Small Hello

Good morning! How are you? I'm good. Survived Thanksgiving, my dad and sister came as had dinner with us. This is my third year cooking dinner for my family, first with my dad and sister joining us. Each year I get a little further behind in all I do to get ready for it. My first year everything was done and on the table exactly when I said it would be. Each following year I've been rushing to get the rolls in the oven, the gravy made, and some other odd instances that make me feel frazzled. But it was all delicious and I had a great time with my family. That's what matters right? I hope you had a fabulous turkey day also!


I did not get my thing done for Thanksgiving. I started and was doing pretty well but then it hit me that Christmas isn't that far away and I still have so much to do to get ready for that.


I'm making everyone's Christmas present this year. I have a pretty good start on all of it but I need to stay on top of it if I'm going to make it.


I'm half done with this present. It's fun to work on and it has a lot of meaning in the colors.


Plus I'm working on some mantis for my aunt. Four for Christmas and another one for another time. I have one and a half finished.


That's what I work on after the girls go to bed. All other crochet things are worked on during the day. Then there's another blanket I've started but don't have a picture of, and a quilt I have to get done. Plus something I'm contracting to Elliott to make for me. And don't forget the endless hats and scarves I'm going to make. My goal for this year is to get it all done BEFORE Christmas. If I keep up the good work I'm confident I'll make it. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic though. We'll see! I'll keep you posted.


Oh! I just want to show you a few things. Starting at the bottom and going clockwise, that's Alyssa newborn, 3-4 months, and 8 months. It's ridiculous how fast time is flying.


There's Amelia as a newborn, one year, and today. She'll be three in 2 months and some change. Where does all the time go? Must have been all the fun time I've been having with these babies of mine.


We bought Amelia some pink Christmas lights for her room, I've been wanting to do it since last Christmas but Elliott said she was probably a little too young last year.


She loves them! I figured she would. I'm just glad Alyssa doesn't know that her big sister is getting something she's not. Next year might be a different story! Well, I'm sorry there's not more to show you. My mom and step-dad just got back into town so we've been hanging out with them all week. But I'll get pictures of the other stuff I'm working on for you next time!

Hope you have a great day!

Bits and Bobs and a Ripple

Good morning! How are you today? Im excited because guess what?! Elliott bought me a new phone for my birthday and I now know how to link to websites on my blog from my phone!! Yay! Apparently the app I use has the ability to do it but my old phone was very outdated and didn't function properly in order for that feature to work. Thank you technology for being wonderful again!


Instragram is also really fun, as are a bunch of other games I couldn't get and/or play with my other phone. It was the 3G iPhone which was very old, and it was starting to be a real drag because I couldn't do hardly anything the iPhone is capable of doing. Now I can view blogs AND comment on them, open things with one touch instead of the press and hold then press the open button. Ah, easy again. Anyway, enough of that.


Are you having a fun weekend? We're not doing much this weekend, just cleaning. Earlier, Amelia and I were laying in bed and she was whispering furiously in my ear, "I'm just gonna help you..." as she probed her freezing fingers into my face and stuck her freezing feet on my arm. Then she ran away and threw Barbie at me. It was all pretty unpleasant but I loved it none the less.


Alyssa got a new car seat because my big girl out grew her infant seat. I would be sad about it but she was so heavy in her infant seat to carry around plus she hated that seat.


Sorry her face is kinda whited out, it was really bright out. But she loves it. It's bigger and more roomy for her. Plus she really likes to ride in the carts at places instead of being in her car seat. It's the end of an era. But it's better this way. Still no crawling from the babe yet, though she's taking 3-4 "steps" and then falls down to army crawl her way to where she's going. For a non-mobile baby, she's pretty mobile.


Amelia and I have been playing with the camera on my phone. She loves to see herself when we take pictures. She's such a ham!


Big ham! I put her in the Mai tei just to see what she would do and she actually liked it and she was pretty weightless in it.


I put Alyssa in it while we cleaned the kitchen yesterday morning and she put her head down on my back. She was so sleepy. Speaking of sleepy! If you have children, have you noticed their sleeping habits being crazy because of the weather changing (or other unknown factors)? Amelia has been sleeping so weird lately. Alyssa's sleep problems stem from regular baby things though.


How's it going on your crafty home front? I've done nothing more but love my new ripple blanket. Elliott and I decided it should be for one of the girls. Probably Amelia, and the little hexagon blanket will be made for Alyssa. Especially since Amelia is always trying to steal mine and Elliott's blankets.


I am loving the neons from ILTY. They're thicker than the regular ILTY but still very soft. I started the blanket last weekend and I'm already (or just however you look at it) 21 rows in with a starting chain of 210. So it's wide and will be 140ish rows long. Hopefully she'll be using it for forever because she'll grow into it, but I know her tastes will change once she's older.


Oh, I do love a lovely ripple blanket. I hope you have/had a wonderful weekend! Have a great week! ☺

Crochet is Crochet is Crochet

Apparently it is not!
Good morning! How are you this beautiful day? I'm well, not really looking forward to later today because my poor Alyssa has to get shots.


This little girl is six months 4 days ago. Still no crawling but why would you need to crawl when you can roll and spin in circles like a helicopter all day?


She is doing the splits, some baby downward facing dogs, and definitely scooting backward, mostly to end up under things.


Eating rice cereal like a big girl, but not oatmeal. We, I mean I, find this out the hard way while wearing Alyssa in the ring sling on a walk after breakfast one day. She threw up all over the inside of the sling. Not spit up. This involved the reflexes and included the sounds of actual vomit. Don't worry, I'm not scared of any kind of throw up. But I was worried she was sick. I placed her in her bouncy seat and she threw up some more. At one point I walked away to get Amelia something, because at that time she hadn't thrown up for a few minutes and came back shortly to find her red faced and choking. Mama bear instincts and reflexes kicked in and I grabbed her, flipped her face down on my arm and patted her back firmly with my other hand. She moaned softly and spit on the floor, going a little soft in my arms. I rubbed her back and talked to her and she started to squirm not too long after. I squeezed her and told her I loved her and she was ok. That's the scariest thing I've gone through with Alyssa. The scariest thing with Amelia was when she fell down the back deck stairs about 7-8 months because she went through the doggy door when we still had it. Then another day we tried oatmeal again. Same result without the choking so we've stayed away from oatmeal.


Besides all that jazz, I haven't been up to much hooking lately. I made Amelia this hat from a new pattern I was trying I'll link up to it in my next post because I'm planning to make Alyssa one too. But it's easy and fast. I was just hooking along with the hat when some dark yarn showed up woven in the periwinkle I was using. I thought it looked pretty neat so instead of cutting it out I left it. By the way, Amelia is wearing underwear in the picture. I cannot keep clothes on my child. Not since she's been potty trained. Oh yeah! She's been potty trained for awhile now and she is amazing at it! She'll stop doing something sometimes and say, "oh! I gotta go pee!" and run off to do her business. I still have to bribe her to poop sometimes but she's good at that too.


Alyssa likes the hat too so she's definitely getting a matching one. But my hooks have sadly been very quiet lately because I have been crocheting hats and squares but I really miss the smooth, relaxing movement of a blanket. Long chain, double crochet, turn, double crochet again to end. I miss blanketing. But I'm gonna get one started again soon. But not soon enough for my hooks.

Please Welcome...

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering the same thing. Did she have that baby yet? Why yes, yes I have. :-)

At my 38 week doctor's appointment we talked about induction dates because though I was progressing roughly a cm a week I still wasn't having regular contractions. Then I told my doc I thought I was leaking fluid which launched a whole other thing and he said at my 36 week scan my fluid was borderline high and was worried about my water breaking randomly. So we set the date for March 8, at 7 in the morning. I was a little disappointed because I really wanted to go on my own because I was also induced a week late with Amelia, but not disappointed because I was going to meet my babe a week early!

Lovely right? We got to labor and delivery at 6:45am and the nurses told us they weren't ready for us yet and to wait in the waiting room. We got up there at 6:50 and waited. Waited. Two couples came in after us and went right in. Good thing I wasn't in labor. Then I called on the phone that gets you to the nurses' station and the night nurses didn't tell the day nurses we were out there. No biggie, this was going to be a great day! They got us set up in bed and got my IV going with pitocin (I was having contractions, but not regular) and my doctor came in and broke my water about 8ish. Joked with me about how he almost wore his leather jacket that I once dreamed he wore to one of my appointments, then everyone left us to our thing. 8 to about 10am was a breeze, then my contractions started getting way stronger and I was feeling them in my back and that's when I told Elliott I'd like my epidural. My nurse came in and ordered it for me.

The anesthesiologist came in and asked me some questions, one question was "how tall are you?" I told him 5'2, and that I married a tall guy so my kids would have a chance. Elliott is well over 6'2. He laughed and said his wife didn't get so lucky since he was on the shorter side. It was all a good time until the actual epidural part. With Amelia my epidural wasn't painful at all, with this one he had to reposition it once, so I had to get it twice. I had the most awful pain shoot down my right hip both times. It was a mix between metallic pain and pressure. It made me shake and I wanted to pull away so bad but sat still. The nurse made Elliott sit in front of me when what I really needed was for him to stand up so I could lean into him. Whatever, the nurse went from strange to batty to rude by the end, and I have no idea why.

After my epidural was finally in everything was numb from my belly down and everything was so itchy! But then I had a band on my lower belly where I could still feel each contraction. After rolling around and getting repositioned I was so tired and took a nap. About 12:30pm my nurse came in and asked how I was, I told her I felt some pressure but was still feeling really good. She said she would just check me real fast and from the impression I got she didn't expect me to be much further than the 3-4 cm I was before my epidural, especially since when she checked me she said, "I'll be damned, you're ready." Elliott then rushed out of the bathroom to be with me and text my mom who was watching Amelia for us that it was about time. The nurse set everything up before she called my doc and got me in the stirrups. I was so nauseous and I hate throwing up but Elliott came to my rescue with a cool wash cloth and ice chips which helped a ton! He was such a steady rock for me through all of this, just as he was with Amelia's birth.

The doc came in and said, "oh, look at all that hair. Looks like another red head." All I could do was laugh. With everything in place, the nurse telling me when to push (because I really could feel nothing) our little baby was out in five pushes.

Alyssa Jane was born at 1:12pm at 8 lbs even and 20 1/2 inches long. Her ears were slicked to the side of her head with a head full of red hair. Amelia was about 5-6 months old before she had that much hair. Who, if you were curious, was 8.5 lbs and 20 inches long at 40 weeks 6 days.

She has Elliott's ears, eyes, nose, chin, fingers, and toes and my legs. I was mostly just the carrier for this babe, but I'm alright with that. :-)

Birth is such an amazing experience, and though I wouldn't want to do it everyday I still enjoyed both of my experiences.

Amelia loves being a big sister and is always kissing Alyssa and asking to hold her. She is also a great binky holder/putter backer.

Daddy (who is Alyssa's twin for sure) is in love with his two little girls and has taken on a lot of the morning chores so mommy can sleep a little longer.

And mommy is in love too. Who knew you could love two just as much as you loved one? A heart knows no boundaries.

We all couldn't be happier. More rested yes, but we're all still smiling.

Yarny and Sewy Talk

Good day to you! I hope you're having a woderful week! We are but I'm a little bummed because this winter, if you want to call it that, has been so dry and we've only seen snow twice. Both times weren't even enough to cover the ground! As long as it doesn't blizzard on the day we need to go to the hospital, I guess I shouldn't complain much. Though this morning was really foggy!

So Sunday it was a gray day in Kansas (in my part anyway) and my little Boat (that's what we call Amelia) was sick to her tummy. That was the bad part. But the good part was mommy and Amelia cuddled together in bed watching movies! I hate when she's sick but I love how cuddly she is when she doesn't feel well. She camped out between my legs with her head on a pillow, of course with Daidai by her side.

I would have posted last week but my phone, still our only source of interweb, is being a big dummy. I was halfway through my post and my app shut off. Without saving my writings. Ugh! I was just so mad I just gave up. It's been shutting off all my apps lately for no reason. I'm starting to regret having this phone. Oh well. I'll try again, but doing something different.
I've been busy crocheting and sewing trying to satisfy my own goal of getting all my current projects, which are all close to being finished, done before the middle of February. That way everyone has their goodies and I won't have to worry about it when AJ gets here. 48 days to go!

I found a tutorial on Oh, Fransson!'s blog (http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/2010/02/crazy-ninepatch-lattice-quilt.html) on how to make the wonky nine-patch square. I tried it her way, messing up the order of fabric flipping, and I ended up with the same fabric in each square more than once. And my seams didn't match up enough for my liking, so I slept on it.

I came up with this! I cut out a square from a soda can box that was the same size as my starting squares and then cut it into three pieces.

I would line each cardboard piece up with each fabric and cut.

It was a lot more cutting this way but I was dedicated to making it work better. In the end my seams lined up much closer but I still did something wrong and ended up with two of the same fabric in each square, as to where you are supposed to have nine different fabric pieces in one finished square. Oh well! It looks better to me than my first try. My first attempt is the one pictured above.

That's my bump and the blanket I'm working on. I've mentioned this blanket before but didn't share the link. I found it through one of my favorite blogs, tangledhappy.com, when Sara shared it. The orignal blog is, http://www.mooglyblog.com/2011/09/21/free-pattern-blackberry-salad-striped-baby-blanket/, I still can't link on my phone, so sorry! :-/
But I'm hooking it up with I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby in such fab colors! I'll have to share the actual color names later as the skeins are perfectly nestled in a bag and I don't have to move any around but just pull on the ends and stitch away! It's very convenient!

Amelia has been super kooky lately. Well, when she was feeling well enough. She just cracks me up!

Did you know her second birthday is only days away! So super sad that it's been two years already! We've just had so much fun that it feels like it's gone by in the blink of an eye. But once her birthday party is all wrapped up I don't have much to do but wait for baby AJ. Haha, I didn't realize I would have basically a month to do nothing but wait for this babe! Unless an early arrival is in the stars for us. Doubt it! Amelia was six days late.

Oh! My friend Meg made something like this for her front door and when I saw it I knew I wanted one for our door too. Elliott picked out the colors for all of it and I simply love it! It was less than $5 because I had everything at home except the P, and it took less than 20 minutes! What a way to satisfy your need to make something! I'd love to make one for AJ and Amelia's doors too.

Besides all that we've just been hanging out and trying to keep ourselves busy. I have another quilt in the works for AJ but I'm keeping it under wraps for now. Then Elliott's anniversary blanket is just about finished! I couldn't get away with two skeins of each color so I had to bite the hook and buy a third skein for each color. I'll have enough to do a border though! So, win-win!

I don't believe I've shown you this! I made this for Amelia for Christmas but she refuses to wear it. I wrote down the pattern as I worked it out and I'm thinking of sharing it but definitely making more! Maybe someone will like it enough to wear. Anyway, I've gone on too much! I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Until next time!

Disappointed, But Not

Good day! Well today was our big ultrasound day. Little A tried to be as good as she could be while the tech wiggled the scope around on my belly. I can't remember what she called it but the placenta is in a position that makes it hard to feel kicks and punches from the outside just yet. She said by next week I should be able to feel them more. E got kicked yesterday though. Peanut's feet were just under my ribs and pushing on something weird (it didn't feel good) so I put E's fingers there and pushed back and Peanut kicked!

Well anyway, this little baby is measuring right in track for March 14 and is beautiful just like Little A in that stage. Then it came time to find out the gender. Ankles crossed and butt turned away! Argh! Not a chance to see what was between the legs. The tech said she has a guess and she was right last time, but I'm not telling! Not until November 23 or 24 when we go back and get to sneak in to see the tech again and hopefully get our picture of proof.
I'm disappointed that the baby was hiding but I'm not because the baby is healthy and is, after all, MY baby. :-)

Besides all that, I'm working on Little A's costume today and must get it done before Friday. Friday is the town's little trick or treat through the downtown. I also have to get E's and my costumes done, they're just hats though. Sunday is E's family's bonfire and Monday is the best holiday! I'm really excited for it all! I hope you're having a great day!

Until next time!

A Wave and a Ripple

Good afternoon! I realize it's a week and two days late, but those of who've been pregnant with a toddler know energy is a thing of the passed. No excuse. No excuse! I promised I'd be better about posting an it only lasts a few weeks before I drop off again.
Little A, just turned 20 months, has decided that the terrible twos was perfect to start right now. But of course, the other day when it was the worst it was a full moon. She's just so independent and wants to do everything herself, and when the "no's" come out so does the throwing-self-on-floor tantrums. Ugh! Luckily they only happen at home, so far.

Can you believe this face ever doing something like that? I CAN!

Besides being the tantrum police,
I tried to work out a pattern for a Halloween decoration/stuffy, but it did not turn out how I wanted at all! I think I know how to fix it though, which is good because it was so cool...in my head. I'm also feeling frustrated over Little A's Halloween costume, I'm sewing it up without a pattern but it's not working out either. Good thing I decided to practice on scraps first, I have an idea as to what I'm doing wrong so hopefully I'll get it right soon.

I'm also writing down my pattern for this hat and hopefully I'll have it posted tomorrow or Sunday. Yep. I'm gonna share it with you! It's so easy and everyone loves them. I made this baby version in a few hours (including frequent stopping to watch TV and tickle Little A). Anyway, onto the waves...

I've been working on two of my wavy/ripple blankets everyday. The weany, now big girl, blanket in the mornings while Little A watches Disney's "Cars" and eats pre-breakfast in our room (she's obsessed with that movie!). The weany blanket came about after I purchased some of Hobby Lobby's yarn, "I Love This Yarn" and while nursing Little A scanning Google for crochet blankets in images. I found the pattern at http://www.crochetme.com/media/p/89937.aspx, it's free too! I started it back in January one day when I thought Little A was leaving nursing behind just to comfort myself. Turns out it was just a fluke and the next day was business as usual via nursing. She's been weaned since May and I'm still not done with her blanket. Done for her birthday? Christmas? Maybe! She loves it though, she stole it from me this morning.

And my ripple in the afternoon while she naps. Her one hour nap. What happened to my good sleeper?! She's still a good sleeper but mommy misses the two hour naps. The ripple grows faster than the wavy, and I've joined Lucy's, at Attic24.typepad.com, Ripple Along. It is her pattern, after all, that I'm using. I love all of Lucy's patterns and I think I told myself when I had time I'd make my favorites. That was awhile ago and as of right now I'm working three of her patterns. The hexie, the granny stripe, and the ripple. If you have time and are looking for something new to work on, Lucy has great tutorials! I'm trying to do the colors randomly but I'm keeping the orange an the pink away from each other. They do not look good next to each other. I'm not good with "picking" random colors so I got an app for that! I type in how many numbers and press generate! It picks the color for me. I did all five colors, one after the other, in the beginning so I just use that to convert numbers into colors. I'm liking using this method so far.

It's wonderfully warm, as are the other two blankets I'm working out with Hobby Lobby's yarn. It's funny because each one is made with the same yarn but they all feel so different. The granny stripe especially is so thick and heavy, while the wavy is so blankety, as the ripple so airy bit so snuggly. I love them all! I can't wait to finish them all! Well anyway, that's about all I've got today! Not uper exciting. Keep your eye out for the tutorial this weekend, I promise it's coming! But in baby news: I'm currently 18 weeks.

Eleven days left until we find out if #2 will tip the estrogen scales or level us out with testosterone. Mommy votes boy, Daddy votes girl. Either way, our love is only going to grow.

Until next time!