Bunny Sally got stitched yesterday afternoon. I have no idea how I finished, especially when you consider the fact that I was sort of hiding my stitchery efforts in my lap beneath my desk, ready to toss the whole kit-n-caboodle on the floor in case someone walked into my office! I pulled her right side out through the inch and a half long hole in her right gut side and poked out the ears and the hands and feet (paws?) with an unsharpened pencil and showed off my embroidery prowess to a coworker who sews.

Then I carried the gutless floppy bunny into school to give to McPantses because I knew she’d love to see it. Somehow, after dinner and screamering and toot-like behavior from both chilluns, the house silenced itself, the pets stopped sticking their snouts into the Crabcake’s highchair seat, the table was cleared and I got a moment to drag the polyfill* out and show my daughter how to stuff a gutless bunny.

She got the hang of things quickly, too. I showed her how the sides were sewed together and she was careful not to stretch out the hole or tug at the threads. I showed her that small handfuls of stuffing are better than big ones because it helps the animal stay softer and more pliable. I also showed her how to check out wrinkles and how to decide if the bunny was exactly huggable enough or if she needed a few more handfuls. McP and I stuffed Bunny Sally for a full hour, carefully poking polyfill into ears and arms and legs and we enjoyed ourselves very much.

After we got the huge bunny head mostly filled, I stopped long enough to grab a leftover floral fabric scrap and cut out a small heart and stole Build-A-Bear’s sniffle-inducer and told McPantses to give the heart a kiss and make a wish and she did. Then we stuffed the heart into the bunny and finished stuffing–I’m pretty sure the heart actually ended up in Bunny Sally’s neck or brain area, but she hasn’t imploded yet, so I guess it’s okay. The girlchild was anxious to tell us her wish and said that she always wishes the same thing about her animals at Build-A-Bear, which is that the animal will be the best bear [elephant, puppy dog, whatever] that she has and we talked about how that wish always comes true. She wished the same for Bunny Sally.

I had McPantses read a book aloud while I stitched up the gut opening with the precision of a surgeon. I’m really proud of the perfectly closed hole in the bunny and McPantses was impressed, too.

The fast friends slept well last night, but we’ve had a discussion this morning about how naughty Bunny Sally isn’t to steal carrots from the fridge and taunt the dogs with them any more. The dogs think the carrots belong to them, you know.**

And then I started thinking, wouldn’t it be cute to make a matching big stuffed carrot out of coordinating fabrics to go along with the bunnies? I don’t have anything else to do.

Oh, and while I think “Mortimer” is a splendid name, I think the boy’s bunny will have to be named “Harry.” It just goes with Bunny Sally.

* Plain ole polyfill won and here’s why: the best-loved huggable squishy creatures at my house get barfed on sooner or later, so I wanted fully washable.

** Whole carrots = best treats ever for big dogs, at my house.

I am making bunnies for the kids and I’m stitching McPantses’ floral/seersucker bunny together and thinking about stuffing.

I have two huge bags of polyfill stuff in the guest bedroom closet, but I wonder what else I could fill this bunny with that would have an interesting, pleasing texture? Buckwheat amongst the fiberfill? Lavendar? What’s got longevity?

I’m stitching her up by hand, even though I could whiz through it in five minutes on the sewing machine. I’m not great with curves on the machine and I want the curves to look curvy and not pointy, so by hand it is. The bunny is adorable, if I do say so myself. Her front is floral (hot pink and white with medium green leaves) and she has green eyes and a two-toned pink nose. Her ears are lined in white chain stitch and have herringbone stitched pink inners. She has a tiny star-shaped belly button and a tiny swirly stitched tail, too.

McPantses is looking forward to helping me stuff her new bunny and she has christened the bunny “Sally,” because we love that name. The boy’s bunny is going to be dark blue/white plaid on one side and a lovely yellow/blue/white toile on the other; he shall be named “Mortimer,” because, by golly, if I’m stitching up two bunnies, I’m naming at least one and the only one I will get to name is the boy’s.

Yesterday, McPantses had a helluva grumpy day. She was a complete toot* the entire day and either burst into hysterical tears or aggrieved loud mutant agonized screamy arguments several times. She has this dramah queen thing going where she will cry with desperate abandon, but she’s often completely faking it and I can pull her out of it pretty well.

(Two birds of a feather, the Husband would say.)

For instance, yesterday afternoon I celebrated Memorial Day properly by cooking a full Barefoot Contessa episode for our dinner, because nothing says it’s a work holiday and it’s 100 degrees outside like a hot meal of comfort food! We had meatloaves and buttermilk mashed potatoes and chocolate brownie tart for dessert. Hmmm–don’t tell that I left out the lardon-enchanced brussel sprouts. McP fussed hugely about meatloaf and how yucky it is because it has onions in it and sat at the table, her bony little shoulders heaving with sobs at the notion of “big girls try.”** Then I caught her with a crook eye and a raised eyebrow and she instantly turned off the waterworks and laughed at me, forked down a bite of the offending food substance and pronounced it good after all.

Little toot.

She was sent to tidy up her room after dinner so that I could clear the kitchen in peace before we embarked on this whole chocolate brownie tart adventure together. When she screeched through the kitchen to check my progress, she was hysterical [again] to find that I’d started melting chocolate chips and butter over a makeshift double boiler*** She ran instantly for the Husband (to have him force me to let her help, of course) and she was so angry she couldn’t explain herself adequately, nor could she calm down enough to accept my invitation to her favorite perch on the counter where she sits to crack eggs and stir at things that don’t truly need stirring.

But I got her on the counter and she calmed herself enough to cook with me and, more importantly, to run her grubby fingers through the chocolate bowl before I rinsed it in the sink.

The whole household was busy and active all day long and by about 6 p.m., everyone was exhausted. The boychild went to bed early and I left the Husband and McPantses in a warm oozy chocolate haze to clear the kitchen yet again. After I finished, I found the Husband asleep and McPantses nearly asleep herself, so I took her to our room and snuggled her under the covers while we watched Spongebob and petted lolling, lazy golden retrievers, who take any available opportunity to sneak onto our bed.****

McPantses was rotten yesterday all day long and she repeatedly showed me something that my friend says: the one who deserves it the least needs it the most. McPantses deserved to spend the day in time out or whitewashing a fence or peeling potatoes, but what she really needed was hands-on time and rest and just plain old love. I’m going to lose my relevance in her world one day, but I’m still front and center for now.

* “Toot” is our tame family word for the word we want to use, which is “asshole.”

** “Big girls try” works for now. They try one bite of horrible, wart-inducing foods that would surely reduce lesser beings to dust and they try to potty before leaving the house, even though they still have to go immediately after being served dinner at any eating establishment on the planet.

*** I am a brave chocolate melter. I rarely use the double-boiler method and prefer to go low and slow over direct heat. Double boilers are for wimps, I say.

**** When I moved back into our bedroom, we kicked the gorgeous girls out and I’ve slept better for it.

Every night at about 10 p.m., the Husband starts fading fast. He is rarely, if ever, fully awake after 11 p.m., so I knew that the movie we were watching really interested him when he was still paying attention at 11:15 last night.

We caught the second half of In Good Company, which has a fairly lame ending, but is otherwise quietly interesting from the parental point of view. Dennis Quaid plays the father of a college student daughter and a teen daughter. His wife is newly pregnant and he loses his job to a guy in his twenties (played by Topher Grace) and ends up shunted along into a lesser position. The younger dude begins dating the older, displaced dude’s daughter (Scarlet Johanssen, who could account for the Husband’s awake-ness). I think Quaid gave off a real sense of irrelevance and it was mildly depressing to consider, in terms of our own kids and how that’s bound to happen one day.

Not long ago, a blogger wrote about how our parents just really want us to care about what they’re up to–as adults we’ve become the popular kids. I’ve never thought about it that way, but it’s so true. She said, “All our parents want is for us to think they are cool and important, for us to choose to spend time with them in the face of many options for our attention.”

Since I read that entry a few weeks ago, it’s stuck with me. One day the boychild will run from me instead of screeching for me from across the house, demanding to be scooped up and snuggled. Even now, I have to grab McPantses for a hug or sneak into her room after she’s already asleep and smooth back her hair from her damp temples and whisper to her. It’s about the only time I can catch her when she’s still.

I think I wrote about it before, but it still shocks me: our main goal as parents is to help our children grow up and want to leave us. It’s then that the popularity contest begins, isn’t it? It’s then that I will begin competing for time and attention.

I’m a selfish person overall and I’m particularly selfish with my time, at least partially because I have so little to spare, but I guess the least I can do is treat my parents and my inlaws in the way I hope my own kids will treat me one day, even while I [often] privately bemoan my lack of free time. That between us the Husband and I possess four living parents who care enough about us to even want our time (and particularly want our kids’ time) is miraculous in this day and age of dysfunction, isn’t it?

Seriously?

Shiloh?

Brad and Angelina, rednecks of the world toast y’all with a Bud Lite, but Yankees think you should have gone with Pittsburg, if you’re commemorating Civil War battles. There are four separate Alabama towns named Shiloh and three in Arkansas. You have guaranteed that your kid will be fit to fly the flag at a NASCAR opening ceremony one day. Fine, fine choice!

Why not Antietam, anyway?

The scene: lounging on couches in front of the teevee last night watching a DVR’d* episode of curb your enthusiasm.

Me, who has caught the boychild’s cold from last week: “My right nose** is snuffed up and my right eyeball is watering.”

The Husband, who has caught the boychild’s cold from last week but who surely does not have it as bad as me because he never does: “That’s so odd. I was just thinking about how my right nose is stuffy and my right eye is watering.”

Me: “We match! Do you have your period, too?”

I crack me up.

* DVR = best invention ever for lazy couch potato to feel a sense of major accomplishment. Deleting the episodes and clearing out that “Recorded Television” category makes me feel like I’ve gotten something done.

** You say “nostril.” I say “right nose” or “left nose.” I can’t tell you why because I don’t know why.

Birthday over, thank goodness. Having a birthday is not much fun without the one member of the household who is totally into the birthday scene around! The main realization I’ve had this week, as I turn 34, occured on Monday while I was standing in line at the artsy coffee shop behind a bunch of kids out for exams from the school McPantses will attend in the fall.

I asked the uniformed girls (all tan, young, lovely and long-legged, no matter how tall or short they were) about what “tennis shoe soles” means for little kids at their school and if crocs count. The boys (also all tan and long-legged, no matter how tall or short they were, and with lots of thatchy long hair) wandered off when I started talking and a girl with a thousand-dollar gorgeous obviously real Gucci bag slung over her shoulder and leather flip flops on neatly pedicured feet called me “ma’am” and told me she bet little kids aren’t allowed to wear crocs.

I took my cookies and walked out of the store thinking about how I’m twice as old as those high-schoolers (twice as old? When did that happen?) and whether or not my daughter will ever be toting around a thousand-dollar handbag and would I even want that for her?

I am ready for my girl to be home.

ETA: The handoff is complete and was without incident. McPantses has just given me a rundown of all the protein she’s had to eat in the past few days. Note to self: explain that waffles are not protein.

First, a huge HUZZAH! to all my friends* who are at the Javits Center in New York right now participating in the National Stationery Show! I don’t know what one says to paper people to wish them good luck and big sales. “Break a leg!” doesn’t sound quite right, does it. How about “Break a pen!” or “Push the envelope!”

Second, my house is almost painfully quiet. After a successful ballet/tap recital Saturday morning and an ice cream sundae at lunch, McPantses has flown the coop to visit with her Atlanta grandparents. She spent yesterday at the Georgia Aquarium, where her favorite thing was the huge Beluga whale. She was mighty impressed and must have told me (in her normal voice of near-scream/squeal) ten separate times last night on the phone. Today, it’s Build-A-Bear and the evile Chuck E. Cheese and if I couldn’t say good things about my parents in-law for any other reason in the world (and I can), I can say thank goodness I rarely have to visit those places** because they exist and will take my child while I hide under my bed.

The quiet at our house is disconcerting and it’s freaking the boychild out. He spent much of yesterday asking for “Tah Tah,” which is what he calls his sister, and dragging us outside to look for her. He also insisted (I have never met a baby better equipped to insist things–he points, lunges, grunts and hollers) we check the car for her several times. It’s adorable and sad to see how much he misses her. I can’t wait to see his reaction when she comes home.

As for the coming home, I’m in a bit of a pickle. Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m not much of a holidays/gifts/birthday person (except for Christmas and except for giving McPantses a big time and good memories and traditions) and am easily embarassed and could pretty much ignore the whole day, except that McPantses would have a complete fit. She insists on cake and was flabbergasted to learn that sometimes people don’t have shindigs on their birthdays. She wants to stay at her grandparents’ until Wednesday (which is too long for my comfort level, but I hate to drag her home before she’s ready).

I originally wanted her home on Tuesday but we’ve agreed on Wednesday. She will be upset if she has to come home early, but she’ll also feel terrible if she misses my birthday. I guess we will fake it, instead, don’t you think, and have cupcakes on Wednesday?

* I think it’s okay to call online paper people my friends, isn’t it?

** The last two times I’ve been to Build-A-Bear, I cried when they had McP kiss the heart that they shove into the animal. I hate myself for being such a sniveling ninny.