<conversation>
Mathilda: "What kind of phone is this?" asking about her friend Sam's toy cell phone.
Me: "Cell phone, I guess."
Mathilda: "Oh. So you use it to sell things."
</conversion>
Today was her 4 month birthday and 4 month checkup. It was no surprise to learn that she's perfectly healthy. She smiled at everybody and was declared a "happy baby" by the pediatrician, Dr. Lee.
She is such a sweet baby. Very smiley and charming. She has a way of smiling at people and them looking away like she's bashful. It's adorable. Sometimes she looks at me with an expression like we are sharing some sort of inside joke. I can't help but smile at her whenever I look at her. Lately I've been giving her lots of raspberries on her belly. That definitely makes her giggle. Speaking of which she had graduated to really cracking up. Mathilda in particular can really make her laugh. Watching the two of them together is heartwarming. Mathilda is a sweet and wonderful big sister. She has seemed entirely comfortable with the whole baby thing but she has just recently started sucking her thumb, which is something she never really did before. We're not telling her to stop. I'm assuming it will pass.
She said that her teachers had told the kids that if they didn't take their naps that the leopard-caun was going to tell the Easter Bunny not to come. Pretty weak. It sounds like something I might say in one of my weaker moments.
So I just ripped off the satin baby blanket binding that I had started to sew on to this baby blanket I am making for a friend. I had made several beautiful blankets before for myself. I went to a shmancy fabric store to buy some cute flannels and the selection was kinda limited but I found some adorable pink flannel with bunnies and circles. If I can figure out to upload a photo from my photo, I'll post it. Anyway, I wanted to have different colors or patterns on either side. The store owner suggested I try this supersoft organic cotton for the other. I should have listed to my gut that was telling me, "Hmmm...it's soft and organic but it's stretchy...how well is that gonna work you beginning sewer you." So I asked the owner about working with that material and she says that she hand bastes first before sewing. Hmmm...point of hesitation #2. Again, I suppress it like the good consumer that I am and buy the fabric along with fabric to make a skirt even though I don't have a pattern and I get pretty good instructions on how to wing it.
This project is cursed. First I come up a cute bunny applique that I want to sew onto the organic cotton side. It's stretchy and the applique does some odd crinkling but I can live with. Then I go to sew the sides together and the stretchy material stretches out past the flannel, so I call the store to ask for help and lady tells me, "Hand baste it." Hmph. Okay. I pull it apart and hand baste it again like a good girl. Then I go to sew it together and I get weird wringles on the edges, parts where it folds over. It's not a nice clean edge. I contemplate pulling it apart again and pressing the edges first but decided that I can camouflage that stuff but putting a satin baby blanket binding over it. Good idea, right? Well, I guess when you try to hide crap with more crap, it just makes more crap. The binding wasn't long enough so I had to finagle some pieces together. Echhhh...I'm aggravated. I just pulled off the binding and am just about to call it done and send to my friend so that it doesn't haunt me.
I wish I had a sewing fairy godmother who would tell me how to do this stuff. Poop.
Yeah, so now she's 10 weeks old and I've finally gotten around to posting here again. I have plenty of excuses...damn good ones too...we moved 1 week after she was born. Well, other than being mom of a newborn and a 4 and 3/4-year -old, moving is my main excuse. I have some others but they are on the weak side.
I have fleeting moments of brilliant ideas about what to write but I never seem to remember them later when I have a spare moment. This particular moment finds me at the computer furtively trying to log something before Elsa wakes back up from our inaugural experiment in putting her down to sleep by herself. Until now, she has been very much of a "hold me constantly" baby. She's a wonderful, sweet, beautiful baby but she loves her some cuddling. Experiment thwarted. She's waking up. I swaddled her, nursed her, stuck a pacifier in her mouth, sang lullabies in the rocking chair in a dark room and laid her down carefully in the co-sleeper. Her routine until now has been holding in a swaddle while she sleeps until we go to bed. Not viable. I'm more worried about her sleeping alone for daytime naps. My whole plan for making the return to work tolerable was to spend most the time working at home and Elsa being able to nap alone is vital for that to be a real option.
About Elsa: very bright eyed, strong (she could lift her head up almost right away after being born), very calm. We're seeing lots of smiles right now, she loves to play the tongue game where you stick your tongues out at each other. This evening she was using her hands to swat at the toys hanging on her gymini play mat thingy. We were at a kid's birthday party today and all the moms were passing Elsa around and commenting on her wonderfulness. I was so proud. I was also thrilled to have a couple people tell me how great I looked for a new mom. These comments were especially well received since I'm feeling frustrated about not fitting into my regular clothes. I broke down and bought some new clothes, 2 sizes bigger than normal. I was almost in tears at one point trying on jeans. It's funny how these types of changes make you realize how hot you were before and how even then you could find faults. Getting older is like that. If I knew how hot I was at 23, I would have done a few things differently. I'm actually not sure if that's good or bad.
Anyway, point is, Elsa is a sweet little elf of a baby. She got her first vaccinations a couple days ago. One of the vaccinations was for Rotavirus and is oral. The nurse was telling us how most babies spit it out and that's okay. Our girl sipped it and didn't seem to mind it at all. What a champ! The shot wasn't as well received but hey, anything other than a howl would just be weird. We are following the Dr. Sears Alternative Vaccination schedule with more frequent visits but fewer shots at each visit. This reduces the amount of alumimum that their little bodies must process and also allows you to more easily identify any allergies, etc. Our pediatrician, who looks about 15, was fine with this strategy. I'm reminded how lucky we are to live in the Bay Area where things like this aren't perceived as freakish.
TTFN
Baby No-Name was born at 12:05 on Thanksgiving morning (11/27/08) at home, on our bed. I think she actually does have a name...it's Elsa Johanna Myerhoff...her dad just hasn't accepted it yet. He keeps coming up with crazy non-name names that I'm forced to reject and then feel like a big meanie, which is particularly annoying since I'm already a hormonal, hungry, breastfeeding mom and really normally not mean at all...maybe even a pushover at times. Anyway hopefully he'll see it my way soon :-)
Miss No-Name has been a delightful baby so far. She only cries when she has a good reason to, her cries are practically cute (though I imagine that's my hormones talking) and ... wait...she's crying now...gotta go.
Show us the most productive thing you'll accomplish today.
In fact, the second section of the book (it's divided into 3 parts: Eat is in Italy, Pray takes place on an ashram in India, and Love is about her 4 months in Bali) where she writes about what was supposed to be 6 weeks on the ashram and the rest roaming about India, I think I finally got this spiritual thing a bit. It was fascinating reading about her struggles with meditating even though she was already committed enough to her spiritual growth to get her butt on a plane to India and spend it sitting on said butt meditating in a cave (among other places). Even the 2 poems she wrote at the end of her stay on the Ashram had a funny, hard edge to them...after 4 months of meditation and prayer. I guess it made me think that one could be on this spiritual path and still have some common sense. It doesn't have to mean that you get all Cumbaya 'n shit. I think I'll start meditating. That's not at all what I was expecting from this book. Regardless of the spiritual stuff, the book was such a fun read and had me chuckling out loud. If you like to travel and have a snarky sense of humor, you'll probably enjoy this book too. You might have to be a chick to really enjoy it but an open minded guy might love it too.
What's the oldest thing in your fridge?
creepy capers
This is a hat pattern I came up with when faced with needing to ravage my stash rather than buy more yarn. I had seen a similar hat in a window in a yarn in Vienna and had fully intended to get into that shop and get the scoop but didn't manage to make it happen. So, instead I was able to incorporate two trips into one hat. The yarn I used for this hat is basic sport weight yarn in two shades of purple that I bought for close to pennies in Buenos Aires, Argentina almost 2 years ago. It took a couple attempts to get this hat right. I also knit an adult sized one in moss green w/ burgundy stripes. My favorite detail is the little "stem" on the top. I'll try to get a photo of the adult one (ideally w/ both Mathilda and Nick or me wearing the matching hats) up soon.
Oh and this is Mathilda's first time on skis!!
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Recent Comments
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KymPossible said:
oh my, you are way more of a supermom than I am. We know The Man well, and have learned... read more
on Valentine's Preschool Peer Pressure - I succumbed -
Wise Old Owl said:
[this is good]How wonderful and creative! Mathilda is cute as a button in that costume! ^_^ read more
on Mathilda's Crafty Halloween Costume -
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motodot said:
Thanks Wise Old Owl. I might just do that next year. The problem w/ starting that project now is that... read more
on Valentine's Preschool Peer Pressure - I succumbed
on Jan's scarf