new hobbies…

When lil miss was born, I had already decided to make her baby food. I figured that since hubby and I don’t eat much processed food, and rarely stuff out of bottles, why should she. It worked well for us, with the exception that we had no baby food jars to give to people who asked for them. I guess they’re good for storage? In any event, I invested in a few tools to make things easier.

Lil bean will be starting solids soon (in about a month), and I fully plan on doing the same with her. In fact, I already have a batch of pureed apricots in the freezer waiting. What? It was either freeze them or let them go to waste, and I couldn’t do that. They were fantastic apricots, just too many for me to eat but not enough for jam.

Yes jam. I think the gateway for me to go from making lil miss’ food to taking up canning was probably making applesauce. She loved homemade applesauce. The first year, I just froze the batches. Last year, I decided to try my hand at putting up applesauce, since she could easily eat her weight in it. Okay, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, because my mind is breaking at the thought of 36 pounds of applesauce.

In any event, I put up applesauce. I can’t remember how much I put away, but I think it was about a 1/2 bushel. I naively thought that it would last until apple season. Laugh. Go ahead. I think it lasted until January But it was an easy transition from freezing to canning.

To say I’ve been bit by the canning bug might be a bit of an understatement. This house has been overrun with jam in the last few months. We started with strawberry, moved our way through sour cherry, blueberry, triple berry (my favorite, a combo of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries) and have now reached into peaches. Not to mention the canned peaches and pie fillings.

Darn… time to go find a piece of toast. I’m hungry just thinking of all this yummy jam!

mini happiness project

Lately, I feel discombobulated. There’s so much going on, but I don’t always remember the details. It’s probably due to the lack of sleep – funny how when you think about babies, you imagine them sleeping so peacefully. I’m here to tell you that it’s all a myth! Which isn’t to say that lil bean doesn’t sleep, but she doesn’t sleep as much as you’d think she does. Or maybe she does, just that she gets to sleep throughout the day and I have to stay up and keep an eye on lil miss.

In any event, I’ve decided I need to work on keeping track of those little moments. The ones I don’t want to forget about, but that aren’t monumental. The small happy memories that you look back on and smile. And because I want my children to know that they brought me much joy, I’ve decided to keep a paper journal. Something I haven’t done in years.

This is how it works: Every night before I go to bed, I want to log at least one thing that made me smile throughout the day. I’m trying to pick one memory for each kid, but I’m not making that a hard and fast rule. I’m hoping that once I’ve done it for a while, I can wake up and read some of those memories. Talk about waking up on the right side of the bed!

What do you do to create happiness?

our latest addition

I realized I never announced our latest addition…

On March 24th, 2012 at 7:11 PM, we brought lil bean S into the world. And this lil girl is quite the love bug. She almost exclusively wants mama.

Vital stats:

• 7 pounds, 12 ounces
• 19 ¾” long
• 14″ circumference head

Life with a newborn has been quite a roller coaster. Unlike her sister, lil bean took the boob almost too easily… she refuses pacifiers and is rather wary of a bottle. She wants her food straight from the tap most of the time.

But how can you say no to this face?

Image copyright Tyler Plank Photography

things I don’t want to forget

I have a bunch of posts that I have in draft mode, but I want to focus on something smaller and bite size.

I love my children, and there’s certain things that they do that I don’t want to forget. In no particular order:

• the way lil bean coos when you kiss her belly
• the way lil miss “reads” The Little Engine That Could
• how fascinated lil bean is with a ceiling fan (seriously, she could watch it for HOURS)
• how excited lil miss is riding the “big kid” slides at the pool

There’s so much more to write about, but these are the moments I don’t want to forget. The moments that I love being a mom.

funny how things get done…

It’s funny how things get done when you limit your computer time. No reason in particular, just that I’ve been feeling a bit bothered by the sheer number of things I want to do, but didn’t seem to have time for.

So at the start of the year, I decided to devote some additional time to those things. Reading for one. I can’t tell you the last book I actually finished before I got my Kindle in November. I can tell you that I’ve managed to finish 8 books this month. Problem is, I’m now starting to run out of things to read! So if you have any suggestions, please feel free to wing them my way. I tend to like fiction over non-fiction, but I do read both. Bonus points if the book doesn’t involve Elmo

The other thing I’ve been working on is fitting more time in for knitting. It seems like I didn’t finish too many projects in 2011, and I’m not really sure why that is. It’s not like I don’t have things I want to finish, just that it seemed like I was very slow in my knitting. For 2012, I’ve decided that one of my projects should be a pair of simple socks, so that I can knit while taking care of the lil miss during the days. It’s worked out great so far, I managed to finish a pair of socks.

Nothing too exciting, I used Trekking XXL in colorway 100. I admit I picked it out of the stash solely because it didn’t require that I do any form of winding. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the swift.

I also managed to finish the most intricate shawl I’ve knit myself. I’ve knit some pretty detailed things in the past, but they’ve always been as gifts for others, so this was a bit of a break with tradition for me. I cast on at the end of October, worked on it until Christmas knitting got in the way, and then worked on it pretty religiously in the evenings after lil miss was in bed. I would have probably finished it sooner, but I did have to tink 10 long rows due to an error. Oh well, I’m not perfect Here’s the crummy pre-block shot:

Not sure what I’ll be working on as my big complicated project next, but I think for now, I’ll be focusing on some baby/kiddo knits. I finished one sweater for our new addition, and am working on the matching one for her big sister. Pictures after I finish both. And a pair of socks for my stepMIL. Because she bought the yarn ages ago, and I haven’t finished them. Well, I finished one pair, but I still have a second pair to knit. Moral of that story? Pick the yarn yourself.

things that I wasn’t going to say…

Sometimes part of the reason I don’t write here is because I don’t have something cheerful to say. And I seem to have this belief that I should record only the good parts of life, the happy ones. And the thing is? While that’s fine and good, that’s not how life works. So I’m going to take a page out of Cauchy’s book, and just let it out. After all, I pay to host this space, and I should use it as I need to, not as I think people want me to (if that even makes sense)

I don’t claim to speak for every mother. Or even every stay at home mother. Just my experiences. But I can say that you get no respect for being a stay at home mom. People practically treat you as if you’re a lazy & stupid unemployed git, sitting around and eating bon bons every day. For the record, I have no idea what a bon bon even IS, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually had one. And nothing personal, but I’m not exactly dumb.

I work hard. Every day. I don’t get a day off. At best, I might get a few hours during the day every now and then, mostly planned far in advance. My boss is 2 years old. She doesn’t understand that she doesn’t get what she wants all the time. She throws tantrums and yells when she thinks it’ll help her case. She does things that drives me nuts, but it’s not like I can explain logically to her why she shouldn’t do something. It’s not like I can tune out her annoying behavior and ignore her.

I don’t get to have many adult conversations. It seems like these days, 99% of my conversations are about “white trucks” and “Abby happy”. I think that’s what is the hardest part for me. I don’t get to keep up on current events… but I don’t want a lecture about what’s going on in the world. I just want someone to ask how I’m doing on occasion.

lil miss has a new skill…

It seems like every day, lil miss learns something new. And for me, I find these times to be extremely bittersweet – on one hand, I’m proud of everything she’s learning to do, and on the other, it just serves as a reminder that she’s not my little helpless babe any more.

And today, she’s grown up even more.

In less than a year, she’s gone from just getting used to the idea of having a tricycle, to learning to keep her feet up, and now? Now she can pedal and steer. It completely amazes me how fast she’s growing up!

fair isle goodness…

Earlier this year, I joined a stranded mitten swap. It sounded like fun, and well, I felt like knitting a pair anyway

Problem was, finding a pattern that I could finish in the allotted time frame. I decided on the Midlothian Mittens pattern by Laura Chau. It fit my mindset at the time, easy and mindless, but fun at the same time.  

And now, without further ado:

Pattern: Midlothian Mittens by Laura Chau
Yarn: Sublime Yarn Cashmere Merino Silk DK
Needles: size 3.5mm/US4 DPNs
Mods: I didn’t line these, mostly because I couldn’t figure out what to line it with that would be softer than the Cashmere Merino Silk. These were heavenly, and hard to part with. I might need to knit myself a pair someday.

changing roles…

I’ve spent the last two years tech editing patterns, and I’ve learned a lot about things that work in a pattern. I think it’s given me the confidence to try my hand at designing. I don’t have as much time to knit as I used to, but it’s definitely fun trying to figure out how to get a particular stitch pattern to work given the constraints of the item in question.

So when Kim at Indigodragonfly approached me and asked that I design something for her Smart Ass Knitters/World Domination Club, I jumped at the chance. I saw it as a deadline, something to make me take the time to write up a pattern instead of knitting an item and writing the pattern when I had a chance. If I’ve learned one thing as a mother, you don’t have free time. You really just have to make the time to do what you want, taking it from other buckets. So on nights I tech edit, I take the time out of the knitting bucket. And the buckets are a lot smaller since I became pregnant.

But that’s neither here nor there… the important part is that I’m proud to announce my pattern writing debut:

Pattern: Charee socks
Yarn: Indigodragonfly MCN Sock in “Just like mom used to kill”

The pattern is currently an exclusive to the club, but will be available to all in August 2012.

big things going on around here…

But I’ll let lil miss give the details: