Monday, December 29, 2008

The finished hat!

Little N likes her hat. It is a little large for her, but she will grow into it. She tested it out in the the snow for me over the weekend. It kept her warm and happy.



Sunday, December 14, 2008

Little N's Mew hat



This project has taken a lot longer than it should have! I started this as a test knit in October. It was coming along nicely and then I tucked my daughter into bed, leaving the knitting in a bag on an end table.

I knew better.

I've lectured the kids 100 times and they knew better.

My husband didn't have to say I told you so.

I tempted the puppies and they have no will power.

I came out to find a pink spider web pulled across my living room, with one dog on either end of it. Even though there are two colors in the hat, the puppies thought that pink was the color for them. It had to be the pink, the one where I was really cutting it close if I had enough to finish the hat. Lucy had pieces of yarn around one paw and a piece sticking out of her mouth with her tail going 100 miles per hour. Max, well, max had what was left of the skein in his mouth with his tail going just as fast.

The puppies were willing to trade my project with a toy and Pete took them outside so I could pick up the living room. Pulling the yarn with the puppies inside... not a good idea.

I picked up the yarn and salvaged what I could from the original knitting. I had to pull out a few rows and luckily there was no damage to my needles. What was left of the ball of pink yarn, was a complete and utter loss.

My son and I stopped by the local yarn shop and found a skein of pink in the same dye lot, which meant I could finish the hat. However, I had to put the hat away. I just didn't want to deal with the knots.

Finally, my sad little hat, the one I promised to test out the pattern for, needed to get off my needles. I was able to get past the point where I had been prior to the puppy-tug-o-war event with what was left and started into the new skein.

Little N is very happy with her hat.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Happy 3rd Birthday, Little N

Today is Little N's 3rd birthday. Today's post will be a photo montage. Happy birthday, baby girl!



10 months old.


First birthday


15 months


Woodland park Zoo, Seattle


Family Vacation/Reunion


20 months


20 months


2nd birthday


Spring 2008


Last weekend at our home in Shoreline


Puppies!


Pumpkins... Momma, maybe if you weeded more they might grow...


Fall Rain


First snow, what a great birthday present!


Birthday party with friends in Seattle

Friday, December 12, 2008

Sick on her birthday

Of all the days to get sick, poor little N woke up from her nap not feeling well. I happened to be downstairs and when I heard her come out of her room and cry, it wasn't her normal, "I'm cranky-tired-hungry-healthy" cry. It was a sad, sick cry and it got me running.

I picked her up and without a word she proceeded to pull in tight and cry. Her little stomach made some awful sounds. I ran her to the bathroom and the inevitable happened, which seemed to upset her as much as it surprised her. We brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth and I made a call to the boss that the day was done for me.

She's spent the remainder of the day on my lap or Pete's lap on the couch. She perked up a little for a bath and was pretty happy to get into her cozy footed jammies for the night.

Tomorrow is little N's 3rd birthday. Sadly, this means she will be sick on her actual birthday.

I am anticipating she will join us in bed this evening at some point.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

So Gross

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the imitation syrup no longer requires refrigeration? This grosses me out to no end! What have they added, what gives it a shelf life longer than most people will keep a bottle of syrup?

I spent 10-15 minutes reading labels at the store, trying to find one bottle of syrup that was brown sugar and water, the stuff we grew up on. But, instead, they all have long lists of ingredients I cannot pronounce. Can this stuff really be good for you?

It grosses me out enough that I started buying the real maple syrup for the kids. Big N and Little N are not very appreciative of the real stuff. They have no idea that their grandfather would hide his little bottle of real syrup in the back of the fridge so his kids wouldn't use it. Perhaps he knew we would appreciate it as much as Little N and Big N's expressions indicate it is not their favorite. They even like to tell me, it is not their favorite (exact words).

In my adult house, the fake stuff is hidden in the back of the fridge, by Pete, and he growls at me if I suggest that we stop buying the chemical stuff.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

2+2+2 = 6, but I have 5. Why?

Big N has come across a math problem he couldn't explain.

"Mommy. Why do I have only 2 grandpas and 3 grandmas? Did my grandpa die?"

I think he was working on this question for a while and it was a tough one to answer. I don't want to scare him and I was not ready or even expecting the death conversation.

As the conversation unfolded, I think he was mixing up who my grandfather was and how all the relatives fit into the family tree. It was like he was trying to fill in a row of pegs and couldn't figure out which peg went where. We've spoken about my grandpa to him in the recent past. There are photos of Big N with my grandpa and he asks who he is and why he never sees him. Perhaps in his mind, the pieces fit together that this grandfather must belong to one of his grandmothers.

We talked about what death means and how you can't see that person anymore. It is ok to miss them. I answered his questions as honestly as I could and tried to keep the explanations concise and exact. I was worried that saying someone was gone would be confusing to him, because there are people that are gone, but they come back and would he think if I made an offhand comment that someone was gone that he might never see them again?

We talked about it and I explained that he was here when he was a baby and he loved him very much. He is not here any more, but he will always love him even though we can't see him.

Big N seemed ok with this explanation.

"Mommy, if he was your grandpa, then he is a daddy. Who is his little girl?"

"My Mommy."

Big N giggled at this point. "Your mommy isn't a little girl! She's as old as you are!"

When did it become ok to steal?

We paid early in June to sign big N up for preschool. The owner took our money and we set up work schedules and visits to Grandma to accommodate the schedule. Then, right before the classes start, the owner changed the schedule multiple times and the school no longer worked with our schedule. We had to scramble to find something else. I explained our situation and asked for the money back over the phone, twice, and she agreed to mail a check. She never sent it. I called again a few months later and left a message. Again, nothing. I finally drafted a letter outlining the facts with a time frame to respond and I sat on it for a bit. I emailed her once more and she tells a story about mailing a check, for a different amount, to the wrong address.

The fact remains, she kept our money for six months with no attempt to return it. And now she wants us to pay for her canceled check fee for a check she never wrote. Did she lose the registration paper work with our address? Did she toss it out when we left assuming she could keep our tuition?

1. She charged us $180 for tuition, but she says she wrote a check for $160.
2. She got wishy-washy and changed her schedule 2 times within 2 weeks of the start of preschool, and she wants to hold us to a contract that she herself did not intend to keep.

No, I'm sorry. Stealing is stealing. Holding onto money that is not yours, ignoring requests and phone calls and then lying about it is wrong. Either she really is disorganized or she is stealing. However, the simplest solution is typically the correct one.

This is for a preschool? Are you kidding me? Seriously?

What ever happened to honoring your commitments or doing what you said you would do.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Stuck

Little N enjoys playing dress-up. Her newest version of playing dress-up involves multiple changes of clothes through out the night. She will come out in various states of dress, or undress, asking for help. Last night, she hit a snag. She found a pair of footed jammies Grandma had given her for next winter. She managed to get into the box of the next size up of clothes I had in the back of the closet.

During her third wardrobe change into the big jammies, she came out to ask for help as she had somehow managed to get the feet twisted around and behind her body. The the right foot of the jammies was facing up on her left foot. With the left foot of the jammies twisted and trailing dangerously behind her, she promptly shut the door on the empty foot and tried to run down the hall.

This did not go over well with little N.

She pulled and tugged and pulled some more, leaning her whole body forward trying to figure out what kept her from running down the hall. She then let the entire world know that this did not fit into her plans for the evening of staying awake.

I peaked down the hall to see what was causing her so much distress to see her arms reaching out as she tried to get away from that door. It took a while to calm her down, but she did finally go back to bed and managed to stay in bed for the night in the same jammies.

She still wanted to wear the big jammies this evening. I am hoping she might leave them on tonight, but I'm sure that will not be the case.

Little N modeling her big girl jammies.

Mommy...

My son caught me off guard this afternoon. He came upstairs and asked me point blank, "Mommy, do you want another baby?"

I was a little surprised by the question and wondering where this conversation was going. I tried to reassure him by telling him I was very happy with the two babies I have and I gave him a big hug and let him spin in my desk chair. Always a hit.

We've been talking about babies at our house, Baby N is at our house with her mommy and both of Nate's good friends, B and P are big sisters. He's seen and heard a lot about babies recently.

"But, Mommy, if you had another baby, we could baby-sit for you."

You just give me the hard sell, kid. Can I quote you on this when you are old enough to baby sit? At this point, I played a little dirty and suggested that he talk to his daddy about another baby.

Big N ran downstairs and I could hear him reporting the conversation, "Mommy said I should to talk to daddy about another baby."

Sorry, Pete.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Baby sweater and a hat for the big sister

Big N and Little N's good friend and former neighbor, B, is now a big sister. Her little sister C, was born in mid November.

Of course, this called for some knitting on my part. A new baby is a fun person to knit for. The look great in whatever you make them and the projects tend to go fast. Big N helped me pick out the yarn we used for the baby sweater, even though it took some work to point him away from the shiny green yarn. It was fun to get the kids involved in the gifts, especially considering how much the kid's care about the people we were giving the gifts to.

The hat was actually a pattern test I did for the designer. I had originally intended this as an adult gift, but big N informed me that the color was more to B's liking. The pattern was a little confusing, but once all the repeats worked out, it came out beautiful. The only problem is the pattern missed a few rows and the final hat was child size. This worked nicely with Big N's color plan, as the hat now could go to B.

Big N modeling B's big sister hat, in Cascade 220 Heathers


B's little sister, C, was due in November and her parents decided to wait until then to find out whether baby C was a girl or a boy. This made it easy to avoid the typical baby pastels, which was fine with me. We picked a nice holiday color, red for her sweater and some pretty buttons, picked by little N, that either a baby boy or a baby girl could wear.

Wee Welcome set in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino.


And, yes, it made my day when our friends told me that baby C wore the red sweater home. I'm easy to please.