seven quick takes friday - ed. 4

1. I've been hanging up all our pictures this week.  The vast majority of our "art" is free printables off the internet (with a dash of homemade + Etsy) but I love it anyway.  After this, only the curtains remain to get our house home-ified!

2. I was trying to hang up our large world map poster with a gazillion Command strips.  It kept rolling in on itself and pulling off the wall and it just refused to stay stuck.  I had thrown myself down on the couch in a fit of frustrated temper, when Jack asked, "Why don't you just nail it to the wall?"  Right.  Duh.  Six tiny nails later, and it's me: 1, map: 0.

3.  Fortunately that wasn't one of the No-Nails Walls in our house.  I discovered when I was first hanging up pictures, that the studs - and some of the whole inner walls - are either metal or concrete, which, unsurprisingly, don't really take nails well.  All the better to withstand typhoons with, I'm sure (I feel like the Big Bad Wolf as I say that:  "All the better to EAT YOU WITH, MY DEAR!!!")  But every now and then the nail I'm trying to hammer in just kind of bounces off, so if I want to hang anything on that wall, it's gotta be by tape (or Command hook).  Kinda ghetto, but oh well.

4. Speaking of Little Red Riding Hood (how's that for a smooth transition?), that's exactly who Faith is going to be for Halloween this year.  I got her an adorable little vintage smocked dress off Etsy, and I'm knitting her a little hood/cape (out of cotton yarn - we are in the tropics after all).  It occurred to me after I started knitting, though, that she doesn't actually know who Little Red Riding Hood is, so of course I had to buy her a book telling the story.  It's a little advanced for her age, but it's true to the original story, which I love (wolf swallows Granny and Little Red and the huntsman cuts them out), and the illustrations are gorgeous.

 Link

5.  I dislike when fairy tales are "cleaned up" for kids.  Not only does it take away a good deal of the excitement and delicious horror/scariness of the story, but it underestimates kids.  Kids are smarter and more observant than we tend to give them credit for.  They know when you're BSing them.  I love this quote by Chesterton:  "Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.  Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey.  What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.  The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination.  What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.  Exactly what the fairy tale does is this:  it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."

6. Total change of topic:  I am pumped (hahahahaha) at the milk supply I've been able to store in the freezer for Josie, with pumping just once a day, or even less.  I was NEVER able to stock up for Faith, because I was working 80 hours a week, and I could never get ahead of her... and pumping that much SUCKS.

7.  It's with astonishment that I realize that (for me at least - not discounting women who've struggled with breastfeeding) - for me, breastfeeding is easy once we get over the first couple of weeks.  (And this from a woman who had legit mastitis this time around - red streaks and fever with shaking chills and everything.)  But pumping at work?  That is hard, baby.  If you've done it, kudos to you.

(PS - I have no idea why my blog posts changed their order.  The Seven Quick Takes - Ed. 3 is from last week, or maybe 2 weeks ago.)

(PPS - No wait, I figured it out.  It's because I was adding tags to old posts, and didn't realize I could do that without actually editing the post.  Boo.)

Go visit Conversion Diary for more quick takes!