Little Mr

A January Spring

January 31, 2016 Marie Leave a Comment

Strange weather we’re having here – snow and ice, but then lovely 50-60° days thrown around. They’re lovely breaks from being indoors all the time, though everything is quite muddy so we’re not exactly getting outdoors every chance we can just yet.

But the Little Mr is getting more grown up and responds to questions more and more, so when you ask “Do you want to go bye bye?” and he nods his little head in that forceful, full-body nod that he does, well… you put on your shoes and your coats and you go somewhere. Today it was the zoo. It wasn’t overly busy, despite the warmish weather, but we also arrived early while everyone else was in church (my favorite time to go do anything on a Sunday, to be honest).

Fall tulips

September 21, 2015 Marie 1 Comment

Last week I bought myself some tulips, and my mom some pretty yellow roses. My tulips are faded and gone, now, but they were pretty while they lasted. I might walk down to the flower shop up the street and see what I can find there to replace them. I really do love having some fresh flowers at the table, especially since we’ve been actually using the table (whereas before baby we ate a lot on the couch – lame, I know).

The Little Mr is napping in his crib at the moment. I have mixed feelings about it. After a year of him napping in our arms, I’ve become quite attached to those afternoon snuggles. At the same time, though, he is becoming more and more his own little person and he doesn’t want to be held to go to sleep anymore. A lot of afternoons it’s a struggle of trying to get him to settle down enough to sleep in my arms on the couch and most times he just wants out of my arms only to turn around and cry and reach for me. It’s been… stressful. And I don’t have the patience to deal with this stage of wanting down but wanting up at the same time. It’s exhausting. So, crib naps are where we’re headed. He’s really, really awesome about going to sleep at night in his crib, so I’ve been trying to transition him to the crib for naps a bit more. So far, so good. But I miss those easy naps and snuggles together, and it makes me incredibly sad to know that they’re no longer happening.

On the bright side… I get time to post here. Or knit. Or clean. Or whatever I want to do because I don’t have someone at my heels 24/7. Today I’m cleaning. Or will be after I finish this post up. We’re looking at houses, though we’re not quite sure if we’re going to actually put ours up for sale. The sweet little place in the country I mentioned before has issues so I think it’s officially off the list. I can deal with drywall and floors and a bathroom needing finished, but there’s standing water in the corner of the basement. You can’t really have a basement here without having water at least occasionally (our own basement has been known to flood in bad storms when the city’s storm drains get overwhelmed) but standing water in a corner when there hasn’t been any rain for a while is suspect. Anyway, I’ve been trying to purge more and clean up more things around the house just in case. It needs done if we’re going to have people coming through our home, and it definitely needs done if we’re going to pack all of this up to move. The less to pack and move the better, and since I’d like to downsize our square footage that means getting rid of some bigger things, too.

Let’s see… what else have I not had a chance to write about…

My annual knit group trip is coming up and I’m much more excited this year than last. That’s probably the lack of postpartum hormones, mostly. We’re going to dye yarn again, and I think that might just become an annual thing, too. I placed our Knit Picks order for it but I didn’t get any yarn; I did get some of their Full Circle roving in the Wolf colorway, though. I want to play with dyes over the grey color since everything else is always on white.

The Mr saw the Atwood cardigan on my Knit Picks catalog cover and kind of casually mentioned that he wouldn’t mind wearing something like it. So, of course, I had to immediately order the pattern and yarn to make him one. I’ll have to start it ASAP, though, if I’m to get it finished by winter. Maybe if I’m super fast with it I can get it done in time for us to get a family photo done and we can all wear the hand knits that I’ve made for it? That’s probably being overly ambitious, though.

I’m a sleeve seam away from being done with my Solaris cardigan. It feels a tad snug in the arms, but blocking might help. If I can be bothered to block it, I mean – most knits I just seam and wear unless they absolutely need soaked/blocked.

I think that’s it? I have sewing to share but it’ll have to wait until later. I need to go clean while I have time and the kid is asleep!

One.

August 8, 2015 Marie 3 Comments

A year ago today this kid made his grand appearance. This last year has been rough with many highs and lows, but we survived. We’ve all survived. But I’m especially proud of myself and that survival thing.

This kid is officially one and we celebrated with Peter Rabbit and carrot cake. I’ve promised the husband that I won’t go so overboard on the future. I really couldn’t help it, though – Peter Rabbit is just about my favorite kids book ever and Declan really loves the bunnies in the books we have and the one I knit him. And, truthfully, I didn’t really go THAT overboard – I had probably 100 different ideas for food and whatnot and ended up keeping all of that simple. So, really, he should thank me for not doing all the things I wanted to do.

Peter Rabbit will be making an appearance from now on every Easter, especially since we don’t celebrate the religious aspect of the holiday, so I can’t wait to dig all these decorations back out next Spring (see, it can’t count as going overboard if you’re going to actually re-use the decorations every year for a holiday, right?). The bunny cake was… eh. I don’t understand how to bake with these fancy pans – the instructions say to make the sides of the cake higher than the middle… but, hello, gravity called: they’re breaking up with your silly directions. I don’t know, maybe I’m doing something wrong? The one half of the bunny had broken ears, and there was no way I was going to be able to shave the sides down to piece this thing together to make the 3D cake I imagined. But, you know? I don’t even care – it looks damn adorable sitting on a bed of kale on my cake plate regardless.

Summer, finally

July 20, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

With so much rain and dreary days it hasn’t much felt like summer on the days I’m home. Today, though… today is different. Today is officially a summer day. Hot, sunny, with the sun beating on your back. Finally I could blow up the baby pool and go outside with the Little Mr and play. He wasn’t much interested in sitting in the pool, and that’s probably my fault because I didn’t fill it up this morning for the water to warm until now, but it turns out he really wanted to play in the sprinkler setting on our hose attachment. So we sat there while he ran his hands through and picked up the hose and waved it around, splashing himself in the face and then getting angry about it and throwing it back down on the ground. Then it was back inside for something cold – frozen pureed pear in a mesh feeder for him, and coconut cream pie ice cream for me.

Zoo-ish (What can I say? I like birds.)

April 12, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

We made a trip today to the zoo. I’m fortunate enough to live within easy driving distance to the fantastic Columbus Zoo. I don’t think I ever truly appreciated it until I went and visited other zoos elsewhere. We really do seem to have one of the best zoos, at least when it comes to Ohio – it isn’t like I’ve traveled elsewhere to see if there’s any other that compares.

It was the kid’s first trip and it went pretty much as expected – he’d rather chew on the wood at the displays and didn’t really care about the animals. It was busy, though, since it’s one of the nicer days we’ve had in a while on a weekend. We didn’t get to see the whole zoo, but I don’t mind because we got to see my favorite: the aviary. I know, I know – the zoo is packed full of other animals to see and ones probably more interesting than some North American birds. I can’t help it. I like birds. We have a zoo pass for the season, so I’ll probably try to go back on a weekday in hopes that it’s less busy so we can get closer. Maybe if we go a few times the Little Mr will get more into it?

This evening I’m going to cut into my fabric for my next Sorbetto. I wore my black one today under a green cardigan and I absolutely love how comfortable it is to wear, which really cemented my desire for MOAR TANKS! So here’s hoping this next one turns out as awesome as the first!