Gark Turns Twelve with Brownies!

Happy Birthday, Gark! Hard to believe you're 12 already! When did that happen?

It's a wise child who chooses a heap of caramel brownies instead of cake.

Although caramel brownies might just make the birthday boy a little logy. How many did he eat? And look at the size of that one!

they don't make you logy if you viciously attack them, though

whoops, my lame step-count is exposed! I better get walking!

For Linda

"Faces Of Seven"

She wouldn't smile for me, but she has a beautiful smile, her whole face crinkles up.

Color is off on the ones I didn't use the flash.

Click for full size

Merry Christmas

Thank You, Lord, for the gift we did not deserve and could never earn.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Big Brother Buzz

What's the Buzz all about?

Why is this any different than countless other happy big sibling new baby pictures?

Buzz hasn't wanted to hold Seven. He hasn't been acting jealous or angry or anything but pleased with her, he obviously enjoys her, but he hasn't wanted to hold her. Sometimes he's just been busy and indifferent, other times he's claimed he's too small, or she's too small. Once or twice when he's been curled up next to me I've moved her over so we've held her together, and he's been happy with that. But he's never asked, volunteered, or said yes when someone has asked him.

So this morning just the little boys were up and I needed someone to hold her just for a moment, while I grabbed something for them. Sputnik was busy and couldn't be bothered. I asked Buzz to sit in the corner of the Big Recliner, and tucked Seven into his lap. And the look of pride that lit up his face was delightful. He might not ask, and might not volunteer, but he was very very pleased to help out this morning.

It made my day.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful ...

Oh, the weather outside is frightful ...

But cookies are always delightful ....

And since we've no place to go ...

Let it snow,

let it snow,

let it snow ...

Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.

"Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
I get real frustrated and I try hard to do it and I take my time and it doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
It's like I concentrate real hard and it doesn't work out
Everything I do and everything I try never turns out
It's like I need time to figure these things out..."

So I've been working on a knitting project for months ... it started out with a concept for which I had no pattern and some changes I wanted to make ... I figured out in my head what I thought I wanted ... a long, tube-like stretchy knit "sock" with a hood, to snugly swaddle a new baby in.

My first attempt was a gift for my neighbor. I knit a 21" tube, then used short rows to curve around to the front for a hood. My initial big problem was that my binding off was too tight, not stretchy like the rib, and so the hood opening ended up being a non-stretchy face-sized hole.

Here's the first one, which my neighbor was gracious enough to put on her baby for a photo shoot as well as critique.

Here's my neighbor's Baby S. quite content and happy -- once he got into it.

In addition to the face hole being too snug, she also recommended making the body of it wider/stretchier, because it was a long way down the tube, a little difficult to get baby's head all the way into the hood. She admitted that it was difficult enough that she probably wouldn't put him in it again; I was thankful for the honest critique.

I had already started on Swaddle Sock 2.0 when she brought baby S. over in 1.0 -- and the 2.0 I was working on was stretchier, but with a much thinner yarn, so the overall circumference was less. (I thought I'd taken a picture of 2.0, but I can't find it. It looked like a very nice sweater sleeve.) I decided to put 2.0 on hold and start over again, with thicker yarn and more stitches for a wider-yet Swaddle Sock.

Which I finally finished, this morning.

I've been nearly done since a day or so after Seven's birth, but I was stuck on how to do a kitchner stitch graft at the end, to seam up the hood, if I was knitting in rib and reverse-stockinette. It took me a lot of searching and two sample swatches to figure it out. I'll post that discovery in another post, though.

Anyway, here's the finished Swaddle Sock 3.0

And here's little Seven, enjoying it muchly ... once she got into it.

The good news is that, once in it, she was snug and content and slept quite nicely.

The bad news is that, like version 1.0, even being stretchier and wider around, it was still a long squirmy road from the bottom end up to the hood. And newborn babies don't really like having their little faces covered up. As we struggled to gently pull it down over her and move her to the hoodie end, it twisted, so the hood ended up not facing front, so by the time we were all situated she was none to happy. Until I nursed her and she snuggled right down, quite pleased.

But if I can't figure out an easier transition to swaddled down in it, we may not use it much after all.

Maybe that's why there were no patterns online for what I thought I needed?

Baby in a Basket

Played with baby and basket and a camera for a little while today. Mostly to give it a trial run. I should probably give Seven a bath and some moisturizer and foof her hair before any "real" pictures ... some of the pix came out okay from a mom-taking-pix perspective, but grainy from a would-be-photographer perspective. I didn't try too hard figuring out and fiddling with settings, I took a bunch just on 'auto' today ...

Anyway, that's not the part you're here for, so I'll give you the important part, the best four pix. These are the little thumbnails from my flickr photostream, so click on them if you want the bigger size.

Love And Chicken

Pardon the belated entry ... my time at the computer has been one-handed and my brain is lagging about a week behind.

Friday was our anniversary. We'd already gone on our anniversary date a few weeks ago, just to make sure we got one in. But The Grand Lunar surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers!

Red tulips and deep blue irises (iri?) ... and an "I love you" balloon which almost got stolen as a toy, but i reclaimed as mine. :) The flowers came as buds, so it was nice to watch them unfold. I didn't take pictures of the unfolding, but I wanted to.

i am one very very blessed woman. I love you, Grand Lunar! Thank you for 16 wonderful years, 7 beautiful children, and a lovely surprise bouquet.

In other Love news, here's Tobi-wan holding his baby sister ... he's so gentle and attentive!

In "Chicken" news ... I have been thinking of trying to take some of those artsy fartsy sleeping newborn in a basket pictures. Only... I'm chicken. One, because I'm not really that great of a photographer, I don't really know how to deal with low light, no flashes, wiggly babies, things like that. And two, because I don't really have a photographer's studio type set up, with soft lighting, mysteriously blank rooms, and a plethora of baskets and fuzzy blankets. Plus our house is cold, and I don't want to freeze the baby.

Speaking of the baby, we're going the with blog nickname of "Seven" - since she's the seventh (of nine in our whole family, even) ... so ... if you happen to refer to her in your own writings or comments, if you would use her blog name rather than her real name, we'll keep her real name between those of us in the know, from now on. I'll be going back and editing out the real name from everywhere that's within my control.

Thanks!

Ain't She Sweet ...

You're probably all waiting for an update.

She's slept fairly well the last two nights. And pretty much all day. Sleepy babies are hard to wake. I remember Gark slept the 1st 2 weeks straight. I spent today nervously hoping she's getting enough to eat, with all the dozing going on. But that means she's also very content and pleasant these days. To the delight of those who adore just sitting and holding her. She does have some content alert times, too, just looking around at the world ...

Isn't she just the sweetest thing?

As for me, I'm still recovering. Hard to find the balance between returning to necessary real world tasks and not doing too much. It's tiring. But we're doing alright. :)