Umiko

I can hardly believe it - we are in single digit days until we move into our new-to-us home. Friday, the 29th, is our contract closing date. This is the point in blogging when I have to restrain all the nasty things I have to say about the sellers, because I may very well go off the deep end and honestly, it's just not nice. Why do I want to rip them to shreds with words? Well... we got our hopes up that we wouldn't have to live in our hotel for the full 50 days (that's almost two months, people! UGH!). Then, two weeks ago our realtor let us down as easily as she could after confirming that the sellers are "overwhelmed" and that we shouldn't plan on having our household goods delivered until the 29th or after.

I'm so glad that we spent half a day shopping the Easter sales for flooring, otherwise the news today would have been even more frustrating. The good news is that my husband actually approved of the deep purple carpet I was not-so-secretly lusting after for the bedroom. That, and we found extremely discounted carpet for the living room and saved 75% on the laminate flooring. Although we spent at least $60 on gas money shopping around over the last two weeks, we estimated that we saved roughly $1,500 on flooring. Totally worth it! I am so excited that I am going to have a real dirty-work art space downstairs for clay working and tattooing.

Ah yes, and the bad news is that the help we were hoping to have won't be there. My father-in-law was supposed to fly in this weekend to help us rip up flooring and install the new, but we were very sad to hear that he went in for surgery early this morning to have his gall bladder removed. Apparently he was experiencing some horrific abdominal pain last night before checking himself into the ER. Thank God it wasn't something more serious and that they were able to operate quickly to remove the stone-filled gal bladder and stop the infection that was settling into his liver. My husband has a few friends who may have been able to help, but the outlook on that happening is looking pretty bad right now.

I've been steadily knitting. I finished an interesting little tshirt from the current Interweave Knits magazine, I'm 80% done with the modified Coachella tank top and plugging away at a few rounds here and there on a hat. I can't believe how much I have knitted in the last two months. I think I'm making up for all the time I spent in Michigan not knitting.

The older that Lucas gets, the less that he's interested in me playing with him. So... I knit and talk to him while he plays by himself and we talk about what he's doing. His vocabulary skills improve every day and most days it seems like he is just overflowing with the desire to communicate every interesting detail of his life. Nowadays I have very little guessing to do when it comes to his needs and wants, he is capable of communicating so much to me. I am so taken aback by how quickly he learns, most of the time all I can do is smile like only a proud mother can and relish every moment of his personal journey and discovery of the world. His joy is my joy, his hurt is my hurt, his accomplishment is my pride... Being a mother is (for me) so spectacular and fun that I will never find the words to describe it properly.

One of these days I'll have my laptop hooked up to the internet again and I'll finally be able to start posting most photos of my knitting and progress on the house. I have the feeling that this year is going to be very full and very fulfilling.

Some days I think I only survive because I know nap time or bed time is coming soon. My son's temperament changes at the drop of hat lately. I've been chalking up the moodiness to teething, the battle that never ends. I know that this will eventually pass, but then what? Terrible twos?

I've noticed myself getting increasingly frustrated and fed up with meal times. I know that I haven't been sleeping enough by choice and this is really been affecting my patience level. Strike one for Mom right there. Lucas came out of a 6-week long phase of refusing almost all finger foods and was back to pureed meals. Awhile ago he came out of that (literally, one day to the next everything changes!) and he had a few good weeks, now we're back to extreme picky eating. I've been reading endlessly about the experiences of other mothers of children this age and realize I am far, far from alone on this topic.

Lucas is refusing to being spoon fed which cuts out his super healthy yogurt and fruit mixes I make him for lunch most days. That also means forgetting about ground up adult dinners from the food mill. You'd be surprised how few choices there are when it comes to soft finger foods and how quickly they become tiresome for a baby. It's maddening because Lucas went from packing on pounds to dropping into the 7 percentile for his age. He has only gained ONE POUND IN FOUR MONTHS!!!!!!

It's disheartening to spend hours a day preparing the healthiest food I can come up with that include things he likes, attempting to feed him and letting him feed himself and then the slimy aftermath of the clean up process. I've taken to duct taping his bowls to the tray and allowing him to at least try spoon feeding himself. There is food in his hair, on his face, in his ears, under his bib, in his lap, his tray becomes an artist's palette of color, the booster seat/highchair is covered and the floor and anything nearby is splattered with whatever he's (not) eating.

Lucas will eat some bread, crackers, bites of a whole banana, and endless amounts of all kinds of cheese willingly, but my regular standbys of scrambled eggs and diced fruits are no longer on his choice of menu. If he were still gaining weight, I wouldn't be concerned, but he's not. People are starting to comment that he's small for his age. I'm just about at my wit's end and ready to try new things.

Some of the suggestions I've read online are:

-Ignore him while he eats. I do this sometimes anyways. I play darts, clean the kitchen or do something where I can still see him.

-Offer only one food. This goes against everything I know about a balanced diet, but at this point, I have to try everything possible that might have worked for someone else.

-Cut back on fluids before meals. Because Lucas is still on-demand breastfed and refuses cow's milk, he often drinks quite a bit of water from his sippy cup.

-Try Pediasure or some other baby shake. I am very anti-fake food and formula types of stuff, but again, desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

-Let the baby graze on food all day. Nice in theory and I do this at times, but a lot of foods don't have a long life-span unrefrigerated or covered. Bread gets hard, eggs and dairy spoil. And we have dogs who are always on the lookout for scraps of food - this is probably the hardest part of letting him graze.

Normally we have most meals together, but this seems to make him less interested in eating as of late. A couple of times I have set his booster chair and tray down in front of the TV with cartoons and he has happily eaten anything offered to him. I hate doing it, I think it forms a bad habit of mindless eating that could possibly lead to obesity later in life, but I have to do what works right now.

I keep reminding myself that this will pass. I was a horribly picky eater until I was in my teenage years and I am healthy and turned out just fine. What I need to work on just as much as different methods of feeding Lucas is my ATTITUDE. If I'm short with Lucas, appear frustrated and irritated, I know I'm not making it easier or enjoyable for him and therefore shooting myself in my own foot. As I mentioned earlier my lack of sleep has really been affecting my mood and attitude for the worse, so I need to gain a few extra points in the self discipline section and get some more shut eye.

Deep breath. I know I'm not the only mother who has faced the "My child won't eat," battle.

Fireworks are exploding in my house right now. My husband is at the re-enlistment office putting in his request for our next duty station. We got lucky and the one we wanted is open. Yay! Now we're just waiting for an answer and a date. I love the "journey", but knowing the destination is major plus.

Secondly, I was on Ravelry replying to a post about useful knitted baby items and instead of bombing the thread with my reply, here's my list for future reference for mom and baby:

• Hooded towels
• Washcloths
• Wash mitt
  
• Bathtoys (knitted over a floating toy/ball)
• Bath toy hanging bag
  
• Highchair cover
• Stroller cover
• Shopping cart cover
• Bibs with pockets
• Blocks
• Placemat
• Boppy cover
• Changing pads
• Baseball/sun hats
• Toy bag
• Squishy rug
• Wall art
• Mobile
• Soft bath things for mom because it hurts "down there"
• Frozen meals
• Frozen cookie rolls
• Knitted animal/colors/alphabet book
• Diaper bag
• Baby shoes drawstring tote
• Color wheels & b/w toys for newborns
• Legwarmers/knee protectors
• Sleep sack
• Usual array of hats, booties, mittens
• Hood/scarf combo piece for warmth without strangulation
• Burp cloths
• Pacifier case
• Corner protectors for tables and legs
  
• Stackable rings
• Blanket (duh)
• Tank tops for summer (harder to find in stores)
• Dresses (tend to be expensive)
• Rocking chair pillows
• Wrist knitting bag for sling mommies
• Nursing necklace
• Mommy bandana or headband
• Nursing cover cardi
  

Non-knitted items:

• Mini food chopper
• Baby/toddler cook books and food prep specs
• Eating and drinking utensils and accessories for all stages
• Pumping accessories (bags, drop-ins)
  
• Nursing pads (expensive!)
• Pads
  
• Cool packs for "down there"
• Donut to sit on
• Diaper Genie refills
• Diapers and wipes galore
• GCs for baby-related stores
• GCs for photographers/photo processing
• Travel coffee mugs for safer drinking
• A gigantic bottle of liquor because she'll need it!!!! Just kidding.

I'm sure I'll be adding to this list over time and as new things occur to me. These are some of the things I would have liked to have had, things that friends have requested the most or things that I wish I would have had time to make but couldn't because I was busy being a new mommy myself. I hope someone besides me finds this list useful!

In 19 hours my son was born one year ago. He was born to me, his father and in the presence of his grandparents. It was the best day that the four of us got to spend as "five". From the moment I knew his precious life was growing deep inside of my body I loved him with a love I didn't know I had the capacity to experience. Fierce protection, incredible wonder at the creation of a new little human being, undying joy unspeakable..

In the middle of the night my labor pains woke me and my life has been dramatically changed since. I would do it all again without blinking. I would endure every moment of disgusting morning sickness, every hormonal mood swing, every stretch mark, every personal sacrifice, every uncomfortable prick of the needle, endless swollen ankles, sausage fingers, sleepless nights, hellish back labor and contractions, every tear, every drop of blood, every day of miserable teething, every diaper change, every step not seen over the belly... I would do it all again knowing I would have my precious son in my life at the end of it all.

This last year has been full of household changes, changes in priorities, changes in schedules, changes in habits, first smiles, first punches at toys, first kicks, first words, first tears, first tiny fists clutching my fingers, first kisses, first cuddles, first bites of food, first teeth, first steps, first falls and endless other joys that will forever be bright, shining little lights of wonderful memories.

Happy Birthday, Lucas! I can't wait to wake up to my birthday boy and to bake him a yummy first birthday cake! I hope your day is half as good as mine ;)

This Mother's Day was about as chipper as the last. Here's a list of things I could have done to make it better:

-duct taped my mouth shut
-gotten a babysitter and left the house all day alone
-stayed in bed and slept
-stayed in bed and knitted
-stayed in bed and read
-refused to acknowledge the holiday at all

Any of the above would have been better than the actual day's activities combined.

My dishwasher pooping out on me topped everything off. Now I can look forward to several days of dishes to be hand-washed tomorrow. Yay.

Life has a way of getting busy! I haven't been blogging because I've simply had a lot to do recently. Lucas is teething and is, more or less, literally physically attached to me 50% of the day. When I do have some time online I try to catch up on my favorite blogs, keep in touch with email and search out good couponing deals. As Lucas gets older, his demands on my time increase. So my house may be light years away from my standard of clean and I may never have clean socks again, but at least I am content knowing that my time is being invested in something precious and worthy.

I spent the last two days preparing homemade baby food for the next couple of weeks. I've introduced Lucas to all the commercial organic baby foods that Gerber offers (except meats), which was my plan to determine what foods to prepare for him at home. I have to admit that it was quite the ordeal. Firstly, in an attempt to support the local farmers, I visited the Farmer's Market down the road. The salesladies were grim-faced, but the sweet potatoes and apples that I brought home completely made up for their moods. But I'll get to that shortly.. 6 potatoes and a dozen apples cost me a little over $6. $6 equals roughly 5.5 double packs of Gerber foods.

In numbers, that equals about 28 ounces of food. I didn't measure exactly, but my output was much more than 28 oz. Though the financial savings is a huge plus because of how much Lucas is eating now, it takes second place to the fact that I want to offer Lucas the best, freshest food I can find him. This is just another aspect of hands-on mothering in my opinion. I'm not a Hamburger Helper kind of cook, so I feel like I can offer Lucas homemade just as readily as I offer my husband homemade meals from scratch.

After the Farmer's Market trip I drove back home and stole my husband from his woodworking in the garage. We drove to The Fresh Market in Newport News and it's been a long time since I've been that thrilled about a grocery store. If a grocery store can be beautiful, this place was. How nice is it to shop to the sound of subtle classical music and pleasant lighting? Very, if you ask me. The selection of organic food was lovely. From the organics I picked 4 each of two kinds of pears, a 5-Lb bag of carrots, and a colorful mango. From the non-organics I picked up two ripe avocados for Lucas, two containers of strawberries and two pluots (a hybrid apricot/plum fruit that I've never seen) for the hubby and me. I think we spent a little over $30. It was an interesting experience and I thought the selection of products was unique. I've been shopping on base for too long.

The mango and the avocados were no brainers. Cut, pit, scoop out meat. Each fruit fit perfectly into my small food shopper and within 30 seconds I had baby puree. I mixed the mango in with Lucas' morning oatmeal today and he loved it. I had just the right amounts to fit into small freezer bags. I'd hoped to put the food in ice cube trays for easier portioning, but for the life of me I couldn't find them! After the foods froze I put them on a cutting board and cut them into squares with a very sharp knife. Too easy. Eat that, Gerber!

Tomorrow, time willing, I'll post more about my baby food making adventures (read: messes). I took some photos of the process.

My days go by so fast it makes my head spin. I probably don't accomplish that much, but I try to concentrate on major things. Take care of my body, my family, and my house. Socialize. Knit. You get the picture.

The other day I did several loads of laundry, felted bowls in between loads and went for a two hour walk with a friend and my son down by the sea wall. We got some very cute photos of his two-month birthday. For awhile I was making lame excuses for not working out. Stupid excuses like not having proper footwear. The last pair of sports shoes that I bought was way back in 7th grade when I wanted to join the track team. I owned them for 11 years. I quit the track team before the first meet. Running sucks. I finally threw my Adidas away when we were moving from Germany to Virginia and I realized that I was hanging onto .. well, trash. Plus, my plastic tote with shoes was absolutely bursting at the seams and the whole scenario was ridiculous.

Reminiscing about footwear : here's a photo of the first pair of socks I ever knit. Back in 2005 I was stuck in Marmaris, Turkey with nothing to do after the tourist season had ended. I had vague plans of possibly staying there on a permanent basis, even if that meant taking the ferry to Greece every six months to renew my tourist visa. (And I swear (crossing my fingers) I was not the girl hiding out with the Russian chick in the bathroom when the Turkish cops came looking for illegal workers.) I was working as a tattoo artist for a friend of a friend of my ex-boss. After months of working up to 14 hours a day, mostly tattooing and sometimes selling jewelry, I was bored out of my mind in the coldest winter Turkey had seen in 50 years. All hopes of living it up in a warm climate for the winter went out the window.

On the weekends I taught my boss's ten-year-old daughter, Sezan, English. I adopted a kitten and I taught myself how to knit socks on DPNs. I simultaneously had two websites open - some picture tutorial to guide me through the steps and a free generic sock pattern. Somehow I managed to wrestle 5 needles and a ball of yarn into two, equally sized and very slippery socks while huddled in front of a space heater. Two months later while recovering from surgery, I knit another pair of pink and orange striped socks. Those were the only pairs of socks I ever finished. I have two loners hiding out, one still on 0-sized needles because I lost my pattern notes and another gigantic I-broke-up-with-him-before-his-socks-were-done sock. One of these days I might get over my new sock-knitting phobia and start again.

Try as a might, I could not find wool locally in Marmaris, the yarn stores only carried acrylic. I still have most of a ball of the green/brown yarn left. I'll probably never use it, it's more a souvenir of a time past. I think it's kind of ugly now, anyways. Maybe I'll knit a charity hat and attach a story to the yarn. Or maybe I'll store it until the moths consume it. (Insert shrug here.) When I flew home to Germany two days after Christmas I left behind a pile of clothing so I could fit more yarn in my luggage. Me? A yarn-stasher in the making? No....

I. Am. So. Freakin'. Tired. Exclamation Point. Little Man's been going through another growth spurt. At first I was majorly happy that he hit the sack earlier than usual last night. While the heartbeat sound setting lulled him to Dreamland I was able to power clean, do laundry, sterilize milk storage bottles and receive a very much needed loving massage from my husband after recruiting his help with a few chores. The downside is that I didn't go to bed until after 2:30 a.m. and Little Man had me up every two hours and was wide awake by 7:30 a.m. Thankfully my husband took the baby downstairs this morning and I stocked up on another two hours of blissful, silent rest.

I think I'm finally starting to wake up now. The irritated sleepy haze has faded to around the perimeters and is disapating quickly. In about an hour my friend will be dropping off her two-year old for a few hours while she and her husband attend a wedding sans offspring. I would have been willing to take on their darling newborn as well, but as she explained, when it comes to babysitting it's better to split them up so no one gets overwhelmed. I think I probably have to agree.

In other non-daily-grind news, today I am on a mission to finally cast on something. My Knit Picks order is still on it's way, so I won't be starting my cardigan quite yet. BUT - I did find a very alterable pattern for a comfy raglan. Last week I bought 4 ginormous skeins of Rainbow Boucle on sale from JoAnn's with the intention of making them into my dad's wedding present. Then I started swatching and playing with it. Yeah.. no. The boucle is far too textured to lend itself to any kind of recognizable stitch pattern and I don't think I can stomach another straight garter stitch afghan on such a large scale. Yesterday I brought back two skeins of the boucle, keeping two for the raglan and accessories and picked up three sets of needles that I was missing. In the end I only spent an extra six dollars, so I'm glad I traded the yarn for sticks. Plus I managed to accomplish the whole trip in under an hour which saved us all from another baby break down.

In closing: check out this amazing Mario rug!

I'm trying to get back to a few of the activities I enjoyed pre-baby - such as going downtown to knit with the ladies on Wednesdays and getting out of the house at least once a day. Yesterday I conquered the art of stuffing the stroller into the back of the truck and toting the baby around with me and K while browsing the craft and book stores. Miraculously he slept the whole time. The downside of the 3-hour outing was that we all came back famished and slightly dehydrated, but it was well worth it.

Everyone has something different to say about when it's okay to start taking your newborn in public... Some say a couple weeks, a month, six weeks and then some simply don't care. Well, the way I see it, if it's okay that I bring my three-week-old newborn to pediatrics and have to expose him to dozens of germy, snotty little sick kids, then I don't see the harm in taking him to places where the chances of getting sick are significantly less. I figure it's another one of those issues that I, as a mother, have to feel comfortable about doing.

Beyond just escaping the confining quarters of home and the rinse & repeat cycle of nursing-diapering-napping, the highlight of yesterday was probably picking up the new fall issue of Knitscene (yay for 40% off coupons!) and falling in love with 9 projects at first glance. Seriously, I've never wanted to knit so many things out of one magazine. Generally there are a couple of ideas I like per magazine, but the fall issue has so many wearable knits I don't even know where to start. Here are the top six - in the order I'd like to knit them.





















I'm probably getting in over my head knitting-wise though... I'm waiting to receive my yarn order from Knit Picks so I can knit the Short-Sleeved Cardigan With Ribbing from the Fitted Knits book by Sefanie Japel. On top of that, yesterday I picked up four large skeins of Rainbow Boucle in red/burgundy that are destined to become a late afghan wedding present for my father and his new wife. Of course, I have no idea how I'm going to find the time to knit everything.

On July 13th Lucas Ryan was born into this world. It's amazing how different life has been since the day our son was born. I thought mothering a newborn would be more difficult, but happily it's been mostly smooth sailing. I think we might be adjusting to some kind of routine now, but every day has been an unpredictable adventure. There have been many laughs, moments of tearful anxiety and so many more overwhelming emotions.

The most beautiful part of being a mother so far has just been holding him to my chest and enjoying him.