Lately whenever Isabelle brings some pens over, asking me to draw, I find myself drawing this little guy. He sort of reminds me of a hamster.

Then I remembered, when I was little, we had a hamster. I can’t remember his name. I can’t remember what happened to him. But I do remember I used to take him out of his cage, hold him in my hands, and “fly” him around the room saying, “Super Hamster!!”.

And seeing as the topic for Illustration Friday is “save” I thought I’d share.

I just got a call that started like this, “What the hell? WHAT THE HELL? ” It was my friend Olinda. We’ve known each other for 30 years so I knew exactly what she was talking about without her having to say another word.

She’s jonesing for Isabelle pictures. So why the silence for a week? Well, I’ve had my hands full. On Friday I went to San Francisco to see my sister (Helen) and her friend Christina. Christina was interested in hiring me to sew up a prototype for an idea she had. So Isabelle tagged along and got to play with her cousin Ebow.

We were at Helen’s work. Downstairs they have a day care and that’s where the kids played with this little kitchen.

The kids had so much fun. There was only one unhappy moment where Ebow wouldn’t share a chair. He pushed Isabelle away saying, “go away!”, which made Isabelle cry. But beyond that they had fun throwing balls, playing with window shades, driving little cars around, and playing make believe. Ok ok. I know, Olinda. That’s a blurry picture of Isabelle. That doesn’t count. So here, they were pretending to drink tea and eat pizza:

So, have I been sewing the prototype and that’s the explanation for my absence? Well no. I turned down the work. I decided Christina deserved to have someone with more sewing skills who could do a better job.

And I guess that’s a good thing because I’ve had my hands full with Isabelle. It was noticeable the very next day, on Saturday, when we went to the store. She was so cute in this picture: sitting on the little kiddie lawn chair and wearing kiddie sunglasses.

Then she turned and became a terror. She threw a tantrum over I cannot even remember what. Alan took her crying out of the store. She’s NEVER done that before.

The past few days she’s been difficult, hard to please, and short tempered. Alan notices that she gets this way whenever she sees Ebow. Maybe that’s just a coincidence…

So yeah. Hands full of temperamental toddler here. Oh wait. Hands full of temperamental toddler and tissue paper. My allergies are kicking my butt. What am I allergic to? The outside! I’m allergic to trees, flowers, and grass. So yeah, allergic to the outside.

With the combination of these two things, I’m just worn out. No sewing. No drawing. I’ve read my favorite blogs but I haven’t even looked at the rest of them. I have 856 unread items. I have had no energy for writing. But today’s call, “what the hell?“, has made me get off my tired butt and post some pictures. And oh my gawd it took me over two hours to write this between Isabelle’s whining.

So, will that last you another week Olinda? or until whenever I feel like posting again?

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to post more pictures of Isabelle on here. Alan doesn’t download the pictures off the camera so unless they are on my blog or I show him, he doesn’t get to see them. Well you’ve seen how well that’s been going.

Even after Isabelle got back to her happy little normal self, I haven’t been in the mood to write or to even look through pictures. But today is different. We finally got around to taking our monthly family picture, over a week late, and I had to go through THEM ALL.

So, here are pictures from this weekend. We went to the Oakland museum with my friend Veronica to eat cake!

No. Just kidding. They did have cake there but we went to look at wildflowers. Here’s the description from their site, “Celebrate the coming of spring with California’s diverse wildflowers at the annual Wildflower Show. Create a child-sized flower bouquet, compose a mini-terrarium, check out the vital role of bees as pollinators, and more!“. I was looking forward to making a terrarium with Isabelle. I’ve been wanting to make a terrarium since at least February 13th. How can I be so exact on the date? Because that’s when I took this picture:

See how Isabelle filled it with what she wanted, her toys and a partly eaten cookie? It’s been sitting empty since then.

Yeah, so that’s the main thing I wanted to do, make a terrarium. And wouldn’t you know it, we didn’t get around to doing it. So what did we do instead? We looked at wildflowers. Me and Veronica laughed like little kids at the funny names of the plants like this one:

Still gives me a giggle.

And what else did we do? Make a paper flower hat!! A little hat made out of PAPER!! (You can click on each picture individually to see it larger)

It was a little challenging. Isabelle didn’t understand at first why we were putting this big piece of paper on her head. She kept ducking out of the way. I’m so glad Veronica was there to help take pictures. We needed both pairs of hands to get the paper on Isabelle.

And here is Isabelle showing it off when we were taking our monthly family picture today.

So yeah…let’s see when I’m in the mood to post again. Hopefully it’ll be soon.