Some homemade is better than others

My recent knitting binge is finally slowing down because of the mixed success of this little number I'm calling Clown Puke. Slowing is a good thing because I really need to get going on Christmas and Mo's birthday plans. But back to Clown Puke. I improvised the pattern combining some details from recently made kid sweaters with some ideas I had while making several stocking caps. And the results are, well,...colorful. It's cropped and swingy which is good. Mo selected this yarn herself and then hugged and petted the skeins like  bunny rabbits for hours after purchase. Alas, she is less enthusiastic about the final product. We did a test fit, and she said, rather forcefully, "No, Mommy, take clown puke off me!” The heart is fickle. The sweater is definitely big on her and will fit better next winter. Maybe by then she will change her tune.



Last year Mo gave her cousins and friends a mix cd of some of her favorite songs. It was very well received. So we're releasing a new edition this season. Robb downloaded everything yesterday, and I designed the album cover. We might need to add What Does the Fox Say to the playlist though. Too trendy? Will it get old? No indeed, the Fox has a timeless quality: Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho! Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!



While we're on the topic of homemade, Robb made himself at least 3 kidney stones just in time for the holidays. One has passed, another will pass, but the behemoth pictured above is 10mm in diameter. That's 1cm. If you're rusty on your metric system, the stone is as wide as a dime (whoops, a dime is 18mm, so that was a wild exaggeration). Now before you start thinking that we have money coming out of our urethrae--that's the correct plural of urethra, I looked it up--let me just assure you that this bad boy ain't going anywhere on his own. I've named him Ebenezer because he's trying to ruin Christmas and also because Ebenezer means "stone." Okay, actually it means "stone of help," but this Ebenezer is only helping Robb to the hospital next week for some aggressive treatment called lithotripsy, which as I understand it feels akin to being beaten with a bag of oranges. Only much louder. Humbug, I tell you! Humbug!

[Robb will most certainly mention my naming of his kidney stone in his application for sainthood.]

Down low too slow

Robb dislocated a rib on Sunday. We didn't know what he had done to himself, only that his side was getting more painful as the week progressed. So he saw the doctor today. He'll start anti-inflammatory meds tonight and probably spend the next few nights sleeping in the recliner. In the meantime I thought I'd post a catchy little song about the injury. Since he hurt himself....(wait for it)....slapping someone five at a Ravens game. Too soon?

Robb folding laundry says to me

"For a minute there I thought these were your pants, and somehow I shrunk them horribly!"

Paint Snow Hill the long version

Click here to read the full post.

Thousands of finches

Each morning after Mo's been fed I wander into the kitchen in search of coffee. With the sounds of music and playing drifting down the hall I stand at the sink and sip. Just outside the window winter's cold blast surprised the hydrangea and made her drop her dress. Sheltered amid her naked elbows is a fat bird I have not had the presence of mind to photograph. He is two shades of grey: charcoal back and wings, lighter grey belly. Sometimes a mating pair of cardinals joins him in the sticks. I pointed him out to Robb and wondered what kind of bird it is.

"It's a finch."

No, I don't think so.

"Trust me, there are thousands of varieties of finches." That is probably a true statement if you add "in the world" to the end of it. This is another case of Mr. Science trying to bully me with his credentials when he's pulling something out of his ear. And if the topic wasn't birds he might have pulled it off. But he was trying to buffalo a girl whose favorite childhood book was the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds. I'm pretty sure my bird friend is either a bunting or a junco.

I returned from walking the dog and told Robb to check out the finches I saw on the walk. He leaned in close to the camera to see.



"Those are some really big finches."

Robb and Kevin circa 1983

Halloween costumes by Charlene. Awesome!

Juiced!

And 112 hours later we have electricity at our house again. Robb will arrive there later this afternoon to assess the situation and deal with the horror that is our refrigerator. Bless him. Mo and I will join him in the morning. Once we've set thing in order and I've gone to work tomorrow and Saturday, we're off to OC for the week. Some vacay will do us good.

You don't want to sit next to me at dinner...

...because I only have two topics of conversation these days: poop and boobs. Just think, if I wasn't nursing the baby I'd only have half as much to talk about. My life has been so overtaken by both ends of Maureen's digestive tract that Monday night when Becca called and asked me what was going on, she then had to listen patiently to a three minute description of an unusually full diaper before I let her tell me that Ernest proposed to her. (!!!) She must have been thinking, "When the hell is she going to shut up about the poop?"

Probably never.



This post here is going to be about poop. (Apropos of nothing, pictured above is Robb's birthday cake. Poop is not the secret ingredient.)

Last night at work I answered the phone with my little spiel, "Thank you for calling the veterinary clinic. This is Barbara. How may I help you?" A very familiar voice replied:

"OH.

MY.

GOD."

I knew exactly what Saint Robert* was talking about. "I know, right?"

New this month Maureen's digestive tract has matured so that she only poops every three or four days. But with great maturity comes great volume. When she finally goes, it's a doozy. Total destruction. And Robb, poor Robb. He still gags when he scoops Sukey's poop, and he's been doing it for over four years now. Until last night he had only dealt with the aftershocks, not the main event. I don't think he entirely believed me.

"I used nine wipes," he said. "NINE WIPES!" If you weren't sure, that's a lot of baby wipes. You can tell from the CAPS and the exclamation point.



In other news we celebrated Robb's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and my first Mother's Day while Angie was visiting. (More on Angie's visit to come...) I saw this ridiculousness appear in the margin of my Facebook screen. Really? I should send him a message? How about I just have a conversation with him? Since, you know, he's my husband, and we live under the same roof. Stupid social media.



I kept Robb's anniversary present for weeks in a box marked TOP SECRET PROJECT hoping to make him twist in the agony of curiosity. It worked for maybe a day. And then he seemed to forget about it. But when he opened it--a family tree--he was very happy. There is a ring for each year we've been married and a branch for our little sprout.

[*Saint Robert will chronicle the total volume of baby poop he's cleaned up--and the many times it has caused him to dry heave over the changing table--in section IV, article 14, items A through D of his Application for Sainthood.]

A quick tour

I'm writing today from the Fortress of Solitude, otherwise known as Southern Maryland, where I am all alone. Except for Robb and Sukey and little baby-kicks-a-lot and our neighbors who had us over for Wii bowling and pizza last night and my coworkers and friends. Aside from that crowd, though, I'm completely alone. Truly most of our family and loved ones are somewhere else, and we consider ourselves lucky to get them down to our wilderness outpost once a year.

In addition I've hit this weird pregnancy travel barrier. Every time I'm cooped up in a car for over an hour, I get very twitchy and start making a low keening noise that grows and grows like a husky dog waking up from anesthesia, until ultimately I am howling and my left ankle has blown up to four times its normal size and the baby doggedly attempts to climb into my chest cavity. When I finally get out of the car, I feel achy and cranky.  (I almost typed "achy and breaky.") And let me tell you: I am a real joy to be around at that point. Just ask Robb.

Since I'm not traveling anywhere again until Christmas, and you're unlikely to visit our house until after the baby is on the outside of my body, and the baby's room will never been this clean and organized once that happens, it seems like a good time for a virtual tour. Welcome to the nursery. (Click on the panorama below for a closer look around.)



Actually I rarely use the word "nursery" in reference to the baby's room. I spent ten adolescent summers working at plant nurseries, and I can't quite bring myself to think of the baby's room as a place for wet sneakers and sweat and the fetid reek of decomposition. Perhaps a few dirty diapers will help me see how they are analogous.



For our impending offspring we chose the smallest of the bedrooms, which was previously the room in which I painted and sewed and got my craft on. All of that stuff has been relocated to the underused second living room, where it now looks at me with stern disapproval every time I walk by and pretend not to notice the mess. Robb has less luck pretending not to notice the mess. He even went so far as to trip over a painting and cut his shin open on the corner of the frame just to illustrate how patient and long-suffering he truly is. Photos of the new craft room in disarray will be included as attachments to his application for sainthood.



For the moment we have the Congratulations banner from my baby shower slung across the windows. We intend to replace it with honest to goodness curtains. In fact I ordered a cute set of green ones, but apparently 42" times two panels does not equal 100". I didn't happen to notice this until I was standing on a chair holding up a curtain panel thinking, "This looks a skosh narrow." Foiled by math once again!



No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is Billy Bass in the corner right next to baby's first fishing pole. We want to introduce the child to taxidermied animals as early as possible since their petrified bodies are hanging dustily all over our house. Unfortunately this is the only one that sings "Don't Worry Be Happy."



I have been playing dress up, making little unisex outfits to go with baby's growing collection of sweaters and knitted vests. I picked up Easy Baby Knits by Claire Montgomerie on Wednesday and am psyched about getting into it. Although word around Ravelry has it that the patterns run a little large and that it pays to check out the authors blog for errata. Makes me so appreciative of knit designers like Cosy who use real live test knitters for all their patterns and then proofread them like the dickens. Sounds like just plain common sense, right? But you'd be surprised how many knitting patterns hit the street with nary a test, written by people with poorer math skills than me.



All of the dresser drawers are filled to the gills with receiving blankets and diapers and 0-3 months clothing.



So I hung all of the larger sizes in the closet. Robb just shook his head, exclaiming that his unborn child has a larger wardrobe than him. In all the angst he somehow missed the fact that I have arranged the child's clothing by size and then by color. If I have already rainbowed our bookshelves and my own closet, why should the kid have it any other way?