Year: 2005

Busy, Busy Week

Sarah Carolyn, General

20051117_snowbunny.jpgI’ve had stuff going on every night this week: Monday I had a rehearsal, Tuesday I took a needlepoint class, Wednesday I was in a recital. So tonight I stayed home instead of going to Sit & Knit, because I’m just really tired. And tomorrow I have yet another rehearsal. I’ve really overcommitted myself this month.

This morning we woke up to a light covering of snow on the deck, so after breakfast I stuffed Carrie in her bunting and let her wander around in the snow. She absolutely loved it! We weren’t going to buy her boots or a snowsuit this year, because we didn’t think she’d like the snow. Since she did, we picked up a pair of boots at Target this evening – this way she won’t ruin her everyday shoes and her feet will stay warm. I think in a few weeks when the snowsuits go on sale we’ll have to buy her one of those too. And I’ll just have to staple her mittens on, because she figured out she could take them off and play with the snow barehanded. I think the fact that they’re thumb-less is frustrating to her, but the smallest sizes of mittens all seem to come thumb-free. I suppose if her hands get cold enough she’ll stop taking the mittens off.

Dr. Teeth

Sarah Carolyn

Carrie has been sleeping poorly, and I even brought her to the doctor this afternoon to have her ears checked – they’re fine, but her four front top teeth are all “ready to pop through” as he put it. I just hope they pop through soon, because the sleep deprivation is killing me! I swear it’s worse now than last year at this time, because I know she can sleep through the night, she just won’t. Not that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her – I can’t imagine what it must be like to have your mouth hurt to the point where you can’t sleep, and not know why.

We really don’t like giving her Motrin on a regular basis, but it does seem to help, and I suppose if I was in enough pain that I couldn’t sleep I’d take something. But those teeth had better come through soon…

A Case of the Mondays

Sarah General

Before I left the workforce to raise my child, I would have told you that Mondays were so hard because it sucked to have to go back to work after not working for the whole weekend.

But now I don’t work outside the home, and I don’t have a weekend away from being a mom, so why are Mondays still so hard? Even Carrie finds Mondays hard, protesting her nap and generally being cranky all day. Today seemed particularly difficult, probably because I played hookey for much of Saturday.

Mondays just suck. I’m glad it’s almost Tuesday.

Apples, Peaches, Plates and Utensils

Sarah Carolyn

Carrie picked up two new signs and a spoken word yesterday. She can now sign and say “apple”, and she figured out the sign for “bath”. Oh, and she recently learned the sign for “peaches”, too, although that’s a dangerous sign. Instead of signing it on her cheek, she signs it on the side of her head…which is really bad if she’s already had some peaches and her fingers are sticky! It’s funny, we couldn’t get her to repeat “apple”, but she said it clearly as she signed it, and then grabbed an apple out of the fruit basket on my parents’ counter. My mom thinks Carrie knows how to verbalize a lot of words, but waits to say things to us until she can say them perfectly. I don’t know when she’d be practicing, though, because we can hear her over the baby monitor whenever she’s in her crib.

In other news, Carrie now gets a plate at dinner instead of having her food put directly on her tray. I was expecting plates to go flying across the kitchen, but you know what? She does really well with it unless she doesn’t want anything on the plate or she’s done eating. She’s also learning how to manage a spoon, and a fork in very closely supervised circumstances. I know all of this is good and important, but she looks so grown up it makes me a little sad.

Shopping Spree

Sarah General

Have you ever had a day where all you planned to do was run one errand, and then somehow it was night and you had been out all day? My mom, Carrie and I were just going to one of the (not so) local yarn shops to pick up three little ladybug buttons I had ordered for Carrie’s ladybug sweater. Of course, I bought more than the buttons: two pattern books and one skein of yarn to swatch.

By then it was lunchtime, so we went out for lunch, and Denis met us there.

We decided to send Carrie home with Denis so we could run a couple more small errands – Babies ‘R’ Us and JoAnn’s. My mom needed a shower gift and I needed yellow thread.

When all was said and done, we had to bring dinner home since we were out so late! And I now have the patterns, fabric and notions to make two sets of pajamas and a Christmas dress for Carrie, patterns for clothes for her doll, a set of kids Thanksgiving dinnerware, and a Christmas gift for Carrie. I did feel a little guilty for abandoning Carrie and Denis for much of the day, but it was a lot of fun to go shopping without leaving a trail of goldfish crackers and hearing comments about my shrieking daughter everywhere I went.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Sarah Carolyn

20051111_bunting.jpgIt was pretty chilly this morning when we left for our tour of the ice cream shop at the mall. (Yep, that’s a benefit of being in the MOMS club – ice cream right after breakfast!) Thankfully, Carrie’s new bunting arrived just a couple of days ago. It’s a Land’s End fleece bunting, and although it was a PITA getting her in and out of it (well, mostly in) wherever we went, it definitely kept her toasty. I’m hoping it will get easier with practice. I’m also hoping that her fall coat will be enough for above-freezing sorts of days, especially those with lots of errands! I think I’ll use my coat choice as a basis for hers: if I can wear my light corduroy jacket and not be freezing, her fall coat will be fine; if I need my quilted down parka, she needs her bunting.

I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with how quickly I got my LE order: I placed it Saturday night and it was in my hands after lunch on Wednesday. (Good timing, too – when the UPS truck pulled up, I opened the door to swirls of snowflakes!)

Carrie & Snoopy

Sarah Carolyn

I realized after my post yesterday that I hadn’t ever gotten a picture of Carrie with her Snoopy doll, so I snapped a couple today. It wasn’t too hard, since she made a beeline for him as soon as I put her down in the living room after breakfast! Oh, and she’s wearing a super-cute Zutano outfit my brother got her last year. The weather and the sizing have finally cooperated so she could wear it! (I love the ears on the hat!)

20051110_snoopy.jpg

The Great Fabric Hunt

Sarah Crafts

Carrie got a largish Snoopy doll for her birthday, along with his own set of pajamas. The pajamas are royal blue with white paw prints, and are a rather thick knit fabric – like a very soft, light sweatshirt material. And there’s a hat, too, which Carrie loves to try to put on her own head. She absolutely adores Snoopy in his pajamas, and frequently carries the hat around with her, if not the whole dog. So I thought I could make her a set of matching pajamas (with a hat, of course) if only I could find similar fabric. Right. I can’t even find the same weight knit fabric at JoAnn’s, in any color or pattern, let alone something that coordinates.

I imagine this must exist somewhere, I just need to find it. Look out internet, here I come… (I wonder if the company that made the Snoopy pajamas would sell me some remnants? Of course, shipping might be kind of pricey, since I can’t imagine they were made in the USA…)

Voting, Haircuts and Shoes.

Sarah Carolyn

20051108_voter.jpgHave you voted yet today? Carrie did! (The sticker you can’t read in the picture is one of those “I voted today” stickers. Silly overexposure issues!) She actually did help me vote, too: I brought her into the booth and she helped me pull the lever for the curtain back when we were done.

OK, so how bad is my hack job on her hair? I now know why it is that people go to school to cut hair: it’s really, really hard! Oh, well, at least it’s out of her eyes, and it’s only hair, so it will grow back – hopefully before Thanksgiving! I was thinking that since it had only been three weeks since her first haircut, there was no way I was going to bring her to the salon every three weeks, and how hard could it be to just trim her bangs? Yeah. Famous last words. Good thing she’s too young to be traumatized by it.

You know what’s really cute, that you would never think would be cute before becoming a mom? Being up at 5 AM trying to get your baby back to sleep, and having her point to one of her shoes on the floor and say “sh, sh, sh” over and over again. She definitely knows the word “shoe”, as well as “socks” – that one she says as almost a “ts” sound. I kind of thought that ‘s’ sounds came later, but Carrie seems to be really into them. Then again, she has a complete obsession with shoes and socks, which I’m sure is going to cost us a lot of money when she gets older.

Perfect Fall

Sarah Carolyn

20051104_swinging.jpgI was thinking this morning about what a perfect fall it’s been. The leaves have stayed on the trees in all their glory for longer than I can ever remember, and it’s been unseasonably warm. (Of course, this is all changing as I type this, as I’m sure the howling wind is stripping the trees bare and bringing us the cold weather we’re supposed to be having.)

We took full advantage of the wonderful weather these past few days and went outside every morning to play. Mainly, this involved either tasting leaves and rocks, or swinging. Carrie absolutely adores her swing. She would carefully make her way down the little hill, tromping through the yellow leaves, and reach her arms up to the swing to say “OK, Mom, I’m ready now.” In fact, there were a few times I thought she wanted to get out, so I’d take her out, carry her to the middle of the lawn and put her down…but she’d turn around, carefully make her way back, and reach up to the swing again.

I’m a little sad, because we’re going to have to put the swing away for the season soon, and she’ll probably have forgotten it by the time spring rolls around. But then again, she’ll get to rediscover the joys of swinging in the lovely warm spring air!

It really has been a perfect fall. The best I can ever remember.