The Crafty Happenings--In Other Words: Keeping Busy

Two things have plagued the McClain household of late:

1. The agony, and ensuing insanity, of waiting for doctoral school responses
2. Bryon's new ridiculous schedule

Apparently, the Pentagon's control center (trust me, this is the best way to describe it), has a small standing staff, but there is a requirement for a much larger one, so they peg the regular units around base for manpower, in rotations. It's Bryon's unit's turn, and thus, his turn. Because this job is a 24-7 job, it requires staffing round-the-clock. This means that for the duration of this temporary assignment, Bryon has had to take very strange shifts. He works 6 days on, then 4 days off, alternating shifts between days, midnights and afternoons. We're about halfway through this temporary assignment (he's done at the end of April).

It's been...interesting. Sometimes, he's home and able to take Collin to school, or even pick him up; this is something he'd never normally be able to do. Other times, he'll go for long stretches where he barely sees us at all because while he's home, he's sleeping. It's a very weird arrangement, and it reminds me of a modified version of what we went through last year when he wasn't around at all. It is much better because, of course, he's here a lot more; but when he's not here, it's back to me and the boy. A lot.

Anyway, between needing to distract my brain from eating itself and imploding with stress over waiting, and falling back into old Mommy and Collin habits from last year, we've been keeping very busy with crafts and all sorts of nonsense around here. Collin and I developed pretty good routines last year, managing pretty well without Bryon (not that we liked it one bit, but you do what you do), and we seem to have slipped right into them again, and we're making the best of having our time together again.

Last weekend, we had "science day." We spent about an hour making his homemade volcano erupt. We also did about fifteen science experiments from his science kit, but the volcano was the highlight of the day for both of us.

Collin went through a gallon of vinegar and nearly a box of baking soda. He has demanded that we buy food coloring next week at the commissary, so that it looks more like lava.

I was very impressed when he set up all his dinosaurs around the volcano and insisted that it should look more realistic. I wasn't so much impressed by the "realistic" argument, as I was by the creativity he had. It was pretty cute.

Oh, and in case you are curious, I took about 95 pictures of this event. When I showed them to Bryon later, he said that he felt like he was there because when you play them fast enough, it's like a movie. 


We have also been baking. Collin has discovered that Pinterest exists. This means that he's constantly asking me to look on the computer at that "idea page thingy" as he calls it, for new recipes and crafts that he can make with me. Nothing like a boy who wants to scroll through Pinterest, right? He insisted on this strawberry cake the other day.

I thought it looked easy, but it was less easy than I expected. It wasn't difficult, just a lot of steps. He loved it, and I loved making it with him. The best part about baking with a boy? He had his invisible ink pen with him (it has a light on the end), and he insisted that the light was required to "inspect" all of our ingredients for spiders. So, he shined the light into everything we did, and made little beeping noises to indicate that everything was passable.

Today, we made Perler bead bowls, which sort of failed. But, now we know how to make them better for next time around. Collin has a big barrel of Perler beads that he refuses to use. So, I found a way to make bowls out of them, instead of putting them on the peg boards and making flat images. He is pretty excited to make bigger ones next time.

We also made a snow shaker that failed miserably, but he is pretty excited about it because all the glitter stuck to the knight we glued to the inside. Either way, I'm just glad to be having fun doing things with my boy that he thinks are great. I love every second of this time with him.

Collin has become slightly annoyed with how many pictures I've been taking of him lately. What can I say? Who knows how long the camera will be working? I've got to take advantage of it while I can!

Oh, and in an unrelated, but interesting note: the cat has become unbelievably fat. He blames a glandular problem; I blame free-feeding. Bryon has started limiting him to one serving of food a day and has been expecting him to ration himself. This is how Homer spends a large portion of his day now: in total anger at us, planning our demise.