Presenting the Pirate Princess of Pottstown Port

Shae is going to be a pirate for Halloween. This is all my doing; I wanted her to be something fun for trick-or-treat, but I also wanted her to be something that had a certain degree of power along with the feminine charm. Also: badassery. And inflatable swords.

To properly get Shae into character -- oh, yes, I am a "method Mom" -- we've been watching a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean in our house. The first and second movies, anyway. We haven't seen the third one yet, but we have the trilogy on Blu-Ray and I'm pretty sure we'll be getting in a lot of viewings. Because Mommy? Loves her some Orlando Bloom AND some Johnny Depp.

At some point I'm going to need to figure out what to do with her hair, so it will fit under her tricorn hat. Somewhere in my house is a multi-color scarf that I got from my husband's grandmother, but I can't find it. To practice, I found this wrap that I got for some trip to somewhere. It's ... very big. But a lot of fun to tie around Shae's head.

I'm also going to have to start working on her skirt soon, or it will never be finished, because Mommy is a terrible sewer to begin with, and I have to hand-sew the whole thing. Probably more than once, because I don't anticipate that it will work out as expected the first time around.

In the meantime, we'll keep watching Captain Sparrow to learn how to act like a pirate. And we'll probably throw in a little SpongeBob, just because.

Saturday in the Park

While we were at the Forks fair over the weekend, we also snuck over to the playground for a little while. Basically because if we didn't, we would have never heard the end of it.

I will take this opportunity to admit here that I am totally "THAT" parent, the one who doesn't let her kid go on every ride at the playground, because I sense danger -- on this particular case, it took the form of tweens and young teens, roaming the park with no apparent parental supervision.

Know what I don't understand? How 12-ish-year-olds can walk and chew gum and talk and text and have fights with their boyfriends/girlfriends and be mean to little kids, all at the same time. Is this a specific set of life skills that my daughter is going to learn someday?

Also: we are now officially too big for the baby swings, but I will never understand why playgrounds don't have a sort of intermediate swing, one that is not quite so big and not quite so far off the ground. Didn't they used to? I used to go on the swings. What are today's 3-to-6-year-olds supposed to do at the park when their mothers won't let them go on the merry-go-round?

I mean, she still had fun in the baby swing, but I caught her more than once watching the bigger kids on their bigger swings. She totally wants in on that action.

And I think we found the one sliding board in the world that she doesn't want to go on -- one of those shiny metal numbers, the kind they had when I was little, on the playgrounds that had asphalt and blacktop under the monkey bars, instead of mulch and shredded rubber and bouncy protective stuff.

Lions and Tigers and Bears (LOLwut?)

So, riddle me this.

If it didn't say "Bears" right at the top of this drawing, would you have been able to figure out what this was?

Yeah, me either.

Goin' Commando (Pre-K Style)

If ever there comes a time that aliens (not Yoda, but, you know, gross aliens) (not Stitch either) invade from Mars or wherever (like, Hoth, where the Wampa lives and eats fresh steaming tauntaun for breakfast) (forgive me, we've been watching "Star Wars" again, because WE ARE AWESOME RAWR!) and the invading alien armies decide to put down a protective layer of moon bounce materials ...

... Special Secret Super-Soldier Shae is ON THE CASE, and she has us covered.

Head Over Feet

Know what else you can do when you're three years old? Ride around your grandparents' backyard on your bicycle while still in your pajamas.

I wish I were three years old again.