No Poo vs Poo Poo

Reporting live from Baby Jail! It’s kind of like irish handcuffs, only with a baby instead of two pints of Guinness.

Molly is a sweet little darling dolly Mollywog. I call her Molly Mo-mo-mo-mo-mo, and sometimes Doodle and sometimes Cricket. She smiles easily and — AND! I forget to tell you! — she has slept through the night three days in a row this week. She must really love me.

She is, however, not without her flaws, as tiny and imperceptible as they may be. She has two faults, one for each end. Her first fault is that she has a tendency to overeat if we’re not paying attention, which means that when we least expect it there’s a firehose of vomit shooting out of our dear sweet seven-week-old. It’s rather shocking. Nearly as shocking as the sensation of having someone else’s vomit trickling into your underpants. Her other fault — some would call it a skill — is the striking ability to eject poo from her (adorable! chubby!) bottom, out her diaper, straight up her back and into her hair. I’m sure there’s a circus somewhere in need of a sideshow infant, right?

In return for a solid 6-8 hour stretch of sleep, Molly Dolly Pollywog requires much holding and cooing and jiggling and feeding between the hours of, oh, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. which, when you’re the mother of two other tiny tots, is basically the only prime blogging time, and despite the iPhone I still can’t manage to write at length with one hand. I can surf, but I can’t write. So instead of writing to you dear lovelies I have been lurking on assorted websites, the top three being:

  1. apartment therapy (I’m doing a casual version of their 20/20 cure)
  2. my exclusive mom forum where my bitches be at
  3. naturallycurly.com

That third link? Yes, it’s an entire forum devoted to obsessing over one’s hair. And I’m obsessed with their obsessing. These members are not just deconstructing bad hair days, they’re de facto scientists, running trials and comparing results. They have opinions about, for example, behentrimonium methosulfate. That is hardcore.

A popular tenet on the site is the concept promoted in a book called Curly Girl, which advises a person with curly hair to stop using shampoo and only wash with (a particular kind of) conditioner. They call it CG, or No-Poo, for no shampoo. This is done because (it is said) the harsh detergents in regular shampoo strip the hair of valuable oils, making it dry, frizzy, and unmanageable. Basically, making it look like this:

still tired, though

With the right conditioner instead of a shampoo wash, you can turn that into this:

the hair experiment continues

Or so it goes.

I mentioned all this No Poo business briefly in a blog post a year ago about my “hair experiment.” It worked pretty well for a little while, but not forever. I finally gave it up and have been shampooing since, though I’m not in love with how it looks now.

Yesterday I finally escaped Baby Jail for a desperately needed haircut, and last night I decided to try going No-Poo once more. Once Molly was asleep in her daddy’s arms, I jumped in the shower. As I’m standing there, applying my leave-in conditioner, Iain bursts into the bathroom. He is carrying Molly. And Molly has just recently practiced her sideshow skill.

My No-Poo? No match for her Poo-Poo.

The land of make-believe

Hoo! Newborn time! I had stupidly forgotten just how fractured and unpredictable it is.

I spend most of my time sitting on the couch (Just like being pregnant!) trying to bounce and soothe Molly (not at all like being pregnant!) who is doing the typical newborn thing of only liking to sleep on a warm body and who wakes up periodically to holler, wriggle, snort and fart. For someone who only weighs about 10 pounds, she sure can feel like a ton of bricks.

However! She is one of the three most adorable tons of bricks I have ever had the privilege of holding. And plus I can surf the internet with one hand with my iPhone, and Netflix just started streaming the fourth season of 30 Rock, and my neighbors are extremely helpful people, so really, things are good.

So speaking of surfing the internet; I found this cute little bit on Design Sponge about pumpkins. And we happen to be growing a large number of pumpkins in the big garden up at the camp. So the next time I make angry chicken’s pumpkin muffins (which I do every fall), I’m going to save back some of the pumpkin goo to make this mask.

Ha ha! Gotcha. As if I’m going to have time to bake OR do extracurricular home grooming care in the next mumbledy-mumble months. Snap!

» DesignSponge » Blog Archive » small measures with ashley: homemade bodycare.

Idea: homemade kid-quote blank cards

I love these homemade cards from Amy at Angry Chicken. It’s an old post of hers from more than a year ago, but the idea still makes me smile. I found this today while browsing old archives while procrastinating.

And lord knows my kids say enough awesome things to be quoted on a blank card.

I haven’t made anything by hand in what feels like months. Well, except for a few things in the kitchen, but that’s not very exciting (ham casserole which went straight into the freezer) and frankly it is too damn hot to cook. Maybe it’s too damn hot to do anything. I certainly don’t want to touch yarn or handle a quilt when it’s 85 degrees INSIDE the house and about 112 degrees in the bowling ball hanging off my belly. I am not even really inspired to do anything but sit on the couch and complain and stare at the laundry basket that has been in the living room for a week.

But cards I could do. As long as I don’t have the laptop on my lap, making my legs all sweaty.

» angry chicken: homemade cards.

Over on Ye Olde Tumblarrr

Been finding lots of happy images and posting them on Tumblr. I love the queue feature: I save a week’s worth at a time, and let them autopost themselves. I should really do that here on Supafine, too. Hrm.

Anyway. Screenshots of my good taste: (Click to visit that month’s archive)

april2010

may2010

Notice the screenshots say “April” and “May”. That’s how long this post has been in draft. Yay summer!

5 ways to know you’re a Pro

JessamynNorth

SoFunFabrics

My latest article is up on Meylah.com! I had the supreme privilege of interviewing Jessamyn North, Chicago photographer extraordinaire; Tisha Galloway, the brilliant mind behind SoFunFabrics, and the lovely Joy and MJ of etsy shops Snazziedrawers and Thumble Handmade Jewelry, respectively.

4119140872_921f835e30Photo by Jessamyn North

Lots of great tips in here for keeping your spirits up and making good choices when starting a creative business. I only wish I could have reprinted our exchanges in their entirety. So much good insight!

Interview with Laurie Wisbrun

sorbet_palette

Man, what an exciting week. I told you yesterday about the interviews I got to do for my article for Meylah; today I get to tell you about interviewing Laurie Wisbrun, who is an Austin-based textile designer as well as super awesome. In my article I also get to include the phrase “after a brief stint in cheese,” which — I don’t know about you — made my week.

Laurie Wisbrun is not new to textile designing, but she is new to mass distribution of her fabrics, so you might be unfamiliar with her. Run check out my article and her new line, which is called Tufted Tweets and is so adorable.

ALSO MAKES A GREAT GIFT HINT HINT.

OK. Happy Thursday! Hope to be back with more news later!

Knock Off Wood

Got this link via J. Caroline Creative: rural Alaskan housewife shows us how to knock off Pottery Barn furniture at home. I absolutely love the idea of building your own furniture; my husband made a toddler bed for my oldest son once, and we have discussed building chairs (he does the frame, I do the upholstery). We have hacked many Ikea pieces and done small reupholstery jobs but never stuff from scratch like this site.

Check out the site now, before she takes down all the references to Pottery Barn (her latest post shows a cease-and-desist letter).

Knock Off Wood.

Speaking of music

Here are two places to go if you’re looking to download a few new-to-you (maybe they’re just new-to-me?) .mp3s.

  • The mixtape page at Flux-Rad (by an old friend and employee of Woxy, Ohio’s world’s greatest radio station) (entire .zip mixtapes to download)
  • the toplist of this guy, found through my Tumblr Dashboard (individual .mp3s to download)

I like to find a few new tunes, pump up the jams and watch the tykes shake their (and I quote the two-year-old) “big ol’ booties.”

The Overdue Book Calendar

bookcalendar

Aunt June is just the cutest thing going. I did a mini post about her Flock fabric collection on True Up and I see here she’s got only the most perfect thing ever: a 2010 Overdue Book Calendar WHICH, if you know me and my weekly 10-books-at-a-time library habit, you know would be perfect for me.

That run-on sentence was exhausting.

Anyway. Here it is. NEED.

» The Overdue Book Calendar 2010 PDF by auntjune on Etsy.