Playing the catch-up game

Since I've neglected my own blogs for almost a year, the side effect was that I neglected to keep up with the blogs I was following as well. The Blogger/Google Reader app for my Android phone quite frankly sucked. It was SO much of a pain that I eventually threw in the towel and said "When I get some spare time..."

And we ALL know how that goes. Some things that happened in the last 12 months:

I was diagnosed with ADD. Which means better living through Big Pharma for me to be able to cope with life. That's fine, though, because I've never been MORE productive and MORE focused in my life. So YAY DRUGS!

My oldest daughter was diagnosed with ADD. Actually, SHE was diagnosed first and then I got my diagnosis. But this is my blog, so I come first. MUAHAHAHAHAH See "Better living through Big Pharma" for her too. Her issues are different than mine so she gets more/different meds than me. All I can say is that they WORK and she's actually acting like a normal 10 year old. Most of the time.

My oldest daughter was diagnosed with "pituitary dwarfism", that is, lack of growth hormone. So she gets injections every night for her condition. She's getting so TALL now.

My younger daughter started participating in pageants. She's done really well all things considered. She's won quite a few titles and this weekend we're off to our state's National American Miss finals. She's wearing a suit I made from a vintage pattern for her interview suit. She'll also be representing our state at the Royal Galaxy National/International Pageant at the end of this month, thanks to the help and votes of my family and online community.

Interview Suit, not quite finished here

Incidentally, her formal wear and theme wear both took first place at a local competition. Her sister got best theme wear too.

She designed this herself

I designed this. The tree lights up as do the wings.

Beware of big presents...

My oldest daughter had her tonsils out a couple of weeks ago. She's finally back to normal.

Sayonara Tonsils!

My oldest daughter ALSO got her feet issue sorted out. She suffered from Siever's which is basically an issue with the Achilles Tendon pulling on the heel plate and causing inflammation. Poor kid suffered for two years from painful feet. Couldn't do stairs, run, jump or otherwise be highly active like every OTHER 7-9 year old. Thanks to the fabulous Ortho at Nemour's, she got physical therapy and shoe inserts which actually FIXED her issues. Now my klutzy wonder, oft called "Grace", has better balance and is able to run, jump and play. Apparently her ankles rolled so far in that it was causing balance issues. She's only able to wear sneakers most days (we have one pair for outside and one "nice" pair for church) but she's happy with that. It makes MY life easier when I tell her to find her shoes and put them on.

My son recently brought the plague to our house and everyone but ME(for once!) got sick. My better half missed two days of work, we all missed the 4th of July frolic downtown and poor Oldest Daughter was less than a week post-op and coughing up a lung. Thankfully she recovered just fine. We think it was a flu virus. How I did not get sick is beyond me. Maybe it was all those kids' gummy echinacea & vitamin C supplements.

Everyone passed the school year and matriculated to the next grade. So in about 4 weeks, I'm going to have a 1st, 3rd & 5th grader. This is Oldest Daughter's last year of elementary school. Next year I'm shipping her off to my mother-in-law... JUST KIDDING! I don't have much use for the typical "middle school" thing. I missed out on all the drama that was middle school because I was homeschooled from 4th-9th grades. I'm glad. To this day I'm just SO not into the drama of who did what to whom and how it's like so totally whatever and stuff. Funny thing is, Oldest Daughter is just like me. She says she doesn't get along that well with the girls in her class because "all they do is sit around and talk about boys and gossip". She'd rather be playing Beyblades with the guys or building Gundam models. Frankly, so would I.

Gaza C Gundam Model

I thought I was TOTALLY DONE with sewing for a while. I closed my Etsy shop for the summer because the orders were actually coming too close together and I couldn't keep up AND take care of my family. I know, I know, what a terrible problem to have...

Now that I'm done with pageant clothes, including embellishing the store-boughten ones, I've got to focus on UNIFORMS. I have a love/hate relationship with uniforms.

I LOVE that they make it so easy to decide what to wear each day. It cuts down on morning drama when we're already running behind to make it before the tardy bell rings.

I HATE that they have to have Polo shirts. Those things are terrible. They trap stains like Ursula trapped those "poor unfortunate souls" in The Little Mermaid. What's wrong with woven cotton shirts? Yes, they need to be ironed, but SO DO THE POLO SHIRTS. Because if you don't they look like [potty word].

I HATE the quality of mass-market uniforms. Especially JC Penney's. Yes, I'm calling you out Penney's. And because this isn't Etsy, I CAN. Those skirts didn't even last the year before they looked like [potty word]. In contrast, The Children's Place uniforms last long past the time my kids grow out of them. But they are pricy. And they HAVE TO BE IRONED. Even though they say "Wrinkle Free" don't you believe it for a minute. If it's cotton it has to be ironed. I'm seriously thinking about sending their uniforms OUT. Target makes some decent twill pants that are pretty OK. But still.

I HATE the fact that Younger Daughter is SO SMALL that she wears a size 4/5 in the waist but a 7 in length of pants. She's 8 and built with a very tiny bone structure. You'd *think* she was super-fragile, but she can kick both her sister AND brother's collective butts. She's pretty much ALL muscle. So for her, I usually end up putting her in shorts or skirts or making her jumpers.

So uniforms. Earlier this year I was stalking Etsy's vintage patterns and came across two identical patterns in sizes 8 & 14. Neither of them exactly fit my girls, but it's something to work from. Oldest Daughter wears a 10-ish in vintage sizes. Younger Daughter wears a 4. Her interview suit was a size 6 that I took no less than 4" out of the jacket and 3"+ out of the skirt. She's SO small that my child size dress form at it's smallest setting is TOO BIG. Ugh.

The Pattern (Source)

Anyhoo, I'm going to make the shorts and skirt for my girls for their school sartorial splendor. The Boy is on his own. He's already got plenty of pants and shorts from last year that still fit.

Sew ya later!

#backtoschool #schooluniforms