Applecopters and Dobbies

Worst baby blanket project EVERRRRR!!!

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.

Elsa: 2.5 months later

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

Introducing Baby No-Name

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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.

 

Vox Hunt: Day of Rest

Show us the most productive thing you'll accomplish today.

Pizza

Made from scratch, crust included, with my "three and three quarters" years old daughter. Tummy's grumbling...mmm....

Love love love "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Elizabeth Gilbert

I adore this book. I just finished reading it and am now going to scour Amazon and my public library's website for other books by this very funny and down to earth writer. I may even love her writing more than Anne Lammott's...that might have to do with the fact that Anne Lammott's autobiographical stuff talks a lot about her Christian beliefs and Gilbert's on the yoga/meditation type of spiritual path which I can get behind better.

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.

QotD: Fridge History

What's the oldest thing in your fridge?

creepy capers

Mathilda's pole obsession (or Mathilda's first time on skis)

It's not what it sounds like. We took Mathilda up to Tahoe last weekend and decided it was time to get the kids on skis. The current thinking is that the little ones don't get ski poles, just boots and skis. Mathilda instantly noticed that she wasn't getting the full package and took issue with that. Somehow this manifested with her "borrowing" the ski poles of people who had parked their gear while they took a break to lunch or guzzle beer. So innocent. So trusting. See Mathilda doing her version of pole dancing. 

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Modified beehive hat

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!!

how much my mom loved me

I had a moment earlier this week that was strange and powerful and wonderful. I was looking at Mathilda and felt the love I had for her exploding from my heart. It was like all kinds of energy was spewing from my heart chakra (if you're into that sort of thing...I'm not sure that I am). As I felt that I thought to myself, "My mom must have felt that way about me." For some reason, that thought had never crossed my mind.

When I think about my mom, mostly I feel sad for myself that she's not alive and doesn't know me as an adult or know my family. I feel sad that Mathilda doesn't get to have her Grossmutter or Biene or whatever my mom would have wanted to be called.

Anyway, in that moment, I felt her love for me and it was so comforting. Maybe she was even there somehow in that moment. 

I was just looking at these old photos examining them for signs of that deep love, that adoring gaze of a mother deeply in love with her child. I see them...Wasn't she beautiful? That last picture just kills me.  She looks so lost in thought...dreamy and sad. I wonder what she's thinking. I wish I could ask.

What the he## does "motodot" mean?

Everybody has to come up with some sort of online handle or login at some point if they're using the internet to any degree. My first name is usually gone because it's not only a first name but also the name of a beloved children's tale often associated with hallucinogenic experiences. Obviously a top choice among many early internet users. Well, one day I was trying to set up an account on nytimes.com and was getting really irritated that nothing that I found easy to remember or remotely expressive of who I am was available.

I had to come up with something original. At the time, I was riding a motorcycle quite a bit on the weekends (see photo below for evidence of my former coolness) and I had, and still do have, a cat named "Dot" (photo of kitty unfindable as she is extremely shy). Well, moto + dot = motodot. It's as simple as that. And, it's never taken when I need to set up an account unless I've already been to that site and just don't remember, which happens more often than I'd like to admit.

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And if you're into motorcyles you'll see that I was riding a Honda Hawk 650 which I loved. It had a weird thing where if I hadn't ridden in a while, I'd have to bump start it (or talk Nick into doing it for me). It was my first and probably last bike. We sold both Nick's and my bikes when we decided to have a kid. Boring but responsible.

If I may continue to ramble on, the particular day that photo was taken was one of my best riding days ever. Nick, my brother Jan, and I went on a ride together. Lucas Valley Road off the 101 to brunch at Pt. Reyes, rode down the coast and the whole bit. Lots of curvy roads. It was a gorgeous sunny day so the conditions were great, I felt great, both of my favorite guys were with me. Along the way, we met some other riders and one older gentleman took me under his wing and gave me some great riding tips involving shifting weight from side to side. It was one of those days when everything was clicking...I don't know if my rising star was in venus or my biorhythms were stellar or what was up but it was one of my favorite days of all time. Plus I rode faster and better than my brother. Neener neener Jan!