Knotty . . . but Nice

Sorting

2011-11-21T18:24:00.004-05:00

A week or so ago, the bean was enjoying some halloween candy and lamented the fact that there was only one blue M&M in the package she was eating. Blue seems to be her favorite color now that she has learned to name colors (she was partial to green before then-I guess she liked the way the word sounded). Anyway, the boy explained to her that there's a store in the city where you can buy a bag of only blue M&Ms (or any other color, for that matter). She was interested, but didn't mention it again. We figured we'd take her after the sugar overload of the holidays was over.

The bean has been asking to go into the city to her Mommy's work, so the boy woke her up this morning and asked if she'd like to do that. Her response, of course, was to ask if she could also go to the M&M store. Because as much as we'd like to think otherwise, children just never forget a. single. thing.

So we went to the city and the bean got a bag of blue M&Ms. No pictures of that, unfortunately, but once we got home, to entertain her and also turn this into an educational lesson (since it certainly wasn't a nutritional one), I set her up sorting the colors from Mommy and Mama's bags.

A bag of multicolored M&Ms and a muffin tin was all it took to keep her entertained for an hour.

Sorting and mixing over and over again.

Why yes, I do let my 2 year old sit on the kitchen counter! Most days its the only way I can cook or do the dishes. Rest assured, I stay within arms reach and keep her away from the stove and knives. She's been sitting there long enough that she knows to stay away from the edge and to ask for help when she wants to get down.

Halloween

2011-11-01T16:16:00.005-04:00

Clearly, I'm finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately. Life with a toddler moves at a much faster pace than I had anticipated and, on the rare occasion that I do find time to sit down with the computer, there are always fingers coming at the keyboard, wanting to "help." And so, even though I didn't manage to find time to post this yesterday, I'm very excited to share with you our halloween projects (a day late).

Bats! From Country Living, via made

I covered some of our picture frames with cheesecloth and stuck little plastic spiders in them to make it a bit more spooky.

The cute leaf garland is an idea I got from pinterest. I just cut the shapes out of some extra felt I had on hand and sewed some yarn through them. The little ghost is cut from window film (template via Martha).

Finally, our mice that took over the stairs. (Template via Martha).

I also tried to make the bean's school lunches festive the last couple days.

Pumpkin sandwich (not the best carving job, but the bean was pleased)

Spider crackers and ghost banana (this came back with only the chocolate chip eyes and the cheese slices eaten--fail)

Mummy pizza

And finally, the bean in her costume

I hope you had a nice holiday!

Two Years

2011-06-30T20:44:00.008-04:00

Our bean turned two today. We started off the day with pancakes fitting for a two year old.

We then headed to the beach, at the bean's request, to make sand castles, just like Olivia. Its been a little over a year since the bean's last trip to the beach, so it was like going for the first time. As we drove up, she asked over and over where the beach was and was thrilled to finally see it. She had a great time splashing in the waves and collecting shells.

We spent the afternoon at home playing with her present--a balance bike. The bean has been very interested in bikes lately (cutely calling them motorcycles and telling us she'd like to ride on a motorcycle), so we were excited to give her this present. She's just walked around with it so far and isn't comfortable sitting down just yet, but hopefully it won't take her long to get the hang of it.

Finally, the bean also received a mailbox built by her moms (well, mostly by the boy--I contributed the letter). As you can see, we ran out of time and didn't get it painted. We'll hopefully finish that up this weekend. The lack of paint did not get in the way of her enjoyment, though, she loved putting the letter in the slot and retrieving it over and over again.

Our big girl was able to blow out both candles on the first try! Since it was so much fun, she asked us to sing again and again so she could blow them out over and over.

Happy birthday, my little girl. I can't believe its been two years already!

First Egg Hunt

2011-04-10T21:34:00.004-04:00

A photo essay

Bathroom. Done.

2011-03-10T11:00:00.002-05:00

I've been wanting to post final bathroom pictures for a while now, but I wanted to wait until it was completely done and, well, we got it about 90% done and then stalled. We had a hard time finding a towel ring/TP holder set that we liked and since the bean only recently got over her ~~obsession with~~ habit of unrolling every roll of toilet paper she sees, we weren't in much of a hurry. So that explains why I'm finally wrapping up this project about 6 months after it was done.

The last update I posted, we had just finished installing the toilet and "just" had the vanity to do. We debated right up until the last minute on whether we should put a vanity or pedestal sink in, assuming it wouldn't matter much to the other parts of our remodel. In the end, we decided on the pedestal, since a cabinet for the same price would be lower quality composite wood. We also think the pedestal makes the tiny room feel less cramped. I had read online that installing a pedestal sink was "graduate level DIY" which I sort of took as a challenge. How hard could it be, right?

Well, first of all, we had to install bracing between our wall studs behind where the pedestal would sit. Now, when we removed the old vanity, the drywall was pretty damaged and required patches in a few places. We had already patched, mudded, sanded, primed and painted the wall to make it as pretty as it could be, but now we had to open 'er back up.

I wish we had taken pictures of this step, we were both just so anxious to finally have a sink in that room (and frustrated to have to repeat work) that we forged ahead. It only took a couple hours to cut a section of drywall out between the studs, screw in a piece of 2x6 lumber, and patch the drywall back in. Then more of the long process of mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding, and painting (again!)

If you haven't done this before, the base of the pedestal is screwed into the floor, while the sink is held up by long screws that go through the back of the sink and into those aforementioned 2x6's. I had read that getting everything to line up was difficult, but this process went fairly smoothly. (Of course, we were very careful to measure, mark, and measure again before we started.) The hard part was the plumbing. Oh, the plumbing!! It took weeks and weeks along with I don't remember how many trips to three different hardware stores to finally get the plumbing to line up. Thirty-five years ago, plumbing was made from a different material than it is today and the old sink drain was in a different position from the new one and, oh yeah, you can't really see behind that pedestal while you're installing all those tees and elbows. Ugh! What a headache! (Also? Plumbers putty? Totally a steep learning curve with that stuff. After getting all the plumbing to line up, we excitedly turned on the water and got a puddle on the floor.)

But we finally figured it out. I L.O.V.E. this faucet. So much so that we special ordered the pedestal (with just one cutout) to go with it. Love.

We still had one big hurdle to jump and that's this little guy.

Why is this pipe sticking through our wall? We can't even figure out where it leads to, but it was hidden behind our old cabinet and needed to be hidden again. I took a stab at building a box to encase it, but when I was driving the nails into it, the whole thing sort of fell apart. I put the hammer away and went on strike for a few weeks. Then, the boy stepped in and worked some magic.

Ahhh.

Add the final touches we put on a couple weeks ago, and I'm calling it done.

What did that before look like again?

Oh right. And now:

When we started this project, I don't think either of us were convinced that we would actually be able to pull it off. We went into it with the idea that we could always hire a contractor if we got in over our heads but, thankfully, that didn't happen. We did the whole thing by ourselves and every time I walk in there I'm sort of surprised and definitely proud that we did.

Oh, and do you remember the buckled wood floor that originally tipped us off to the leak in the bathroom? After months of waiting it out, the floor has dried out and shrunk back down into place. That section will probably never be the same again and a couple boards sit a little funny, but at least there's no longer any danger of someone tripping over it! A happy ending all around.

Monkey Hat

2011-03-05T08:48:00.004-05:00

A quick crochet project to break up all the knitting I've been doing.

This is the monkey earflap hat crocheted with knitpicks swish worsted. I'm not much of a crocheter--I have to google every time to remember the difference between a single, double, half double crochet, I always forget--but this project came together quickly and was really fun to do.

I loved watching that pretty yellow flower form before my eyes. Isn't it funny how something you're not very good at can sort of seem like magic when it works?

I'm loving making things for the bean, the projects come together so quickly!

Best Gift Ever

2011-02-27T10:59:00.002-05:00

For those who don't speak toddler--she's singing "happy birthday to you, mama and mommy."

The return of sleep

2011-01-21T10:26:00.006-05:00

My friends, night weaning is something that's been on my mind for a while. It all started when the bean was around 6 months old and I read that most 6 month olds slept through the night. I waited and waited for that to happen, but we were nowhere close. Since then, I've read several books and tried a slew of tricks to get the bean to sleep longer stretches at night, but we've only had minimal success.

I've known for a while that we would have to wean at night if I was going to start getting uninterrupted sleep and I was starting to feel like 18 months was a perfect age to be night weaned, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it. To be honest, I didn't actually set out to night wean last month, but something strange happened to the bean's latch during the night that made nursing very painful. I guess it was the combination of all those teeth along with her being half asleep, but whatever the cause, it was enough for me to not want to nurse at all. I tried over the course of a couple nights allowing her to nurse for a few minutes at each wake up and then comforting her as best I could back to sleep, but it almost seemed to make matters worse. I finally decided we would nurse to sleep at bedtime and upon waking in the morning, but no more nursing during the night. The bean and I have had many conversations to this effect over the past few months, so it probably wasn't much of a shock to her.

It was definitely rough going there the first couple nights. The bean would wake up and ask to nurse, I would remind her that we don't nurse at night any more and she would completely lose it. The boy and I tried everything we could think of to comfort her and get her to fall back asleep, but there were definitely a lot of tears at first. We ended up losing even more sleep through this process, but the end was so worth it. The bean has slept through the night without waking exactly one time--she's usually still up once or twice during the night, but when she is asleep, she sleeps much more soundly than she did before and she falls back to sleep faster. The number of times she wakes is less and, the most amazing part is that she sleeps from the time we put her to bed (around 8pm) until around 2 or 3 am without waking once. This is incredible for her as before I would be running up to nurse her back to sleep once or twice between the time that she went to bed and when we did.

Our daytime nursing is still unrestricted and you can bet the bean is making up for those lost night sessions by nuring eleventy billion times during the day, but I'm so glad we were finally able to stop the night nursing. (And also a teeny tiny bit sad that our bean is getting to be such a big girl that she no longer needs it.)

A "room" of my own

2011-01-17T14:36:00.001-05:00

We don't usually make resolutions around here, but this year we have a big one--organization. We had so much going on when we moved in two years ago that we didn't spend much time thinking about how to organize our stuff, we just shoved it wherever it would fit. In 2011, we plan to rectify the situation and we got a jump start on new year's eve. As we were cleaning out our coat closet for the third time in as many months, the boy had a brilliant idea. We rarely use our front door so we end up leaving coats, hats and gloves by the back door. The coat closet has become more of a dumping ground, so the boy suggested we convert it into a craft space for me. Yippee!!

I can't believe I'm sharing this with you, but this is our scary, embarrassing closet before we cleaned it out. You may notice my sewing machine and some half finished craft projects on the floor. It used to be a bit of an ordeal to pull the machine out each time I needed to use it (I would sew on the bean's little child sized table).

We removed the hanging rod and added some supports for a desktop.

It took a bit of work to get the angles on the desktop right. We hadn't figured into our measurements the fact that none of the walls are square.

We built a second shelf above the desktop and added some paint. After that, it just took a trip to ikea for storage solutions and I now have a craft "room!"

I have all my fabric stacked on the top shelf next to a box containing patterns and large tools. Pins, scissors and other small tools hang on the wall in front of me as I sit, my straight knitting needles are stored in a tall vase to the left along with a wall mounted spool rack that holds thread.

In my convenient new space, I whipped up some circular needle storage to hang on the wall to the right (love this).

I have a garbage can on the floor which, rather than being used for garbage, holds balls of yarn just waiting to be knit together (there's a larger bin in another closet--my, I have lots of yarn). The sewing machine still sits on the floor, but we drilled a little hole at the back of the desk that the cord fits through. I have an extension cord tucked in next to it so sewing is just a matter of plugging in to the nearby outlet and moving the machine to the desk.

Oh happy day! I love being able to see all my tools and fabric and knitting projects. I'm no longer starting things and forgetting about them because they've been tucked away here or there. The boy is so happy that there are no longer in-progress knitting projects on every available surface--now everything has a home! What a great start to 2011.

Snow Day

2011-01-12T13:59:00.005-05:00

This was the view out our bedroom slider when we woke up this morning.

And the downstairs slider.

And our car.

What a lot of shoveling we have to do!

Skirting the issue

2010-12-24T13:36:00.000-05:00

I had one more christmas craft due before the big day and I was able to sneak this one in right under the wire.

Our first christmas living together, the boy and I acquired a big bunch of new christmas decorations. The following year, I was just coming out of my first trimester of pregnancy and was not feeling up to digging all the decorations out of storage, so we didn't decorate that year and that's why, when we unpacked our decorations last year, it was like we were seeing everything for the first time. We didn't unpack a tree skirt and were sort of surprised since we vaguely remembered owning one, but neither of us could really picture what it looked like and we certainly couldn't find it.

Last year, we did without a skirt, but this year I decided to rectify the situation. I loved this skirt the moment I saw it (I'm a sucker for polka dots), but wasn't feeling the $60 price tag.

I figured I could whip up something similar, so I started out with a couple yards of white muslin and used the string-tied-to-two-pens technique to make two perfect-ish circles roughly 4 ft in diameter. I then cut slits through one side and made smaller circles in the center for the tree opening. I sewed those two circles together, leaving an opening for turning and turned the whole business right side out.

I then stitched one round of red ric rac at the outer edge of the skirt.

The polka dot part was the most time consuming. I found three household items of varying size to serve as my templates and traced and cut many, many circles from wool felt.

I pinned a piece of scrap muslin over the hole to make finding the center easier and, using the string-and-pen technique, I marked three concentric circles on the skirt using a disappearing fabric marker. I then spent hours agonizing over the correct "random" dot placement.

Finally, I sewed all the little dots down with coordinating thread. I'm sure fabric glue would have also worked, but we're a little suspicious of glues around here and I thought the stitching would wear a little better.

The last step was to stitch more ric rac round and round the circles and throw that baby under the tree!
The only regret I have (that I plan to rectify before packing it away until next year) is that I didn't add fabric ties to hold it closed. It works fine as is, but the ties will definitely make it more bean-proof.

The bean says merry christmas to those celebrating tomorrow!

Where, oh where has December gone?

2010-12-20T14:12:00.005-05:00

December somehow got away from me this year. I took on some extra work this month and that, along with household chores and chasing after the bean, has kept me away from my usual christmas preparations. Finally, this last weekend, I found the time (in between holiday parties) to bake batches and batches of christmas cookies while listening to carols and finishing up some last minute crafts. NOW it feels like christmas is coming!

Do you remember this stocking that I started for the bean last year? I stitched like crazy on it all of last December, but I knew there was no chance of getting it done in time. You might think it has been finished for months, given the fact that I had all year to work on it, but I needed to give the thing a little rest at the beginning of last year and only worked on it here and there for several months. This fall, I kicked it into high gear and finally finished up all the stitching.

Last weekend I found the time to do the finish work (ugh, the finishing seems to take longer that the actual stitching). I'm very happy with how my first attempt at embroidery turned out. We hung it up alongside my handmade stocking from my childhood and a place holder stocking for the boy. It took a full year to complete the bean's stocking, so perhaps in two years I'll complete the other two kits I have hiding in my sewing table for us?

2010-12-13T06:32:00.010-05:00

Its been way too long since I posted a bean update, so let's see what she's up to, shall we?

At just a couple weeks shy of 18 months, the bean is busier than ever. She now runs and jumps and dances when she hears music and has that very short attention span that toddlers are known for. Watching her play with her toys can make one dizzy as she moves from one thing to the other.

Of course, the bean is also showing those other traits that toddlers are known for--irrationality, impatience, and tantrums. We try to remember that this is a time in her life when she very much wants to be independent and, to be sure, most of the tantrums are over her not wanting any motherly assistance. Its actually a little funny to see our bean's face slowly change (a warning that the storm is coming), then to see her carefully and slowly lie down face first on the floor (no sense getting hurt just to prove a point). She cries for a few moments, then looks up to see if she still has an audience.

Beyond that, 18 months is all about communicating. The bean's vocabulary has really taken off and she's using new words almost every day. She definitely has a desire to learn and will spend up to 5 minutes (the toddler equivalent of hours) pointing at various objects and listening to us name them. Most interesting to me are the words the bean comes up with that we haven't taught her, in fact, she has some words that we don't really use so we wonder how she learned them. She is also starting to put words together into sentences and they provide a peek into our days lately: That's mine! More cake please! No Mama!

These days the bean loves dolls and babies more than anything else. She doesn't actually have a proper baby doll, but she makes due with whatever is on hand. Mostly, its this stuffed dog which she has named "baby puppy" and which gets puts to bed with a little washcloth for a blanket and whose "spit up" gets cleaned with lots and lots of tissues. When we're out and the bean sees a stroller go by, she's off like a shot to go investigate. I remember being a nervous new mother and absolutely freaking out when, during flu season, a curious young toddler tried to hold baby bean's hand, so I imagine the bean is not a welcome sight running full tilt at these little babies. We're working on admiring them from a distance, but the bean gets lots of hands on time with babies at her twice weekly daycare visits. The teachers tell us that she loves helping feed the babies their bottles and will run over to rock a bouncy seat the moment she hears any crying. The bean is getting ready to move into a toddler room at daycare which will mean many new friends and fun activities, but we're sure she'll miss all the babies in the baby room.

Another favorite activity is helping mama and mommy cook. If she sees one of us even walk into the kitchen, the bean is off to start pushing a chair from the dining table into the kitchen while yelling, "I cook! I cook!" and "Help!" once the chair gets stuck. She stands on her chair next to the counter and "helps" by measuring out water and pouring it from one measuring cup to the other.

Helping mama roll out bagel dough

This is an age where we are really getting a lot back from the bean, when she'll initiate hugs and kisses, wave and say "bye bye" when one of us leaves and come running to greet us when we return. Those teen years will be here before we know it, so for now we're soaking as much of this up as we can!

Thanksgiving menu

2010-12-01T08:19:00.000-05:00

I cooked thanksgiving dinner this year for our little family. The problem with a vegetarian thanksgiving is the matter of a main dish. We can (and do) enjoy the side dishes, but for our dinner at home I really wanted a main protein dish to replace the turkey. A few months ago, I got it in my head to somehow stuff seitan, roast it and serve it with gravy so we wouldn't miss out on those traditional flavors. Honestly, my first two practice versions of this dish left a lot to be desired. I originally made the mistake of using the seitan recipe on the back of the gluten container. My final version used the recipe from Veganomicon and it was excellent!

Seitan Stuffed with Mushrooms
Double batch of simple seitan recipe from Veganomicon
4 cups sliced cremini mushrooms
4 tbls high smoke point oil, such as canola, corn, or safflower
1/2 cup gruyere
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup packed spinach leaves
dash of white wine

Make the seitan according to the recipe, but when shaping dough, shape into two thin rectangles. (Seitan can be made up to one week ahead and stored in its cooking liquid.)

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil on high heat add about 1 1/2 cups mushrooms. Sprinkle with salt and saute until browned, stirring occasionally. Remove mushrooms from pan and add an additional tablespoon of oil. Continue cooking the rest of the mushrooms and oil in small batches. The trick to this step is to work with a hot pan and small batches of mushrooms so that the 'shroom juices are boiled off as they are released and you end up with nicely browned mushrooms. Getting the pan too hot, however, will cause your oil to burn, so watch the pan closely and adjust the temperature as needed.

Once all the mushrooms are cooked, remove the pan from the heat and adjust the temperature to low. Return all of the mushrooms to the pan and add the cream, cheese, and wine. Stir to combine and melt the cheese. Add the spinach leaves and cook until wilted. Adjust seasoning and remove from heat. (Don't clean that pan! Deglaze it with a bit of white wine and vegetable stock and and save that liquid to make gravy with.)

Lay seitan pieces flat and cover with a thin layer of the stuffing. Tightly roll each piece starting at one narrow end and tie with cooking twine in two or three places. Cook in a 350 degree oven until heated through, approximately 40 mins.

To serve: remove twine and slice. Top with mushroom gravy.

The rest of the menu? I'm glad you asked.

Parmesan pastry pinwheels

vegetables and hummus

Butternut squash gratin

Brussels sprouts hash

Mashed parsnips, russet and sweet potatoes

Homemade crescent rolls

Thankful

2010-11-25T20:34:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I'm jealous that I'm not the fun Mom. During much of my alone time with the bean, I'm doing housework and I'm much more likely to be vacuuming the couch than making a fort from its cushions.

Sometimes I'm jealous that the boy thinks of all the fun games, but mostly I'm just thankful that the bean has someone in her life that lets her clean up her toys like this.

Happy thanksgiving!!

Boo!

2010-11-01T16:27:00.006-04:00

October 2009

October 2010

2009

2010

2009

2010

I should probably make a throne joke

2010-10-30T23:21:00.001-04:00

It seems that the tasks that have taken the longest in our bathroom have had the least impact, but those that have been quick have made a big difference and so it is for grout. Aside from the long dry times involved (a couple days for the mortar to set before grouting followed by a few more days for the grout to cure), this went fairly quickly and of course makes a huge difference in how the tile looks.

I have to be honest, I almost hurt myself patting us both on our backs after we got to this point. We had walls and floors--almost done! In fact, this project languished for a few days while we thought about what to do next. I thought we'd just drop the toilet and vanity in place and call it a day, no need to rush. After a couple days, we started to remember some of the little details. Like moulding. Floor moulding is nice to have.

So there was painting, measuring, cutting, nailing down and caulking of the moulding to do. THEN we could finally drop the toilet in. Twice. We did have the foresight to buy two wax rings because we thought we might need a second try at getting the thing in and we were right. Centering an awkwardly shaped (and heavy!) piece of porcelain onto a hole that you stop being able to see midway through the process isn't the easiest thing, but I think the thing's sealed up now. I hope, hope, hope that it is since I have no plans to repeat this remodel anytime soon.

We sort of thought we were on the home stretch at this point since all we had left to do was the vanity. Oh boy, what a headache that ended up being. I'll tell you all about it next time!

A-tiling we will go!

2010-10-14T14:19:00.000-04:00

Before the recent blog silence, I mentioned that we were remodeling our bathroom. I'm excited to share with you the first update on the work we've been doing.

Why is it that the work that takes the most time while remodeling a room is the stuff that makes the least difference in how it looks? I could show you step by step pictures of how we spent the first couple weeks into this bathroom redo, but they'd honestly all look the same. After days and days of patching drywall, taping, mudding, mudding, sanding and mudding some more, followed by primer and two coats of paint, all you can say is, yep, there's walls there! We're limited to doing all of this work on weekends in between social/family obligations and a few hours of naptime snuck in during the week, so its been slow going.

Moving on to the part I've been most excited for--tiling! We chose large (12"x12") porcelain tiles that were affordable without looking too cheap. Even though we were told it would be more difficult, we were committed to laying them on the diagonal because it really dresses up our budget tiles. The first step in pulling this off was to carefully plan the layout. We first found the center of the room, then drew diagonal lines out from there and finally outlined the position of the first tile in the center.

Next, it was time to mix up the mortar, which was just like using a huge hand mixer.

One tip we read online that really helped us was to use a piece of 1"x2" lumber screwed into the subfloor to lay the first row of tiles against. We carefully lined it up where the edge of the tiles would go and used it as a guide to get the first row of full tiles down.

We let those dry overnight, removed the 1x2 and then the real fun started. We did a sort of dry run by laying all the tiles into place before mixing up more mortar. We were lucky enough to borrow a tile saw and the boy was a superstar tile cutter.

Marking the tile cuts was a bit more challenging than it would have been if we had just laid the tiles straight across, but we were able to make use of a homemade tile marking tool--two pieces of 8 1/2"x11" paper strategically cut and taped back together in a 12"x12" square (you can see it in the picture below). This guy was folded into the shape we needed, then placed on top of the tile to be cut for easy marking.

The boy did the cutting with the saw which put me in charge of making the odd shaped cuts with tile nippers. I attacked this job with vigor (and no gloves) until I felt something strange on my hand and realized it was a blister that had opened up. I ended up with several of the worst blisters I've ever had and the boy had a little scratch from a jagged piece of tile, but otherwise we ended the day unscarred with a floor that looks eerily similar to the "dry run" picture above, but now those suckers are stuck down--hopefully for a very long time!

Crickets

2010-09-30T06:17:00.003-04:00

Was the bathroom remodel the project that finally did us in? Well, nearly, but we're still here and have many updates planned for you soon. Right now, I need to chase after the bean, fold some laundry and . . . wait, bean come back!!

The next big thing

2010-08-25T13:21:00.000-04:00

We, like most homeowners I imagine, have a list of projects we'd like to complete around our house. We even have them prioritized and roughly scheduled for the year that we plan to complete them in. Our townhouse's 1 1/2 bathrooms definitely need a complete redo (they're all original circa 1975--blue sinks! Almond toilets!), but we have a few other projects we'd rather complete first and had put the bathrooms off for a couple years. We've recently learned, if we didn't know it already, that sometimes houses have a way of screwing with your priority list.

Let me tell this story a different way. If our house had a nickname, it would be Niagara. You may remember that we discovered and repaired several water leaks when we redid the floors a little over a year ago. And the floor is where this story starts. Our beautiful new wood floor started to bubble up in the hallway, just a few feet outside of our half bathroom, a phenomenon that I now know is called cupping. A few weeks later, that area of floor completely buckled. In hindsight all the clues were there, but it took us a good while to track this floor damage down to a leaking toilet in our half bathroom. We should have noticed, but didn't, that water was leaking from the bottom of the toilet tank at an alarming rate, flowing between, around, and under the old, cracked floor tiles and wreaking havoc on the subfloor below.

All this is my drawn out way of saying that we're remodeling our bathroom. Not that we have a choice--once we pulled out everything that was wet, soggy, and rotting, there wasn't much left and nothing to do but try to put it back together. Well, let me show you what I mean.

Here's our bathroom before we started ripping stuff out.

The bottom few inches of drywall around the toilet had to come out, but luckily we were able to save the rest of the drywall in the room along with the subfloor, but everything else had to go. Since there's a good chance that our walls were originally painted with lead based paint, we tried to be very careful about containing the mess that we made. We sealed off the room with plastic, cleaned up with TSP at the end of each day and showered before holding the bean.

After a long weekend of trading off between demolition and bean care, we were left with this.

I always reach a point during big projects like this where I start to panic. Late in that first weekend of work, I looked at the empty room and had to lay my head down. Neither of us have taken on a project this big before and the confidence I felt at the beginning waned a bit when the reality of the work ahead of us settled in.

Nothing to do but put it back together, right?

I'm honored

2010-08-17T13:08:00.001-04:00

I've been given a beautiful blogger award by the lovely ladies over at 1 in Vermillion. If you're not already reading this account of Nutella and Strawberry's parenting journey, well, you should definitely start. Its by far one of my favorite parenting blogs. Thanks again, guys!

More birthday craftiness

2010-08-16T11:44:00.006-04:00

Almost two months later, I'm finally finishing up the last of the birthday posts. Today, I have two more handmade gifts to show you. First up is the growth chart.

I'm really cracking myself up with my photoshopping. Of course our bean has a real name that we do use that I stenciled on the chart, but since we don't publish her name here, I had to get creative.

I made the chart out of a strip of linen fabric that I embroidered with brown and green thread. The green doesn't show up in the photograph at all, but there is a repeat of the brown pattern at the top of the chart. I then added a little interfacing to stiffen up the fabric and sewed on the patterned backing. I had never made anything with the backing folded to the front like this, so it took a bit of practice and planning to make the corners neat, but it wasn't difficult at all. Finally, I used fabric pens to mark the distances and color in her name. I was too cheap to buy a whole alphabet's worth of stencils when I only needed a couple letters, so I printed out the bean's name in a large block font on a piece of heavy cardstock and cut the letters out with a utility blade. Time consuming and tedious, yes, but it got the job done.

When it came to hanging the thing on the wall, I was stuck. The boy and I both agreed that we liked the clean look of just the rectangle without any long hanging ties showing, but since we're talking about fabric, most of the hanging options we considered would end up with some sagging somewhere. We almost just drove nails right through the whole thing to attach it to the wall, but thank goodness we decided against that. I ended up making a fabric casing for a wooden dowel that I was able to attach to the back of the chart fairly invisibly. We then nailed a picture hanger right into the dowel and hung it that way. The very tip-top of the chart rolls down ever so slightly, but its barely noticeable and that's close enough to perfect for me!

As it turns out, its difficult to photograph a 5ft long strip of fabric, or perhaps we need a different camera lens, or both. In any case, you're stuck with this arty angle in order to see the detail of the embroidery.

The final handmade present, is this sweater that I posted about a really long time ago. I finally got around to finishing it in time for her birthday. Well, its almost finished. Its in need of two more buttons since I miscalculated the number I thought I'd use. Yes, I understand this displays an inability to count to ten correctly. I haven't been quite as sharp as I used to be since the bean came along--I think it maybe has something to do with not sleeping through the night in over a year.

This sweater is the presto chango sweater (ravelry link). The front panel is completely removable so that it can be swapped out for a different pattern or larger size, how cute is that? A wool sweater may seem like a strange gift for a late June birthday, but I knit this in a 2T because ~~I'm realistic about the amount of spare time I have~~ I wanted it to be big enough to fit for winter. See, those two missing buttons aren't much of a problem--she won't need a sweater for a few more months and she probably won't be big enough to fit into this for another year. All part of my plan, I swear!

The bean says thanks for stopping by and looking at her presents!

Kitchen Revealed!

2010-08-09T13:00:00.001-04:00

It may appear that this blog was intended to only be a journal of our bean's first year, given how abruptly I stopped posting, but I'm still here with lots to say! We've been busy with some new projects that I'm excited to tell you about, but first please indulge me in a couple more birthday posts.

I posted a teaser of the bean's birthday presents and now I'm back to share the finished projects with you. Well, I'm back to share one of them--the bean's kitchen!

We are so happy with how this turned out. The fridge, oven, and under oven compartment are pieces of plywood that we attached with hinges and closed with magnetic closures. We added a catch on the oven door so that it wouldn't slam open and smash little beany toes.

The center drawers are the baskets that come with the trofast system.

The burners are plastic coasters that are attached with a single nail in each center, which ended up being a great alternative to glue.

The most difficult part of this project was the scale. We had a hard time finding real kitchen items that were small enough to work. We looked everywhere for a faucet that would be small enough, but still look like a kitchen faucet rather than one for a bathroom. Finally, I read a tip somewhere about using a bar faucet, which is perfectly sized for our little sink (the sink is a square cake pan).

The shelf is a leftover piece of plywood and the rack that the utensils are hanging from is a leftover drawer pull that happily ended up being just the right length.

After much debating about how to frame out the window (all the trim we found was too wide), the boy had the brilliant idea to use a picture frame. We removed the glass and screwed right through the frame into the plywood back. The curtains are handmade, but the rod caused some problems. The boy ended up cutting down a cafe curtain rod to size and we attached it with something that I like to call "those plastic things that hold pipes to the wall," which I'm fairly certain is the technically correct name.

If you were wondering about the accessories, the metal and plastic pieces are Ikea (they have such a great kids section!), the plates are Plan toys (can't recommend this company highly enough!) and the condiment bottles are Melissa and Doug (I'm falling out of love with them, since their stuff isn't as durable as it could be, but boy is it cute!).

Birthday recap

2010-07-02T13:14:00.009-04:00

Please indulge me in a few more birthday posts, I have so many pictures I want to share with you from all the events of the last week. We celebrated the bean's birthday with family the weekend before the big day and thankfully the weather cooperated, since we held the party at a park near our house.

I DIYed the happy birthday banner and hung paper lanterns from the rafters of the shelter. We also covered the picnic tables with brown paper and provided crayons for scribbling with. It might be hard to see in the pictures, but we had a few dozen round lollipops that we stuck into polka dotted pails to fit in with our polka dot theme.

The bean loved hanging out with all her family and friends, but the bubble machine may have been her favorite part.

When everyone gathered around and sang happy birthday, she was a bit intimidated but, thanks to a happy camcorder accident, we ended up singing twice and she loved it the second time around. I highly recommend singing twice!

And the birthday cupcake wasn't half bad either.

A few days later, on the bean's actual birthday, we went to the zoo.

She especially loved the little tubes in the prairie dog habitat.

But the ducks were a close second.

After all that excitement, we still had more presents to open, pictures to take and, of course, another round of happy birthday.

She crashed shortly after this picture was taken. It was a good day.

The Pox

2010-07-02T11:20:00.004-04:00

The day before the bean's birthday, she woke up with red spots all over her body. I was trying to think of anything new she was exposed to at the same time that the boy was telling me it didn't look like hives or a heat rash. Then we remembered that the bean had an unexplained fever the night before and it all fell into place . . . the chicken pox!!

Honestly, we were still debating whether or not to vaccinate her at her one year appointment, so we weren't heartbroken at the thought of the bean ending up with natural immunity (no boosters required!), especially since it looks to be a mild case. Its a mystery to us how she ended up with it, though. We don't know of any friends or relatives or other children at daycare who've had it and I know of people who've taken their children to pox parties to no avail, so I'm surprised we ended up with it without even trying.

Like I said, its a mild case and the bean is fighting it off the way she approaches most things--with laughter and smiles.

One Year

2010-06-30T07:30:00.000-04:00

Today, at 3:23 pm, we will be celebrating the anniversary of the bean's birth. I've thought quite a bit over the last couple weeks about what I want to remember in this birthday post. I wanted to remember the bean's birth story and how I had wondered for nine months what contractions might feel like and if I would recognize them, then laughed when the first one came because it was unmistakable. I wanted to tell how we had taken so many classes and read even more books, but during transition, no relaxation technique could have helped me. How, at the moment of her birth, I was consumed with the pain of labor and didn't realize she had been born until our midwife told me to open my eyes and see her staring up at me.

But going back that far, to the moments before and during her birth, leaves out all of the magic and pain and tears and beauty of this first year. I also wanted to talk about how surprised I was the day I put her on her stomach for tummy time and she rolled onto her back for the first time. And how proud I was day that I tried to put a rattle in her hand and she held it for a moment before it fell to the ground. The first time she pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. The first time she looked up at us and smiled back, or the first time she laughed a big, joyous, belly laugh. Her first step. The first time she tried to put her toes in her mouth. A celebration of our bean's first year must also include a celebration of these, and many more, happy moments.

I also want to remember the struggle, to see how far we've come. I remember so many tears those first two weeks--we were all so tired and the three of us were learning how to be a family; how we were going to get along and what it would take to take care of each other. I wanted to talk about how I thought I would die if we weren't sleeping through the night by six months and how, when we still weren't (and still aren't now) we figured it out. We made it work and learned to get by and its not as hard as I thought it would be.

I wanted to tell the story of how hard breastfeeding was in the beginning, how exhausting and painful it was, how I literally could not take a shower without the bean crying to nurse while I was away. I wanted to say that sometimes it still is exhausting and painful, but now its mostly just sweet and lovely. A year is such a big milestone and, while we aren't planning to wean just yet, I'm starting to see that someday this will end and there is more sadness and less joy at that thought than I had imagined. I love being able to comfort and nurture out little bean and my heart melts a bit when she reaches for me.

Most of all, I wanted to remember the day, the exact moment when I hit my stride as a parent. I want to remember when the idea of going to the grocery store with the baby stopped terrifying me. The moment when I stopped wondering how the world could continue as it had before, while here I was just trying to function. The day I decided it wouldn't really hurt anything if I pulled my dirty hair into a ponytail and went on about my day without a shower. When was the exact moment that my peripheral vision and reflexes becamed sharpened to the point that I can now catch a dropped sippy cup midair without pausing my conversation? The day that I learned just how many diapers to pack in the diaper bag without running out or having too many? The day that being vomited on stopped fazing me? I wish I knew. Sitting here now, as the mother of a one year old, I feel calm and confident and its only when I look back at the new parent I was a year ago--scared, confused, and unsure--that I realize how far we've come, but there are no exact moments I can point to.

Today, we celebrate the bean's birth and all the joy she's brought to our lives. We celebrate the fact that we made it through this first year and we're also celebrating this subtle transition. The bean is no longer a baby. I'm not sure when in this last year it happened, but today its unequivocal. The boy and I have also grown. A year ago, we became parents but at some point during that year, we turned into moms.

Hey Good Lookin'!

2010-06-18T18:41:00.009-04:00

In addition to preparing for the bean's upcoming birthday party, we've been busy working on three homemade gifts.

The boy deserves all the credit (or blame, depending on how you look at it) for being the brains behind this first project. Inspired by all the cute play kitchens on sites like ikeahacker, the boy decided we could handle putting one together too. We gave ourselves plenty of time for planning and building--we actually started on this way back in January. We started with Ikea's trofast storage system. We like this particular piece because its made from solid pine and we love not bringing more particleboard (and offgassed nasties from the glue) into our house.

Aww, look at how little the bean was!

After the frame was together, it just took a trip to Home Depot to get a sheet of plywood that we had cut to create our doors and back piece. At this point, the project lagged for a while, since it was hard to get up the energy (and find the time) to prime and paint all that wood, but thanks to the bean's new nap situation, we finally picked up the pace the last couple months.

Once again, the boy had a stroke of genius and suggested we leave the center third of the base cabinet unpainted to act as a cutting board. Too cute!

The base cabinet and doors were easy enough, but we wanted the back "wall" to have stripes, and taping off stripes is my job around here. It hurts my eyes a little bit to look at the tape in this picture, but the stripes are evenly spaced (more or less).

Finally (finally!) it was time to put everything together, although it didn't go as smoothly as our pictures make it seem. First of all, you may know that Ikea (like the rest of the world) uses metric measurements. Home Depot, on the other hand not so much, so we got a funny look when we asked for cuts down to the 1/8 of an inch and the helpful orange aproned man asked if he could round up. I figured we needed to sand down the plywood anyway, so what could it hurt? Well, as it turns out, that was a mistake. The boy sanded everything down before we painted it (since sanding is the boy's job around here), then sanded some more when it appeared that the doors were too big and finally sanded a third time for good measure until finally, everything fit the way it was supposed to.

In the interest of safety, the boy rounded off the corners on the three doors (oven, "drawer" under the oven, and fridge). We're also pretty sure that the back wall is never coming off. That sucker is held in with over 30 screws. There's still a sink, faucet, window, and place to hang utensils still to do, so stay tuned for the big reveal in a couple weeks when we'll (hopefully) have some pictures that weren't taken in our dingy basement.

On Sleep--Part Two

2010-06-16T10:00:00.001-04:00

In my last post, I shared our sleep issues and now I'm back to tell you how we've (hopefully!) solved them.

First of all, I gave up on the idea of the bean sleeping every moment in her crib and decided to focus on naps. I told the bean I'd meet her halfway and continue to stay with her in the evenings after she fell asleep if I could just get her to nap on her own. I also let go of the idea that this would be a quick transition and set up a multi-step plan that we'd work at over the course of several weeks.

The first step was to get the bean used to sleeping without a body right next to her. Instead of cuddling with her through her nap, I started to roll away from the bean after she drifted off to sleep. I also stopped nursing her to sleep while lying down and instead would sit up and hold her until she fell asleep, since my ultimate goal was to be able to nurse her in a chair and then put her in her crib. This took a good two weeks to get to the point where the bean would fall asleep easily this way and nap soundly without cuddling up to me.

For step two, I brought the mattress out of the bean's crib and put it on the floor right next to our bed and had her sleep on that. This step was probably the most difficult for her to adjust to and there were a few days that I ended up laying on the mattress with her, but after another two weeks, she finally got it. (Yay!)

Next, I moved the mattress into her bedroom and put it on the floor next to the crib. We play music while the bean's sleeping, so I moved that into her room too. At this point, I started to put the bean on her mattress by leaning down as if I was reaching over the crib rail to try to get her used to that feeling.

After a week of that, I put the mattress up into the crib and fully expected a repeat of our previous experience (i.e. screaming as soon as her head hit the mattress), but I was shocked that it actually worked! Not every time, but I could usually get her down in the crib after a couple tries.

At first, the bean would only nap for about 20 minutes at a time, but I wasn't complaining. I was loving being able to get some things done, but after a while of that, 20 minutes turned into 30 minutes and 30 turned into 40 and then one day she napped for a full hour without waking up. She'll now nap for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a time, which makes me so happy that I'm doing a little happy dance right now as I write this.

After the naps were established, I started putting the bean in her crib at the beginning of the night, and that started with 30 minutes stretches. We're now up to 1 hour at a time in the evening and I'm totally fine if that's how things stay. I'm able to get some things done in between her wakeups and at some point I give up and bring her to bed with me.

I never knew how many things I could accomplish in such a short period of time, but I usually map out my plan of attack before I put the bean down and then I run like crazy getting things done. It feels so good to be able to accomplish some things and I feel like a better mother when I can focus on her while she's awake and leave the chores for naptime. Here we go with the happy dance again!

So there you have it--how we got the bean to finally nap in her crib. Knocking on wood and crossing my toes that it stays that way!

On Sleep--Part One

2010-06-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

We're big fans of Dr. Sears in our house and have several Sears parenting books. One piece of advice that is repeated in a few of the books is: if you resent it, change it. I've been resenting our sleeping situation for some time now, but felt powerless to change it which just added to my resentment.

Well, let me start from the beginning. For the first several months of her life, our bean slept in a bassinet beside our bed at night. During the day, she would only nap in our arms, but she was good for 2-4 hours at a time in the bassinet at night. After a couple months, she outgrew the bassinet and we transitioned her to her crib at the foot of our bed, which went fairly well and she even napped in her crib a few times, but at close to 4 months that all changed. There were a lot of things going on around that time--the weather got cooler and we stopped sleeping with a fan on, we weaned her from her swaddle, maybe she was entering the four month sleep regression, but whatever the cause, she flat out refused to sleep in her crib.

Now, you may remember that I posted a researched explanation of my thoughts on co-sleeping and had come to the conclusion that I wasn't sure we could do it safely and I wasn't really comfortable doing it full-time. I later said that I was too scared to bring the bean into our bed and had (almost) given up on co-sleeping until the day the bean decided she'd had enough of her crib. We had spent one night where the bean had been up every hour. She would wake up, we'd go to her room where I'd change her and nurse her back to sleep--a process that took a good 30-40 minutes. Then I'd very slowly and carefully lay her down in her crib, hoping she'd stay asleep and then spend 10-15 minutes trying to get myself back to sleep. Add that up and that gave me about 15 minutes of sleep before the next wakeup. I was a zombie the next day and the following night was the same deal--up every hour until one time I tried to put her down and she screamed the moment her head hit the mattress. Normally, I would have started the whole routine over again, but I was so desperate for sleep that I brought the bean into the bed and there she stayed the rest of the night. I tried to put her in her crib the next night, but it was the same deal--screaming at the top of her lungs when she touched the mattress and that was it. We were full-time co-sleepers ever after.

For the most part, we've loved it. The bean doesn't have to fully wake up when she's hungry, so she goes back to sleep faster and easier. I don't (usually) have to fully wake up to feed her, so I also go back to sleep faster and easier. The boy and I are both a little neurotic, so having the bean in bed is perfect. We just lay a hand on her chest when we want to check her, rather than having to squint across the room in the dark and wonder if she's really breathing or not.

In my original sleep post, I worried about safety. Here's what we've done--we removed two pillows from our bed so now there are only two thin pillows that we keep as close to the top of the bed as possible. We sleep with the fewest, thinnest blankets we can get away with and keep them folded down to waist level. We make sure our fitted sheet is tucked in nice and tight and we routinely check that our (firm) mattress is pushed all the way up to the headboard, with no gap. We also use bed rails--at first just one on my side of the bed, but then two once the bean started moving around more in her sleep. I laugh now when reading my sleep post because I said that its hard to get in and out of the bed with a rail up and you know what? It REALLY is, especially when you're carrying a sleeping baby that you don't want to wake up, but we make it work. For many months, we also had large feather beds on the floor on either side of the bed to soften the fall if the bean were to accidentally fall out of the bed, but we now feel more comfortable with our setup and don't worry about falls as much.

OK, now for the part that I have been resenting. We worry about falls and, for that reason, don't leave the bean alone in the bed. So that's 2-3 naps per day plus bedtime (which is at 7pm for the bean) that I have been trapped in our bed (or at least the bedroom) while the bean is sleeping and I am not. I have alternated between the optimistic (this is forcing me to take a break and rest!) and pessimistic (I have dishes and laundry and cooking to do!) viewpoints, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't working for me. I resented it. I wanted to change it.

We've tried several things, such as making a bed on the floor in our living room for the bean and something I call "crib bootcamp," which ended up being as painful as it sounds. (Crib bootcamp meant the bean wasn't allowed to sleep unless she was in her crib and, faced with those options, she chose to not sleep at all). Our results have ranged from minimal success to full out failure and, in case it isn't already obvious, cry-it-out isn't a strategy we're interested in trying.

I love the bean to death and I want to spend almost every moment with her, but I would have loved to have a few moments to shower or clean the house or even just sit on the couch and stare at the walls instead of lying next to the bean nursing every few minutes.

I'm going to share a solution with you in my next post. I hope I'm not tempting fate by calling this problem solved but, knock on wood, cross my fingers, and throw salt over my shoulder, its been working consistenly for over a month now so I'm hoping we're on the right track. Stay tuned.

11 Months

2010-06-07T15:17:00.005-04:00

Eleven months, eleven months. Where does the time go?

At eleven months, the bean has taken her first step, but is much too timid to actually take off and walk on her own. When we try to get her to walk towards us (or even to just stand on her own), she puts her arms out to the side as if to say, "Whoa mom, why'd you let go?" and very slowly eases herself down to the floor. She'll be running circles around us soon enough, but for now I'm OK with her taking her time.

The last few months, the bean had slowed down a bit with her babbling, but now her voice is back and she has a lot to say. She still has no words, at least that we can recognize, but she sometimes will slap her hand down on the table and repeat the same sound louder and I imagine that she's frustrated that we just don't understand what "Gah. GAH!!" means.

The bean is getting more and more social every day and loves to wave at every person (and inanimate object) that she sees. She loves to be out and about and is a big crankster if we try to stay around the house for a day. Not that we've been doing much of that now that the nice weather has arrived, but it means we'll have to get creative this winter.

The boy taught the bean how to give kisses and she's now a bit out of control with them. Everybody gets a kiss (or two) along with all her toys and every page of all her books, the dog, the cat, the table. Its a regular love-fest at our house.

After months and months of sleeping issues we had just resigned ourselves to the fact that we had a bean who was never tired. Somehow a switch was flipped at eleven months and the bean is finally sleepy. I would even go so far as to call her a good napper now, which feels strange to write after so long with her not napping at all. I have a few posts planned on the topic of sleep and what we did to encourage her, but I think mostly the bean just decided sleep was alright after all.

Finally, let's have a moment of silence for the Itsy Bitsy Spider. It used to be almost magic in its ability to calm the bean down and end crying, but no more. Luckily, we've discovered a replacement in the form of a little dog named B-I-N-G-O. I would have liked it to be something else (maybe something more soothing and less tiring to sing?), but the bean loves BINGO and who am I to argue?

June!

2010-05-27T23:12:00.001-04:00

Happy June 1st!

A year ago today, I turned to the boy and said, "Well, I guess this baby is really going to have a June birthday." With a due date in the middle of the month, I felt sure of this since July 1st was a full two weeks (two weeks!) past my due date. What were the odds of being 14 days overdue?

Little did I know just how long this bean would make us wait, but she was well worth it. And even though the overgrown and uncomfortable me from a year ago would cringe to hear it, we would have waited many more months for her.

Happy birthday month, beanie!

At long last

2010-05-27T21:30:00.006-04:00

When we moved into this house a little over a year ago, we did just enough work to make it liveable and then we waited for the bean to arrive, expecting that it would be some time before we would be able to work on the finishing touches. Now that she is able to entertain herself for longer stretches of time, that day has arrived and we've been working on tackling our living room.

Here's what the room looked like before we moved in.

We ripped up the carpet, installed wood floors and painted basically every other surface, but the room was still blah to me.

We really wanted a 100% wool rug because we were concerned about a synthetic rug outgassing, but couldn't pay too much for one. We were lucky to find this affordable red and white rug at Ikea and we love it, but it was the only red in the room.

Our couch is old and too squishy and needs to be replaced, but we're hoping to make it last until the bean is out of the drawing-on-furniture-with-crayons-and-sharpie stage. In the meantime, if we put lots of extra pillows on it, its somewhat more comfortable to sit on, but I'm so over these black and white pillows. I'm not quite sure what we were thinking there. Oh, and the cat tree had to go.

We made things more baby-friendly by moving the wood coffee table into the corner and bringing the ottoman out, which got a slipcover and a tray so it can still be a sometimes coffee table. (The bean loves to pull up on the ottoman and throw the tray on the floor, so it doesn't get used for drinks, but it looks nice). I also made some pillows for the two black chairs and replaced the covers on the black and white couch pillows with new fabric.

The cat tree was relocated to the basement (sorry kitty!) and replaced with the bean's play table which I've temporarily comandeered for a sewing table (sorry baby!). Building a playroom is on our list of projects, so once that's done the play table will live there.

The wall opposite the couch was looking lonely with just the TV on it, so I made a collage of frames above it to keep it company. I brought the red in with a picture of a flower from our wedding and some leftover fabric from the pillows.

And here's the bean and I admiring our new room. We love it!

10 Months

2010-05-20T11:31:00.000-04:00

Ten months is all about standing, standing, and more standing, followed by walking while holding onto a hand (or two) and climbing up and down the stairs. We did put a baby gate at the top of our stairs, but we opted to leave the bottom open so the bean could learn to navigate them and its one of her favorite things to do (with a mom spotting, of course).

We've been signing to the bean for several months now, although we haven't been terribly consistent with it. We've been signing milk, all done, more, eat, and cat. It seemed like maybe the bean was signing milk to us, but its sort of a common hand motion for a baby and she seemed to do it at inappropriate times, so we weren't sure. The last couple weeks, its been very clear that she means what she's saying (and maybe she has all along?) and its so cute when she gets right in my face and signs milk as though she's saying, "Will you feed me already, woman?"

At 10 months, the bean is finally starting to eat the way I imagine a toddler should. She's no longer refusing to eat more than a bite or two of solid food and is instead keeping us on our toes by sometimes eating a large meal and other times eating nothing at all.

The bean has mastered waving goodbye and clapping and will raise both arms over her head if you ask her how big she is. She will also give you a hug if you ask her for one (and she's in the mood to do it) and it just melts my heart when she throws her arms around my neck and squeezes. Its truly one of the best things ever.

The bean has also started squealing and will just sort of randomly start doing it when she's playing. The other day we spent quite a while playing this game where the boy held her and I ducked my head around the corner and peaked out at them. Everytime the bean saw me she and I would squeal until I hid again. Silly yes, but endlessly entertaining nonetheless.

Mostly, the bean is getting bigger and bigger and is leaving babyhood behind. We are starting to have conversations that start with, "Do you remember when she used to . . . ?" And you know what? I'm starting to not remember. I wish I could have a do-over of her first few months with a little less sleep deprivation so I could remember more of it. I can't believe how quickly this time has passed and look how big our little bean has gotten!

The sign says 10 months, just trust me on that one. You have no idea how hard its becoming to take these pictures--the bean will hold the sign so it faces every direction but at the camera.

Another really fun game

2010-04-30T19:41:00.006-04:00

Here she is, all strapped into her carseat, ready to go to the store and, I might add, properly dressed with long sleeves and socks, since it was a cool day.

And here she is once we arrived at the store. Apparently, the socks were cramping her style.

We play this game every day. So much fun (for her)!

9 Months

2010-04-20T19:32:00.000-04:00

When we first decided to start taking these monthly pictures, I wondered whether we'd be able to take the pictures on the exact monthly anniversary of the bean's birth for 12 months without missing one. So far, we have been able to keep up with taking the pictures but, as you may have noticed, I've been posting the pictures later and later in the month.

So, even though she's almost 10 months old, here's what the bean is (was) up to at 9 months.

Let me start by saying that, although I declare each new month "the most fun," I really mean it this time. 9 months is so. much. fun. The bean is so busy crawling and climbing and laughing and playing. We are getting to see more and more of her personality and more and more of her sense of humor and its just so fun. What we have learned is that our bean is a very social person. She waves and "talks" to every person she sees and hasn't displayed even the slightest bit of stranger anxiety. She actually wouldn't let me get away with lying recently when a total stranger came up and wanted to hold her. Um, no, I'm not handing my baby over to someone I don't know, so I fibbed and said, "Oh, she's really scared of new people, I'm afraid she'll cry." Meanwhile, the bean was reaching for this woman and trying to squirm out of my arms to get to her, which was probably the first of many times she'll rat me out.

The bean has gotten better at crawling and is a little faster at it, but she's still not getting anywhere very quickly on her hands and knees. She'd much prefer to be walking and will pull up to standing and grab at our hands to help her along, only resorting to crawling as a last resort.

The bean has also apparently gotten tired of hearing the thing that I swear I must say 100 times a day--please don't put that in your mouth. She now finds some off limits item (usually a piece of fuzz off the floor) and puts it quickly into her mouth, then howls with laughter when I come running to try to dig it out of her mouth. Such a fun game for her!

Given that putting things in her mouth is such a fun game, you'd think she'd be doing better eating solid food, but not so. The bean is definitely over having someone feed her baby food and would much prefer finger food, but she's still only eating a couple bites at each meal. She's still nursing every 2-3 hours, so I think she's just not hungry for solid food but I'm sure she'll start eating more when she's ready.

What else? We hit a bit of a snag with our toilet training while we were on vacation last month. We purchased a ring to sit on top of a regular sized toilet to make it baby-sized, but the bean was scared of it and didn't want to sit on it (I can't really blame her--a toilet is so tall compared to a baby!) We just stopped our efforts during that week which meant it took a bit of time for her to get back into the swing of things. We seem to have regained the ground we lost and are adding a third toilet session to our day. I'm really talking a lot more about going to the bathroom than I ever thought I would, but I really want to document this journey and I'm very curious to see how everything works out and to look back at what we did along the way.

Moving on. At 9 months, the bean is starting to become less baby and more toddler. I definitely have mixed feelings about this. I miss our little baby who we held and stared at for hours. I'm excited to move onto the next phase and toddlers are the absolute most fun! Also, toddlers are pretty scary. I'm a bit intimidated by the baby tantrums we've seen--the refusal to have her diaper changed or clothes put on, her crawling away when we ask her to come to us. Right before she was born, I wondered how we'd ever parent a baby and now I'm wondering the same thing about a toddler. I know we'll figure it out, but its a little scary (and a lot exciting!) right now.

And finally, my favorite thing about 9 months requires a bit of explanation. I used to see other new parents holding their little babies up against their chests and I'd feel a twinge of jealousy that their babies would rest their little heads right up on their parent's chest and snuggle in. As a newborn, our bean never really liked to be held that way (she didn't really like to be held, period). But we're now getting a taste of it at 9 months. When she's tired, or sad, or just needing a hug, she snuggles right in and its the best. thing. ever. Yay for 9 months!

Two-fer

2010-04-17T19:30:00.000-04:00

Two days before we left for vacation (almost a month ago now!), the bean's first tooth broke through.

She spent most of December with painful teething and then those little teeth took a vacation for a few months. This first one popped through in mid-March with little notice. We just saw that her gums looked swollen one day and the next day I felt the very tip of it.

Notice all the fingers in that picture. Its not so easy to take a picture of the inside of a squirming baby's mouth. Even with props, it takes lots of hands.

Two weeks later, the second tooth broke through with the same lack of fanfare, but now the top teeth are coming. You may remember it was the top teeth that we thought were giving her the trouble in December. Well, those two upper guys (gals?) are working their way down now and, apparently, they hurt. The poor bean has been grumpy the last few days and there have been lots and lots of tears. Although, I guess if cutting teeth has to hurt, its maybe better to cut four more or less at once to just get it over with.

Easter

2010-04-12T18:30:00.000-04:00

I know I'm late, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share a picture of our little jellybean in her easter dress.

She's getting so big!

Do you like vacation??!!

2010-04-07T12:51:00.010-04:00

A few weeks ago, the bean crawled over to the sliding door and sat there staring out and pounding on the glass.

I got the feeling she was trying to tell me that she had a little cabin fever and who could blame her? Between our many illnesses and the bad weather, it seems we've been cooped up in the house all winter. We decided we needed to get away to someplace WARM.

To say we were nervous about the trip is an understatement. We tried to remember every detail that would make the bean comfortable and avoid any potential meltdowns. Thankfully, our bean was a trooper and did her best to charm everyone around us, earning herself the nickname "the little mayor."

At some point during our first day of travel, the boy turned to the bean and explained that we were going on vacation. "This is vacation, do you like it? Do you like vacation?" We laughed so much at this and remembered to check in often during our week away. "Bean! Do you like vacation?" The more times we said it, the crazier our voices got until the bean was very perplexed at her parents talking in funny voices and then laughing hysterically.

We spent our week swimming, sitting on the beach and relaxing. The bean loved playing in the water and waving at every single person she saw. Vacation with the bean was, obviously, much different than going away pre-baby. We had to be careful to organize our day around the bean's nap and meal schedule and, of course, we enjoyed no late dinners out--we had to be back in our room by 7 each night to put the bean to bed.

But we all had such a great time and loved getting away and having nothing to do but take care of the bean and lounge around.

And we're definitely looking forward to taking our "little mayor" on another trip soon!

Knitting Lessons

2010-03-20T14:41:00.000-04:00

Rocking the faux-hawk and playing with mama's knitting.

I hope you someday take needles in hand and get as much enjoyment out of this craft as I do, little one!

I'm THAT mom

2010-03-17T15:12:00.003-04:00

I've been sort of straddling the world of the stay-at-home mom and that of the working mom the past few months. I feel very fortunate that I was able to cut my work hours back to part-time so I can spend more time with the bean during the day. In many ways, I have the best of both worlds.

Of course the flip side of that is that I also have the worst of both worlds. And that is this: the bean is at daycare 1/5 of the week and it would only seem fair that she would get 1/5 of the germs, but we seem to have a special deal where the remaining bugs are thrown in for free. Yay! Its heartbreaking to see her spend every weekend with a runny nose and gradually get better just in time to head back to school and get sick again.

On my days off work, we try to stay busy with playdates and activities around town so we don't both go stir crazy, but we have these freeloading germs that come along with us.

So, I'm that mom who's kid always has a runny nose.
I'm that mom who cancels a playdate because her kid is STILL sick (or sick again).
I'm that mom who shows up to storytime with pinkeye. (Me, not the kid. Oh, so much fun!)
I'm that mom who shows up late and frazzled because I was answering work emails all morning.

I'm also that mom who shows up on St. Patrick's day with the only kid who isn't in a cute green outfit. I guess I can't blame that one on work or germs, that one's just because I'm a flake.

Sweater Fix

2010-03-14T20:04:00.005-04:00

When I was getting the bean dressed for school the other day, I noticed that a yarn end had worked its way loose on her (brand new, store bought) sweater. My first instinct was to cut it off, but on closer inspection I saw what looked like a bunch of dropped stitches,

And proceeded to FREAK OUT

For half a second

before coming to my senses and remembering that I'm a KNITTER and should know how to fix the stupid thing, so I decided to fake it. I pulled out my tiniest crochet hook and picked the "dropped" stitches back up easily enough, but it took a bit of studying for me to figure out what to do with them.

Scary stuff

I ended up threading the broken yarn onto a yarn needle and sewing the top stitch of each ladder back in, then knotting the broken ends together. I have never succesfully completed a fix like this (I have a pair of handknit socks languishing in the back of a drawer because I couldn't figure out how to fix a hole), so you can imagine it took some time and a few different tries to get this to work.

But work it finally did. Yay me! I conquered the cute as can be sweater with the teeny-tiniest stitches ever. I am so glad that I figured this out, but I hope to never have to do it again (especially at this small a gauge). And oh yeah, this totally cured me from wanting to knit a baby sweater with teeny tiny needles.

Operation: Diapers No More

2010-03-09T20:10:00.001-05:00

We first started putting the bean on her potty when she was a little more that 6 months old and our expectations were very low. We wanted to get her comfortable with sitting there once a day and hoped that she might do so without complaint after a month or two. The bean actually never complained about it and was very happy to sit there and read a book each morning. We were also surprised that it didn't take long for her to actually start using the thing--it was about two weeks before she was going consistently.

At some point a few weeks ago, we realized two things. First of all, the bean had gone to the bathroom in her potty each morning for the last 7 days, at least. Second, the bean had been going to the bathroom on her bath towel after every before-bed bath. The next logical step was to add another "sitting" right before bed (ideally before her bath). That second sitting has not been quite as successful as our early morning one--mostly because its harder to really schedule it at a specific time since we don't take baths every night. Still, she uses the potty at night about half of the time.

The plan for right now is to continue with twice a day until we hopefully have some more consistency at night. Then I think we'll keep adding sessions into the day until she's pretty much going every 3 hours or so.

The second part of our plan involves getting rid of disposable diapers. With the bean in cloth, she'll be better able to tell when she's wet which will help with our training efforts. You may remember that we had planned for the bean to be in cloth diapers all along, but we ran into a bit of a roadbump with that when she kept getting really painful diaper rashes that were only healed by switching to disposables. Her skin has toughened up a bit now and we're ready to switch again--the only problem being that she's outgrown the diapers I made and I'm still working on making new ones. Once they're all sewed, we'll switch back to full-time cloth and hope she handles it well.

We don't plan for her to be "full-time" on the potty until sometime after her first birthday, so we still have lots of time. As a newborn, the bean used more than 12 diapers a day--now, at 8 months, we are down to around 5 and we'll be working on getting that number down.

Getting around

2010-03-04T20:35:00.006-05:00

The bean has requested that I retract my earlier statements regarding her lack of interest in crawling.

She also feels very strongly that army crawling counts and I'm in no position to disagree with her.

Who knew all it took was a ziplock bag for motivation?

8 Months

2010-02-28T11:14:00.004-05:00

My favorite thing about the bean at 8 months old is that she now lifts up her arms and reaches for us when she wants to be picked up. We held her for quite a bit of her day before, but now I find myself carrying her with me even more often because I just can't say no when she's now able to ask to be held. I'll stand up, intending to leave her playing with her toys while I run to the next room to refill my glass, and end up bringing her on my hip because she grabs my pants and lifts her arms to me as soon as I get up. So cute and irresistable! Actually, the bean seems to be experiencing a bit of separation anxiety and isn't keen on being left alone in a room at all even for a few minutes (or alone in her crib, or sitting anywhere that she can't see someone else).

The bean has started communicating a preference for whose arms she'd like to be in. She'll sometimes almost crawl out of my arms to try to get to the boy when they haven't seen each other all day. I love to see how excited the bean gets to see her mommy and its such a joy to watch them playing together. I'm not sure I've ever seen the bean as happy as she is when she gets a good grip on the boy's glasses and is getting ready to pull them off and finally get a chance to really check them out.

The bean has mastered pulling up to standing and is beginning to cruise while just holding one mom's hand for support. I was afraid she might get up to standing and get stuck there, but she hasn't had any problem plopping herself back down to sitting--the problem is that she'll flop onto her stomach from sitting and get stuck there and cry until one of us sits her back up again. She still has no interest in crawling, but she manages to get around through a strange combination of rolling, scooting, and flopping from her hands and knees onto her belly.

We have a play area for the bean that's equipped with a floor mat with interlocking pieces. The bean has always been much more interested in taking it apart and eating the pieces than she is with playing on it, but lately she's also found a way to get herself stuck in the middle of the pieces and trying to get back out is lots of fun too!

Now, how did I end up where the circle is supposed to be?

At 8 months, the bean has also started waving "bye bye" when one of us waves to her. I've said this several times before, but I really think this age is the most fun.

Happy Birthday To Us!

2010-02-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday to my love. May we celebrate many, many more happy birthdays together!

Knitting? What's that?

2010-02-26T18:25:00.007-05:00

I knit for the bean like mad during those agonizing days leading up to my due date and in the first few days after, but I put the needles away during the second week I was overdue. I knew that there'd be no time for knitting after she arrived and I didn't want to leave something half finished on the needles. As it turns out, that was the wrong approach. There has been no time for planning a new project--picking a pattern, swatching and experimenting with needle sizes--but there have been a few minutes here and there where I could have picked up some work in progress and knit a few stitches. Unfortunately I had nothing, not even a half finished sock, to pick up and work on. Until now.

The bean was extra sleepy during her recent illness and, since she takes her best naps in our bed, I sat with her while she slept. And knit.

I finally decided on this little sweater (Ravelry link).

Now you may be thinking that I forgot a thing or two during my hiatus since this sweater doesn't look very sweater-like, but trust me.

Here, does this help?

See? there's a little origami involved.

I'm still working on the front lace panel, but I'm so in love with making things for the bean. There's such instant gratification involved with knitting for a baby (unless we're talking about blankets, which take about 10 years to knit). Hopefully at some point in the future, I'll have time to knit adult-sized garments.

Until then, I'll keep making bitty baby things, a couple stitches at a time.

PS You didn't think I could write a post without a picture of the bean, did you?

7 Months

2010-02-24T12:25:00.000-05:00

With the bean being sick, time has gotten away from me. I'm just getting around to posting the bean's 7 month photo with only a couple days to spare before she turns 8 months old.

At 7 months, the bean has absolutely no interest in crawling, but she is quite the wiggler and climber. And the grabbing! Oh my goodness, this kid wants to hold everything except for the things that we give her to hold. We thought she was grabby at 4 months, but its amazing how much better at it she's gotten. I'm sure I'll be saying the same thing again once she's better able to get around.

The bean now pulls up to standing with very little help and can stay that way for quite a while if she has something to hold on to. She is just starting to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other and will walk with someone holding her hands and will even cruise around furniture (gulp!) if we help steady her midsection as she does it. The bean has also gotten into a sitting position on her own one time, but I don't think she realized that she's the one who put herself in that position because she hasn't done it again since.

The bean has moved on from babbling about mama and baba and is now onto dada. We're glad she's learning how to say new vowels, but for some reason its just not as thrilling to hear as mama is.

Moving on--the bean is still toothless. She teethed like crazy for all of December, but her teeth now seem to be on a break and while we can see them very close to breaking through, they don't seem to be bothering her and haven't made any more downward progress in a month.

The bean continues to work on her pincer grasp and, while she shows no interest in feeding herself the small bits of food we've offered her, she has on more than one ocassion managed to use that first finger and thumb to pick up a little fuzz ball off the floor and pop it into her mouth. Yum!

Speaking of food, the bean is still not too thrilled with the solid stuff. On a good night, she'll agree to take a couple bites before absolutely refusing. At least 3 nights a week, however, she won't open her mouth at all, whether we try to feed her or we try to get her to feed herself. We're still trying to offer new things and hoping she'll take more interest in food once we start giving her stuff with a little more texture to it. Or I might be nursing until she's 5. One of the two.

Most of all, the bean is a very happy, easygoing baby. We knew we were lucky before, but after dealing with Grumpy McGrumperson while she was sick we are so grateful to have our giggly little girl back.

Still Sick

2010-02-22T08:19:00.002-05:00

The bean is STILL sick! I can hardly believe it, but its been over two weeks of high fevers, a runny nose, vomiting, and lots and lots of coughing. Apparently, the bean's immune system was busy fighting off the bronchiolitis when another virus came along and caught her off guard, making her sick, sick, sick. She hasn't been much interested in nursing and what she has been able to eat, she hasn't been able to keep down. We thought she was looking a bit skinny and late last week we noticed a decrease in wet diapers, so we were off yet again to the doctor's office for our third visit since all this started. We were hoping the bean hadn't lost too much weight, but she's down a little over a pound.

The bean has been waking up in the middle of the night crying almost unconsolably and I've been reminded of what it was like those first few weeks with a newborn. Now we are back to counting wet diapers, timing feedings and scheduling weight checks like with a newborn as we work on operation (re)chubby baby.

Thank goodness we're (hopefully) at the tail end of all this craziness and we just need to fatten up our little girl and she'll have an easy recovery.

Ode to Tylenol

2010-02-11T08:13:00.001-05:00

Tylenol, you are a miracle drug;
if you were a person, I'd give you a hug.
Our baby awakes shortly after midnight;
Cheeks flushed and warm, what to do for our plight?
I find the thermometer, wishing I could sleep more;
I'm wide awake when I see a temp of 102.4!

Quickly, we look for that red and white label.
There you are (our savior!), on the night table.
One holds her arms; the other, the head;
getting her to drink is the part that I dread.
I swear under my breath as our operation goes south,
why won't this kid just open her mouth?

Finally we say enough is enough,
with her face and our bed covered with the stuff.
Thank you, Tylenol, her fever has passed!
I drift off to sleep wondering why you taste like such ass?
When she sees the bottle, she tries to escape.
Can you blame her? Your flavor should be called dirt, not cherry or grape.

Forewarned doesn't mean anything

2010-02-09T13:32:00.005-05:00

Well, we knew it was coming. We expected it and were warned by, well, everyone. Still, the reality of the daycare sickness is harder than we expected. And it came sooner. Just two weeks at the place, only two days without her moms, and the bean has bronchiolitis. She's miserable and has spent much of the last three days groaning or outright crying. Its certainly not helping that her moms keep coming at her with the ultimate baby torture devices--saline drops and a nasal aspirator.

I know this is not at all uncommon and that all babies go through this, but that knowledge doesn't make it any easier to see the thermometer up above 100 and to see the bean not able to nurse because she can't breathe through her nose. It breaks my heart to see her in pain and know that there's precious little I can do about it. Get better soon bean!

More daycare

2010-02-01T12:39:00.001-05:00

We spent an hour a day at the bean's daycare last week under the guise of getting her acclimated to it, although the reality is that it was probably more for us than for her. From the first day, she seemed completely comfortable playing with all the toys and watching the older kids crawl around. We benefitted more from seeing the daily routine and watching the providers caring for the other babies. I had planned to write detailed directions on how to get the bean to take her bottle and how to get her to sleep, but it was quickly apparent that this would be unnecessary. These women take care of babies for a living and they know what they're doing.

By the end of the week, we both felt completely comfortable leaving the bean and we did just that--we left her there and went out for breakfast. She was fine, although we were both wrecks. It occured to me as we were slipping out that this was the first time ever in her life that she wasn't with either of her moms and that thought brought the tears. I kissed her little head and waved over my shoulder to the care providers because I knew if I looked back it would be all over. The boy was more stoic, but did rush me through my breakfast and, although we had meant to be gone for an hour, we were back in 45 minutes. We peeked in the little window and saw the bean sitting on someone's lap having a grand time. When we walked in, she saw us and reached for us both, which was the best feeling ever.

This week is the real thing--she starts going for two 1/2 days per week on her own. I'm sure she'll love it and I hope to be able to stop crying about it at some point as well!

One year ago today

2010-01-24T10:26:00.001-05:00

And it just keeps getting better. Happy anniversary, my love.

And not to gross you all out too much, but I, sadly, contracted a toe infection from my pedicure the day before our wedding which scarred my toenail. I just cut off the last of the deformed nail the other day--one year later. And that, my friends, is the last pedicure I will ever get. I'm not above suffering for beauty, but even I have my limits.

Slow down, January!

2010-01-20T19:46:00.006-05:00

The boy has taken the month of January off for FMLA leave and its been so incredible for us to all have this time together. We had been plotting for weeks all the things we planned to do during the month, but its going by so quickly and there are still so many things on our list!

The first order of business was to buy a second car. When I left my job in November to become a contractor, I turned in my company car, leaving us with one to share. We are now back to being a two car family and the boy no longer has to depend on the bean and I for rides to and from the train station. This was becoming a necessity as the bean has decided to move her bedtime to just before we'd usually leave in the evening and our nights were becoming very hectic.

Coincidentally, the bean has also outgrown her infant carseat, so we've had a new one installed in each car. We have our carseats installed by our local police department, which is something I highly recommend. Its insanely difficult to get the seats installed tightly enough, particularly in an older car that doesn't have the LATCH system. The bean now rides in a "big kid" convertible carseat. We very rarely used the infant seat to carry her around in, but we are definitely missing it those times that she falls asleep in the car and we'd like to bring her into the house without waking her.

Also in January, we took the bean for her 6 month well baby visit. After gaining 2 pounds per month consistently since birth, the bean gained barely 1/2 pound between 5 and 6 months. The boy and I were noticing that she looked like she'd thinned out a bit and we were right. Perhaps we won't have a 40 pound 1 year old after all!

The bean also had her first overnight away from home on a long weekend with family in Vermont. We had a lovely time relaxing and shopping during the day while most everyone else was skiing. We did learn something that will probably be true for the rest of the bean's childhood and that is that sleeping in a strange place is hard. It was hard to get her to fall asleep and, while we've been spoiled at home with a baby who wakes to eat and then goes right back to sleep, it was a different story away from home. Each night, we had a middle of the night party lasting at least an hour and during which the bean was wide awake and ready to be up for the day. We also experienced the limitations of co-sleeping with witnesses this time--the bean goes to bed between 6 and 7 pm and we don't leave her alone in an adult bed. She won't sleep anywhere else, like say a crib or pack 'n play. Our very gracious hosts eat dinner late and each night ate without my company, as I was lying in bed either nursing or reading a book and watching over a sleeping baby. Doing something about our sleeping situation was on the list in January, but we so far have had no success. I'm still planning to write more on that later.

But moving on. The bean also took her first trip to New York City. The boy had to go to work for a few hours, so the bean and I followed along so she could be shown off to co-workers. We were both impressed with how she handled the long train and crowded subway rides. After this trip and the long car trip to Vermont, we're starting to feel a bit more confident about being able to survive a trip by plane in the near future.

The bean liked her mommy's big chair!

We have continued on with solid foods and the bean is finally starting to get the hang of it. She is so cute as she opens her mouth when she sees the spoon approaching. She's still not eating very much, just a tablespoon or so a day, but at least she's eating something.

Finally, we started experimenting with the potty this month. Our plan is to get her familiar with sitting on it over the next couple months in hopes of having a routine of going potty several times a day by the time she's a year old. The bean is obesessed with standing and has starting learning how to pull herself up and each time that she sits on her potty, she lets us know that she's done by just standing up. I'm simultaneously proud that she's learning new things and sad that our little baby is gone.

And now we have one last week in which to cram the remainder of our list. It will be so hard to see the boy going off to work again. And with February, comes our first days at daycare.

First Taste

2010-01-02T10:20:00.003-05:00

The bean started solid food the day after christmas. I plan to make most of her food myself and we debated for quite some time what to start with. In the end, we decided on sweet potato. I steamed and pureed it, heated it, and we got ready with the video and digital cameras.

She took one bite.

And made this face.

And refused to eat any more.

The next day was the same story, along with the day after that. We've tried pears and peas and have gotten similar lukewarm responses. I'm starting to wonder if we should stop forcing the issue and just wait a bit longer.

Honestly, with the way this girl loves to nurse, I'm not at all surprised that she's not thrilled with the idea of solid food. I have to admit I was sort of hoping for a break, though!

6 Months

2009-12-30T10:00:00.009-05:00

I can't believe we're parents of a six month old; where has the time gone? Someone said to me recently that the days are long and the hours are short and I couldn't agree more. While I've been busy with the minutiae of diapers, feedings, naps and baths, the bean has been growing up! Six months is an incredibly meaningful milestone to me, for an important reason and for no reason at all. The reason is similar to the one that had me letting out a sigh of relief when I passed the 25 week gestation mark of my pregnancy. I knew that there was never a time when I would be guaranteed that everything would go well, but passing that viability mark made me breathe a bit easier. When the bean was a newborn, I drew a similar line at 6 months. The risk of SIDS drops off significantly after 6 months, so this half-year birthday is a huge milestone in my mind because of that. I also say that there's no reason because I'm very aware that there are many other things to worry about and I'm just beginning to understand that I will be filled with worry over this little one for the rest of my life. Still, it feels good to pass this milestone and check this worry off my list.

At six months, the bean is sitting like a pro! No more wobbling and she rarely topples over--usually its just when she's tired or over-reaching for something. She is not able to pull herself up to sitting, but she lifts her head, kicks her feet and tries so hard to that it may not be long now.

The bean is also not crawling, but she's starting to experiment with pulling herself up on her hands and knees. She lifts up into that position and then looks around as though she's trying to decide what to do next, then flops back down on her belly. She is definitely getting better at rolling and has added a breakdancing-like belly spin to her repertoire which has really helped her accurately get where she wants to go. Because of this, she is into everything!

Once she learned how to roll, she wouldn't tolerate being put on her back and would put herself on her belly any chance she got. Once her sitting got better, she would complain when we didn't help her to sit and lately its the same with standing. She wants to be helped up in a standing position all the time. If we try to put her down on her back, she'll push down her feet and stand. If we succeed with getting her feet out from under her, she'll use her incredibly strong stomach muscles to try to stay sitting. Because of this, every diaper or clothing change is a wrestling match. Even if she agrees to lie back for a moment, she quickly starts to roll over, usually as soon as the diaper is off. I've gotten really good at fastening diapers and putting on pants from behind.

The bean's manual dexterity is really improving. She is able to pass objects from one hand to another and is just starting to master her pincher grasp. Of course, pulling mama's (that would be my) hair and removing mommy's (the boy's) glasses have given her lots of practice.

At six months, the bean's hair is really coming in. She was so bald for so long that we thought it might be more than a year before she had any hair, but she has more and more hair every day. Literally. Some days we notice a difference overnight.

The bean has slowed down her babbling a bit, but has added "b" to her vocabulary and says "baba," which always makes me laugh. Baba is what we call a bottle and, given how she feels about them, I don't think she'd be asking for one if she knew what she was saying!

Sleep is a topic I have planned for a future post, but I have to say that, when I read that most babies sleep through the night by six months, I never dreamed we'd be up as much as we are. She is such a happy and easygoing baby that I know we are lucky, despite our sleeplessness. I try to remind myself of that when I'm tired and frustrated.

And finally, Itsy Bitsy Spider is still a favorite and still calms her right down. I can't wait until she's older to ask her what exactly it is she loves about this song!

Christmas Recap

2009-12-28T12:54:00.001-05:00

Our first christmas with the bean was amazing and maybe a bit overwhelming. We opened presents on christmas eve with the bean's 6 cousins, 5 of whom are under the age of 6, and it was a completely different experience looking after the bean with so many other children running around. So many kids plus presents meant there were many new and interesting (and dangerous!) things on the floor for her to get in her mouth. Not to mention that the bean and I usually spend our days alone in a fairly quiet house. She didn't know what to make of all the noise and excitement and, as a result, didn't sleep much at all for two days. Santa didn't grant my wish and end the teething, but we kept a big supply of teethers on hand during our travels and, despite teething pain, chaos, and sleepiness, she was in pretty good spirits.

And her moms had so much fun! The bean was much more into the present thing than we expected, helping to rip some of the paper and playing with each new toy as we opened it. We loved playing with her toys almost as much as she did and she was given so much stuff that we've put half of it away to pull out little by little over the next couple months. We were so grateful for the things the bean was given, but at the same time we're struggling with worrying about not going overboard on presents, especially when she's older, in order to give some meaning to christmas other than just getting stuff.

For our part, we really tried to choose quality toys that the bean would play with for a long time. We don't have a very large house, and this has helped us to really think about each purchase. We consider the safety--we prefer toys made of wood or fabric, we feel that these are safer, although you really have to take the manufacturer's word on the safety of wood finishes; we think about how much use the bean is likely to get out of it--blocks, stacking cups, toy foods, and dolls are play staples throughout most of childhood, in my opinion; and finally, there's an aesthetic component--large, brightly colored plastic toys that play music or make a lot of noise just don't do it for us. As I'm typing this right in front of our big plastic exersaucer, I feel the need to say that there are definite exceptions. We originally had a "no plastic" rule, but found it very difficult to follow so now we just try to limit it. Two brands that we love and that meet our requirements are Melissa & Doug and Plan Toys. These are the brands we directed our family to when they asked us what to get.

The bean was given some really great things, including this little rocking horse that she loves:

But by far, her favorite present right now is this pull toy, which we thought she wouldn't use for a few more months. As you can see, the flag is her favorite part.

The boy and I like the idea of all the presents "arriving" under the tree on christmas morning, so we stayed up on christmas eve putting the presents out. Obviously, this was more for us than for her, since she had already seen all her presents (and helped us wrap them), but its a nice tradition that we wanted to get in the habit of practicing. We opened presents christmas morning just the three of us.

Ha, I just realized how huge the bean's feet look in this picture. She has room to grow in those PJs!

The boy is really the toy expert around our house and started early (was it September?) working on the bean's christmas list. We wanted to get her a big present, but there really weren't any "big" things that are age appropriate, so the boy had the great idea of getting the table and chairs set. We hope she'll get lots of use out of it in the next couple years.

Soon, little one, you'll sit at it without Mama's help!

And we had yet another celebration to attend late in the day on christmas. I love this picture of the three of us because the bean's expression says it all--she was done and ready for christmas to be over.

This time of year, especially, I miss my family on the West coast, but I have to admit that there was a little part of me that was glad that we didn't have 4 christmases to attend.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T09:10:00.000-05:00

Today, as always, I am so thankful for my little family, who are the greatest gifts I could ever hope for and I am wishing for love and joy in your lives as well, now and in the new year.

Merry christmas from krafty, the boy and the bean!

Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades

2009-12-24T11:03:00.002-05:00

I so very badly wanted the bean to have a handmade stocking for this year so I could say that it had always been hers, starting with her first christmas. I knew it was an ambitious undertaking, considering how little free time I have this year and the fact that I didn't start until the week before thanksgiving, so I'm not surprised that I wasn't able to finish. Its hard to admit defeat, but I think I'm going to have to call this one. Even if I were to stay up all night stitching, it still needs to be sewn into a stocking. Next year, my little bean.

Too much of a good thing

2009-12-23T10:29:00.006-05:00

The boy and I are sugar addicts. We generally try to eat very healthfully, but when it comes to dessert, forget about it. Early in our relationship, we bonded over the fact that we both believe ice cream should not be reserved for warm weather eating. I had to fast the day leading up to my surgery last year. I confidently announced that, when I broke the fast after almost two days, I would no longer be eating processed sugar. I lasted two days before I gave in. We like our sweets.

It should come as no surprise, then, that one of our favorite christmas traditions includes loads and loads of cookies. Every year, I start in early December making batches of cookies to give away. They fill our freezer and we can't help but sample them. I make extras to account for the ones we eat, but there is always the worry that there won't be enough to give away. I never know until the containers are filled whether I'll be making emergency batches on christmas eve to make up for our December gluttony. I might also add that by the time the cookies leave the house, we are happy to see them gone. We've been eating them for weeks and are sick of them.

Today I packed up the cookies and there were enough to go around, with some to spare. We've enjoyed them all, pronouncing each new batch our favorites as we taste tested them and I think they look so pretty packed up in their little tins. Still, I have to say, good riddance!! I can't wait to get these things out of our house!

All I want for christmas is her two front teeth

2009-12-20T18:27:00.003-05:00

Its been months since we first started talking about teething in our house. When the bean started drooling and chewing on everything at around three months, we felt in her mouth for little bumps, but there were no signs of anything coming through. We sort of shrugged it off as first-time parents getting overly excited for some new development.

A few weeks ago, the bean started having the occasional meltdown and would only be comforted by a teether, her chewing of which reached a new level of intensity. A few times she grabbed my hand, shoved my finger in her mouth and chewed so hard it hurt. Still, we saw no sign of any elusive teeth.

The last few days, however, have been really rough. The bean's sleep, while always pretty bad, has reached a new level of crappiness. She's been a colossal grump and has started grunting to express her unhappiness. I've been saying all week that I wish these stupid teeth would just COME IN already and bring our happy baby back.

So, I've read that the bottom teeth come in first and that's what we've been feeling for. There is still absolutely no sign of any bottom teeth coming, but today we looked at the top and I'm sure you already know the end of this story. There are two big bumps right there, almost ready to break through.

I hope Santa brings her teeth and a sunny disposition to go with them!

Babyproofing, whatever that means

2009-12-18T08:29:00.004-05:00

The bean was several months old before I first heard the term "free-range kid," but it definitely resonated with me. I think this means different things to different people, but for us it means that we try to encourage the bean to explore her surroundings while limiting her time spent in "containers." We naively assumed we could survive without any of these until two weeks with a screaming baby had us begging for a hand-me-down bouncy seat. Today, the bean sits in a bouncy seat while I shower (unless I can get her to nap in her crib while I sneak off for one) and she'll sometimes sit in her exersaucer while I cook dinner. Otherwise, she is playing on the floor or being worn in a carrier. I have no idea what life is like with a crawling or toddling child, so our plan may change as she does, but for now, this is what works for us.

The bean is also becoming more and more mobile by the day. She's not showing any interest in trying crawl just yet, but she's discovered that she can get anywhere she needs to go by rolling there and is getting better (and faster!) at it by the day. The combination of these two things is what's causing my trouble. I'm having a hard time striking a balance between letting the bean explore and keeping her . . . well, safe.

I know that sounds silly because of course I have no internal debate about whether or not to keep her safe. But, for instance, the bean is enamored with our christmas tree. She likes to look at the lights and glittering ornaments, but what she really loves is to roll over to it and grab the lights and feel the branches on her fingers. I know she would love to get these things in her mouth and she often ends up with a handful of pine needles, which I have so far been successful in stealing away before she can eat. As I type this she is playing with some plastic packaging material, which of course is a euphemism for plastic bag. Yes, I am letting my baby play with a plastic bag, even though there is a warning label printed right on it. When she brings it close to her mouth, I move it away and tell her "bags are not for eating," but she loves the sound it makes when she crinkles it with her hands and I don't have the heart to take it away from her.

I know I'm supposed to be distracting her and replacing forbidden items with other, more appropriate, ones but do any babies really fall for this? The bean is fairly single-minded and isn't content with a familiar toy when there are so many new objects to explore. The boy and I both want her to explore all these things but a line must be drawn at some point. Of course acutely hazardous objects are off limits (hot and pointy things come to mind), but do we put away all breakables, hide the electronics, and lock up any PVC/BPA/phthalate containing object she might want to mouth?

How do you deal with this? I'd love to hear general philosophies or specific tips or even a reality check about how much more difficult this will get with a toddler. (And if you have no idea, you're welcome to comment just to say hi!)

But at least I haven't licked my finger and cleaned her face

2009-12-17T13:38:00.003-05:00

Things I have done in the last 5 months that I never imagined myself doing:

Picked another person's nose
Chosen to sleep in pajamas covered with someone else's vomit rather than stay up to do laundry
Used my shirt to wipe someone else's face
Routinely gone more than a day without a shower
Left the house without fixing my hair
Forgotten to brush my teeth
Had to cut short errands because my clothes had become covered in someone else's poop
Slept less than 4 hours at a time, except for a handful of nights
Spent almost every moment with someone without getting the slightest bit sick of her!

Hi-Ho Hi-Ho

2009-12-08T07:30:00.004-05:00

Since before the bean was born, we've struggled with the question of whether or not I'd go back to work. The boy and I considered several different possibilities that would allow us to keep our bean out of daycare, but finally decided that the only thing that would work for us would be for me to stay home, or work part-time. We were still weighing the pros and cons when the bean arrived and I admit that I did a little Scarlett O'Hara every time the topic came up--I put the decision off for another day.

As my maternity leave came to an end, I finally got up the nerve to talk to my boss and we arranged for my job to be outsourced back to me on a part-time basis. I had fully expected that this would not be an option and that I would end up resigning outright, so I was pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless that I would be going back to work. I consider myself very fortunate to have this opportunity and to have had as long of a maternity leave as I did, but I think it must be hard to go back to work whether you're home for 6 weeks or 6 years. I've been dreading the day that I'd go back, even though I love the work that I do and I'm looking forward to earning a paycheck again.

The dread has been compounded by the question of childcare. We had planned to hire a nanny to come to our house to care for the bean. Our nanny story goes like this: after screening applicants for schedule conflicts and moral objections to our same-sex status, we scheduled interviews. After no shows and last minute cancellations, we interviewed two women. We chose one to come back while we were both home to care for the bean for a few hours. It didn't work out. Just a tip to potential nannies--when a mother of the child you are caring for says, "Oh my god, she's choking!" The best course of action would be to immediately stop whatever you are doing that is choking the child. Continuing on until the child vomits while the mothers try to wrestle the baby from your arms will get you a, "Thanks for your time, sorry it didn't work out."

Thankfully, the boy's mother has volunteered to help out for the next couple weeks. After that, the boy will have some leave from work and will be on bean duty. And then, she'll go to daycare. Before the bean was born, we had picked a daycare that we love and they still have an opening, thankfully.

My first day of work was yesterday. The boy tells me the first few hours went smoothly, until the bean decided she wouldn't settle for substitutes and wanted to nurse to sleep. Mother-in-law and the boy were able to finally get her to nap for a bit (after some serious crying) and I came home to a very sleepy, but otherwise happy, bean. Me? I cried in the car to and from work.

Five Months

2009-12-01T11:43:00.005-05:00

At five months, the bean:

Is really starting to babble more. 'M' is her favorite consonant and she loves to say, "mmmm." "mom", "ma," and "mama."
Is able to sit independently for a couple minutes at a time before she topples over.
Is much more interested in what we have in our hands than in any of her toys.
Loves to pet the cat, even though she doesn't yet know the difference between petting and hair pulling.
STILL loves Itsy, Bitsy Spider. If she's crying and I can't get to her right away, I can sing this song and almost always get a smile. Other songs just won't do.
May or may not be teething, but is definitely enjoying gnawing on all her teethers.
Enjoys putting her left foot in her mouth.

Thankful

2009-11-27T18:36:00.003-05:00

This year, as always, I am so thankful to have the boy in my life. I am so very fortunate to be able to spend my life with someone so loving, understanding and supportive.

I'm thankful that, when one of the relatives we planned to spend the weekend with came down with the flu, it was a mild case. I'm thankful that, when we decided to change our plans at the last minute so as to not expose the bean to said flu, family friends were willing to let us crash their thanksgiving dinner.

Most of all, I am so very thankful to have a happy and healthy little bean. Every day I am struck with what a huge responsibility we have to care for and educate this little person. I am so thankful for the opportunity and I promise to do the absolute best job I can.

Frantic Napping

2009-11-17T10:55:00.003-05:00

Its the "oh my goodness, she's asleep in her crib, how quickly can I blog/clean the house/get dressed/get dinner prepped/get some rest" franticness.

So here's my blog post. Off to quickly (and quietly) clean the house!

How to Get a Baby to NOT Sleep

2009-11-13T11:26:00.005-05:00

There have been several moments during the bean's short life where I've wished, for her sake, that we knew a little bit better what we were doing. I've never felt this as strongly as I do today.

Several weeks ago, shortly after transitioning her into her crib, the bean started waking up hourly during the night. We tried several things to extend her sleep, including angling her crib mattress in case she was having reflux that was waking her (propping up the head of the mattress is supposed to minimize reflux and also reduce the occurence of ear infections). Shortly after that, the bean began waking the moment we put her down in her crib--she would not sleep there for any length of time. At first it was just her nighttime sleep, but then she began refusing her crib for naps during the day as well. We began cosleeping fulltime at night and either cosleeping or holding her for naps during the day, because it was the only way any of us could get any rest.

There are definite advantages to cosleeping and we really love doing it, but the biggest disadvantage is that you must be in the bed when the baby is. At least, that's what it means for us, since we're too nervous to leave the bean alone for fear she'll wake up and roll her way onto the wood floor. This has left me stranded in the bed at 9pm on several occasions, waiting for the boy to come relieve me so I could brush my teeth and get ready for bed. The situation was getting frustrating for me because I could put the bean down on our bed without waking her, but the moment she was in her crib she was wide awake. I'm embarrassed to admit that this went on for weeks before it occured to me that the angled mattress may be causing the problem. We flattened out the mattress and guess who's sleeping in her crib for the longest nap she's had in weeks?

Seriously, we're fairly intelligent people, but there's a steep learning curve to this baby stuff!

Bittersweet

2009-11-11T10:27:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, our family had a court date. The boy's second parent adoption of the bean was finalized.

The judge was the same man who performed our marriage ceremony and who presided over my name change and it was nice to see everyone at the court and show off the bean. Afterwards, we went out for a celebratory lunch but it didn't feel like there was much to celebrate.

We are fortunate enough to live in a state that recognizes gay marriage, which means that we have both been listed as parents on the bean's birth certificate since her birth. The second parent adoption is more of a formality, meant to protect us in less gay-friendly areas. We know we are very fortunate to have these options available to us to protect our family.

And yet, we have so far to go. In order to obtain the adoption, we were required to submit to a home study by the state. A social worker visited our home in order to determine whether we were suitable parents and our bean was appointed her own lawyer who was asked to determine whether it was in the bean's best interest to remain with her family of origin. The whole process was demoralizing, maddeningly slow, and felt unnecessary. As the boy said, "I just adopted my own daughter."

I spent the day feeling sad that we had to do this, happy that we were able to do it, and sad again that not every gay couple has this option.

But the bean did get to help swing the gavel. That was fun!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T13:45:00.001-04:00

Last year, I took christmas off. I was exhausted from my pregnancy and still battling with morning sickness and the idea of pulling all of the decorations out of storage and trying to set up a tree was too much for me. I asked the boy if it would be too terribly disappointing if we just skipped it. The boy agreed but added, "This is the last year you'll get away with that!"

Very true. Now that we have a child, we agree that there is no more skipping holidays, which is why its funny that halloween was almost here before I looked at the boy one day and said, "We have to take the bean to the pumpkin patch!" Some of my favorite fall memories include taking a hayride out to the pumpkin patch where I searched and searched for the most perfect pumpkin to bring home. I wanted to start that tradition for the bean as well.

So we went. And took a hayride. She picked the perfect pumpkin.

And decorated it up.

Dressed as a chicken.

And didn't miss out on celebrating her first holiday.*

*I think we get a pass for the 4th of July. She was 4 days old, we took a picture. Good enough!

Four Months Old

2009-10-30T17:46:00.002-04:00

Its gone by so quickly. At four months, the bean:

Rolls both ways
Tries very hard to sit but ends up flopping face first to the side
Crab walks to the side when you change her diaper
Loves any toy that she can bat at and spin, especially the wheel on her exersaucer
Still stops crying and smiles when we sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to her

Now She's Dangerous

2009-10-15T17:07:00.003-04:00

The bean has been rolling tummy to back for about a month now, but today she rolled back to tummy for the first time (and she did it over and over and over again). That means no more leaving her in the middle of our bed or turning our backs for a second when she's on the couch. Which means crawling (and some serious babyproofing) is just around the corner!

Growing

2009-10-09T16:32:00.006-04:00

I meant to post these pictures as we took them but didn't get to it, so how about a side-by-side comparison instead?

THIS Is What I Thought It Would Be Like

2009-09-30T12:29:00.001-04:00

I've had a post written for some time describing our experience at the hospital after having the bean, but I never published it because it seemed like just a bunch of complaining. Suffice it to say that we were very anxious to get away from the hospital and get home after our two day stay. I was under strict orders from our midwife to go home and do nothing but care for the bean for the next two weeks. The boy had taken that time off from work and we were looking forward to getting to know the newest member of our family. I had expected that the three of us would crawl into bed and stay in our pajamas. I'd feed the bean, the three of us would nap, the boy and I would take turns changing diapers and we'd squeeze in some gazing into each other's eyes here and there. The reality? Well, all I remember is the screaming. I fed the bean all. the. time. and when I wasn't feeding her, she was crying. I couldn't feed her lying down and I couldn't sit up in the bed thanks to my broken tailbone. I took the bean out of the bedroom to feed her and the boy ran around trying to take care of our animals, bring me food and water, and attempt to calm a screaming baby when I finally unlatched her to go to the bathroom or close my eyes for 10 minutes at 3am. It was not the peaceful time I had imagined it to be. The boy assures me (and there's photographic evidence to confirm) that the bean did, in fact, spend some time sleeping and interacting with us during that time. Looking at those pictures is like looking at my belly pictures the day before I delivered--I refuse to believe I was ever that big. And I refuse to believe that the bean ever stopped crying those first two weeks.

At my two week checkup, my midwife advised me that life with a new baby gets significantly easier after the first two weeks, after six weeks, and again after three months. Some of you even told me things would get easier at three months and its not that I didn't believe it, not exactly. I just didn't want to get my hopes up. Well, I'm here to say that you were right. I can't believe how far we've come from those first two weeks. We're napping consistently during the day and . . . dare I say it? We have something that looks almost like a schedule. NOW we can lay in bed and coo and giggle at each other, take a long nap and the bean will actually eat a meal and stop for some time before eating some more.

Shortly after the bean was born, I mourned that the days of the boy and I curling up on the couch on a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie were gone forever. Well, last Saturday the bean took a long nap and the boy and I did just that. It was heaven. I love, love, love spending time with the bean and "talking" to her and making her laugh, but those long days when she wouldn't close her eyes for more than a few minutes at a time were really, really tiring. We are all in such better spirits when she gets a little rest during the day.

I can't say whether this change is because the bean is older and decided to nap better or if its because we are getting better at taking care of her, but I suspect its a little of each. Every time we realize something new (oh look, when her eyes get glassy, that means she's tired!) I feel so badly for our little bean that she's had to suffer with such amateur parenting. We don't even need to mention how long after her birth it was before one of us said, "Do you think we should check if her diaper is dirty?" OK, I admit it, it was not me that said that. Were it up to me, the poor thing would have gone much longer without a clean diaper. I was a bit preoccupied with trying to figure out where the truck went that ran me over and oh yeah, working out everything that goes along with having another human being attached to my breast nonstop. But I digress. We're getting more comfortable with this whole parenting thing and she seems to be forgiving us our mistakes and adjusting right along with us.

I know its a cliche, but its truly amazing how quickly this time passes. When I look at the pictures from the bean's first few days and think about how different she is now, its amazing. I'm trying so hard to remember how quickly this time goes and to savor every moment. Before we know it, we'll be wondering where this first year went (and laughing at how inept we were)!

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

2009-09-27T21:13:00.004-04:00

Its been quite an adjustment getting used to my post-pregnancy body. I expected that it would take some time to get back into my jeans, but I hadn't planned on 'the girls' partaking in the steroids that my butt and hips obviously abused the last several months. The first couple weeks postpartum, in my sleep deprived, hormone crazed state, I would look in the mirror and proclaim that nothing had stayed where I had left it.

Every couple weeks, I've been optimistically pulling out pre-pregnancy clothes to try on and see how they're fitting. The weather has been getting cooler lately, so today I pulled out a warmer shirt that I haven't worn since last fall and the results were, um, unpleasant. I said to the boy, "Why doesn't this shirt fit me? It fit fine before I got pregnant!"

The response? "Yes honey, but you were flat-chested then."

Happy Beanday!

2009-09-24T14:27:00.002-04:00

One year ago today and unbeknownst to us at the time, I became pregnant. It would be two more weeks before we found out, but the little bean was already starting to become the big bean I'm holding right now. Happy conception-versary, little one!

The Unexpected

2009-09-16T11:30:00.007-04:00

We knew from the beginning that we could plan all we wanted, but there would be no way to predict how things would go with a new baby. Still, I've been surprised by the things that haven't gone according to plan.

Diapers. We just used the disposables provided at the hospital for those first couple days and switched to cloth once we got home. Then the bean got a horrible case of diaper rash that caused her so much pain that she was wailing inconsolably. The bean cried quite a bit those first couple weeks, but it was always for food and she was easily quieted at my breast. With the rash, she was in too much pain to eat and we were heartbroken that we could do little to comfort her. We tried several different things, but the only way we could find to get rid of the rash and keep it away was to switch to pampers. We tried some more earth-friendly (and less chemical-laden) brands, but they too brought on the rash. You can imagine that's difficult for this tree-hugging mama to swallow, but the bean's in charge. Now that her sensitive skin has started to toughen up a bit, we are very slowly starting to reintroduce the cloth by using one or two a day, but we may never be the full-time cloth diapering family I thought we'd be.

Sleeping. Before the bean was born, I posted about my concerns over our sleeping arrangements. I wasn't exactly sure where everyone would start out sleeping, but I had always thought that I would bring the bean into bed with us at some point during the night to nurse her and we would all sleep together for at least a couple hours. As it turns out, the logistics of that were really too difficult for me. Nursing in bed is not as easy as I thought it might be and I turned out to be way too paranoid to sleep with the bean in the bed. We did try out the snuggle nest for two nights before it was returned. You still have to pick up your baby to get him or her into the thing and the bean always woke up when I picked her up those first few weeks. I figured if I was going to risk waking her, I might as well put her in the bassinet. Yes, the ancient bassinet is where she ended up sleeping her first two months. The boy had the brilliant idea to remove all the lacy coverings, which allowed us a clear view into it from our bed so we could easily check in the night that she was still breathing (c'mon, I know all you parents have done it too). This setup has worked really well, but the bean is growing so quickly that she's within a couple inches of not being able to sleep in it with her legs straight out. She's been able to stretch and simultaneously bump all four sides with various body parts for a few weeks, so this past weekend we moved the crib into our bedroom. (We're still not ready to give up on being able to check her breathing in the middle of the night.) We now have a crib at the foot of our bed and we sleep with our heads at the foot so we can check her more easily. We have co-slept a handful of times and for sure the bean sleeps great in bed with us, but I am still paranoid about the whole thing and sleep better myself when she's in her own bed. Had we known, I guess we could have put the crib in our room from the beginning.

Baby Stuff. This was the biggest surprise. I was adamant that we not have big piles of plastic baby accoutrement around our house. That and my aversion to anything single-purpose led us to make very thoughtful, well researched purchases. We got a pack and play that came with an activity mat in tasteful, subdued colors. Travel, downstairs naps, and play--three uses! We chose a similarly subdued rocker. No bouncy seat, no swing; we thought we'd hold her or have her in a baby carrier most of the day anyway. Turns out the bean's aesthetic and mine are very different. She didn't much care for subdued and hated being in a carrier. (And not once has she been able to stay asleep when we put her in the pack and play.) Fortunately, we have some experienced friends and relatives that answered our calls for help when we couldn't manage to keep this baby entertained for more than 30 seconds at a time. We now have a living room full of brightly colored (some plastic) baby gear. She loves her hand-me-down activity mat and bouncy seat so much that I feel bad I almost deprived her of them. Lesson learned. We will continue to make thoughtful, earth-friendly purchases, but our living room decor will no longer factor into the decision.

On a different note, I was completely unprepared for how being a parent would change me. When the boy and I first got together, we spent every moment of our time getting to know one another. We stayed up all night having deep, intimate conversations and, after sleeping an hour or two, would pick up the next morning right where we left off. We would lock ourselves in the bedroom all weekend, emerging only to eat or walk the dog. We missed a lot of work in those days because nothing seemed as important as spending time together.

Being a mama to the bean is like that. Its mostly one-sided, but it has a similar intensity. I've spent every day and night with her for 2 1/2 months now--watching her learn new skills and discover new things, studying her in an attempt to predict when she'll be hungry, tired, or wanting to play. Its been such a short period of time, but its hard to remember what things were like before she arrived. I didn't think that I spent very much time thinking about myself before but, in comparison, it seems like that's all I did. Now, everything is for the bean. My needs are squished in around the edges. The poor boy is somehow piled in on top of that. In a way, I feel that its a juggling act, but in other ways its really not. The bean needs us to do absolutely everything for her, so she wins out each time. In such a short period of time, this little being has become my universe and its amazing to me how natural it feels.

The boy and the bean. My two favorite people.

Late Night Confusion

2009-09-13T01:57:00.004-04:00

Last night, as I was climbing into bed at 5am, the boy woke and asked me, "What are you doing up?"

I took a long pause, trying to decide how to respond. "Did you forget we have a baby?"

"Oh, yeah."

Silly boy!

Beanie Baby

2009-09-12T04:26:00.004-04:00

I'm two handed typing for the first time since the bean was born - yay!

Thank you so much for the comments on my last post. We're having so much fun with the little bean and I know that the hard parts are very temporary, but it can get overwhelming and it helps to be reminded of how quickly things can change. Two months is such a tiny period of time in all of our lives and even in that time, things have gotten dramatically easier (we now sleep at night, even if we're not sleeping through the night).

I was in kind of a dark place a few weeks ago and feeling rather sorry for myself until something remarkable happened. We had a decent night of sleep and I woke up feeling like a new person. I realized that things are much more difficult when I'm sleep deprived (duh!). While there's not much I can do about the sleep situation, I decided to try to eliminate the other stressors in my life so that the sleep issue is the only thing I'm dealing with. I made an appointment with a lactation consultant to work on the breastfeeding issues we've been having and started seeing a chiropractor to try to get some relief for my poor, broken tailbone. Its amazing how much difference these two things have made. I think my milk supply is mostly regulated and we're working hard on correcting the bean's latch. Its going to be a long, slow road with my tailbone, but I've already seen some improvement and I think I'm not far from a day when the pain is dull and in the background rather than sharp and searing every time I stand up.

On the sleep front, I haven't been able to get any naps since I'm exclusively breastfeeding and the bean absolutely refuses our attempts to feed her from a bottle. I'm feeding her every 90 minutes during the day and every 2-3 hours at night. On the weekends, when the boy is home, I tried sneaking in a nap between feedings but that didn't work out so well. What has worked is when the boy gets up with the bean in the morning. For some reason she'll go a couple hours without eating while I sleep in. I was amazed the first time we did this, honestly, because you'd assume the bean is waking up because she's hungry. Nope, she's just done sleeping after 7-8 hours. I keep reading things that say babies this age sleep 10-12 hours at night--not true for this bean! Anyway, I slept in every day over the long weekend, which was heaven and I feel so much better. We can't do it every day, but hopefully the extra rest on the weekends will be enough to get me through the week.

But onto the bean. She is still growing like crazy and, at two months, is as big as a four month old. She "talks" all the time and is starting to reach for toys and hold them when we put them in her hands. She recently discovered that she has feet and tried desperately to grab them, but couldn't quite reach. She also realized we have pets and is particularly fascinated with the cat. She's not rolling completely over yet, but we often wake up to find that she's rolled onto her side and is sleeping in her bassinet that way.

Oh, and she likes having her picture taken!

Long time coming

2009-08-12T10:15:00.006-04:00

I've started writing this post several different times over the last couple weeks. First it was about my 6 week checkup (this pain in my tailbone ranges from excrutiating to intense but tolerable, otherwise I'm healing nicely), but that's been 2 weeks ago now. I wanted to write about how the bean screams when we put her in her carseat but, with the encouragement of our midwife, we've been taking her on frequent, short trips and she seems to be getting better about riding in the car. I wanted to write about my frustrations with breastfeeding, but the whole story seems too long to type out with one hand, which is the only way I'm able to use the computer these days. Simply put, I have oversupply, overactive letdown, and hindmilk/foremilk imbalance. The bean has adjusted her latch to accommodate all this milk shooting down her throat, which is making it hard for her to eat now that I've tried to lower my supply. I would have never guessed that breastfeeding would be the hardest part of all of this, but it really is.

We're still struggling with naps (she doesn't really take them), so I'm barely keeping my head above water when it comes to running the house while the boy is at work. We've been doing our best to trade off between bean care and housework when we're both home and I'm trying to come to terms with not having a clean house or home-cooked meal every night, but that's hard too.

The bean is beautiful and so much fun--she smiles and laughs and "talks" to us. She's a generally happy baby and rarely cries for no reason and we are so truly blessed. But right now this job is really, really hard.

Photos and Weeds

2009-07-28T07:19:00.006-04:00

The other day I managed to do my hair for the first time since the bean was born, we were both bathed and dressed at the same time, and all the red splotches on my face had healed, so we took the first pictures of the bean and I together.

Also, the bean was at the doctor's the other day and our suspicions were confirmed--our little girl is growing like crazy and is now 11 lbs! As challenging as breastfeeding has been, one problem we don't have to worry about is supply. Our pediatrician looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time and said, "You have a lot of milk!" What's the appropriate response, 'thank you?'

Three Weeks

2009-07-23T19:07:00.006-04:00

I've heard a lot of new parents say that the first couple weeks were harder than they expected, so I imagined the worst it could possibly be and amplified that and set my expectations there. Still, its so much harder than I expected!!

We really turned a corner after the first two weeks, but during that time the bean wouldn't sleep. I don't mean that she wouldn't sleep through the night or that she was up a lot, I mean I sat down to nurse her at 10pm and we were still at it at 4am. She was taking 1-2 hour naps a couple times a day and that was it. I was a zombie and the poor boy tried to help, but the bean was only interested in one thing, if you know what I mean. She ate all. the. time. and no matter how much I'd feed her, she'd still act hungry.

Thankfully we have milk now! (Actually, tons of it. The bean was not gonna mess around with undersupply--she made sure that milk came in, but good.) And now that she's eating better, she's starting to sleep better. At the beginning of her third week, she started sleeping 2-3 hour stretches a couple times a night and now, the last few days, she's doing the same during the day. Yesterday, I literally did not know what to do with myself. The bean slept, so I slept. When I woke up, she was still sleeping. For the first time in three weeks I didn't have a fussy baby in my arms wanting a new diaper or to eat or to be held or to just be entertained in some way. It actually felt . . . strange. I wandered around the house trying to decide which project to tackle first. Don't get me wrong, I'm still not showering daily and I don't usually manage to get out of my pajamas (or brush my teeth regularly), but its getting easier and I can again imagine a day when I'll be able to take care of both the bean's and my basic needs and maybe even get a little housework done.

But we can't dwell on the negative because our little girl is so perfect and amazing and I really don't think I'm biased when I say that (ha!). She is growing like crazy and is already starting to look different than she did when she was first born and we're already mourning that our little baby is gone (little, of course, being relative).

The boy had to go back to work last week, which was so incredibly difficult for all of us, but we're trying to manage. I was fortunate to have had help from the grandmas for all but two days and thank goodness because we wouldn't all be fed and wearing clean clothes otherwise. (Well, the bean is always fed, but the rest of us might not have been.) Next week I'm on my own full time, but hopefully it will be easier since I've been able to ease into it.

I believe we may be coming to the end of this nap, so I'll leave you with some more pictures of our little angel.

Birthing the Bean

2009-07-19T02:10:00.004-04:00

Monday morning we had our last midwife appointment. We had spent the weekend trying all the induction techniques we could think of (other than castor oil), but we just couldn't get anything started. The midwife checked me (3cm), swept my membranes (for the second time) and scheduled me for an induction on Wednesday. We talked about the castor oil and she said if I was going to take it, I should do it that day. I was nervous to take the stuff, so we decided to wait until Tuesday morning to try it since I had been nauseous all day and didn't want to make myself more sick.

I woke up just after midnight on Tuesday morning to go to the bathroom and by the time I got back in bed, I had my first painful contraction and then another one 5 minutes later. I timed contractions for 20 minutes, then woke up the boy to say, "I think I'm in labor, but you should go back to sleep." I drank some water and paced around downstairs to see if the contractions would keep coming. When it seemed like this was the real thing, I tried going back to bed, but it was too uncomfortable to lay down. I decided to labor in the living room trying a bunch of different things to get comfortable--labor ball, hands and knees, standing, etc. I was really tired and wanted to conserve energy, so I ended up spending most of the time propped up on the couch so I could rest between contractions but still be sitting up when they hit. The boy kept checking on me throughout the night to see how I was doing. I was nauseous and finally around 7 am, I threw up like I never have in my life. I can't even explain how violently I wretched except to say that when I looked in the mirror afterwards I burst into tears. Hundreds of blood vessels had broken in my face and I was literally covered with large red blotches. It was terrifying. By that point, I was done with laboring at home. My contractions were between 3-4 minutes apart and only 45 seconds long (we would have preferred them to be closer to a minute long), but I just wanted to go to the hospital. The boy called one of our midwives who offered to check me at their office.

The trip to the office was torture--I made the boy pull over every time a contraction hit because I couldn't handle the bumps while contracting. We finally made it to the midwive's office and learned I was 4-5 cms dilated. We were given the choice to head to the hospital, go back home, or walk around at the office for a bit. I just wanted to go to the hospital and get settled so I didn't have to move around anymore, so we went in. I had several contractions while walking into the hospital and had to keep stopping and leaning on something until it passed. A bunch of people offered us a wheelchair or asked if we needed help, but it was a point of pride for me to walk into labor and delivery myself (I can't tell you why this was, but its how I felt). We finally got there and got to our room, but had to wait a while to get checked in (and we were waiting for the midwife who would attend our birth to arrive). I wasn't sure what to do with myself, but ended up sitting cross legged on the floor and stayed that way during check in and the initial 20 minute fetal monitoring.

Finally, our midwife arrived, I was taken off the monitors and given the OK to get in the whirlpool. While I was in the tub, they gave me some IV fluids, since I had been vomiting. The tub really helped with the pain of contractions, but also worked to slow them down. At some point while I was in the tub, our doula arrived and shortly after I got the shivers. I had heard that shaking was normal after delivery, but didn't realize it would happen during labor as well. I was so glad the doula was there to reassure us about that because it was a little disconcerting to be shaking while in a warm bathtub! I was in the tub for over an hour and then had to get out again to spend some more time on the fetal monitors. Our nurse was great, but was insistent that I be flat on my back during the monitoring, which was the worst possible position for the pain. While I was in the position anyway, the midwife checked me and I was still at 5 cm. If sweetie and I had learned anything during all our classes and reading, it was that we shouldn't invest any energy it what those numbers were. It was drilled into us over and over that labor can stall at any dilation and can also progress quickly. I had decided to just ignore the numbers and focus on getting through the contractions. Still, I had been in labor for almost 12 hours and it had been almost 4 since I was first checked at 4-5 cms. The midwife suggested she break my water to try to get things moving. I always thought I would resist having my water broken because, once its done, you have a limited amount of time to deliver before they begin pushing for a c-section. I quickly agreed, though, because I realized that I would be worn out and unable to continue if I hadn't delivered in another 12 hours.

After my water was broken, contractions became more intense almost immediately. The midwife recommended I try taking a shower, but I couldn't get the water hot enough or the water pressure high enough to do much to alleviate the pain I was feeling in my back, so I got back in the tub. While laboring in the tub the second time, I became nauseous again and started really having a hard time handling contractions. This was the first time that I turned to the boy and said I couldn't do it anymore. Rather than making it through each contraction one at a time, it became about making it through a third of the contraction. They would start out OK and I would do a good job of relaxing through it, but at the height of each one my body would involuntarily tense in a way that felt like wretching. After the peak, I would regain control and be able to relax again. I told our doula that I thought I was pushing. I really wasn't sure because it wasn't as though I was making a choice to push and tensing my muscles--my body was just taking over and doing it without any help from me. The doula reassured me that I would feel like pushing when I felt more pressure down low, so I figured I was wrong about what was happening. After an hour or more in the tub, it was time to get out again and be hooked back up to the monitors and have my midwife check me. I was at 8 cms. My back pain became overwhelming, along with the nausea. I threw up again and remember being embarrassed at having done it in front of everyone, particularly the boy who was right next to me, but I quickly forgot about that. From that point on, I kept my eyes closed and turned completely inward. I was aware of what was going on around me, but I didn't feel a part of it at all. Looking back now, I know that I was in transition but at the time, I couldn't think about progressing. I could only focus on what was happening at that very second. It wasn't about having a baby, it was about surviving each new contraction. After this point, I also started saying no to everything anyone told me to do. The midwife told me the baby was trying to turn her head to make her way down and that I should get out of bed and on my feet, but I couldn't face the idea of moving. It wasn't until I overheard the midwife tell our nurse that I needed to get out of bed "if we have any hope of making this work" that I agreed to move (out of fear of a c-section).

Since my eyes were closed, everything that happened at this point just happened--voices came and went in my ears, pillows appeared, hands were on my back, but I wasn't always sure who was doing what. I was set up leaning over a counter and was told to pace around the room between contractions. I was really vocalizing with every contraction and tried to moan like I was being told to do, but ended up mostly yelling "oww" and "it hurts so much." Of course, there was also a lot of "no" and "I can't do this" thrown in anytime anyone told me to do anything. This was absolutely the worst point, as I labored through those last 2 cms. The contractions were so intense that I needed to lean over the counter for the first and last third of them and then stood up straight and pushed 2 or 3 times at the height of each. Someone told me not to push, but then I heard our midwife saying that I should go ahead and do whatever my body was telling me to do. I had no choice in the matter--there was no way I could not push. The boy was helping me walk around between contractions and when I felt another one coming, I would rush back to the counter so I could lean. Remember also that my water was broken and I was leaking fluid with each contraction. That is such a sanitized way of describing what was happening--the reality was much more gruesome than it sounds and I was again horrified by it.

While we were walking around, I had to open my eyes, of course, and I saw that everyone was rushing around getting things ready. The baby warmer was brought out and supplies were being piled up. I didn't understand why they were doing this--I still didn't believe the baby was coming any time soon. The midwife mercifully asked me to get back in the bed and checked me again. I was fully dilated and ready to push. Rather than being excited by this news, I complained. I didn't want to push, I really didn't want to do anything but tell everyone that I couldn't do this anymore. My legs were lifted for me and I'm pretty sure someone had to lift my hands and force me to hold my legs up. I began pushing because I was being told to. The midwife had me sort of roll over--I pushed for a few contractions on my back, some my side, in a squatting position, and then the other side. At one point, I believe the baby's heart rate declined because the nurse asked me to not push for one contraction and, as much as I didn't want to push, it was worse to not push. I complained about that too. After that one contraction, we were back to pushing and the midwife asked me what position I wanted to continue in. I could have squatted, which was what I had planned, but I was just too tired and too scared of more pain to move, so I continued pushing on my back. This may sound strange, but I was still in my own world and not thinking about the baby at all. The doula kept telling me the baby was coming and I'd think to myself, "No, she's not!" I guess part of it was that I was just trying to get through what was happening to me and part of it was that I didn't want to get my hopes up in case I ended up with a very long labor. So, when the midwife started talking about the color of the baby's hair, I told myself that the head can move down with each push and then move back up between contractions. A few minutes later, the midwife asked if I wanted to feel her head crowning. I felt her little head there, but for some reason it didn't register that she was crowning. I was waiting to feel the "ring of fire" that I'd heard about and I didn't think she could really be crowning if I hadn't felt it. A few minutes later, I felt incredible pressure and almost a bulging feeling and I thought maybe that had been her starting to crown. The midwife asked me to open my eyes and I really didn't want to (I may have even said no), but thankfully I did. I opened my eyes and that was a moment I will never forget. I had birthed the bean's head and shoulders and there was this baby right there, just looking around at everyone. I was so in my own world I had almost forgotten we were having a baby, but seeing her there brought me right back to reality and I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't thinking about her. I looked up and saw the boy, who was also watching the bean. There was so much emotion on both our faces. I later learned that the boy had caught her as she came out. The midwife then told me to reach down and pick her up, which I did and she came right onto my belly and just layed there and looked around. Unfortunately, they had to take her away immediately because there had been some meconium when my water was broken. They checked her out for a few minutes, which felt like an eternity, then she was back on my chest. I wasn't quite done whining, though, so I told the midwife at that point that I didn't want to birth the placenta--I was done! It ended up being no big deal and it was a lot less pressure without everyone yelling at me to push. During that time, we were told to keep the bean crying for a while until she pinked up, but once her color was good she latched on and ate for over an hour. In fact, she stayed up nursing most of that first night.

Everything turned out exactly the way we wanted, despite our concerns about being in the hospital. The only little thing I wish I had done differently is that I wish I had forced myself to suck it up and push in a squatting position. My tailbone was broken during delivery, which made getting in and out of bed extremely painful those first couple days and sitting to nurse for hours is torture. I wonder if it would have been different had I not pushed on my back. Still, its hard to complain. We ended up with the most beautiful little girl and were able to avoid the induction and have a natural birth.

Happy one week!

2009-07-08T04:08:00.009-04:00

Yesterday was the bean's one week birthday. Its hard to believe that its been a whole week already--it feels like one long sleepless day. Yesterday we called in reinforcements (aka Grandma) to help us figure out how to get this bean to sleep. So far, so good. I know the poor kid was exhausted and needed some rest but her amateur parents couldn't figure out how to get her to close her eyes and stop fighting sleep. We also can't figure out how to have distinct nursing sessions throughout the day, rather than one continuous 24 hour feeding, but one step at a time. (If I hear the term "human pacifier" one more time, I may become ill. Yes, I am pacifier. Right now, I believe that is my job. I think she'll be weaned before college.)

I'm desperately trying to find the time to finish her birth story, but how about I share some beany goodness in the meantime?

My last belly picture at 41 1/2 weeks. Already, I can't remember being that big.

Rare, closed eye sighting.

Rockin' the sweater mama made.

Introducing The Bean

2009-07-03T20:32:00.003-04:00

Born on June 30th

9 lbs 4 oz

Can it be?

2009-06-30T03:17:00.003-04:00

A full 13 days past our due date and one day before our scheduled induction, it looks like my body knows how to go into labor after all. We hope to be holding our little bean later today. Please keep us in your thoughts until then!

The longest 10 days of my life

2009-06-27T10:19:00.007-04:00

The longer she makes us wait, the more I knit,

Sheldon turtle knit from knitpicks shine sport, Baby Merry-Janes knit with Cascade 220, Newborn hat made with knitpicks Bare in worsted, Aleenan mekko dress made with knitpicks shine sport, and Crumpets dress knit with Rowan DK cotton.

and sew,

Very baby pocket diapers, microfiber inserts, and hemp fleece wipes.

and bake.

Ginger-spiced scones with cashews and dates from Vegan Planet and chewy oatmeal-raisin cookies from Veganomicon.

Overripe

2009-06-19T09:08:00.006-04:00

Dear Bean,

Well, the date that we've been thinking about, repeating to one another, and preparing for these past several months has come and gone with little fanfare. It seems that you are healthy and comfortable right where you are and that's where you plan to stay, for now. Sad as it is, this temporary arrangement we have going on is coming to an end. (It seems you may not have gotten the memo--your current living situation was always meant to be temporary. We have made other, more roomy arrangements for you that we think you'll like just as well.)

I understand how stressful moving can be (and I fear that this first move of yours is going to be stressful and painful for all of us), but it can't be avoided. Your parents are ready for you. Your grandparents won't stop calling to ask about you. The neighbors have even started asking where you are. The two of us together are just too big.

Its time.

We can't wait to meet you,
Mom

39 Weeks

2009-06-10T15:28:00.006-04:00

I just got back from my 39 week midwife appointment. It would seem all the contractions I've been having have actually been doing something--I went from just a fingertip dilated last week to a full 1 cm, 50-60% effaced and the bean is at a -2 station. (She needs to move from -4 to 0 and then on to +4, which is at the exit, so she's started heading in the right direction!) I'm fully expecting a long wait, but having a little progress is so reassuring!

I asked our midwife to estimate how big the bean might end up being and she told me 8 - 8 1/2 pounds. Some may think me crazy for rejoicing at this news, but considering I myself was a 10 pounder, 8 pounds doesn't bother me at all. I know the estimate could be off, but I needed to hear at this point that they think she's going to be at least a tad smaller than I was, whether it ends up being the case or not.

So, the plan for next week is to have a non-stress test on my due date. If, for some reason, the bean isn't doing well they'll send me right off for an induction, otherwise I'll be offered an induction for the following week (which I'll decline). Then we'll have more waiting, I'm sure.

We're still keeping ourselves busy with cleaning and working on house projects until the bean decides to show her face. For some reason, I'm procrastinating on finishing up my diaper sewing and putting those last couple items into the hospital bag. I did, however, convince the boy that we should set up the pack and play in the living room, just in case that's what was keeping the bean. Doesn't seem to have had much of an effect, though.

We realized as we were starting to pack our hospital bags that we as yet didn't have a baby book. I hadn't really given this much thought, as I expected we'd pick something up at one of the baby stores. I knew that we'd end up with something that mentioned mommy and daddy, but figured it'd only be one page and we could work around it. Unfortunately, when we started looking at the books, most had mommy and daddy references on every page. That clearly won't work for us, so we explored our options with internet retailers and found this.

This book advertises itself for single, adoptive, and same-sex parents and has removable pages, so it can be customized for most any situation. There is even a page for information about the sperm (or egg) donor, which we thought would be nice for the bean to have. Its not quite as flashy as some of the other books we've looked at; in fact, we both thought we could have made sometime similar ourselves but we also knew it would be a project we'd think about and possibly never finish before the bean arrived.

Still, it will definitely serve our purposes and thank goodness there won't be a lot of ~~daddy~~ mommy references!

38 Weeks

2009-06-03T17:44:00.008-04:00

I've been saying this for a while, but I just can't believe how far along we are in this pregnancy. 38 weeks! While I feel completely and utterly ready for this pregnancy to be at its end, I'm also shocked at how quickly the time has passed.

Truthfully, I've been really uncomfortable lately and, though I'm trying to stay positive, I was pretty down today. Luckily, our incredible midwife completely cheered me up at my checkup by joking with me that the baby won't come before I'm completely miserable and reassuring me that just as many women have their babies in the two weeks before their due dates as have them in the two weeks after. I asked her to check me and then lie about what she found and, while I'm typically prissy about talking about such things as the condition of my cervix, I'll share what she told me. The bean is low, although not yet engaged, and I'm a fingertip dilated. Now I have no idea whether she was just complying with my request or actually telling me the truth, but it doesn't matter one bit. I can pin all my hopes onto a fingertip's worth of dilation and that should get me through another week. Hopefully by then there'll be a bit more progress and that can get me through until our due date (at which point I may cry hysterically and beg the bean to please come out, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it).

Anyway, lets all distract ourselves with some crafty goodness, eh?

First of all, I am more-than-a-little-bit proud to announce that the blanket I have been knitting this entire pregnancy is now complete.

This should give you an idea of the size (it turned out quite a bit bigger than I had planned, but the boy and I both agree that the larger size is better, after all).

And the border. This is the Prairie Blanket by Oat Couture knit with some super soft alpaca yarn we picked up at Rhinebeck last year.

Next up is the Helena sweater

and a Cable Cap

both of which were also knit from some yarn we picked up at Rhinebeck, but I seem to have lost the ball band. I'm fairly certain it was superwash wool, but now I might be too scared to wash it in the washer. I guess we'll see how it wears before I decide.

And finally, a Tri-peak hat.

And I may still owe her a pair of booties, but that's probably enough wool for a baby who'll be born in the summer, don't you think?

I'm still working on all those knit toys I promised to make and, of course, there's always diaper sewing to keep me busy until she finally decides to make an appearance.

37 Weeks

2009-06-01T10:56:00.004-04:00

Some time ago, I posted about my worries over the baby's position. She spent a few weeks flipping around and experimenting with being breach, but thankfully she's proven to be very open to my suggestion that she get her head down and start preparing for her exit. She's been head down at the last several checkups, thank goodness!

I also learned at my last checkup that my group B strep test was negative--another relief! No antibiotics for me during labor, thank you very much.

The only small bit of bad news is that the midwives think the bean might be posterior. This means that, while her head is down, she is facing my belly and we'd much prefer she be looking backward. I've been assigned some exercises to do to try to encourage her to turn around, since posterior means painful back labor and let's not forget that I'm trying to do this thing without an epidural. I hope she's open to some more friendly suggestions about her position!

Finally, I keep saying over and over that the bean can come whenever she wants, but we only just got a carseat for her this weekend. The carseat is very important if you plan to actually take the baby home from the hospital. We were lucky enough to inherit a gently used seat from a toddler we know and we spent the weekend cleaning it up and reading through the manual. I'll be taking it to the fire department this week to have it installed and then we're ready. After that, you can come whenever you want, bean, this time I mean it.

Early on in my pregnancy, my mother informed me that she believed all babies come early because all of her spontaneous births were early (there are four of us, my youngest sibling was a planned c-section). I'm positive of this information because I've been clinging hopefully to it for the last two weeks. Yesterday, I decided to confirm with her that my oldest sibling was, in fact, born early as well, since that's the only birth relevant to my situation. Mom has changed her story--she insists I'm confused and it was she herself who was born early, the three of us were all two weeks late. *sigh* I'm hoping her memory has faded and we weren't all THAT late. (For me, I'll take due date or just a day or two after, please!)

Finally, I had contractions all weekend with varying degrees of discomfort, none anything I would describe as painful. I know it doesn't mean that the bean is coming anytime soon, but its still comforting to think that something is going on.

Sleep Considerations

2009-05-30T07:29:00.005-04:00

I've spent a good deal of time over the last couple months thinking about how we're all going to sleep after this bean arrives. I know it seems strange, since I've been told that new parents don't typically do a lot of sleeping, but still.

When I first got pregnant, there was no doubt in my mind that we'd cosleep. We planned to use a cosleeper, but the more I researched them, the more nervous I got. They aren't safety rated and there have been recalls on some models that posed strangulation hazards. OK, I thought, we'll put the baby in the bed with us. Where should she sleep? Between me and the edge of the bed and we run the risk of her rolling onto the (wood) floor. So I thought we'd get a bed rail which, aside from making it impossible to get in and out of the bed, are not recommended for use with infants. There is something like this which would stop the baby from rolling onto the floor, but isn't it also a suffocation hazard?

OK, how about putting the baby between the two of us? In that case, we run the risk of one of us rolling on top of her. (If you spend any time googling cosleeping, you'll hear so many horrific stories of parents rolling on top of and suffocating their babies, which is the biggest argument against cosleeping that I've found). I've read that this arrangement is not recommended because (apparently) the mother is very aware of the baby, but the father typically has no idea what (or who) he's sleeping on. I'm not sure how this applies to a two mom family, but I'm assuming the boy is the oblivious father in our case.

In all the research I've done, I've read over and over that cosleeping can be safe if the parents do it in a safe manner. However, when I try to find out what this "safe manner" is, all I can find is that you shouldn't smoke or do drugs (including alcohol) before you sleep with your baby and you should remove pillows and blankets from the bed. And how do we keep the little bean in the bed, preferably without an adult body on top of her? I have no clue.

For a while, we thought we'd leave the baby in the bassinet portion of a pack 'n play next to the bed, which seemed like a nice compromise. But then I got nervous because we spent so much time furnishing the bean's room with all wood furniture and we plan to buy an organic mattress with wool used as a fire retardant to minimize any toxic fumes she might be exposed to while sleeping. Then we're going to put her in a big plastic box to sleep for the first couple months? It didn't make sense to me.

Enter a further complication:

This bassinet has been in the boy's family for generations. It has, apparently, been passed around from household to household as each new baby has arrived. The boy's father slept in it, the boy and the boy's brothers slept in it and, most recently, a niece and nephew have both been in it, one of whom is currently under a year old. Its certainly not safety rated. I'm praying that its been repainted at least once since the days of lead paint. Oh yeah, its an odd size, so there were no organic mattresses to be had that would fit. Yet, there it is sitting in our house waiting for the arrival of the little bean. We're not even sure if she'll stay in it, at least at night, because I'm not sure we've completely given up on the idea of having her in the bed. (I'm still attached to the idea of sleeping, or at least lying down, while nursing in the middle of the night.) We're just not sure exactly how its going to work, which might be appropriate since we're not sure how any of this baby stuff is going to work--we're just going to have to wing it.

Another milestone

2009-05-27T16:48:00.008-04:00

Today, the little bean is full-term. I've been saying for the past week that she can come whenever she wants, but its only actually true starting today (I was rounding up). I think we're ready. I KNOW I'm ready although I'm bracing myself for a long wait, since conventional wisdom is that first babies come late.

We opted to spend our last long weekend as a 2 person family hanging around the house, resting and finishing final preparations for the bean's arrival. We talked about just how strange it seems that a new person whom we haven't met will be joining our family in just a couple weeks. There's a bed and clothes and all sorts of stuff just sitting there waiting. It feels strange, but exciting too!

We finished putting together and putting away all the gifts from our shower. I washed loads and loads of baby laundry, so now all of the bedding and miscellaneous towels and blankets are clean, along with enough clothes in different sizes to get us through for a while. I still have diapers to sew (of course) but we have enough to get us through a few months. I've been stocking the freezer with meals little by little in hopes that there won't be too many "what will we eat" crises in the first month and I've been trying to keep the pantry stocked so we won't be rushing to the grocery store in the first week. The boy spent a good bit of the weekend cleaning the house top to bottom, since I've mandated that we give it a good scrub once a week so we have a better chance of it being clean when the bean arrives and everyone wants to come over to see her. We're also trying to start babyproofing by strapping large pieces of furniture to the wall and thinking about moving things to higher shelves. Of course, we have plenty of time for that, but we might as well get a jump start now while we're just waiting.

We still have several projects we'd like to finish around the house now that there's time and energy and we don't have to worry about waking a sleeping baby, but nothing that's necessary before she comes. We're ready. We may still have a month to wait, but now would be good too.

How about some more pictures of the nursery, now that we're all done with it?

The crib still doesn't have a mattress, but we're not planning to put her in it for a while anyway, so we'll get that after she arrives. I hate to admit that we struggled an embarassingly large amount of time trying to install the mobile. Our crib doesn't have straight sides, which is what its designed to hang on. We finally resigned ourselves to hanging it on the wall above the crib, even though we thought it would be out of sight of the little bean. Then we took a trip to the store where we purchased the crib and saw the display model with a mobile attached at the back, like we have ours here. So much frustration for such a simple little thing!

The shelves on these back walls were meant to be filled with knitted toys (knitted by yours truly). Clearly, I'm not doing such a great job in that department, although there has been plenty of knitting. If she holds out a few more weeks, I may be able to get a couple done.

I love our little closet changing station! The garbage can contains a wet bag for cloth diapers and, its hard to see, but we installed a little shelf on the right side to hold lotions and pins and other diaper changing paraphenelia. The diaper hanger is stuffed full of disposables plus there are two more bins full. That diaper cake was bigger than it looked!

I believe I've lost the war on pink. There are a couple baby blue outfits (although you may notice that those are dresses) and one or two things in purple and every single other article of clothing is pink. Perhaps when she's a year old, she can wear a different color?

And the countdown continues

2009-05-17T22:09:00.006-04:00

Our little bean is due to arrive exactly one month from today. Of course, we all know that due dates mean nothing to the little babes who pick their own birthdays, but still. We're getting close.
This week, we finish our last childbirth class. In effort to be (over) prepared, I signed us up for 12 weeks of Bradley, 4 weeks of childbirth preparation classes at our hospital along with baby care, car seat safety and breastfeeding. I'm really glad that we tried all these out and a couple of them were really good, but most of them were, well, not. I guess there was no way to know that in advance, but it turns out we could have read all the books that we've already been working our way through and we'd have pretty much the same, if not more, information. We'll see if any of this makes one bit of difference while we're working our way through contractions, though!

The last series of classes we took were at the hospital and as sweetie and I were riding the elevator down to the lobby one evening, we stopped to pick someone up. The woman (wearing scrubs) backed up to let us off and gave us a very strange look when we told her we weren't getting off on her floor. "But THIS is the 3rd floor," she insisted. It took me a few minutes to remember that labor and delivery is on the third floor. She thought I looked pregnant enough to actually be in labor and heading in for delivery. That was a couple weeks ago and while I'm getting anxious for the little bean to show up, she still had a bit of baking left to do at that point. Not that I'm defensive or anything, but I felt an urge to explain to her how far along I was and that my midwife tells me I'm measuring right on target. But yeah, I'm big.

One more month to go . . . it simultaneously seems like a short period of time and an eternity.

Who doesn't love a shower?

2009-05-15T09:25:00.006-04:00

I love baby showers. I'm not going to lie--I love seeing all the cute little clothes and fun baby gear and decorations and playing all the silly games (the games are really my favorite part!). I know some people hate going to them, but I've always loved them.

With my family almost entirely 3000 miles away, I knew none of them would be hosting one and no one in sweetie's family had mentioned anything to me, so I was not expecting to have one (although it was odd that the sweetie was so opposed to my buying anything for the baby--even at 34 weeks!). I should also mention that I am incredibly hard to suprise. I (usually) can tell when someone's hiding something from me and I (annoyingly) ask a lot of questions about what's going on, so I make it hard on would-be surprise planners.

Last weekend, we were planning to go to my mother-in-law's house for Mother's day brunch on Sunday morning, but Friday afternoon the boy called to tell me that there was a change in plans and that mother-in-law would like to have everyone over for brunch on Saturday instead. (I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that the boy is getting better at hiding things from me, but I'm choosing to see it as a good thing in this context.)

So, Saturday morning we arrived at mother-in-law's house, walked in, and I immediately see a bunch of stuff in her entry (mother-in-law's house is always exceptionally tidy). I say hello and then all of a sudden a bunch of people come out of the dining room and yell surprise and I realize that the "stuff" in the entry is a bunch of gifts. Yay, a surprise shower complete with the games that I love so much! I really had no idea and I have to say, after experiencing it for the first time, that I'm now a fan of being surprised. It was so much fun!

Opening presents--I don't know where everyone found such cute clothes, but we were given stuff that is so much cuter than what I bought.

Gotta love a diaper cake! Even though we're planning to use cloth, I think we'll end up putting the bean in disposables occasionally, so these are perfect!

Apparently, you're supposed to make a hat out of the ribbons and wear it for good luck.

It was so much fun and so good to see everyone. And now we really do have everything we need for the little bean, we just need to spend this weekend organizing and putting everything away!

California Dreamin'

2009-05-07T09:04:00.007-04:00

At my review in January, my boss asked me to attend a two week training in CA at some point during the year and wanted to know whether I preferred to go before or after the baby. At the time, I was only thinking about being uncomfortable on the plane and of how much work we had to do before the baby came, so I decided to put it off. The farther along I got, the idea of being away from a nursing infant caused me to reconsider. So, off I went to the bay area at 32 weeks pregnant. (A lot of people asked me if it was still safe to fly. I wondered the same thing, but its OK to fly up to 36 weeks--I made it just under the wire.)

At the same time, I was complaining to the boy that I was regretting our decision not to take any vacations this year and that I wanted one last weekend away before the baby came. This was the perfect opportunity for the sweetie to fly out and spend the weekend with me for a mini babymoon!

We didn't do much of anything exciting, but ventured to Santa Cruz to hang out at the beach. We stumbled upon a great vegetarian restaurant that had veggie corn dogs on the menu (something I was just telling the boy that I sometimes missed from my meat eating days). We loved the place so much that we came back the next day for a veggie bacon cheeseburger with an onion ring and BBQ sauce on top (another guilty pleasure from the past). The place was like a pregnancy craving nirvana, I've got to tell you.

When I left for the trip I was 32 weeks pregnant, which made our due date seem so much farther away than it seems now at 34 weeks. I came back to a very relaxed partner who was saying, "don't worry, we'll get everything done" so I had to put a rush on things by pointing out that if the baby decides to come at 36 weeks, the doctors won't stop her. Saying that even put a panic into me! Even more scary is that when I asked our midwife about it this week, she said that even at 34 weeks, they'll only do a half ass job of trying to stop labor. I fully expect bean to make a late arrival, but I'd still like to be prepared in case she surprises me! We've been picking up things that we need here and there, but this weekend we'll do one last massive shopping spree and then I'll work on the mad dash to sew diapers.

In addition to time somehow moving faster while I was away, my belly growth seems to have also accelerated. People are now either asking me when the due date is (immediately followed by, "you must be getting close") or just flat out telling me that I look like I'm ready to go at any minute. People at work are also becoming hesitant to plan anything with me because they're not sure I'll be around much longer.

I have to say that there has been an amazing symmetry to this pregnancy. The first couple months were full of worry, nausea and wonder and I could have told you at any given time how far along I was, down to the day (when we toured the birth center, I proudly announced that I was 4weeks 3days). The second trimester flew by with me sometimes forgetting what week we were on, but now I'm back to paying attention to the exact number of days we have left to go. The worry and nausea are back and after having been told that I likely wouldn't be able to get pregnant, I never allowed myself to even imagine what it would be like to be in this position. I just can't believe there's a near full-term baby in my belly! Just a few more weeks until we get a look at this little bean.

Pardon my rant . . .

2009-04-28T22:36:00.004-04:00

but I never noticed just how gendered baby clothes really are. When you walk into any baby store, you know right away which side is boy's clothes and which side is girl's because you're overwhelmed by the blue and pink before you even get through the door.

Now, I'm a fairly "girly girl" myself and trust me, I love me some pink and some dresses, but everyone has their limits. We have some dresses that are super cute that we'll definitely put the bean in, but how many dresses does one baby really need? I mean, dresses just make certain things uncomfortable (like crawling and, later, running) and it annoys me how an infant's dress rides up when you're holding her. And is it too much to ask that pink be just ONE color in her wardrobe?

I may have reached my limit the other day when the sweetie and I were shopping and I held up a very cute garment that I (wrongly) assumed was a top. I was thrilled that it was a non-pink color and feeling very proud of myself until the sweetie asked, "Is that a top?" I looked closer and answered, "No, is another @*$#ing dress!!!"

Sheesh!

32 Weeks

2009-04-24T12:44:00.004-04:00

We are closing in on the end of the 32nd week and I have to say that I've been extremely lucky up to this point. Aside from the horrible morning sickness (which we cannot, ever, discount because it really was THAT bad and it lasted well into the fourth month) and the aversion to drinking water that lasted another few weeks beyond that, I've felt really good. I felt so good in the second trimester that I was sometimes surprised to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and be reminded that, yes, I really was that pregnant.

I still don't have any major complaints. I'm starting to get a little bit of heartburn (and a couple episodes of reflux) and a little bit of back pain (should be doing more back exercises--shame on me!). My calves have swollen a little bit, but my hands and face look pretty good and I'm still able to wear my rings! The belly has grown to such monumental proportions that I'm no longer surprised when I see it--I'm convinced its an optical illusion. It doesn't feel like this huge bump should be part of me (and it doesn't feel that big from where I'm sitting).

I know there's still time for all the 3rd trimester discomforts to creep in, but the longer I ward them off, the better. Here's the belly at this point, I can hardly fathom it getting any bigger.

Prefolds, Covers, and Snappis . . . Oh My!

2009-04-21T10:43:00.014-04:00

Don't you hate it when life gets in the way of blogging? I have so many things I've been wanting to post about here. First of all, more than you ever wanted to know about cloth diapers.

Val brought up some valid concerns in the comments of this post. Like Val, I remember my mother using cloth diapers with my younger brother and it being quite a pain. Mom rinsed the dirty diapers in the toilet (the thought of which still makes me gag) and everyone was always getting stuck with the diaper pins that inevitably ended up all over the house. I'm certainly not an expert, but here's what I've learned about how cloth diapering is different now than it was when we were babies.

First of all, our parents probably used either flat or prefold diapers. A flat diapers is essentially just a large square of fabric that is folded up and around the baby. Prefold diapers are similar, but are prefolded (clever name, huh?) and sewn into place so that there are extra thicknesses of fabric where the baby will wet. In the past, these diapers would have been folded around the baby, pinned into place and then covered with a waterproof layer which my mother called rubber pants (but were probably really plastic). These covers are still available, but something like this is more popular since it wraps around the baby, is adjustable, and the fabric is breathable. I've heard that you can just fold a prefold into thirds, lay it inside the cover and you're good to go without having to do any fancy wrap and pin action. If you prefer, you can also do the fancy wrap action without the pinning if you're using one of the wrap around covers. Finally, if you're set on pinning, an alternative to diaper pins are Snappis which are plastic devices which grab onto the diaper to keep it in place. The advantage to flat or prefold diapers is that they are relatively inexpensive and dry quickly in the dryer.

Our mothers would be happy to learn that there are other options as well! There are fitted diapers, which look like disposable diapers, but are made from absorbent cloth. They either snap or velcro around the baby and need to a diaper cover in order to be waterproof. There are also all-in-one diapers, which are the closest you can get to feeling like you're using disposables. These have the waterproof layer and absorbent inside sewn together in one piece so all you do is velcro or snap the whole shebang on the little one and you're good to go. All-in-ones are the most expensive option and I've heard complaints that they take forever to dry in the laundry due to all the different layers of fabric. This is where pocket diapers come in. They work similar to an all-in-one diaper, but there is a removable middle layer of absorbent fabric that can be washed and dried separately (which means they dry quickly).

I am told that there is no need to soak or rinse cloth diapers before washing them. There shouldn't be any, ahem, solid waste for the first several months and after that, the solids can just be dumped in the toilet and the diapers washed with an extra rinse. I was also concerned about soaking because I seem to remember my mom having bucket full of water and diapers waiting to be washed (which is not only a safety concern, but an aesthetic one as well). They say the dirty diapers can just go in a waterproof bag inside an airtight garbage can until laundry day, when the whole mess gets thrown in the washer. We shall soon find out if "they" know what they're talking about.

I've been researching diaper options for months now and it seems like most people have the hardest time finding the right fit during the first few months. I'm hoping that we can avoid that problem by using prefolds since we have so many options for folding. Also, the covers are what prevent leaks and they're relatively inexpensive so we can afford to try out a few different brands until we find something that works. Prefolds are also the most economical option to get us through that period when the bean will be using 2 (or more?) dozen diapers a day. After that, we're switching to homemade pocket diapers. There's a little anxiety for me around this topic because its quite an investment, both in time and materials, to make these puppies and there's really no guarantee that they'll fit or work for us. I guess its like everything else with this baby--we can plan all we want but we really have no idea how this whole thing is going to go until she gets here.

That being said (and no one accused me of being brief), I've made our very first diaper. I really stressed about what fabrics to make it out of. The waterproof outer layer is PUL (polyester polyurethane laminated fabric), that was an easy choice. The inner layer, the part that touches the bean's skin, is organic hemp fleece. From what I've learned, microfleece or suedecloth are better choices in terms of wicking moisture away from the baby and I debated for quite a while about whether that should outweigh my aversion to covering our child's nether regions with synthetic fabric but, in the end, the hippie in me won out. I really hope we don't have a ton of leaky diapers and an unhappy baby. The synthetic fabric won out for the inner layer, which is three layers of a microfiber dish towel that I stitched together.

The microfiber "stuffing."

Inside view--all stuffed.

And all folded up. Its a bit sloppy, but not bad for a first try.

Interestingly enough, after all that debating about fiber content, I didn't give much thought to fabric color. I picked what I thought was pretty and bought it. It wasn't until the sweetie noticed the outer layer fabric sitting on my sewing table and asked, "What if baby #2 is a boy?" that I realized I should have picked something a bit more neutral.

Swimming Lessons

2009-04-09T08:40:00.008-04:00

Going to see my cardiologist is sort of an all day event. His office is in New York, so getting there requires me to take the day off work and commute into the city with the sweetie. After spending five minutes in his office, during which he gave me my "get out of a c-section free" card, I went shopping. I've been growing out of my first batch of maternity clothes and needed a couple more things to last me through the end. I hope I have everything I need now-I hate buying maternity clothes. I'm too cheap to spend a ton of money on clothes I'll only wear for a few months, and the cheap clothes are all really frumpy looking. I'd much rather be spending the money on bean clothes.

Speaking of the little one--apparently week 30 is the week she learns to swim. I was a little concerned on Monday because I hadn't felt her move as much as usual. The next couple days, where I had been feeling kicks in my ribs, I was feeling them near my hips. I told the boy I was pretty sure she had turned breech and the midwife confirmed it at my appointment last night. I was pretty bummed out, I mean, she stayed head down for all this time just to turn now? She couldn't hold still for a couple more months? Then, later in the night, I felt reassuring kicks at the top of my belly. For a minute. Then she somersaulted back around for the rest of the evening but this morning I think she's head down again. I believe at this point she is just messing with me. I had heard women talk about being able to tell what position their babies were in, but I didn't think I would be able to. The midwife even tried to show me how to feel for the head, but I just nodded along with what she was saying. From the outside, everything feels like one big lump, but it turns out those feet in your crotch are pretty unmistakable.

As promised (at least I think I promised), I finally have pictures of the nursery.

I'm starting to rethink the mirrors on the wall--any thoughts? I wonder if we should just lose them and either leave that wall empty or move the shelf over. Funny story about the diaper bag--I didn't intend to get one that matched the room but, obviously, I love green and brown. I was actually looking for something a little less "girly" so that the boy could also carry it without being embarrassed, but I was informed that its a rite of passage for men to carry hideous girly diaper bags, so the pretty brown and green one it is!

I love these little rug dots. They serve absolutely no function whatsoever, but they're so darn cute! Sweetie still needs to paint the side table--the drawers will all be the same green as the upper half of the wall.

We went back and forth about the changing table a couple times. First, we planned to buy a low dresser and change the baby on the top, but we realized that there's no way we'd fit all that furniture in the room. My frugal side was loath to spend money on a changing table that we'd only use for a few months and, despite being pretty spendy, most changing tables are so rickety that I wouldn't want to put a baby on one anyway. Finally, we found this one at Ikea. Its solid wood and the top comes off so that the bean can use it for a bookshelf or toy storage later. We thought about adding it to the boy's painting list, but since it doesn't really fit in the room anyway, we ended up hiding it in the closet. I think its perfect in there, because we can hang a shelf on one of the side walls and have stuff handy without worrying about things dropping from above onto her head. I'm so happy with how it all turned out!

False Advertising

2009-04-02T18:00:00.004-04:00

Even though this blog claims to be all about crafting and cooking, I haven't been making much of anything lately aside from this big belly. Maybe I should change the subtitle to bulleted points on house renovation and Bradley class bitching? Well, at least that should be the title of this post.

After all my complaining last week, the Bradley class ended up being not half bad. An acupuncturist visited to demonstrate pressure points that ease contractions and it was nice to meet her just in case we need to call on her services for baby turning or induction help later.
I needn't have worried about our hospital's birth policies. Last week, we finally met the third midwife in the practice (who we really liked) and she eased all of our concerns. A midwife will deliver our baby at the hospital and the change in location is pretty much the only difference between that and the birth center. (Except that I can't deliver in the tub, but I wasn't sure that was something we'd want anyway.)
I "passed" the gestational diabetes test with a result of 113 (anything less than 140 is passing). That's 113 mg/dL of glucose in the blood, if you're curious.
We are STILL working on getting this house into shape, although we're hopeful that we can finish this weekend. Last weekend my coworker came by with a helper to install the toilet that had been sitting in our hallway for weeks and to do some electrical work and other odds and ends. Its so nice to have that stuff done and to see this place starting to look more like a home than a construction area.

The midwives have been hinting that I may need a medicated birth or the dreaded c-section unless my cardiologist gives me a note saying its OK to have a natural birth. I feel a little bit like an 8th grader getting a permission slip signed to go on the school field trip and it actually angers me if I think about it too long. Um, he needs to give me permission to give birth? He didn't seem at all concerned when I discussed a potential pregnancy with him last fall, so I'm hoping there won't be an issue when I ask for my permission slip tomorrow.
Finally, there was a huge package of cloth diapers waiting for me when I arrived home today. I always knew that I wanted to cloth diaper, but I had no idea how complicated it was. There are so many options and so many different opinions on what works best. I finally placed an order for 36 unbleached, Indian prefold diapers, along with a couple diaper covers and snappis. We'll use those for the first couple weeks when the bean is blowing through diapers like they're going out of style and it'll be hardest to get a good fit. After that, we'll use pocket diapers that I plan to sew in a couple different sizes. I think the boy is still a little unsure about this whole thing, but hopefully it will work for us and we'll both get the hang of it. For now, the prefolds are in wash #1 out of the 5 they'll need before they can be used. After that, we gotta learn how to actually put these things on the kid!