Step Into My Thimble

I finished the Katja pattern from Knitty for Maeve, and she got to wear it for the first time yesterday. It’s in Lamb’s Pride Cotton Fleece, color Antique Lace. I have some really nice dark purple CF too, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough. In the 3-month size this pattern takes hardly any yarn, so it probably would have. Maybe I’ll try it for the 6-month size, though when she’s big enough for that, it probably won’t be an inferno outside anymore. More views on Flickr.

Two days ago Maeve discovered her right hand, and yesterday I watched as she figured out the left one too. I even caught her looking at her left foot. I love witnessing these little milestones. I’m often torn between staying home and finding a job, but I keep thinking I’ll only get to raise my baby once…

She likes this aquarium playmat thing a lot. It lives at my parents’ house, where I was hiding out yesterday due to their air conditioning and stocked refrigerator, and the fact that they are out of town. Peace and quiet, and cool, makes for some awesome napping!

The family in the back yard, Memorial Day weekend. Note the international library logo, inkjet-transfered onto her shirt after messing with the colors in Photoshop.

It’s getting downright sweltery around here, so we had to suck it up and install a window airconditioning unit in the bedroom. Because a hot baby is not a happy baby, and a hot mommy gets even less sleep…

Lots of other mommy-bloggers have given us posts that catalog a day’s events, and they are so interesting to me! I decided to do that too, so yesterday I kept track. I nursed 14 times, but only went to the bathroom a few. I lost track of diaper changes. The whole story is kind of long, but read on if you’re wondering how a mother (me) and an almost-6-week-old (Maeve) spent a day.
Read the rest of this entry »

This picture doesn’t at all capture what I wanted: the very best of all the different types of baby sleep sacks that are out there. None of the other pictures turned out good, and then, she did a numero dos.

Now that Maeve is 5 weeks and some change, we’ve tried a lot of them. This one, a garage sale score from the weekend, is hands down the best one. It has a sort of kimono styling with snaps at a v-neck, and then buttons all down the side, and it’s made out of a heavyweight knit with an herb print. It even has those little fold-down hand covers. This would have been perfect for coming home from the hospital. The thing that annoys me most about so many baby clothes is how the collars or necks are always bunching up in her face! And this one never does that. Perfect.

Some yard photos for you, since it’s been lovely weather for the last two days.

I uprooted most of my bulbs to make way for more annuals. I haven’t decided what to replace them with yet.

This is our perennial bed. It needs some demarcation but for now it’s functional. It includes hostas, day lilies, forget-me-nots, daisies, echinacea, evening primrose, and some others.

The buds on the icelandic poppy. Soon!

I planted hens and chicks in the rock face at the front of our yard.

We found this concrete urn under the porch. It now has lavender in it!

Some of you may have heard of (or maybe you own) the Librarian Action Figure. Or maybe the deluxe model. This toy is modeled after a real live librarian named Nancy Pearl, and my sister gave me one of them for Christmas last year.

Nancy Pearl herself came to our public library this week for a talk, and I was determined to go, baby and all. We went, and the talk was lively and entertaining, primarily about how her books “Book Lust” and “More Book Lust” came to be. Though they are geared toward an audience of readers, and the audience at that talk was mostly middle-aged women of the variety who populate daytime book groups, I think Reader’s Advisory is a really great area of librarianship. If only I were more of a reader…I am too slow. And now that I have a kid I’ll probably never finish a novel again. Oh well. Now look what Maeve has! M.I.B. and autographed, for all you collector-nerds.

In other news, I finished a Jester hat for the baby yesterday. This is from “The Yarn Girls Guide to Kids Knits” and I love it. It caused more of the desperate hand-sucking by the baby, so maybe she doesn’t love it. Her little head will grow out of it super fast, though, so I won’t be able to torture her with it for long.