Kitchen curtains

The only rooms in our house that we haven't painted are the kitchen and bathroom. I think both rooms intimidate me because there is so much that I would like to do to them both that we just can't afford . . . so I avoid doing anything.

But then last week I was at the Fabric Warehouse just down the road, and found the most fabulous Waverly stripe fabric . . . on sale for $4.98 a yard! I had been thinking about doing curtains for the kitchen (the ones up now came with the house and aren't really my thing), and finding that fabric made up my mind for me. Our kitchen has always seemed kind of monotone and boring to me, so I wanted to brighten it up a bit and add some color. Also get rid of the valance and get just a little bit more natural light in there. Voila!

Before:

After:

And of course, don't forget . . . November 1st I will be doing a drawing for a pint of my peach salsa! Just become a follower of my blog and you will automatically be entered to win! (Hmm, sounds kind of car salesman-y, but someone really will win.)

In the middle of the night . . .

"In the middle of the night,

I go walking in my sleep . . ."

~Billy Joel, River of Dreams

I don't really remember a time that I didn't have to wear glasses. I do remember hearing the occasional "Four eyes!" . . . I also remember the time my glasses broke and I had to wear duct taped glasses until my new pair came in. This was way prior to today's glasses in an hour or less, and it was a rough couple weeks of third grade. Not cool, Mom!

I remember getting my 9th grade pictures taken . . . when I brought them home my mom asked why I wasn't wearing my glasses and said that I should be proud of how I looked. I got contacts in 10th grade, and was in the bathroom when another girl came in and said "Wow, you're pretty without your glasses!" She was right . . . come on people, who can look attractive with 90's style huge thick plastic glasses on?!

Of course it doesn't help that my prescription is literally 20/1100. Yes, what someone with 20/20 vision can see from 1100 feet, I have to be 20 feet from to see without "visual aid." Doesn't bode well for poor little Sophia and Jude! When your prescription is that bad, it brings new meaning to the words "Coke bottle," with or without compressed lenses.

Being practically blind (ok, exaggeration) has it's advantages, though. I've learned to function in a haze when I don't have my glasses on. Pre-contacts I danced the lead role in Coppelia sans glasses en pointe (Swanhilda could NOT wear glasses!). And now middle of the night duties? Piece of cake!

When your newborn gets you up five or six times a night, you just do what you need to do by rote. First time up you've only just fallen to sleep in the first place, so you have that disoriented-after-nap feeling going on. Second time up you've gotten a couple of hours and feel the best you are going to feel that night. Third and on?

You know how the beauty magazines say that you shouldn't squint or rub your eyes because you will get crow's feet?

Yeah. Right. How about you try to take care of an infant in the middle of the night, and you tell me if you start squinting. Forget just at night, every time the kid cries you'll be conditioned to squint and grab a clean diaper while unfastening your nursing bra. Potentially embarrassing in the middle of WalMart.

By the time you get up for the fourth, fifth, and sixth time at night? Then you aren't squinting, but it's because you don't bother opening your eyes anymore. And that is when my terrible vision comes in handy. Since I can't see without my glasses, it isn't much different than having my eyes closed.

So now they start crying, you swing your legs out of bed and head to the crib, hands outstretched zombie-like. You reach the crib, and grope around for the kid. Pick the baby up, rotate around till you feel the chair behind your legs, plop down very unladylikely.

Pop the kid on one side, feed. Time for the diaper change.

Unsnap the pjs, pull off the old diaper. Slide the new one under (of course this is all happening on your lap to make it that much harder) and then you have more groping going on, this time to make sure you fasten everything right. And now for the hard part.

Since you unsnapped the pajamas a few minutes ago, the snaps have multiplied. Now instead of six sets of snaps, there are 247, and none of them match up. So you sort of fasten them up, and it's time to feed on the other side.

Eating done, time to go back to bed. Up from the chair, one arm holding baby and the other reaching . . . there's the crib! Feel around to make sure you are putting the kid in bed and not dropping them on their head.

Do zombie walk back to bed.

Repeat.

When you can do it all without opening your eyes, then you know you've got it. Between kids one and two you forget that you get so adept, and then when you are back in that place you wish you didn't have quite so many opportunities to gain that particular skill set. But if you ever wonder how you would function if you suddenly went blind (yes, I have thought that scenario out and plan to develop batlike sonar skills), you just have to have a newborn for a couple months to know you'd be just fine.

Mama's boy

Jude is a mama's boy.

There is no other way around it. Given the option, he would prefer to be glued to me 24/7. And I'm coming around to it, after fighting it and (yes, I admit it) resenting having to wear him all the time.

No one has been able to adequately explain to me why Jude ONLY naps when he is in the Moby wrap on me (and sometimes on John when he is home). Our wonderful pediatrician is stumped, and she usually has a good answer for pretty much everything. Even my sleep bible, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," doesn't have an explanation. HSHHC does promise that by 4 months we can start sleep training him, though, and that makes me happy.

Jude has started this thing where he wakens every hour from 3 a.m. on . . . unless I bring him into bed with me and let him sleep on me and eat occasionally, and then we sleep peacefully until 7:30 a.m. Grrr. I know there are those who love the family bed. I am not one of them.

That said, I keep going back to "Why?!" Why does this kid scream bloody murder when he is tired and anyone but me is holding him? Why does he insist on sleeping ON me 12 hours out of the day? Why does he wake up in his crib crying but then not want to eat?

He misses me.

He loves his mama so much, and is so sad to be out in this big scary world, that he just has to cling to what he knows . . . and what he knows is me. It has taken me over two months to figure this out, but he just needs a little extra time to adjust. He needs this "fourth trimester" to learn that he is safe, and figure out just how to function in the real world.

Whatever this is . . . fussiness . . . colic . . . tired baby . . . I'm sure I will have more days of being frustrated with wearing an extra 13 pounds 2 ounces (just weighed two days ago!), but I also think it is absolutely sweet that he loves his mama so.

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And on a completely different note . . . on November 1st I will be drawing a name out of all of my followers, and one lucky reader will win a pint jar of my famous (ok, maybe not sooo famous) peach salsa! So those of you who have been reading my blog on the sly, now is your chance to become a follower and just maybe win a great prize (other than just getting to follow my blog)!

Back to crafting

For the past two months, I had been having crafting withdrawal. Because of wearing Jude all the time, I hadn't been able to touch my sewing machine for more than a minute or two at a time, and projects don't get finished very quickly that way! But then in the last two weeks, he has been cool with being in his bouncy seat between naptimes, and I finally got my craft on!

I finished a dress for Sophia, and made shoes for Jude . . . followed by four more pairs of baby shoes for my new niece and a friend's baby shower . . . ever so cute! Too bad I didn't take pics of the other shoes I made, because they were so cute and girly.

Sophia kept flopping down onto the sidewalk to look at her skirt all spread around her . . . I think she felt very Laura Ingalls Wilder . . .

I'm not sure why the rolling around was necessary, but it was pretty cute.

My powerhouse Featherweight sewing machine . . . I do 99% of my sewing on it.

"I want sumpin'!"

Ten months ago I never dreamed I would be writing this post. Ten months ago Sophia was labeled "Failure to thrive," and had fallen off the growth curve, down to the third percentile for weight. I look at pictures of her then (following a UTI and kidney infection, and about the time she was diagnosed with severe asthma) and am struck by how skinny she was . . . gaunt baby!

Now Sophia is a healthy, thriving two year old. Back up over the 25th percentile for weight, and growing like a weed. And her eating? It's like we have a teenage boy in the house. A VERY picky teenage boy, but one that can eat her weight in peanut butter and jelly and Annie's mac'n'cheese, her preferred menu.

Back in the day we used to finish up Sophia's dinner with a big scoop of peanut butter and a serving of Haagen Dazs. Not anymore!

She is still picky, but she knows what she wants. And doesn't want.

Just in the last week John and I have started making her try what we are eating. I didn't really think it was worth the battle before, but I have gotten a little tired of being a vending machine at dinnertime, so it's my way or the highway.

Last night we had black bean burgers. No amount of cajoling convinced Sophia that she wanted to try her bite of burger, so I finally dipped it in her Ranch dressing, held it in front of her mouth, and said "Eat it!"

And lo and behold, she did.

Beans were quickly followed by a swig of milk to help get the bite down, but at least she tried it. Then nice Mommy brought out the grilled cheese sandwich I had made in anticipation of Sophia hating the bean burgers.

Sophia has started this new thing related to eating. She says "I want sumpin'!" . . . code for "Give me something to eat now, I'M HUNGRY!"

"I want sumpin'!" is the most frequently heard refrain around our house these days, as Sophia is hungry 24/7. Unfortunately, it is usually followed by a very specific request . . . these days it is pancakes.

Sure, Sophia, let me just drop everything and make you pancakes. At 3 in the afternoon. While your brother sleeps on me in the Moby for another 2 1/2 hour nap. Right-o.

Another fun food behavior crops up every Wednesday, when we spend the day at my friend Carrie's house. Sophia has learned that Carrie has more fun food then we do . . . at her level anyway. She can open the pantry door and get into the Cheez-Its on her own. Hello! Fun times when you are two! If she opens the pantry at our house she just finds recycled ziplock bags . . . the fun snacks are much higher up.

So then when Mommy bans her from getting into Carrie's pantry, she follows Carrie around with her empty plate (where the heck did she find that???) saying "More food, Miss Carrie, more food."

It's like she's Oliver Twist, but I promise I really do feed the kid.

Then today we finally had to have the "You can only eat off the floor at our house" talk. You know the one.

We were out at my breastfeeding support group and I had forgotten to bring Sophia a snack. Duh. She was being a very good girl, but kept saying "I want sumpin', Mama!" or "I wanna go home" (because home is where the food is). Group started to wrap up, and as I packed up I saw Sophia put something in her mouth.

"Sophia! What are you eating?!"

She held out her hand and one of the other moms took a piece of chocolate chip cookie out of it. I asked the Snuggler where she got it, but no answer, she just kept chewing. So I picked up the cookie bit, and found that it was rock hard, obviously leftovers from some group that had met in that particular conference room a LONG time ago.

This is the kid that won't eat my delicious homemade black bean burger, but she'll eat the decrepit month-old remains of a chocolate chip cookie off the floor? And this group meets at the hospital, so this ain't any old floor!

Her tongue hasn't fallen off yet, so I guess she didn't pick up any flesh eating disease. We really have had the "Only eat off of our floor" conversation now. You know, dropped cheerios and the like . . . the thirty second rule.

I love that she gives me something new to laugh about pretty much every day. And going from "Failure to thrive" to eating off the floor? I guess I'm cool with that.

Happy Birthday, Sophia!

I know, her birthday was two months ago. But I never posted a birthday blog post, because I was kind of busy popping a baby out and then tending to him . . . so here it is! I had to at least get some pictures on here, because her cake/cupcakes were so darn cute . . . if I do say so myself. See if you can figure out the theme . . .

We had a family birthday party first, followed by a friend party a few days later. By the time we got to the friend party, Sophia had the blowing-the-candles-out thing down pat. Also the opening present thing . . . she's a pro now and will assist at any other person's birthday party, help requested or not.

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After much effort making puppy ears, they stayed on for about four seconds! Oh, well. NOT going to be making those again, the fabric is torture to work with! They were so very cute, though!

Love the kids hovering over the "buffet!"