Five Things the Baby likes to do at 5am

1. Come up with new country music line dances.
2. Work out her next Vaudeville routine.
3. Choreograph an Esther Williams style synchronized swimming musical number.
4. Practicing to be one of the backup ladies in the next Jane Fonda workout video.
5. Rehearsing for High School Musical 14.

Getting Situated

That's what I've been up to lately.

1. The dresser that La and I picked out for the baby is in place (for now). La's is on the left, the baby's is on the right. It might be a candidate for refinishing at some point, but the drawer action is fabulous and it has enough room that it should last until she's ready for college.



2. Finishing up some projects that were on the kitchen table. Turns out chenille looks pretty, but it's kind of tricky to maneuver. Very slippery. Might be worth it to pin-baste, like a quilt sandwich. Frankly, I'm glad I made a good dent in the stash of chenille. The set with the ducks is for a friend that just had a baby in October. The pink hearts is for us. The bibs are from Bend the Rules Sewing, the chenille blankets from Craft Apple.



3. A tag blankie for the new baby was on my list too. La loved hers for a very long time and still has a special place for it. Put a check in that box. I "unvented" this concept when La was tiny. The concept is pretty much "Taggies" (which holds their IP near and dear to their heart, so selling these is probably a bad, bad idea.)



4. Hooded Towels were also on the list. I was procrastinating these because it's so tough to sew through layers of towel. Ugh. I didn't break any needles but did get some impressive thread snarls. The pink one is the one that a friend of ours made for La when she was tiny. The bottom one is the one for the new baby, the top right is for La - it has a much larger hood. The friend who made these has made them for her three kids as well - it was neat to see them all hanging up in their bathroom when we were visiting. The hood for the small ones takes half of a hand towel, the hood for La's new one took all of the hand towel, up to the start of the decorative woven part. The flowery trim material is from my Grandma Mercier's stash. It's Waverly and about the thickness of a bed sheet. I have quite a bit of it - not sure if she was planning to make drapes or sheets with them.



5. DH added this one to my list this morning. Not sure how it came up but he brought out his knit hat (admittedly one of my early works) and asked about a fleece hat. I had a remnant that I had just opened and found a pattern online. I put it together while he and La were out on a bike ride. His hat was such a success that La requested her own. The pattern was easy to scale down too, although I could have made it a little shorter. Before I took the picture, I had not seen how much she is starting to look like her dad. The picture in the background is one that La made in Microsoft Paint while I wasn't home.



Oh, and a moment of zen. Did you know that you could do this with "My Little Ponies"? I walked into the kitchen and found them this way.

Who's gonna get it?

La (age 4) really enjoys answering the phone. She's doing a good job of it. Here's her side today:

"Hello?"
"Who is it?"
"Who do you want to talk to?"
"He's camping for the day."
"OK."
"Bye."

It was the monkey's friend Robert. La is supposed to let him know about the call.

Suprisingly, even when the caller is someone she really likes to talk to, like Aunt Becky or Grandma and Grandpa Toothfairy (my parents), she does her greeting stuff and hands the phone over. She makes sure she gets a turn later.

Ladies with Laptops

I'm at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing today and yesterday. I have never seen so many women in technology in one place, I don't think.

This is the camera-phone picture I emailed my husband yesterday.

Post 300: A little OCD goes a long way.

I may have overdone it today. I woke up, made a list, the list sounded not too unreasonable (um. If I weren't in the neighborhood of 30 weeks pregnant and the boys were home.) And I started to tackle it.

Soccer game for La at 9am, followed by swimming at the Y (High of 87 or 89 today. Water was 82. Pretty nice once you got used to it, which didn't take too long.)

Lunch at Subway (was going to be Tijuana Flats, but apparently, now La can read the word "sub" and that's what she picked.)

Dropped off a few boxes of leftovers to the thrift store.

Went to the two used furniture stores in the same plaza. Bought a dresser for the new kid. Also bought a Barbie at Big Lots.

Went to the fancy paint store. Closed 2 hours previous. Went to the other fancy paint store (a block away). Got paint for the girls' new room. (This was the subject of the OCD was getting the house in order and rearranged. The girls will be in the monkey's room, the monkey will be in La's room. While we're swapping, we're going to rip out the 22 year old carpet and put in Pergo. But before that, a new coat of paint while the yucky rug is in there.) This is what La picked out. I didn't see that they recommend a primer until after I loaded the picture onto Flickr.
It's going on white walls, so we'll see how it goes, I guess.

Then to Costco to pick up storage containers to use as swap space as we empty the boy's room for the renovation magic.


Is there any wonder that it was almost too much work to unload the car? I slept sitting up, holding my novel in my hand as La watched a couple episodes of Hannah Montana (is it wrong that I really enjoy the Laverne and Shirley/Lucy and Ethel dynamic of that show?)

Last night I stayed up late and cut out projects while watching "Clean House". Here's what I've got piled up around my sewing machine now.

1. These are mostly done. I think. Need to go back and see where I left off. These are a mix of ones for the new kid and ones for Christmas presents. These have been on the sewing chair for a week or so.

2. A set of coasters for me (Bend the Rules Sewing). And one replacement for the original set. I didn't quite catch all the terry when topstitching the flap closed. Good enough for me, though.

3. Chenille Madness. A childhood friend just had a son. I'm going to send her a chenille backed blanket (ducks) and a couple of coordinating bibs. One bib for me and a chenille backed blanket for me too (green with pink hearts). I prewashed the chenille and was amazed at the sheer volume of lint. But it is very soft and nice now. I really hope it's colorfast, though.

Oh, and look what I found on my camera!

All set for December. The hat was something I winged. I'm afraid (hoping?) it'll be a little big. I think this is the kind of thing, since there is no ribbing, that is much easier to make to the right size if there is a model to try it on before you're committed. If anyone is curious about the hat recipe, I can post it.

Five Things about Pregancy

Not much blog fodder so far. Here's what's been going on

5 good:

1. Feeling the baby kick
2. Eating ice cream every night (Isn't cholesterol good/necessary for brain development?)
3. Debating middle names. Does Eleanor Ruby sound too much like Eleanor Rigby? Will it go away once there's an actual baby? We like the kickiness of Ruby. (Other choices include Veronica, Samantha, and it seems like there were some others)
4. Wondering what this little kid is going to be like.
5. Seeing La look forward to and try to interact with the new baby.

5 less-good:

1. Having the baby decide that 5 am is a great time to take up line dancing.
2. Heartburn.
3. Sore stomach muscles from a very active whipper-snapper.
4. Feeling like I have prostate problems.
5. Not being able to remember anything.

Sick Day

Here's what I did on my sick day yesterday. My strategy was do only enough to keep the OCD at bay. Today I'm home too - took care of some stuff in the morning, currently waiting for the cable person to get us set up with a DVR (it's amazing how much economic power a 4 year old has. This is probably another blog post, but there are some things that continually amaze me about 4 year olds. For someone who sleeps with a lovie, and only recently stopped sucking her thumb and can't yet tie her shoes, (a)she wields quite a bit of financial say-so and (b)she plays soccer pretty fiercely. ), and then am taking La to her "big sister" course at the fancy new hospital for women and babies.

Yesterday, I threw "Singing in the Rain" in the DVD player and did some finishing -

1. The baby hats:



2. The baby sweater - now seamed and with buttons



3. Dh's sweater - now I know where I am. I took it off the needles and put it on scrap yarn to get a precise measurement. I have 2" from the red line to the sleeve join. I haven't worked up the gumption to wind yarn for the sleeves yet. But soon.



4. And. Um. I started a baby hat to go with the baby sweater.



I got a great comment yesterday from BB about catching the edges during top stitching. Seems like the secret is to leave a little more seam allowance on that edge, so there is a little more flap to tuck in. Worked brilliantly. Got the rest of them finished this morning.



Also today, I patched up La's shorts. She did some stain removal the brute force way this weekend - and cut the spot right out. Lady MacBeth has nothing on her. I was not there for this, and DH was pretty upset with her. Patched it up with a square from the same batch of charm squares.

There are some "frankenstitches" where I zig-zagged around the actual hole to try to keep it from fraying more. Hopefully the pinked edges of the patch hold up too.

I feel like doing more sewing, but I'm just not sure what yet. I really want to start a quilt, but am really trying hard not to. None of the stuff I've got queued up is appealing.

Have I mentioned that I hate when DH is right?

I haven't been feeling well for a little more than a week. After having to take La swimming by himself twice this weekend (oh, the humanity!), he lost his patience with me feeling crummy. You know why this cold hasn't been going away? Cause it might be a sinus infection. Go figure. I kept thinking that I was feeling "almost better" except for that really strong urge to take a nap, which I was attributing to being pregnant.

So, here's what I've been up to:

I brought the Monkey to a Boy Scout popcorn Show and Sell at the Publix that is in walking distance of the LYS.



Click on the picture to see how it's earmarked.

Also, got this:

It's going to be a couch blanket for La and the baby. The cream color is Cascade 220 Superwash. It's a basic mitered square started from the center, kind of like the squares for the knit along or like the Evelyn Clark blanket pattern. It's sort of muppet-esque, but not too hard to work with.

I've also been picking up DH's sweater from last Christmas. It's going to be an EZ Saddle Shoulder sweater. I think there's an inch or two til it's time to join up some sleeves and do the tricky part.



And, most newsworthy, I finished knitting the sweater for the Whipper-Snapper.
Just needs seaming and buttons.
Here are the buttons La picked:



And, on the sewing machine:



I picked up Bend the Rules Sewing. Neat book. These coasters are from that book and are intended for a Christmas gift for a friend, if they're not too wonky. Otherwise they're for me. One thing I've figured out is that it's worth cutting the backing square generously, then trimming it down nearly to the seam allowance before turning it right side out and top stitching. The top fabrics are squares from a charm pack I picked up aeons ago and the back is a gray-green terry cloth that I found in the remnants bin. There's no middle layer, thinking that the terry is going to add plenty of absorbancy. I've been having trouble making sure that I catch both layers in the topstitching to make it get closed up.