How to make a superhero cape

Well, we all know how to make a superhero cape. But how to make one that doesn't choke your child? I came up with the easiest one ever.

Take one of your husband's old t-shirts. The bigger, the better. Whatever color. Don't worry if it has armpit stains, those will be cut off.

I have no pictures of the following, because I did it a while ago. But seriously, so what if you make a mistake? Don't you have at least seventeen old t-shirts lying around the house?

Cut off the arms. Slice it up the front up to the neckline, but don't cut the neckline. Carefully cut around each side of the neck, to the shoulder seam, leaving the circle of the neck intact. Cut down each shoulder seam to where you had sliced off the arms. Then spread out the fabric. You will have a squarish piece of fabric with a circle of neck at the middle and divots cut out where the arms used to be. The neck should still be attached all the way around the back of the shirt. Capes are roughly triangles. So, make a triangle shape, with the circle of the neck at the top. Do it however you think it looks right. Don't cut too far into the back of the neck where it is still attached. It should look something like this:

What you can't really tell is that after I made the "triangle" and put it on my son, the bottom corners dragged the ground because it was very long, so I just hacked off each corner until it didn't trip him up. This is going to be dependent on the size of the shirt, probably.

The rest of it is merely a "fitting" issue.

First, have your child step into the neck with the cape part in the FRONT:

Then have him work it up around his chest right under his arms. The cape should still be in the front.
Next, have him tuck his chin and start to flip it over his head, keeping his arms on the outside:

If you have to stretch the neck, that is fine. And the first time you do this, it seems like you are hurting your child. And he may complain. But if you have stretched it enough, it should be ok. See?
Then just continue flipping it over his head until it is flowing down his back.

I think this makes a kid pretty happy:



This will not fall off his shoulders as the neck is wrapped under his arms and around his back. It will not choke him if it gets snagged on something. And when it gets too stretched out to work anymore, you can make a new one! And I am sure there are some of y'all crafty types out there who can think of all sorts of things to decorate the cape with. Or, do the directions backward and keep whatever design on the shirt intact.

See? Easiest choke-free cape EVER.

A Good Friday Miracle plus Theology from a 4yo before 7:00 a.m.

My children slept for nearly 11 hours. Thomas, who routinely wakes up at 5:00 or before, and who has never slept pas 6:00, woke up at 6:15. This is miraculous. Seriously.

And then Jonathan woke up about 6:30 and ran into our room and said, "Daddy, I had the most exciting dream!" When Marcus asked him about it, he said, "I was at Gramma and Grampa Bucher's house!" When asked what made it exciting, he said, "I played inside and outside! And Gramma Bucher and Grampa Bucher were there and Karen (the lady who helps with my grandmother) and Gramma Wenger AND Grampa* Wenger!" I repeated that last and he said, "Yes!" and then paused for a minute and asked, "Will God do the same thing to me that he did to Grampa Wenger? Will he make me alive again after I am dead?" When I said yes, if Jonathan believed in Jesus, he said, "Oh I DO believe in Him!" and then asked for breakfast.

*My grandfather, Karl F. Wenger, died at the end of September, 2010, at the ripe old age of 92 1/2. I was positive that I had posted something about it then, but it must have been only to Facebook. Which makes me think that I should write something about him here. Perhaps I shall.

Random photos of the wedding.

Now, don't get all wiggy...this WAS more than six years ago.

But someone recently mentioned weddings and I thought of it.

This was one of the windows inside the 18th C. church with a lovely arrangement of hydrangeas.




This is us, outside of the church, before the ceremony. (Yes, we saw each other before the ceremony...we didn't want to make everyone wait while we took pics afterward.)



This was immediately after the ceremony. First pic of us as Mr. and Mrs.



This was such a funny picture with my cousin's daughter, our flower girl. She had just turned four. Isn't she just adorable?



We had a large reception. The church didn't seat very many people, and the wedding was near my parents' home. So, we had the reception at their house, and they invited all their friends to the reception. This is a photo of our rector giving the blessing before we cut the cake. We tried to have a bit of a ceremonial aspect to it since about half the people couldn't be at the actual wedding.

This is another photo of the cake. I LOVED my cake. Originally, it was supposed to be white piping that mimicked the beading on my dress and was going to have a burgundy bow on the top which was going to cascade down the side. Each of us only had one attendant, and our accent color was burgundy. But the cake guy said that he was worried about the stability of the burgundy fondant and suggested the piping in burgundy. I think it was just lovely!



And here is a last photo of us being smoochy post-toast. The toast was a whole other ball of wax. We had prosecco instead of champagne, and had it as our only alcohol. It was a late morning wedding and this was, essentially, lunch. Seemed odd to have lots of booze. But the caterer didn't bring a corkscrew. So, there was my sister, in her maid of honor finery, yanking corks out of dozens of bottles with the corkscrew in my dad's swiss army knife.


I could bore you with many more photos of the wedding, but I won't. Suffice it to say, we had a lovely time, and we continue to be happily married.

Oh LOOK, a gratuitous cute photo of my two boys:

Merry Christmas

Well, hello there. Apparently I am posting now once a quarter. Ah well.

So, you guys who come to my little corner of the world get to see some silly potential Christmas card pictures:

I can't imagine what it is like for people with more than two kids. At least there was one adult per child in this scenario.



SOMEONE is a little too excited in this picture. (Remind me to tell you sometime about the passport photo I had taken in college....well ok, I will tell you now. After seventeen photos of me with my eyes half closed the photographer said, "For Pete's sake! Hold your eyes OPEN!" The effect was similar, though much more pronounced, to the photo above.)


It gets a little ridiculous after a while, doesn't it?



Ah yes, here is one we can use. FINALLY. It isn't perfect of anyone, but it is the best of all four of us. And so.....




Merry Christmas from our house to yours. And may your New Year be full of joy and peace and blessings.

(Please look back and note that my husband and my younger son almost always look pleasant and happy. Then look at how goofy my older kid and I are. Sheesh. I want a "photo" smile.)

Never Forget

It was a bright blue morning. Crisp, for late summer. There was a freshness in the air that made people here in the DC area a little bit more perky. I had been back to work for about a week after a terrible August*. My boss and I had a horrid day-long deposition to take/defend for one of our stupider clients who shall, obviously, remain nameless. I had gone to work a bit early to get ready and was listening to the radio. And the news started. And I called my boss at home and told her to turn on her tv, which we didn't have in the office. I found some internet video news site. We watched the news about New York, horrified. And then we found out about the Pentagon. And then we had to abandon the vigil and go deal with the stupid deposition.

I didn't get a chance to see the news again until late that afternoon. And the photos and videos of smoldering buildings, and clouds of debris, and people hanging out of windows fifty stories up while the building behind them went up in flames will stay with me for the rest of my life.

My sister was working near the White House at the Court of Federal Claims. She saw the plane that hit the Pentagon fly near her building, which is in a no-fly zone. She saw it from the window of a conference room where several had gathered to watch the news. She elected to evacuate prior to the "official" decision. She had to walk out of DC because the Metro had shut down. She had on heels for work as a law clerk. She walked six miles out of DC, mostly barefoot. Cell service was intermittent, but thankfully I was able to contact her once or twice to be assured of her safety and to call my parents and let them know she was "on the road" so to speak.

I have a friend who was working in the Pentagon at the time. I called his office and cell and got nothing. Nothing all day. I didn't seriously panic because I had a vague memory that he had told me that there was an off-site meeting all day. He had been several miles away from the Pentagon when the plane hit, three doors down from his office. It took him all day to get back to his home in Maryland and phone me to let me know he was ok.

When everything shut down at the Federal level, the local counties did the same. Our deposition was right across from the Fairfax County Courthouse. I walked outside on a break and marveled at the absolute stillness. There was no traffic. There was no one around. There were snipers on the roof of the Courthouse. There was still not a cloud in the sky. The air was still cool and crisp. Birds were chirping. The world smelled fresh and clean.
But everything had changed.

We were attacked. We were at war. We were, and still are, hampered by the fact that there was no clear nation-state to respond to. But we were attacked by fascists just as determined to destroy our way of life as the regime which sent the kamikaze pilots to Pearl Harbor. And though we didn't want to destroy the Japanese people, or the German people for that matter, we NEEDED to respond. We still do. The enemy is more elusive this time. And hides in a religion. And while most Muslims are quick to distance themselves from the extremists, few step forward to identify those extremists. And the attacks keep happening. I have no answers, but I am pretty sure that one answer is NOT to stop pursuing.

Never Forget.

*Story for another time. Suffice it to say, I was full up on grief BEFORE 9/11.

Funny toddler speak.

Jonathan turned four a week and a half ago and I need to write him a "Happy Birthday" post. But the tree fiasco has taken a bit of the wind out of our sails.

I primarily started this blog as a forum to document the changes in my children's lives so that I would not forget, and the other night, Thomas reminded me of this when he mispronounced a word. So here, for all time, are some of the funny words that he come up with:

Frog - pronounced without an "r" and with the "g" pronounced as a "ck". You can imagine. It reminds me of when Jonathan was learning to speak and he LOVED to shout the word "clock" whenever he saw one. Unfortunately he had a tendency to leave out the "l" sound. So I was reduced to saying, loudly, when we were in public, "Yes, that IS a CLOCK! See, it is 3:00!"

Wah-nee. It means water. Don't know why the funny pronunciation. Seems like "wa-ter" is easier, but I am not 19 mos old.

Why-Cause? - This is in response to me telling him what something is. I think it is because he started asking, "why?" and my response was, "Why? Because....." and he now just asks "Why-cause?"

Hot! Everything that is not room temperature, from warm to hot AND from cool to cold.

He knows a lot of body parts and will point them out (and poke them) with abandon! "Eyes! Nose! Errs (ears)! Hed! Herrrr (hair)! Chn! Mouse (mouth)! Tees! Tooeesss!!!"

And, of course, food. "Mluck!" "Chick!" "cookieeeeee! (cookies or crackers or anything crispy). "Ah-Pool" Loves apples. Mostly loves identifying and saying the word. "Nursies!!!!"

He also likes active words: "Danz!" "Wrunning!" "Hug!" As he throws himself full-body at you. And objects with wheels, cars and bikes and "twuck". And he is fond of showing and telling. "Come! Me!" accompanied by a demanding come hither hand gesture.

He is in a bit of a spurt and is adding about two words a day right now. Phew.

The Energizer bunny has NOTHING on this kid.

The haircut

Thomas had beautiful curls, as shown in the previous post.

But he used them like a napkin, necessitating a hair scrub, if not a full bath, every
day.


Also, he is a sweaty little kid and his hair would be soaking wet after an afternoon at the park.



Marcus thought he was hot and miserable and asked me to get his hair cut. Since Marcus doesn't weigh in very much on these issues, I listened to him.

The haircut, from Thomas' point of view:


Beautiful curls.

I am fine with my beautiful curls, mommy. Can't you tell?


You wanna do WHAT? Cut them OFF? No.


This feels weird.


Hey, pretty girl cutting my hair, lollipop to suck on, life isn't too bad!


Still pretty happy, even missing half my hair.


I think I must now be quite serious, as I am now a big boy.

And what has big brother Jonathan been doing this whole time? All swimming, all the time: