Another face from the class I'm taking. I'm really behind in it due to lack of inspiration/just not quite feeling it. But I liked this face I created and I quite liked the technique. You can also see the crayon marks underneath the paint where Kavya helped me color this, which I also adore :)

My doctor wants me to have a 2 hour glucose test done. This is the same almost the same test I swore I'd never do again because it made me feel so awful while pregnant. Normally just the fasting morning levels are done. Meh. I hate that test. I don't want to do it and I'm not sure when I can carve out 2 hours in the morning to go and feel like shit and then come back and feel like shit while caring for a kid. I should have just said no right then. Honestly I'd rather monitor my blood sugar levels by pricking my finger. I don't see why I have to put my body through super unnatural stress for this. And also the blood drawing. Errrrgh. 3 blood draws in one day will be super painful. I am not a fainter and I usually don't faint, but the last time I had this test, by the 4th draw they couldn't find a vein at all that wasn't tapped out and they are digging around in my arm and I feel like crap, I very nearly fainted. Meh, I really should have brought this up with my doctor. I'm such a coward. But maybe I'll call back and ask her for a prescription for the needles/testing strips and I'll just monitor myself for a week and send her the results. Bet she won't go for that tho.

I feel like with my knee, the sleep apnea thing and my eyes I've just been in and out of the doctor's office way too much.

And my doctor thinks that diabetes risk factors are controlled by exercise (which I agree with) and a high protein diet (which I do not). I am sure the statistics don't agree with me. But when I had gestational diabetes I found the one thing that made my numbers soar was processed sugar. I could eat all the fruit I wanted, even eat pasta and bagels (as long as I paired them with a protein) and my numbers were always within limits. And many women on the pregnancy forums couldn't even look at a carb without their glucose levels going out of control. I found that if I had a lot of protein, I needed a bit of a carb to go with it. Not a lot, but a slice of bread or something similar.

Anyway, must end my rant because Kavya decided one hour was her nap quota for today (or maybe *fingers crossed* she was just talking in her sleep).

Bridgette was saying the other day that her son going through the terrible 3s, worse than the terrible 2s. Someone please tell me that that is not always true for every kid (tho what IS true for every kid, nada). Because 2 is pretty drama filled around here. Especially this week when she hasn't been feeling well. We had breakdowns every 10 minutes it seemed. 'Mama won't pick me up and dance - WAAAAAAH' - there was no explaining that my knee isn't up to lifts in dancing.

Today she had a major meltdown outside when I took away a big stick from her, after she accidentally whacked me in the face with it. I realized it wasn't the best thing to play with - bam, MELT DOWN. I'm carrying a kicking and screaming toddler across a very slippery deck with a still recovering knee. Good times, good times. Inside the melt down continued until she turned into the world's most affectionate child. And starting a long hugging and kissing time with me. Heh. Kids are bizarre. Loveable too.

Today Kavya had underwear NOT diapers on and we made it through several hours with NO accidents. I'm trying 1 layer undies, 1 layer cloth diaper liner (absorbent fabric) and then more undies. But she didn't pee in them at all. *does a dance*

We are still on the potty training adventure. I slacked off in December so when I had the energy again post-xmas - she did not want to sit on the potty. She'd be visibly crapping in her diaper, 2 ft away from the potty and I'd ask her if she'd want to sit on the potty and she'd be like NO!!!!!! So I had to pull out the M&Ms trick. Which has worked like a charm. "Do you want to sit on the potty?" NO! "Well the, no M&Ms." Chocolate! poop potty! Next step is the hard one - no diapers. She has the carrot and now for the stick (not LITERALLY). But she has to feel wet and uncomfortable. Someone suggested cloth diapers and so I'm back to cloth diapers (which I had serious fail at the first time). Well, not exactly cloth diapers but cloth potty training pants. And some diaper covers for when those are wet. I expect they won't contain it 100%, but as long as it is MOST of it, I'm cool with that. We'll see how that goes. Should be uncomfortable.

My knee is still sore. Actually it felt way better this morning, I was surprised, but I still can't walk like normal and now my other leg is really feeling the strain of supporting most of my weight. So I'm taking it easy and sitting on the couch or computer. I did manage to get dinner done today because I couldn't eat any more takeout. I'm feeling meh because I haven't exercised in forever, let alone do the normal house care stuff I usually do. The nice thing is that Kavya will sit on the couch with me and we read books together. She is a sweety.

I hurt my knee. Which is funny because I've been exercising and really strengthening the muscles in my legs. My kneecap moved sideways, which happens when the muscles are too weak to hold it. It will be challenging with a toddler, but not half as bad as if it had happened with an immobile baby. I am not sure what I would do then since I really can't carry anything that requires two hands. But that didn't happen so whew. I will only have to pick Kavya up to get her in and out of the crib and diaper changes (tho she's going a lot in the potty now so maybe I won't even have to do that.) S. is hanging out here this morning but has to go to work in the afternoon. We'll manage. Kavya thinks it's funny to follow me and imitate me limping.

I am going to offend a bunch of people, but I really wasn't impressed with Avatar. It's ok if you feel differently, I'm pretty sure we can still be friends. I'm just surprised at the intelligent people who saw something in it that obviously I didn't see. Sure, the visual were completely brilliant. The conceptual artists did amazing work as well as all the technical people and CGI artists. But the story blew. I knew going in the story was bad, but about 2 hours in I was checking my cell phone to see how much more I had to go.

( cut for some spoilers )

Remember when I talked about drawing faces . . . oh last month? Yeah, I'm finally getting around to posting some. Above face - yes, pretty girl. But but but . . well, she's purple?? ;) I'm super pleased with the nose on this one. Noses are hard. This is graphite pencil with water color washes over the top and then the dark areas have a wee bit of black watercolor. Hmmm, maybe a wee bit of colored pencil in there too. I can't remember.



This face is graphite pencil (tho far lighter), colored pencil, then water color washes. The other face has more depth, but I'm still practicing.

S. and I got to play Santa for the first time - even tho it was Kavya's 3rd Christmas, it was the first time that Santa mattered. She said Santa was going to bring her "chocolate and stickers" and he did! She was sooo spoiled today, but poor baby caught a cold somewhere and spent most of the day wiping her nose with her sleeve (which she wipes under her nose and across her cheek). Now her cheek is bright red and we have photos scheduled next week. Oh well :) My eyes are still red too. I don't know what's wrong with them, only that it isn't bacterial conjuctivis. I suspect something viral, but it's been about 3 weeks. Anyway, aside from germs, we are having a good Christmas. Gorged ourselves on food yesterday and I have a chunk of meat in the oven right now (from my dad's purchase of a 4H cow 2 years ago).

Kiddo took a bit to get used to our present unwrapping scheme - which is everyone takes a turn. So she went around and helped everyone unwrap and was fine with that. Everyone else was good about it too since they'll all be sharing her cold. I got a bunch of COPIC markers and other art supplies. I may also take Misty Mawn's face painting class, not sure yet. Kiddo got a small sized table and chairs, tons of stickers, several dolls, play food, broom, AND rolling pin. Lots of those nifty plastic animals. We like those, we play with the blocks and build a house for each one. I'll have to invent some other games with them too.

Hope you all had a good Christmas! I'll post some kiddo pics soon, but she's got a lot of snot dripping out of her nose in them ;)

Merry Christmas! Kavya says that Santa is bringing her stickers and chocolate. He just might ;)

We finally found Darth Vader cowering in the car like a sissy who is afraid of kisses and hanging out with legless Marilyn Monroe. So Lord Vader has been Kavya's new bath companion. Hey, even Dark Lords need showers.

Looking forward to Christmas :) Not too much else to say. I am working on art (drawing faces) but not much to post at the moment.

Last night we put up a Christmas tree. I found out I have a huge gaping hole in the "non-breakable ornaments" category, so we made a quick trip to Target to buy a few, enough to make our tree look decorated. Now I'm wondering if I can wrap up other people's presents with Kavya and put those under the tree, or if she'll just try to open them.

She had fun decorating the tree, but she just laid ornaments on the branches as fast as she could and then she was like "STICKERBOOK" and ran back into the room with her sticker book.

Yesterday at Costco we bought her a stickerbook and a sesame street coloring book. The checkout woman was asking her who some of the Disney characters were, then she held up the sesame street coloring book and pointed to Elmo and asked "Who is this?" Kavya names ALL the characters on the cover as fast as she can "Tat's Elmo Zoe Govgo (Grover)" so the lady asks again and Kavya tells her again. Then the lady asks "Is she speaking another language?" Hahahaha. It was hilarious. I was like, no, she's just speaking really fast and naming ALL the characters on the cover.

My current favorite thing is to ask her the color of something. Everything is blue, except for Darth Vader, who is either pink or black. Tho, she gets yellow sometimes. Darth Vader is missing at the moment tho.

Oatmeal is Mitmeal, that's cute too.

Cold. COLD. I should probably stop drinking this black tea or I'll have trouble sleeping tonight but it's soooo cold and I need warm stuff. At least it's warm enough inside. BRRRRR.

Look, art!





My SL work is really slow right now. Well, I always have something I can do in there, but the recession has finally hit and my sales are LOW. Oh well, they are still enough to support the sim and a little extra.

Kavya and I had a nasty cold this past week and we're still pretty snotty. Meh.

I signed up to take Suzi Blu's Goddess and Poet class recently because 1) I love faces I want to be able to draw them better (I used to know how) and 2) all the videos are done/it's not a video a week, so I can go through and ignore the parts I'm not interested in and watch what I want to. And save them for later. So she draws pretty girl faces, like everyone else is doing right now. I know, I know, I just said I wanted to draw faces like everyone else. Haha. But yesterday as I stared at the pretty girl face I drew, I realized I had NO interest in drawing pretty girl faces. So using what I learned from her face drawing video, I applied it to another face of an old man and while haha, it looks NOTHING like the old man, it does look like an interesting face to me. Yay! Is it is a sure sign I'm getting older that I like wrinkly faces?? ;)

And I too used to want to draw pretty girl faces because I found my stash of face clippings from magazines that I collected in high school and while I find the 90s fashion amusing (and yes, cool), I am like, boring pretty face, boring pretty face. So now I have to find some interesting faces to draw. I'm sure I have something. Somewhere.

Anyway, I'm really happy that I can apply the class to MY style. In fact, I'm really thrilled to find my style. It helps that I am only making art for me, so while pretty girls are the rage (aren't they always), I don't have to care if anyone likes my weird wrinkly faces that aren't even gender specific.

I am finally finding more time to journal. Kavya likes to sit on the floor or the potty and color and so I art journal. We talk about the Sesame Street characters she likes to color, or the colors she is using. It is very relaxing.

Art thoughts:

- Is it really snarky of me to be like MEH when I see something about someone getting an art book deal and their art looks exactly like all the popular boring mixed media art??

- I have no interest in book binding. I've done it. I hate it. Why do art journaling classes have to include it? I don't want to bind books, it is one of those things that I suck at, so therefore, I hate doing.

- Any of the art/craft magazines doing anything interesting lately? I only subscribe to Hi-Fructose anymore because of time, but now Kavya is letting me do more art. I journal, she colors Elmo.

Today we painted. It was a lot of fun, so much that even after an hour, she did NOT want to stop. But it was so messy. And clean up was super bad. I went to dump the water and she walked all over the painted papers . . . and onto the carpet. Luckily I've already stained that carpet myself and it is old, so it's not a huge loss, but there really is no getting out acrylic paint. Then I had to give her a bath to get stuff off her. Major tantrum. Baths do not happen in the middle of the day! She also liked painting with the water more than the paint, so next time I'm going to water down the liquid watercolors I have (non-toxic ones for kids) and let her go to town and cleanup SHOULD be easier. I hope.

Not work safe, but this Lady Gaga video is really cool - nifty outfits, unreal shoes and just general fab stuff.

I finally put up all of my India photos on Flickr.

Most of them are from the Konark Sun Temple, which dates to the 13c. I could have spent DAYS there, but we only got a few hours.





You can see more on my flickr account

Finally, I got to carve a pumpkin again!!!