SEVEN months!

Will there ever be a month where don't say "you changed SO much"?  Well it's not this month.  Buddy, you changed SO much! 

You are full on laughing now and it makes both of us feel like great parents to be able to give you the giggles.  You are eating real food, usually two meals a day because you get so messy it's quite a production to clean  you up.  But french toast is the reigning favorite.

It snowed and we thought you would enjoy playing a bit in it, but we were wrong!  You aren't impressed.

We got to celebrate Thanksgiving with family up north, where you (wait for it) LEARNED TO PULL UP ON & stand against furniture.  You did lots of practicing at Grandma & Grandpa's where it was nicely carpeted and extra cushy compared to our thin rug at home.  The Christmas tree will be a real challenge!  Oh, while we were there you also GOT TWO TEETH!  Yes you've been busy. 

Always on the move and busy busy busy.  Watch out world!

Week 27

Week 28

Week 29

Week 30

Today is the best

I am so thankful, on Thanksgiving Eve, for this life.  Rough moment happen, that's for sure.  But all in all, I am so blessed.

This is a moment to look around & remember.  Not because my house is clean, no definitely not.  But because my son has found the comfort that he needs through his challenging time of teething, learning to crawl, learning to pull up.  Learning how to fall and then try again.  And learning so much that I don't even know yet.  I am so grateful that I can be his comfort today, when our house smells like homemade bread and sweet potatoes and green bean casserole.  And I am thankful for the break he has convinced me to take in this busy day of packing for a trip to Grandmas.  I am thankful for this nap he is taking, with a full  belly, on my lap.

Starting on Christmas

Hello there!  Sorry it's been awhile.  It's hard to find things to write about when I never seem to finish anything.  Sometime I drive myself nuts with my inability to finish all the projects I start.  In fact, I've been meaning to write about this for awhile and today A Beautiful Mess wrote pretty much exactly what I've been meaning to say.  At the moment, I have a knitted stocking waiting to be blocked, a knit christmas gift to finish, THREE kinds of christmas decorations to finish, a new quilt started (not to mention the other ones I've started and never finished), lots of ingredients bought for different recipes to try, and a basement half rearranged.  Yikes.

Really I think half the issue is that I am such a "process oriented" person, as opposed to "goal oriented".  I enjoy the act of knitting (or crafting, finding recipes, quilting, rearranging) more than I enjoy the end product. 

Well the thing I'm most finished with is this simple garland I whipped up to wrap around our bannister.  I found a sheet of stiff felt at Hobby Lobby for less than $1.  I had been hoping to find an off-white color but I guess Hobby Lobby thinks only primary colors are appropriate for stiff felt sheets.  I cut out about a million (imperfect) nickel-size circles, and then ran them through my sewing machine.  I just sewed through the center of each one, let the machine run for a few seconds (to make the spaces between the dots) and then shoved another circle under the foot. 

It sewed together very quickly, and cutting the circles was a breeze.  Except for Dillon, who is incredibly bad at cutting circles.  I know because I tested him and he failed.  Sorry buddy, your secret is out.  So this, along with some pom-pom garland and maybe a few pine cones and our stockings will be hanging from our bannister this Christmas! I'll wait to show you the final thing, since I haven't started decorating yet because Dillon won't let me. 

Hopefully before Christmas I'll have some more things finished that I can blog about. Or not.  At least I'll try and enjoy the process!

SIX Months!

Wow buddy we made it half a year.  It feels like an accomplishment!

You are army crawling around, and getting pretty fast, too!  You are pretty fascinated by shoes so you crawl over to check them out all the time. 

You just started solid food this week, so we made it nursing exclusively for six months. THAT feels like an accomplishment!  We are doing "baby led weaning", so you get whole foods (not purees) in large chunks that you can grab and chomp on.  No teeth yet, so you really are working at it.  You have so much interest in the food, but you aren't really coordinated enough just yet and have trouble getting things to your mouth, especially slippery foods like banana and avocado.  But you really put a lot of heart into it and I'm sure you'll get better very soon with all the practice you are getting.

 We are pretty sure you respond to your name, like to smile a lot at people, and enjoy playing with boxes.  You also like looking through the balusters in the stairwell and we like to do a peek-a-boo game with you there. 

I could go on and on because you are such a fun guy right now.  And big!  17lbs 15oz at your appointment and we are feeling every ounce when we carry you around!

OH and you were a peapod for halloween.  It was amazing and lots of people told us how adorable you were. 

Week 22

Week 23

Week 24

Week 25

Week 26

Safety First!

You guys,  it's No-Shave November! Also known as "movember" to those of you who don't realize that the prostate cancer people stole this glorious month from deer hunters. I love me some bearded fellas.  Norm, anyone?

Anyhow, I had asked on Facebook if anyone had any suggestions for babyproofing our fireplace.  Here were the requirements:

The living room (with the white rug), the dining room to the left, and the kitchen in the back left

1. baby can't have access to the underside of it where all kinds of gas tubes and wires are.
2. I still need to be able to walk around it, since this fireplace sits right in the middle of our kitchen/living room/dining room.
3. Bonus points if we can help baby avoid sharp corners.
4. We have the gas turned off so it won't ever be hot,  just full of wires and corners

Well I got a ton of responses (ahem3ahem) so i thought I'd try the least expensive and least space - requiring.  Here's what we came up with:

Obviously this cardboard solution is only for non-functioning fireplaces.  I picked up a sheet of black cardboard from hobby lobby for just over $1. We took or time and used a utility knife to score and cut a piece to wedge just inside each of the legs for the front and 2 sides. These are just tightly wedged in place,  so they can be removed if we decide to light a fire after bedtime some night (like Christmas).



The back we left open because, as you can see, it doesn't have a nice solid straight side and has flexible yellow tubing coming out of it.  I am thinking a decent size basket full of something will be enough to deter him from exploring it for now. 

Curvy backside (hehe) with an important tube coming out of it.  This will be behind some sort of large basket

And of course, I plan to help him avoid the corners to the best of my ability but I am sure he'll get banged up a bit at some point.  That's sort of what kids do though.  I've heard.

So thanks for the words of wisdom and wish us luck with the rest of the babyproofing.  My computer-geek of a husband has a lot of cables lying around that I'm busy keeping baby out of.  And then there's things like this:

That would be a terrible and blurry picture of my son chewing on a table.

yeesh.

Casting On

Are you ready for a baby-free post???  Well hold on to your hats, ladies and gents, here it is!

With the recovery of my wrists and the occasional goodnaturedness of my baby (dang, well that didn't last long), I began to knit again.

Has anyone else noticed that at the beginning of fall it's all "cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice" and then now when we are really into fall it's all "advent calendars and Christmas shopping"?  Well I do.  Can't we all just be content to be IN the season we are experiencing?  No?  Well I can't either because I decided to get to work on my son's Christmas stocking.

So I cast on...

And I'm winging it.  I've done stockings before so I thought I could wing it and it will come out okay.  I'm trying for cables.  And I can only go a row or two before my wrists start aching so it just may take me until Christmas morning.  Wish me luck! 

The other interesting thing about this casting on is that this is yarn I thrifted WAY back last November with my friend Jamie, who showed me how to turn a thrift store sweater into piles of beautiful yarn!  So cheap!  So wonderful!  So time consuming!  So lovely to rip out knitting for a reason other than that I made a mistake!

I'm just holding this thrifted yard two together, so that I get some bulk and it doesn't take me a year to make this stocking.

Happy Fall!

On being a Mom

The reality is that my son doesn't sleep well.  Or maybe he sleeps "normal" but no one talks about it.  I don't know, I'm new at this parenting thing.  He never really recovered from his four month sleep regression and now we celebrate when we get two hours straight.  He had been nursing to sleep but when I try to do that hourly, he just gets too full and it doesn't work.  So we rock.  And bounce.  And shush.  And pray.  And cry together.  And rock some more.  And walk in circles around the living room.  And then he puts up one final fight, and then he is O.U.T.   

But that's not the point of this post.  Because everyone has hard moments.  If it's not sleeping, it's weight gain.  Or breastfeeding.  Or getting sick.  Or finding a daycare.  Or starting solid food.  Or bullies.  Or potty training.  Or having to buy the jeans with the "slimming panel and comfort waistband".  Or not having enough money for a vacation to Mexico.  Or not spending enough time with kiddo.

The point is that it's rough, but I am a mom and I signed up for this.  I prayed for it for a long long time, actually.  And millions of women around the world pray for it every day, too.

I used to work with adults with developmental disabilities.  And one thing that always struck me, even then, is that I knew adults whose only word their whole life was "mama".  Or the only person they recognized ever was their mom.  And I get to be that for someone. 

The first person to call when you are excited about something is (well probably your spouse but second is) your mom.  If something terrible would happen, the person you call is your mom because moms make everything better. 

It's quite the honor.  And I try and remember that when I'm rocking and shushing and crying and praying and breastfeeding him again and getting smacked in the face.  It's more than having a baby.  It's getting to be someone's Mom.