Mystery Baby

9/6/12

 

I was trying to do something I saw on Pinterest, but I think I waited too long to get the teeny, sleeping newborn.  Oh well.  Princess Sparkley enjoyed it.  We'll be posting some of her photo shoots with Mystery Baby soon.



 

 

9/7/12

Mystery Baby and I napping together.



39 weeks. Gone. 40 weeks. Gone.

39 weeks - August 2

40 weeks - August 9

And, for comparisons sake:

40 weeks with Mystery Baby  -  2012

 

40 weeks and 1 day with Baby X/Little Guy  -  2008

Somewhere, I have a picture of me in this gray shirt on my due date with Princess Sparkley, but that pre-dated us owning a digital camera and I'm not tracking it down right now.

Baby Rag Quilt

I finally got around to making and finishing a baby blanket for the Mystery Baby.  I made a strip rag quilt.  And he has a Ty Pluffies monkey (Dangles) who I'll take his picture with each week/month like I did Little Guy and his alligator.

front

back

38 weeks

July 26, 2012

36 weeks

Things you should say to a pregnant lady:
My doctor - You don't look nearly big enough to be 36 weeks.  (Measures me.) But you measure 36 weeks perfectly.

Things you should not say to a pregnant lady (especially when her due date is still far off):
Random lady at church - You look like you're finally ready to pop. 

34 weeks

6/28

I think this shirt makes me look smaller than I am.

What's been going on...

6/1/12   Me at 30 weeks and 1 day.

6/3/12     We went on a family walk/bike ride to the park near our house and B got bitten by a giant Mastiff.  He thought it mean that I gave him a dog shaped ice pack.

6/5/12      Buddy got the flu which meant his nice Daddy moved our teeny tv and the Game Cube box up to his bed and Buddy spent about 6 or 7 hours playing Lego Star Wars.

Little Guy has been putting this USA magnet puzzle together once or twice a day for a few weeks now.  The other day I came across Buddy teaching him how to play Risk with is.  For those not in the family, Risk is the board game that all the brothers and brother-in-law play when the family gets together.

PJ Shorts

This is my first attempt to sew clothing (other than two skirts I've made for Princess Sparkley) and a pair of shorts I sewed in 5th grade or so.  PS's turned out best although the waist band is really low, hipster-like and if she gains more than three pounds, they probably won't fit her.  All three of their shorts would probably stay up on their own without the elastic waistband.  And now I've learned from my mistakes (hopefully) and I have three more pairs (one per kid) to sew this week.

 

From here, here and here.

 

Happy Mother's Day

Little Guy and I went grocery shopping yesterday and all on his own he was super interested in everyone with flowers and wanted to buy some white ones. So he picked out a bundle of white carnations for me for Mother's Day. Princess Sparkley made me a felt corsage and a candy flower bucket (at Activity Days). Buddy created a Lego corsage, and some giant Lego flowers for me. And I baked myself this cake.

Dress

 I've always seen the pre-shirred fabric in the store and wanted to try making Princess Sparkley a summer dress out of it.  She had a few when she was a tiny girl that I loved.  I saw this fabric the other day and bought 24 inches hoping that would be enough.  It worked, but next time I think I'd buy 30 to be safe, this top is a little tight on her.  My seam is about 1 1/2 because it's hard to straighten/flatten out the top part to get it right.  All I did was sew it together in a tube and add straps (from leftover bias tape from her Easter skirt) and the green bias tape border at the bottom.

Bucky Balls

B's sister's family introduced us to Bucky Balls when we visited them for New Year's. We quickly became addicted after playing with them for hours and then seeing H successfully recreate the cube. A couple weeks passed and our very own Bucky Balls arrived in the mail. Yea!

1/19/11
Here's B once he finally mastered the cube.
And a picture of his outfit for the day. He decided to thin down some of his clothing, including one of his two pairs of pajama pants. So on this day, those pajamas were dirty and he resorted to this clothing ensemble.



1/20/11
And here's me after finally mastering the cube.


The kids also love Bucky Balls.


And some more of our creations (and cell phone pics me sent to H to prove our Bucky Ball abilities).

Lego Madness

Buddy got a TON of Legos for Christmas. He and B built all the sets and over the past weeks they've started to slowly fall apart from all the playing. So Buddy and B decided to rebuild ALL the Lego sets we have and somehow I got dragged into it too.

Here are some of Buddy's solo creations we photographed before we started knowing that we'd probably have to disassemble them for their parts. The "garden" is mainly Princess Sparkley's creation with some help from me and Buddy.



The rebuilding all started last night and was taking place in Little Guy/Buddy's room so everyone went to bed a bit late due to the Lego craziness.

Today we finished everything up, carried it all down to the table and photographed everything (proof that at one point we still had all the right pieces to build all the sets we have ... they'll get played with a lot and start to fall apart again in a few weeks).

Lollies

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things about going to my family's cabin in southern Utah was getting lollies. A Smarties-like, ball shaped (sort of) lollipop that we could always find in the little country stores. On our drive to Ohio for Thanksgiving we stopped at a Cracker Barrel to use the bathroom (and to buy an assortment of fun candy- B's new favorite= coconut patties). While browsing their candy selection I saw giant Lollies and bought some for the kids' stockings. Here they are enjoying them.

Tree Skirt

I decided this year we needed a real Christmas tree skirt. Not a bunched up fancy place mat or scrap of fabric. So, with the help of this, I created my own version:




The two smaller pictures on the bottom right are different stages of creation.

Oh, and I forgot to take a picture of the other side. I used a cute green flannel with tiny trees in little red and green wreaths so if I want, it's reversible.

Buddy's New Blankey!

I FINALLY finished Buddy's blankey. And it was actually rather simple and very quick. I got out all the fabrics (8 of them) that he picked out and ironed them one night. I was planning on doing a rag quilt with 5 inch squares but was terrified of actually cutting out all those 5 inch squares and lining them all up right to make it look good. Then I had the brilliant idea (thanks to Etsy) to do strips instead. (This helped too.) The next day I cut each half yard into 6 inch by 41 inch strips and had Buddy help decide how we'd put them all together. I didn't know if the front and back should be identical, or if we should create basically two different quilts. He ended up liking the layout where all the orange fabrics were on one side. And I eliminated one fabric that was more babyish and knocked the Nascar fabric down to only one stripe. I'm sneaky like that. And I sewed it all together. Here's the final product!


The orange side is the frayed side, so I guess the front. I really like how it turned out.


The back.


Folded in half so you can see both sides at once.


Zoom in on the one corner. I eliminated one row of the Nascar fabric (because I didn't really like it, and didn't think it matched well) and added a row of street sign fabric (that I only had a little bit of) and a rectangle of scraps from Little Guy's blankey fabric (since what started this whole mess was Little Guy stealing Buddy's tiny blankey I made to replace the burp cloths that had always been his blankeys). And the white fabric with little cars on it next to the navy blue and white stripe, is some of the tiny scraps I have leftover from Buddy's original blankeys, two burp cloths I sewed for newborn Buddy. He still has those burp cloths, they are in his bed or under his bed or scrunched down in the toes of his bed, they just aren't AS important as they once were.


Happy Buddy!

Trip South

We headed to B's sister's house on the 5th of July. As always, we had a great time and the cousins mostly enjoyed playing with each other.


At Kangaroo Jac's... a place filled with all those giant air filled slides and jumping things.



Everyone loved this place, but Little Guy LOVED it. He ran all over the place, didn't care if a sibling, cousin or parent was anywhere near him and was covered in sweat by the end. Unfortunately I didn't get any more pictures. We also went swimming at their neighborhood pool after dinner. Fun times.


The freeway we drive on to get there and back is a pretty major route for east coast, north/south travel. Our family has always been pretty good at the license plate game but especially so in the last 6 months or so. Buddy got this board for his birthday. He's an expert and most days beats B for the most license plates... this is an incredible feat that I've never accomplished. He even saw a Hawaii last week!! In Virginia. We had to drive back through the parking lot and make sure he wasn't lying to us. There is was, Hawaii. And we saw 2 Alaska plates at the Potomac Mills mall last week, which, according to my new book, Virginia Curiosities, is the most visited tourist attraction in Virginia. That's sort of sad.


This is what the board looked like at the end of the trip. The license plates still visible are the ones we didn't see. Those that are red, Buddy got. Blue are ones that PS and I shared. The ones flipped over so you can see the state capitol name are B's. Little Guy just yells out whatever we yell, most often California because there's a mini van from California that is always parked on our block and the kids fight over who spots it first each day when we get in the car.

Father's Day/My Birthday Events

B has been drooling over this add he found:


So I made them for us for Father's Day brunch.






And then on to my birthday celebrations:



Sweet Sixteen times two

Girls Night Out

Princess Sparkley is always a bit (read: very) annoyed that there isn't a Father/Daughter Campout. B tried to make it up to her the first year he took Buddy (2005) by camping out on our lawn with her. It lasted about an hour. As long as B was reading her books, she was happy. But the loud loud crickets terrified her, and so they came in for the night. She was almost three.

So we're really tried to make girl time fun during the Father/Son Campout. Two years ago a friend had a bunch of moms and daughters (and baby brothers) over. This year, PS planned a huge night for us. She made signs. She made me a shopping list. She planned out our entire evening. Sorry there are no pictures, I thought B had the camera (but he'd forgotten it and it was in the desk drawer all along). Here's how it went:

pizza and lemonade

As soon as the boys had walked out the door she was hounding me to put the pizza in the oven.

paint each other's nails

I opted for a pale, pale pink polish on my toes.

walk to our nearest ice cream shop for ice cream

She didn't stop talking all night. The girl had so much to tell me. One conversation included: when we puffed up our cheeks and held our breath, why couldn't we just breath the air in our cheeks?

watch Tinkerbell

Not to ruin this movie for anyone, but I fell asleep soon after Tinkerbell was "born" as a fairy, and woke up to find out she'd ruined Springtime and now had to save it. I asked PS, how'd Tinkerbell go from being this Tinker fairy, to being Peter Pan's sidekick, her response, "Oh, I know. I read it in a book once. I'll tell you after the movie." She also talked and squealed and bounced around throughout the entire movie.

eat popcorn

I woke up because PS suddenly demanded, "When are we having our popcorn?"

go to sleep

She went to bed around 9:45. I took a shower and then watched the PBS version of Jane Austen's "Persuasion" (thanks Lia!). When B got home he could see the covers were only disturbed on my side of the bed. He asked why I didn't sleep in the middle, he would have. I told him I didn't even think about it. Funny how people are different. Although, technically, he sleeps in the middle of the bed every night.

Weezer Concert

B and I went to a Weezer concert on April 30 at the University of Maryland for our anniversary celebration. Ben Folds was the opening act (B enjoyed it, me not so much). Weezer was awesome... if only the college students weren't all so lame.



It was outside in the football stadium, so my regular camera pictures turned out horrible once it turned dark... these are from B's phone.

Bad Mom

We just finished up a homeschool unit on plants by doing leaf presses. This is Buddy's paper. If you look closely at the top leaf, the words to the left of it say "BADMOM." This is because I told him we could only keep the leaves he used for a few hours, not forever. I'm sort of proud of him for sounding out his own words (he's sounded out "station" the other day by spelling "statstin"). But still, did his first on his own writing have to be bad things about me!?!