This weekend my sister and some friends came over. I cooked and we ate for hours and made soap. Well not from scratch but the glycerine melt and pour kind. I only made one soap. The overly glittered mermaid on the right. It’s the worst in the bunch. You can’t even tell it’s a mermaid. And it’s supposed to be blue. What’s wrong with me and soap? Why do I fail so miserably when trying to make it?

We actually made a bunch of soap. But I don’t have any pictures of the rest of them. Sometimes I’m so busy enjoying the moment, I don’t take any pictures. I took maybe a handful of very sorry pictures and then went back to eating and making. Someone actually used the snowflake mold and it came out so nice. I really wish I had taken a few seconds to take a picture of it. Oh well.

We even hacked up some blizzard soap to reuse. I love how the toys look emerging from the “ice”.

Isabelle loves the soap though she didn’t actually help make any. She was too busy playing with her cousin Ebow. But she appreciated them mightily when everyone left.

First she danced around with the sleeping woman soap. Dancing and singing. To the soap. Then I showed her the other soap and she went crazy over the rocket. You should have seen how excited she was to take a bath with them that night. When our bath was over she tried to take the rocket soap to bed, that’s how much she loves it.

Go read cute baby #25, making a mess.

It’s been busy here: pattern tracing, cutting, and sewing. I’ve been jumping from project to project. And on top of that I’m behind on pictures like usual.

I have a finished Isabelle doll but she’s naked. I have a dress pattern traced out but haven’t gotten to cutting out the fabric. Then I saw mailorder #9 came out so I jumped onto making slippers instead.

I wanted to test it first so I made one slipper in muslin. Well I loved it so much I went ahead and made the other one. Looking at the picture I wonder if I should modify the pattern a little. Maybe adjust the slipper top by 1 inch so that more of my feet are showing. But anyhoo back to what I was saying. Isabelle thought my slippers were awesome. She wanted her own pair. It was very simple to do. I measured her foot, it’s about 6.5 inches. So I reduced the slipper bottom pattern to 7 inches and that worked perfectly.

She’s been wearing them all afternoon dancing around.

Dancing with her new slippers on Flickr

Now back to dressing the naked Isabelle doll.

On Friday we drove out to San Francisco for a Chinese new year dinner at my aunt’s apartment. On the drive out, Alan was asking me some questions about Chinese new year. Like what day does it fall on, when do the celebrations end, and what is it the year of? My reply, “I don’t know. Do I look Chinese? Hee hee hee.”

His reply, “ahh YEAH!”

So what if I look Chinese? So what if I AM Chinese? I don’t know about any of the traditions and we don’t really celebrate the Chinese new year. I can’t remember if we even had dinner with the family last year. Probably not.

Sure, growing up, my parents did do certain traditions for Chinese new year. I can remember the red envelopes with money inside and the red tins with sugared fruits and I can’t remember what, seeds maybe, and I’m sure we even had Chinese new year pudding (nian gao. I had to look that up on wikipedia).

But either I’ve forgotten the meanings and reasons for everything or I was never taught. Maybe it’s like how I learned to hold chopsticks. I don’t remember my parents ever explaining how to hold them properly, I just copied what they did and somehow made them work. That, of course, explains why I do not hold chopsticks correctly. Maybe it’s the same with Chinese traditions.

Since I don’t remember my parents talking about it or explaining anything and growing up in America with American friends, I didn’t carry those traditions with me when I moved out.

Instead we’re making new traditions with Isabelle. And though they aren’t Chinese or Filipino they will be a part of our family.

Yesterday, with my sister’s family, we went to a museum for a Lunar New Year celebration. We went last year as well. I enjoy the performances and the crafty activities for the kids. Isabelle made a Vietnamese dragon puppet, a Korean kite, and a god of prosperity hat.

Is this a start of a new tradition for us?

Yesterday we woke up early. Early like regular people. Man that was hard. We went to a pediatric dentist to check Isabelle’s cavities. She was tired so it probably wasn’t a good time for the dentist. She fell asleep on the drive there and on the drive back and was quieter than usual in the waiting room. She played with the toys OF COURSE but she was tired.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that she wouldn’t cooperate for the x-rays. They only managed to get one. And to do that she needed to be bribed with stickers. And then she didn’t want to open her mouth for the dentist. There was immediate crying and…screaming might be an exaggeration, more like loud complaining.

And the verdict. She has at least four cavities and the dentist wants to fill them. The cavity that she lost the filling for is close to the nerve. The dentist is worried it might lead to an infection.

So this is the part I’m stuck on, what to do.

One choice is to do nothing and I’m scared to think what might happen to her teeth. Will she get an infection? Will her teeth hurt her?

Another option is to give her oral sedation while they put the fillings in. The awful part about that is, they strap her down in something called a papoose. The medicine will hopefully make her forget the experience but it’s no guarantee. So she’ll be strapped down screaming and crying while they do the work. Very extremely traumatizing. The dentist doesn’t like this option.

The third option is general anesthesia which scares me. They’ll give Isabelle a shot while she’s in the waiting room with us. She’ll fall asleep. They’ll take her in back where she’ll be given an iv drip during the work. Then when they’re done she’ll basically wake up with us not knowing anything had happened. That’s less trauma for her which I like but putting her under? Scary. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

My sister ordered some machine that is supposed to fix cavities and other stuff. I can’t remember how it works. Positive thinking? Maybe we’ll just try that.

Thank you all for your input about Isabelle’s teeth. We’re really leaning towards the general anesthesia but haven’t made an appointment yet.

But onto some sewing talk. Or I should say lack of sewing. I’ve had unfinished sewing sitting around untouched. It’s been that way for a week. I just can’t seem to get going on it. It’s a dress for Isabelle. I was going steadily along and then ran into a slight hiccup. I screwed up copying one piece of the pattern. Then I cut it and sewed it that way. It wouldn’t fit no matter how much finagling and that’s when I realized I did something wrong. Well I didn’t pick it up after that.

And the idea was to make the dress for Isabelle and then try to duplicate it in a smaller size for Isabelle. Isabelle the doll that is. She’s just a little rag doll, like the Maggie doll.

And you know, I really have to get going on that. Isabelle, the doll, is naked. And Isabelle is saying right now as I’m typing this, “make a dress!”. Or she says, “Isabelle is cold” and then covers her with a blanket.

So yeah, maybe I’ll just stop typing right now and get on that.