roly poly
Who knew that those strange bugs that roll into a ball for self defense, were spelled - roly poly, and who knew (certainly not I!) that there was a chain of sandwich restaurants with the same moniker. I had to make sure I spelled it correctly, because I felt shame would befall my head if I were to proclaim, I had a rolly polly daughter, not to mention that polly is a toy, not a bug. Alas all that research to exclaim that Elenya is rolling. :) She did it the first time around 6 1/2 weeks, but as I had not seen it (others had) I was shy to announce her victory. I have not only seen it now I have documented it with video footage, which I will not be sharing, because my voice sounds oddly loud next to the mic and she is grunting and fussing on her tummy before she gets the strength to push over.. which then causes herself to startle and then scream. It's quite traumatizing to view, maybe I'll give the cam a whirl and keep my mouth zipped and inform Elenya to keep the grunts to a minimum, and definitely no tears. Though I do admit the newborn cry is sweet, as sweet as any form of crying can be.
I got my banner updated for each of the kids. And am working on a book of Elenya's first 6 weeks. I'm using a plain board book, then with dry glue adhering the pages, and voila, a book of Elenya. I plan to do the same for all the kids, but my goodness, I had no clue that just editing/cropping photos would take so long to do! I purchased the Modish Girl Album from The Shabby Shoppe.
My friend Stacy is kindly making a few baby items for me, including a baby quilt. Yep, all that gorgeous Ginger Blossom Fabric I bought, is intimidating to me and I can not dare cut it, especially after the drama involved with my intended minky blanket, I curse thee soft, knit fabric! She's also making the girls some diapers for their dolls, bibs for Elenya, and a dress for Elenya too. Oh and kerchiefs. She had a 10% off sale at Apple Tree Boutique on everything but the quilt, which she is doing for me as a friend.
Working on plans for our summer vacations/activities, I'm pretty excited. We are camping for my Dad's 50th this weekend (please let the weather be good!), we are heading to Mall America end of August, and Tennessee for end of September for my uncle's wedding. He's only two years older than me, so he's more like my cousin. Going to hit the Memphis Zoo we hope since everyone will be busy Friday with the rehearsal/dinner, which those that are not in the wedding will not be attending (which is all of us), so we are running out. I have no intention of driving 12 hours to babysit my sister's kid. lol.
Ais wanted to hold Elenya yesterday and both girls ended up crashing, it was too sweet to not photograph.
Miss Blue Eyes - they are a blue gray, only time will tell what color they decide to stay.
Ari outside today, it was hott! My camera lens actually fogged going outside, as did my glasses earlier when we got groceries.
I've been playing with my camera and found a "Super Macro" button which zooms in most awesome. Look at those little wrinkly feet and dimply fat fingers.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
small town summer carnival
Oops! I guess I've had a lot on my mind lately, as I forgot to renew my domain and hosting. I had called Kris to ask about extract, and she mentioned it was down. Thanks Kris otherwise it could of been days before I realized.
I really ought to be cleaning right now, I just got miss pickle down for a nap, and we have friends coming over late afternoon, but I'm procrastinating as I do best, and decided I should update my blog. Mostly because I wasn't planning to update until I had large amounts of time, and had decided if I was going to use wordpress instead of blogger. I also wanted to update my banner before posting, but don't have the best photos of the other kids other than Miss P. so I have to take some photos with good light to accomplish that task. And well I just figured if I waited to do all that, I may not get around to updating for another month, lol.
My Dad is celebrating his 50th birthday at the end of the month. Man I can't believe it! I don't really want to believe it ether. We are going to do some camping on a big group lot, so I'm excited about that. We all camped together a few years ago and had a fabulous time. The following week we were planning to head up to Mall America with the kids, they like that whole ocean section, and they've never done the rides before. Thought it'd be a good way for them to do some rides without paying ridiculous admission fees like Adventureland.
In really exciting news! Willis lost a tooth!!! And he actually lost it. He was in the linen closest putting games away, his tooth just fell out, and proceeded to get lost with the linens. It's been about 10 days and his tooth is still missing. It should be a good laugh when it reappears.
I took photos of Miss Pickle in her preemie/newborn outfits now, to compare to then. Here's a few of them:
Newborn & 6 weeks
Miss Pickle in her peanut shell sling, all snuggly-buggly!
I got fed up looking for my knitting needles, and while I have a knitting needlecase or two that are gorgeous and lovely in everyway, they are too big for my needle needs. One of my needle cases that my mil gifted me is 20"x12" that is just much too large. So I made one. I got the basic instruction from Wiki How. I adjusted the measurements by a lot to be smaller. Less than an hour and here's what I got. :)
First swim of the summer for me and Miss Pickle, and this is the style of photos I got from that adventure.
hehehe, she looks so goofy with that big double chin, gosh I love her to pieces. I learned that while she loves to "swim" in the bathtub with me, she does not enjoy cold water. Lucky for her it went from 90 degrees to windy, cold, and rain in just a few minutes.
I had the shirt custom made along with a celtic rainbow embroidered one, and they are soo cute! I got them from Closet on Queen Creek, and will be ordering more when she outgrows this size. I also received a few custom shirts from Sublime Threads that are absoultely amazing, she actually sews these shirts (the other just embroiders lap tees), and these are gorgeous! They are sized 6 months so won't fit for a while.
Then she specially ordered this fabric since I love it so much on her preemie outfit. *heart*
We went to a small town carnival last weekend. My parent's didn't come, my sister Marki came after we left, and my sister Erika decided she wanted to go to CR to shop and wouldn't get there til late. So it was just us.
Heres what you see in a small midwestern, farming community on a hot july night, oh about 90 degrees.
Young and old alike enjoying a game of bingo.
As we left a bunch of older couples were all dressed up in fru fru dresses to dance on the street, that had ground up corn spilled on it to prevent slipping.
And pork - pork burgers, pork tenderloins, pork this and that, and two dollar cans of soda.
You'll find about 5 kid rides, 3 adult rides, funnel cake, lots of young families, I'd say most never leave the small town, and that includes leaving for education. Lots of friendly people who all know you, which is good/bad depending on what you do, lol. I can see why my family likes living out there, but I prefer to just visit.
A few shots of my kids thoroughly enjoying the carnival.
And just like the fourth of july, here is what miss pickle did the entire time.
She may have peeked once or twice, but that's the extent of it.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
just wanted to say...
Monday, July 07, 2008
One Million and One..
Photos that is. I took tons of photos for the Fourth of July. I'll share some below, otherwise check the flickr page if you must have more.
I know so many people who are getting divorced and having marriage problems lately, bums me out. All of them have kids involved, just sad. :(
Weather is getting crummy again, this is the crappiest summer of my life, (weather wise of course). Every time it gets nice and hot, we get severe weather, floods, tornadoes, enough already! Give me a hot summer to swim in and trash this severe junk! We can't even swim an entire day because it's guaranteed that storms are brewing if the temp gets hot enough to swim. The news is on and they are talking about "high" gas prices in 2004, the price - $2.09 at the pump that summer.
I want to watch all the movies on the AFI top 100, list. Want to read some classic novels too, haven't decided whose list to use yet, but I am loving Lady Audley's Secret, I listen to it while I knit since you can download audio for free from Librivox. Great mystery, and was quite scandalous in 1862 when it was first published.
Didn't make it to the wedding, drove out to my moms for the fourth and Elenya cried the entire ride up, that's 30 minutes of bawling. I couldn't get her to calm down at all. I figured four hours in the car, in one day was cruel.
You can just call me "ref" apparently I should of been calling myself that, instead of "mommy/mom" since the kids were babies. The Ref is a good movie.
For Thanksgiving Arianna and my Dad did a Turkey Ball (basketball), those who made the most baskets got a free turkey or ham. They got second place and a turkey. We had already ordered a turkey for Thanksgiving, so we froze the winner one and fried it for the fourth. None of us have ever fried a turkey, Dad found a brand new fryer at a garage sale for some change. The men fried the turkey, chicken nuggets, fries, and halibut or "harbow" as my sister called it.
Heading to the fryer
They are going to start screening cholesterol in kids 2 years old if they are at risk, because of the obesity epidemic. Some things just boggle my mind.
I can multitask, it just means that my posts include snippets of the news. I don't generally watch this station but the remote is far away from my current location and I don't want to wake sleeping baby on me.
I snapped this on the way to the farm, and when I saw this photo at home I thought, oh my goodness, my "baby" is so big! Agree?
We have been having so much fun, she's all into the new Disney movie Camp Rock. Got her the soundtrack of it the other night too and she loves it. We all have fun singing to it, and be goofy. It's her first real cd. Her other one is Bible Songs that I bought when I was pregnant with her, and the other is demo songs from the Shrek movie that came on the newest dvd.
I made Aislyn this cute little summer top the other day from this summerlin pattern. I bought the fabric at Joanns when I thought, yet again, that I wanted to sew. It's been sitting there a few months. The nice thing about this top is the top is the hardest part, imo for sewing, but it's knit in this pattern! Knitting is easy peasy, so I whipped that up, and c'mon sewing a tube is pretty simple too. So it was fast and done in time for her to wear on the fourth.
I took Miss Pickle out in her Peanut Shell sling the other day where we found Hobby Lobby had Sugar and Cream yarn on sale, that was pretty sweet. I'm finding myself loving the color, hold out for it, navy. I have no idea why! It's not that I've ever had anything against navy, but I've never been aching to wear/knit/see it like I am currently. I don't think it will become a favorite, but I'm visioning cable navy sweaters on William and am going to make Miss Pickle a navy Smockie in the near future.
Thought I'd take the time to share a recipe too. This is my great aunt marjorie's orange tapioca salad. Yep I'm in the midwest so Jello is a salad, apparently that is not the case nationwide, I found this out on ravelry where this became quite a large discussion. I'm sure there is this recipe elsewhere, and sure, variants galore, but here is the recipe that I have and enjoy.
Aunt Marjorie's Orange Tapioca Salad
2 - 3 1/2 oz boxes tapioca cook and serve jello pudding*
1 - 3 1/2 oz box orange jello
Cool Whip
2 large cans drained, Dole Mandarin Oranges
Mix together 3 cups of water with the Orange Jello and Jello Tapioca in a microwave safe bowl. Cook in microwave 9-11 minutes, stirring ever 3 minutes, until it bowls. Stirring is very important, do not skip. Then put in fridge until it's cool and turning into Jello, usually a few hours. Then stir in the Cool Whip and oranges.
*You can not substitute for that other Tapioca in the red box, ask my mom she knows all about this.
My kids love this and the snicker/apple salad that Kris gave me the recipe for a few years back. Which is just green apples, snickers all chopped up, and cool whip. We eat both of these salads semi-regularly, and they always get eaten up at get togethers.
Some fourth of july photos from outside. I played with my camera and it's settings so some of the photos are grainy or whatnot.
First up, my sweet, charming, goofy jokester son... this boy loves to make people laugh. The other night at the restaurant all the kids were just rolling in their seats at the funny things he was saying and doing. Half of it I don't get, but maybe that's cause I'm "old" lol. Here's one of his faces.
Erika's trademark photo face.
Me and Miss Pickle by the fire, poor girl, looks goofy in this photo.
Sparklers by the fire
So we actually ate that turkey for dinner on Saturday July 5th, because we didn't actually eat until MIDNIGHT! The adults were all having fun, talking about TMI conversations that involved the grandparents personal information, not to mention my parents' information... eek. And the kids ate great, and then soon found little corners to hide in.
It was a lot of fun, and Miss Pickle slept through the entire thing other than waking to eat. You see 30 minutes of screaming uncontrollably can wear a girl out.
But we found a binky that she will take, so she's happy to have that sucking need met outside of the mom! And she is starting to smile this past week, and I got a picture of her smile this morning on my phone. She looks at me, smiles, and I melt into a puddle of goo.. I just adore her, and those first smiles just say, "Hey Mom, I love you, thanks for all you do!" aww, I love you too, kid.
Friday, July 04, 2008
cheetah video
Kids wanted to know more about cheetahs, so I found some videos for us to watch, most specifically they wanted to see them run...
This was by far their most favorite video:
and this one too.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
go me!
I got contacts, woot! It only took about an hour of constantly poking my eye to finally get one in. The eye doctor actually had to put them in my eye, then I had to remove one, and put it back in before I could get a prescription. My eyes were so red and irritated from peeling them back and forcefully blinking. But man, being able to see with no glasses is freaking awesome! woot!
I want to get new glasses at some point, probably from Target I saw a few I liked the other day when walking by. I am so proud of myself getting a contact in, I am seriously pathetic about putting things in my eyes. I asked the eye doctor if just repeatedly poking my eye with my finger counted, of course it didn't. Would of been quicker if it did though. I asked for tips from the different people who would peak in to see how I was doing, they all seemed to agree that, "Don't Blink." was the best tip.
Tomorrow we are going to my folks to fry up the turkey Ari won this winter at Basketball with Grandpa. Pretty exciting for the little rascal. Should be fun playing with sparklers, certain odds that someone will burn themselves this holiday, seems to be a tradition.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
crying, knitting, and dogs
Sometime ago in the not too far past, my mom woke me up with a phone call. I adore my mother, she's pretty swell. Since she bought her ear piece for her phone though, she can't drive to or from work without someone to talk on the phone with her, and if no one else answers, she calls me at 7:30 am, though she knows I'm asleep, though she knows I stay up until 1-2 am every day, and that I have a newborn. This particular morning I heard the dog bark from the living room, and flew out of bed in a mad panic... why!? Cause they can not be free at night without supervision. I dreaded what awaited me downstairs, and was surprised to find that all was well, minus a mess and a of course pee, cause what escapee, doesn't pee to mark that they were here.
I found later that Carli chewed tiny holes all over the Aayla blanket I made for Elenya. So now I need to buy more yarn to fix that, ugh.
Fast forward to this morning, kids come downstairs and I hear them say, "Ohhhhh the dogs are out!" ugh. This is not good. I have a mess in my living room with craft things, that I got an itch to get out of the basement late last night, and then wore out, couldn't put them away.
Thankfully it's just binkies, her toys, and then cheap yarn, Encore, and that cotton stuff sold everywhere. But still... I actually needed that yarn, and now I have to buy it again, and I can't actually get the Encore here, it's what I got in Des Moines ages ago with Darci. beh, dogs suck. er or more specifically, Carli. Cause Logan just lays on the stuff, Carli devours it.
I'm an insane woman and considering a trip to the Illinois border on Saturday for my uncle's wedding reception, my Dad and family will be there, but man that's a couple hour drive (twice! in one day) alone with four kids... more scarily, alone with Elenya in the car, who may decide to scream the entire time.... she wouldn't do that would she? I need some sort of guarantee. I know I could cop out and say that I just can't, its just too much with a small baby, and that I may go crazy if she decided to scream, but still, it would be nice to go and we haven't seen many in a long time... we'll see how the week goes, so far I feel like pjs at home on Saturday trump 5 hours in the car....
"Mommy can I have a haircut?"
"Sorry son, not right now, can't put baby down, can't make a sandwich, and can't finish a shower...... as soon as I get baby down.... I will try."
He needs a haircut, I need to do this, but really just want to pay $16 bucks and have it done at the mall. uh. We'll see, I have an eye appointment tomorrow (going to try contacts, cripes am I nuts?) and if it goes well may sneak over there for the little man.
You know when your baby cries and cries, and there seems to be nothing wrong, and nothing to calm them, and you can't even hear yourself think... and then suddenly they stop crying. Suddenly whatever you were doing at that moment, becomes your routine, and you do it over and over again, just for that little bit of quiet... Well me and the kids were watching a show, who knows what I missed half of it, and then someone said "If i could turn back time" and wham, that song by Cher was in my head. I looked it up on you tube, and then the amazing thing happened... she was quiet, she was calm, and she was awake... strangely the song does seem to work, unfortunately it's not a favorite of mine, so I'm already tired of it, but I'll take Cher scantily clad over the crying. believe me, you.
I finished the Blossom knit that I cast on Mar 30th, I finished it shortly after and then took all this time to seam and applique. I want to finish the Anouk seaming and applique.
And my friend Kris gave birth to her baby, a girl, Nora. Elenya and Nora were crying before we laid them down by eachother. When we laid them by eachother, Elenya stopped crying immediately and got this look. I would love for the girls to be friends and when they graduate, we can show this picture of the first time they "met".
A cable sock I'm working on, it's a DYO (design your own), and I'll share the pattern here once I finish.
Herringbone Bootees from Zoe Mellor's book, I adapted it to be kind of like a sock and made them itty bitty to actually fit her feet.
A few more
Miss Pickle loves looking at her mobile, and is totally getting interested in her surroundings.
Happy Fourth of July early, cause I doubt I'll be back here before then. Sure to be a busy weekend for a lot of people, not sure yet how busy I want to be. Maybe I can get some of these "Zelda" hands for the carseat... rofl. These things are absolutely ludicrous looking, without a doubt. I want to come up with some wonky contraption. Maybe they work, but I can't help but laugh when I see these things on websites.
I want to go to a baseball game this summer. I was looking at Twins schedule, no good teams at home until August, which could be good timing to actually make it up there. Wish I could of gotten up to see Boston play though. White Sox play Boston in July though, so we'll see what happens. July is like here right now, so I doubt I'd make it that way in time. I miss concerts too. It's been a long time since I've done things I enjoy outside of movie theatre (took allt he kids, including Miss P to see Kung Fu Panda, one kick butt movie!), and dining out, and coffee shops... I want a little action, like Six Flags, but will have to wait until next year. I won't be leaving little one with anyone, anytime soon.
Should probably go do something productive like laundry while Miss Pickle is calm and hiccuping.
