Saturday, February 28, 2009

We have achieved lappy!

It's one of these; not super-duper fancy, but it works! I am, in fact, posting from it now. I'm having a little bit of an interesting time adapting to the smaller keyboard, but not too bad. Whee!!!

Friday, February 27, 2009

Thing to make your blood boil.

Rixa posted a link to this article. It tells the tale of a Peruvian couple who were brought up on child pornography charges, and whose children were taken from them by CPS, simply on the issue of a photo of the mother breastfeeding her son. It's absolutely ridiculous that the couple are being forced to call something so beautiful and natural "wrong". Dude, I have nude pictures of breastfeeding the Infanta; they're not something that I choose to share with just anyone, but neither was this photo.

Harrumph. Time to go poke at the fire and nurse the Infanta, maybe help my blood pressure calm down.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

More Snow?!




The view from our porch at 6:30 this morning. No, I didn't take these.

The weather continues to be freaky. I suppose it's a good thing that I haven't gotten around to making my window boxes yet..

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Last Night

was the new moon. And it showed! I spent a good two and a half hours trying to get the Infanta to sleep (ok, Daddy had her for a chunk of that, while I played with crochet), while myself exhausted and fighting a nasty headache I'd had since mid afternoon, which caffeine and Tylenol had barely scratched. It wasn't pretty. I finally said some bad bad words and brought her into bed with us (after dosing her with motrin); she immediately latched on to the nearest boob and nursed herself to sleep. Why couldn't she have done that two hours before?! Then she slept quite well.

Perhaps ironically, Moxie posted about managing stress today.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Blah.

SOMEBODY woke me up at a much earlier hour than I'm accustomed to, climbing all over Mama and wanting to play. Now, an hour and a half later, she's crashed out on my lap.

I think I'm going to take us both back to bed for a while.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Yay, photos!

We figured out the issue my camera cable was having - corrosion on the contacts! Zomg! All hail the cleaning power of fingernail polish remover.



My local Ravelry knitting group keeps a charity project going every couple of months. This last time it was preemie hats for the local hospital. We found out they need upwards of ten a month! So, since they're so easy and fast to make, we've decided to make it an ongoing project. Ravelrized here.



The Infanta and her first cellphone. Actually, it's an old broken one of mine; she's been grabbing for ours recently, so we decided to pull one out that she can play with. She was enchanted. Shiny!



Finally: is that Mama behind those glasses?!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Guess who?



This isn't actually the Infanta, it's me at pretty much the age she is now, performing the Infanta's current favorite trick. Like mother, like daughter, eh?

Saturday, February 21, 2009

OMG.

The teacher list for the Sock Summit is up... and it reads like a freaking who's who of the knitting world. I swear, if EZ were alive, she'd be teaching! Her daughter is..

Let's hope the classes are priced humanly, eh?

Garden update: The sprouts I mentioned yesterday? More like six inches. And the daffodils are showing buds. I should really prune the roses this weekend.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Signs of Spring

The days have been almost warm at times recently - mid 50s is almost warm, right? - and somewhat sunny, so we've been getting out and walking a bit. Wednesday I popped the Infanta in the stroller and we wandered around the neighborhood for almost an hour, ending with a good fifteen or twenty minutes at the park, watching some kids play. She so wanted to join them! But I'm thinking that crawling + bark dust = bad news, so while I let her stand at my knees, I didn't let her crawl off.

While we were walking, I found a yard all bordered in crocuses! Just beautiful. I pointed them out to Herself, who I think noticed... hard to tell, you know? I saw another yard, a big one, with a whole array of raised beds; no bed boxes, just long rows of heaped earth. Some were full of grasses, some were heaped with straw, a couple still had onions, and there was one section with plastic support over it - obviously protecting something against cold.

Thinking about these yards makes me appreciate what's going on in my own yard more. Around the edges of the house, the camas lilies, daffodils, and irises all have leaves about two inches tall, and I'll bet that if I went into the back yard I'd find that the tulips were doing the same thing.

It won't be winter forever!!!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

I like

I like cloth butts and I cannot lie
You other mothers can't deny
When a babe crawls in
With an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You've got cloth!

With apologies to Sir Mixalot - this has been floating through my head for months!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

And then there were Two

Are you having issues seeing posts? I ask because Josh couldn't see the overall list yesterday, but if he clicked on individual posts, he could see them. I can see it all just fine, so I won't know if there's a problem.

The Infanta cut her second tooth, probably sometime yesterday. I was only sure about it late in the evening, around maybe 8? Whereupon we gave her some motrin... and then she was wide awake and playful until after 11. *sigh* At least she wasn't screaming.

I got to watch Stardust last night, while attempting nurse Herself to sleep in the rocking chair. Wow!!! Really an amazing movie, and all it's cracked up to be. Sadly, I think we woke the Infanta up at one point, laughing hard at Robert de Niro's character! Anyway, I highly recommend this movie. Some of the fairytale aspects are a teeny bit predictable, but what do you want, it's a fairytale! Beautiful design, great acting, amazing dialogue.. I'll be looking for the book soon - ok, and also the film itself, as what we watched last night came via Netflix.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

When Tuesday is Monday

Yesterday was lovely. We spent it quietly doing couple of chores, juggling the Infanta (who was inclined to be very fussy), and playing Agricola. It was even nice enough during the afternoon that a walk to Safeway was very enjoyable!

Today isn't being so fun so far... mainly between the Infanta being fussy and my glasses only helping somewhat. *sigh*

Oh, well, you can't have everything.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The cure for my migraines is...

glasses! Bet you didn't know I had them. :)

They're reading glasses with a very mild prescription, and I don't need them most of the time, but apparently I do right now. Since they're about 5 years old now, it's probably past time for a new pair; fortunately we have medical insurance that will cover that nicely.

Now I have the fun of adjusting to them all over again... but at least I've had the pleasure of the Infanta being thoroughly confused by them. *evil laugh*

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Signs of Spring

A little while ago, Josh called me into the living room to look out the door at the tree in our front yard. This is the same tree that houses a colony of honeybees, but today it was proving a tempting target for a pair of woodpeckers. I commented that I didn't recommend they check out the hollow in the tree for a nest... next thing I knew, one of the birds was heading straight in. Oh well, not my damage...

Twice overnight, going to get the Infanta to nurse, I found her standing up while inquiring for me. Good thing Josh had already shifted the base of the crib to its low position! Wonderfully, though, she gave me a nice four-hour stretch of sleep during the middle of the night... I love my baby, and I don't mind night nursing at all, but every two to three hours at her age is... wearing.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!

Despite our nonexistent budget for extras right now, Josh has managed to get me both flowers and chocolate. I love this man...

The Infanta, having mastered crawling and cut her first tooth, is patently not content with all-fours locomotion. Oh no, menacing the kitties on their own level isn't enough; she now has to work on walking. To that end, she's begun climbing everything in sight (especially me), and yesterday was consistently making it to her feet - when she wasn't falling (usually in range of hard things to bonk her head on) due to misjudging either whatever she was holding on to, or whatever she was reaching for. We're doomed, doomed I tell you...

Friday, February 13, 2009

I do not recommend

Combining teething, separation-anxious babies and migraines.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

This just in!

The Infanta had her first tooth finally come in late last evening. I knew it was imminent, as I had been able to see it (and the one next to it, so she'll have two soon) for a couple of weeks, but as with all such things, exact timing was impossible to predict.

I feel like a bad mom on some levels for not connecting the teeth just below the surface with a number of behaviors she's been showing recently - frequent nursing, poor sleep, generally escalated fussiness (like the two hour crying jag night before last), and that adorable one-sided dubious smile she's been sporting since Sunday. I didn't connect that last until I remembered at just before 6 this morning she that must be in pain. When I turned the light on to give hers some Motrin, I saw that her face was tense on the side of the tooth, but not the other. Duh!

On the other hand, I can't feel too bad, really - for one, this is my first time at all this, and no book can really tell you what exactly to expect. For another, every kid reacts differently, and the Infanta's been showing possible signs of teething on and off for the last six months!! Also, since she can't tell me what's going on in English, I have to interpret the signals she does give me, and they could mean so many different things that I have to guess. I mean, she isn't generally fussy unless there's something specific - but which specific is it? Hunger? Tiredness? Pain from a bonked head? And why has she been bonking her head so much lately? Well, I guess now I know.

In the 16 hours she's had the tooth, she's managed to bite me twice, but that's not even the main reason I already miss her toothless grin.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

this'nthat

First, a very cool video I found from a listserve of Salma Hayek breastfeeding an African baby. I'm so not a celebrity chaser, but I thought it was very cool, and even more so as she discusses her own feelings about it, and shares a family story on the subject.



On another subject, Hedra talks about men. But maybe not how you'd think! Hedra, can I be you when I grow up?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Snow again, snow again, Jiggetty-Jig

It was snowing when I woke up this morning (the first time). So I pulled the curtain back to watch it, which we did until it turned all to rain. Then I went back to sleep for a while. So much for Stephanie complaining that in Oregon, snow is a singular word! Just because we're not generally buried under mountains of the stuff... and really, what kind of person willing lives in a climate where that's guaranteed to happen? :D

One of my current knitting projects is making a couple of preemie caps for my local Ravelry group's current charity project - preemie caps for our local hospital. Super easy - take fingering yarn and the size needles you prefer (I'm using 3mm simply because that's what came easily to hand), cast on a decent amount of stitches, knit for a while, cast off. I'm using Baby Ull (of which I have a fair bit of leftovers stashed), casting on 64 stitches, and knitting in 2x2 rib for 4 inches, before decreasing. For the one I've finished (yes, I've finished something!!!), I decreased at 8 points around with p2togs, which made for a pretty and easy top. I'm making another in "boy" colors (the first was lavender and white), and hoping that they bring some brightness to the lives of some stressed preemie parents. I'm taking the opportunity to kind of make them prayer hats, too, and knitting in intentions of health, warmth, strength, and love - I figure preemies can use that.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Not just for throwing!

The Infanta discovered how to drink from a sippy cup last night. Being a total dork, and bursting with maternal pride, I tweeted it (yes, I have succumbed to Twitter). I got a picture, but since the cable connecting my camera and my computer is acting weird, I can't share it. :(

There continues to be knitting and cooking and all that other good stuff, but I just don't feel like writing more about it right now. And, it being past noon, it's time for us to get out of our jammies and into real clothes!

Oh, yes, I've given up numbering my posts; it was helpful for a while, but now it's just tedious.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

39. The Escape Artist

My Ravelry knitting group is meeting at the Ike Box a lot these days. It's a coffee shop downtown that's attached to our local YMCA. It's a generously-sized space, friendly to boisterous groups; it has tables and chairs, as well as conversation groups of shabby, comfy furniture. I gather that the place often hosts bands (there's a decent-sized stage dominating the largest room), and serves as a gathering place for many local teens. I can see why, and would have no problem with my own child hanging out there (well, if she were a teenager - spending time there while Mama's knitting is different!). The place is well-enough maintained that I have no issues with my crawler doing her thing on the floors, even in the evening or on a Saturday afternoon (after presumable lots of people and a show the night before). Oh, yes, it's baby- and child-friendly - actually, it tries to be friendly to all ages, and means that literally.

We had been meeting in a side room on Wednesday evenings; large enough for our somewhat rowdy knitters, and with doors that can be closed to contain the various babies (in addition to the Infanta, there's a three-month-old and two eleven-month-olds that make regular appearances). However, yesterday afternoon that room was closed off for some reason, and our group was gathered at a group of comfy furniture to one side of the main room, next to the stage. You experienced parents will see this coming when I point out the combination of a semicircular arrangement of furniture and a determinedly exploring crawler. I saw it, too, and tried to take steps to contain her explorations, but the Infanta foiled those easily, even contemptuously. She was deterred for a time by the combined blockades of a large basket of yarn and a friend's shoes with pink hippos on them (which were apparently fascinating conversational partners). But when the lady working with the yarn moved the basket off the floor, the Infanta suddenly became aware of the vast unexplored wilderness, and set out to conquer. She'd made it almost to the foyer by the time she was corralled the first time; we pulled a couple of chairs from a nearby table in hopes that they would be enough of a blockade. Herself laughed at our pitiful attempts as she raced straight through the gap between the chairs, which happened to be exactly wide enough to admit her. As I pulled her back this time, I brought a third chair over, to solidify the forest of chair legs crossing the gap. Alas, the chairs alone turned out to be inadequate, as the Infanta quickly found that even her slight mass was more than enough to move a chair aside enough to crawl through. As one of the other knitters remarked, she was acting like a cat - if her head could go through, so too could the rest of her. By this time, it was going on 5:30, and time to head home, so I called Josh for our ride and put our things away in preparation to leave. I had learned my lesson, though, and did not let the Infanta crawl free again until we got home.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

38. Infanta update



She's too aware of the camera to get a truly candid shot these days, but here's a pictures of the Infanta playing with the fork I'd pulled out to eat my lunch with yesterday. As you may guess, I got myself another fork. She's zipping around the house on all fours now; at one point yesterday I was here on the computer, and she just sort of took off out of the room. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I came out of the office, and she was nowhere to be seen. I called her name a couple of times, and found her coming out from the direction of the bedroom. She's very happy just kind of exploring on her own, although she does tend to prefer to explore in company - in other words, follow me around. Also, if I'm sitting still and she's exploring, she'll come up to my feet when she wants to be picked up (and usually nurse). She'll come up to Josh's too, but since I'm in charge more often...

No teeth yet, but if I look at her bottom gum, I can see the top edges of her very front teeth, just ready to pop up any time. I'm still not in any hurry!

Friday, February 06, 2009

37. Random Friday

1. I hate memes, so despite having been tagged at least half a dozen times in the 25 Random Things About Me meme on Facebook, I will not be participating.

2. I really, really want to get pregnant again. I'm thinking that March would be a good month to conceive - the Infanta would be around 18 months old when the new baby was born, and it would be decent timing with my potential and actual clients due this fall.

3. In line with #2, I think that the reason my period has been sucking so much this week is that it's a missed pregnancy - an egg was fertilized, but failed to implant. I'm a teeny bit saddened, but mostly annoyed at the mix of a truly craptastic period and a truly craptastic cold.

4. I've had really bad startitis in the last month or so. Depression combined with more stash than I'm used to = lots of ideas for starting things, and not all that much interest in followthrough. Never fear, Mom, I will finish your socks! especially since I'm using those spiffy square needles. :D But I also have some great ideas for sewing projects... not to mention wanting to corral and organize all my needles... Have I mentioned my recent strange fascination with amigurumi?

Thursday, February 05, 2009

36. Breakfast at midnight?

Last night, in the hours I couldn't sleep (the Infanta went into the crib shortly after 11, I didn't sleep until shortly after her 2 am nursing), I had a thought. I'd seen somewhere a recipe for making oatmeal in the crock pot - put it in at night, let it cook on low overnight, and in the morning you have perfect hot cereal all ready to go. So I tried it. I pulled out the Little Dipper that came with my big crock pot, and which has been gathering dust for... a year now? and loaded it with my usual oatmeal proportions - 3/4 cup uncooked cereal, 1 1/2 cup water, a little salt - plugged it in, and went back to trying to sleep. It was fabulous this morning - hot cereal with no especial effort!

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

35. Book List

Saw this over at Lennon's blog, thought it would be a good one for me, bookworm that I am.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (or, since I'm apparently unable to underline, put an ascii heart: <3)
4) Put 6 stars next to the ones you are reading******

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen <3
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling <3
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I assume pieces count here...)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman <3
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott <3
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien <3
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll <3
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia <3
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen <3
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins-
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery <3
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett <3
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White <3
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle <3
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas <3
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Remember that I was a lit major in college, and therefore I read a number of these for coursework.

We're still sick here... although the Infanta seems to remember it only when she's trying to nurse, and has to keep coming up for air between swallows.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

34. Still sick

And not only sick, but enduring the period from hell on top of it. And when I went to do my morning online stuff today, my connection was down so I didn't get the post I wanted up today. Maybe tomorrow; we'll see how I'm feeling then. >.<

Monday, February 02, 2009

33. We have achieved crib!



And someday Herself may even sleep in it. Not tonight, unless some miracle occurs... lolyarite, I kill myself...

We have also achieved high chair; I suspect this will get more use.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

32. Colds suck.

I'm not complaining about temperature this time, but illness. *sigh* Long old day, starting with not sleeping well due to assorted illness, continuing on to Ikea first thing in the morning (but I got my crib and high chair!), and thence to a friend's house to hang out and play board games; we got home about half an hour before I'm posting this. Josh and I have nasty colds, and the Infanta not only has the cold, but also may be pushing her first teeth out (finally!!!). Wish us a restful night...

Anyway, working on planning this knitting day thing. I think Thursdays would work best for my schedule (although Wednesdays would be ok, too). Yes, Lennon, kids are welcome, but I don't have a huge amount of space, nor much in the way of toys for 5 year old boys. :) Just sayin'... Anyway, I started this over on Ravelry; the thread is here. If you aren't on Ravelry, and you're interested in this, you should be! It's a fabulous site, even if you aren't there very often (which category includes me, just btw). The social network part is great, it's getting me out of the house and seeing folks I have a good amount in common with on a pretty regular basis right now, and so is the stash database part, but what I really love is the part about being able to search patterns - you can find tons of different patterns for knitting and crocheting at least, and a goodly proportion are free, which is fantastic for those of us with minuscule budgets (which is all of us, I'm pretty sure).