dark enough to encourage sleep, these babies are a hit. We still have some light coming in around the edge of the windows, but it is nearly pitch back in the room now. In fact, it is so dark we had to leave the overhead light dimmer all the way down.

Curtains? Check!

But Navy curtains didn't exactly scream superheros. What did SCREAM superheroes was the officially licensed superhero fabrics you can buy at JoAnn's or the ones you can buy online covered in bold cartooney print with giant scary superheroes popping out of the design. I decided to go with a plain cotton print - red with little blue, white, and navy stars. The stars were slightly imperfect which reminded me of the stars you see in comic book when someone gets punched in the head... sooo... I pulled out my Singer that my mom gave me and got to sewing valences.

As a disclaimer, this trim looks really crooked! But it isn't! It's the picture! Promise! The fabric is not laying flat here! I really mean it! The trim is NOT whimsical!

Superhero Room: Part 1 "The Walls"

Superhero Room: Part 1 "The Walls"

AKA: Paint Samples LIE and Painter's Tape Doesn't Stick

For those faithful followers (hi mom!) you may remember that Robbie was born in September of 2008 and that we painted his room an adorable robin's egg blue and stenciled chocolate brown cars along the baseboards. For those that don't know that: See that post "Nursery News: It is Adorable!"

Since Robbie is almost three....sniffle... we decided to give him a "big boy room" and update the theme a little. I had "A Super Idea" when I saw some superhero posters and that got me going. Picture me - suddenly a whirlwind of internet research and online shopping for superhero themes. So what I discovered is this: 1. Superhero Stuff is mostly out of my price range 2. Superhero Stuff (especially linens, etc) is pretty cheaply made and low quality 3. Superhero stuff is scary 4. Superhero stuff DIY is way above my ability level.

I had the idea of doing a city skyline on the bottom of the room, but most outlines I could find for stenciling (like I did the cars) were very intricate. Vinyl decals were an option, but they were really expensive. Then I came across a blog where a woman had redone her son's room in superheros and did a very simple skyline using large rectangles and painter's tape. I really liked the idea and decided to do that. However when I went to write this blog I couldn't find the original website ANYWHERE to give this woman credit for her idea. If anyone ever comes across it, please let me know.

We also decided to put up new curtains and valences which meant the robin's egg blue had to go. I decided to paint it a nice pale blue to brighten up the room. Enter paint samples and paint buying. Once I had it on the walls it looked like this:

Not bad... except it is not blue... it is purple... a very light bluish PURPLE. (sigh) We decided to go with it because it still looks OK, and didn't want to drop another $50 on paint. (stupid lying paint sample).

Day 2 came the skyline design. I used green "Frog Tape" because everyone said it stopped bleeds. I didn't wait the "3 weeks" curing time for my base coat because I am impatient and ready to get my little guy back in his own room and own bed, so I still had some bleeds.

My advice to you if you decide to do this is to make your buildings a little bigger than you think you want them because remember you are initially painting the INSIDE of the tape, not the area INCLUDING the tape.
You will also want to use four colors because (nerd alert), the Four Color Theorem (Discrete Math) proves that you can paint ANY planer map like your cityscape using only 4 colors so that no touching edges are the same color. (nerd moment over). I painted black and dark brown first. First I used alternated using a paint brush and I mini roller, but eventually just ditched the roller and went solo paintbrush since the areas were so small. After a couple hours to dry, I went back and gave the buildings a second coat, removing painter's tape, and freehand in any areas that needed touching up (Gaps between the brown and black where the painter's tape was that needed to be either brown or black but not background bluepurple).

Day 3: I started out by taping around the room just like day 2, focusing on the buildings that would be my new colors. By the time I got around the room the first taped buildings were already falling off the wall. The tape WOULD NOT STICK!!! @!#%! So essentially I grabbed both new paint colors and brushes, rubbed the tape back down for a building, painted it, pulled painter's tape off, rubbed the tape back down for the next building, painted it, pulled tape off, etc.... all the way around the room. I touched up missing areas as I went this time.


After a couple hours to dry, I went back and retouched any places that needed a little more coverage.

My husband pointed out that several of the buildings tend to lean toward the north side of the room... I told him that they weren't crooked, they were whimsical!!! Overall I am very pleased with the results. If I had it to do again, I might paint all four colors the same day, removing and touching up paint as I went. I think this might prevent the non-sticking tape fiasco. Walls = DONE! Now onto decorations!