Category Archives: Photographs

Playing Catch-Up, Part Three: The Fibrey Update

I ended up knitting two of those lovely squishy washcloths during the Olympics. They’re seriously awesome to use, so I will knit more. Both my mother and my mother-in-law hinted pretty plainly that they’d like some for Christmas, too, so it’s a good thing I memorized the pattern.

Everyone in my online mum’s group did great stuff during the Olympics, and someone knit their first socks on a whim, which inspired me to consider it as well. I was rummaging through my stash of handspun to find sock yarn, and came to a screeching halt when I realised that I drop double-pointed needles left right and centre, I don’t know how to graft toes, I can’t read a pattern with any kind of reliability, and the phrase “turning a heel” makes me stick my fingers in my ears and go “la la la I can’t hear you.” So in the interests of keeping me excited about knitting instead of running screaming for the hills the way I did when I tried to knit a set of fingerless gloves four years ago, I decided to knit a second washcloth instead. Group enthusiasm is catching. Hanging out with a group of enabling knitters is dangerous in that kind of situation.

I am moving ever closer to socks, though, in baby steps. It’s like gradual exposure this way! First, I am trying Owlet-size legwarmers on double-pointed needles (hereafter referred to as DPNs), because I do not get along with DPNs. So far, I have discovered that I can do 2×2 rib with mostly no mistakes now, and KnitPicks Harmony DPNs make everything easier. But DPNs are still deadly slow as compared to how I knit in the round with circular needles, because I have to fuss with them in the pause between the stitches on each needle. Ceri lent me her full set of Knitpicks DPNs, and I’m going to have to buy my own. I have a single set of bamboo needles dating back from my failed wristwarmers, but they’re so dull that they’re driving me mad. I think I will get the 5″ set, as 6″ is just a wee bit too long for my hands. Practising with the DPNs is required, too, because I won a skein of pretty hand-dyed sock yarn in our Olympic knitting draw, and now everyone wants to see me actually knit socks with it.

I found a box of handspun and fibre at the back of Bria’s closet a few days ago. (It used to be my closet, remember, so that’s not as odd as it sounds. I do not have a secret, magical yarn store the opens out of the back of my daughter’s closet. But if I did, it would be called Yarnia.) In it I found 12 ounces of the wool/bamboo blend I’d ordered when I fell in love after spinning 56 grams that I got from Ariadne Knits a couple of years ago. I also found 4 oz of black Shetland that I ordered after spinning some that Bonnie gave me when she lent me her Schacht-Reeves for a month while she recovered from eye surgery. Two bags of fibre that I adore spinning! Twelve ounces of the wool/bamboo!

I also found two of the ginormous Bernat Handicrafter cotton skeins in a box back there, too, which is fabulous because it’s what I used for both my washcloths, and I was considering buying some and weaving dish towels with it. Now I’ve already got the yarn. (Next, I would like to find a box of misplaced time, in which I could actually spin, weave, knit, read, and nap, please. Writing would be nice, too.)

Finding it was like Christmas! I’m a little upset that I forgot I had it all, though. That does not fill me with confidence. Sure, my stash has split into in two or three different storage places for over a year, and it’s not like I’ve been checking it regularly because I haven’t had time to knit or spin, but still, I’d like to think that my memory is better than that, especially about fibre I was so excited about when I ordered it, because I loved it so much. I also found a couple of braids of indie-dyed spinning fibre, one of which I did miss; I was beginning to doubt the memory I had of buying it. This should be a lesson to me to photograph everything I buy and enter it into my Ravelry stash ASAP. That all came to a grinding halt about eighteen months ago ago (gee, I wonder why), although I can’t use that as an excuse, really, because some of this stuff predates that. More catching up to do, I guess…

Playing Catch-Up, Part One: An Owlety Update

I’ve had a growing list of notes to blog, so I’m going to separate them into two or three shorter posts. (I know you’re glad about that. My posts tend to be novellas. Well, maybe novelettes.)

About a week ago I found Owlet standing a couple of steps up the stairs. I whisked her down. Half an hour later I found her four or five steps up, trying to hoist herself up to the landing. So the next day HRH built another gate and hinged it to the bottom of the stairs. Walking at eleven months, climbing stairs at twelve. I am so not ready for this.

Having learned how to wave goodbye, Owlet is now applying it to everything that moves. She can point to the door and wave, saying “bye-bye” when we talk about someone leaving, too. The other day her local grandparents came to pick Sparky up for a day out, and when she was told that Grandma had to leave she made a very, very sad face, waved, and said “bye-bye” in a heartbroken tone.

She had a little celebration on her actual birthday with godfamilies and honorary uncles in attendance, and then another a week later for all her grandparents. Both were lovely. She got books and clothes and a couple of toys, some of which we had to put away for when she’s a bit older. Our gift to her at the first one was a stuffed lamb, because she loves baas, and for the second (although I didn’t bother to wrap it, they went right into the china cupboard) was a set of tiny teacups and saucers with a delicate rose pattern. They’re the perfect size for a child’s tea party — an actual tea party, not a dolly party. I found them at a thrift store while seeking a used canning rack. I shall keep my eyes open for little plates to match/complement them. These were the cupcakes at the first party:

Here she is opening some presents at her family birthday dinner:

And this was Her Owletship nomming on ribs at that second party:

I took her for her 12 month vaccinations last Tuesday. It’s three shots here, two in one arm and the last in the other. She didn’t bat an eye at the first two, and just made an “oi, what are you doing?” squawk at the third. Brave girl! Or maybe she just has my crazy high pain tolerance. The nurse was a bit taken aback at how calm she was. She had a reaction to it five days later, spots on her legs that migrated to her torso and arms, but they began fading four days after that. I was warned the spots might happen; they’re less common than the fever and irritability, but they’re also not uncommon. Parents are always warned, but I’ve never actually seen it.

Her molars. Oh good gods, her molars. Earlier this week, there were two nights in a row that were awful. She woke up every hour or two, crying. She’s been whingey and clingy in general, warmish to touch although the thermometer swears she’s normal, her appetite is a wee bit off, and she’s just generally miserable, not wanting to play or read or anything. You can’t put her down to get things done, because she just stands there and wails to be picked up again. Everything’s just wrong, all the time. It’s got to be the molars.

Also, she randomly caught a 12″ diameter ball that Sparky tossed to her in the backyard yesterday. Everyone was surprised. It hasn’t happened again. What has happened again in that Owlet has been bonked with the ball repeatedly as Sparky tries to replicate the experience.

Twelve Months Old – Happy First Birthday, Owlet!

A year ago, after two or three weeks of extremely frustrating prodromal labour, I woke up at 4:00 in the morning with the usual contractions and got up to walk around as always, then realized that finally, this was the real thing. Four hours later, we had a beautiful little daughter.

We had trouble those first five weeks, what with the undiagnosed tongue-tie and the major feeding issues related to it. And the emotional issues, too, thanks to the CLSC nurses pressuring me about her slow weight gain. On the other hand, we acquired a wonderful pediatrician who said we were doing just fine, who was (and is) thrilled to bits with how we handled things, so I think we came out ahead regardless. And everything was solved, as anyone looking at the terribly plump Owlet in months four through eleven can affirm.

Owlet can walk, do that stumbling toddler run with her arms out in front of her for balance (usually accompanied by a huge grin and a stuttering giggle), wave hi and bye (and has started doing it to things passing on the street and people she sees while she’s out), open the pantry and pull out a sleeve of crackers (and try to eat them through the cellophane, argh), splash some very impressive splashes in the bathtub, climb up two stairs (only if unsupervised, and she can’t get back down yet), slide off the chesterfield by herself (but not climb onto it), and handle sippy cups like a pro. She has darling little baby curls in that nondescript light brown/dark blonde colour, and grey eyes that are sometimes more blue and sometimes more green, like her dad’s eyes. She loves food so much that she stuffs whole handfuls into her mouth at a time at meals. She can use a spoon or fork once or twice at a sitting, but usually ends up accidentally dumping off what it’s carrying as she flips it over on its way to her mouth, and then drops the utensil in favour of her more dexterous fingers. We’re still working on slowing her down so that she doesn’t stuff a billion pieces of something in her mouth at once, then choke when she takes a drink or tries to swallow it all. Sometimes we get so cross that we take her plate away and put a single bit of food down for her at a time, but that frustrates her as well and ensures that no one can eat in peace. She has eight teeth, and we are fairly certain her molars are starting to move. She learned how to blow kisses on her birthday, but she doesn’t kiss her hand; she kisses her pointing finger and then points it at whoever she’s blowing kisses to.

She talks all the time. She’s at that delightful stage where she babbles in a lovely liquidy flow, and it actually sounds like a foreign language, complete with inflections and with facial expressions. She is especially fond of words that begin with the letter B, such as bye, ball, book, and baa. Cat, meow, woof, more, that (da), Mama, and Dada are in regular rotation. Today hat and Gryff joined the lexicon. She doesn’t usually repeat words we give her, but every once in a while she’ll do it out of the blue and it just sounds so odd. She’s better with books than she used to be, but she does turn pages very quickly, so reading the full story isn’t always possible.

She likes to roughhouse with Sparky and her dad and Gryffindor. If they’re piled on top of one another, she throws herself on top of them all, chortling. If anyone is lying down on the floor, she will try to tickle them (and because she is one, and her dexterity is not yet refined, this often means she pummels them with enthusiasm). Gryffindor has the patience of a saint with her, as she buries her fists in his fur and hauls up handfuls of him, chews on the tip of his tail, or drops her whole head into his belly and rubs her face in his fluff. He just lies there and purrs. She watched Sparky play with Gryff a couple of weeks ago, dragging a string around for him and dangling the Little Gryff toy for him to bat at. (Little Gryff is a small crocheted amigurumi Ceri made for Sparky that Gryff appropriated to carry around and sleep with.) The next morning Owlet found the Little Gryff in her box of toys, where it had been tossed during cleanup the night before. She pulled it out and toddled into the kitchen where the cat was sitting under the table. She crouched down and pushed the toy at him. We watched, fascinated, as she worked out how to dangle the toy from the yarn tied to it, then as Gryff finally clued in to what she was doing, and rolled on his back to bat at it. They played together for about ten minutes.

She wears size 4 diapers (we’re using disposables at night because she sleeps through and a cloth diaper just can’t handle eleven hours, no matter how we stuff it; the damp feeling wakes her up), size 4 shoes (although her toes are peeking over the end of her sandals, so it may well be size 5), and size 18-24 months clothes. She loves to eat crackers, cheese, bananas, watermelon, cherry tomatoes, peaches, and anything else I hand her. She loves to drink milk with her lunch and supper just like Sparky, and water during the day. Nursing is down to when she wakes up in the morning, and before her morning and afternoon naps, although occasionally she asks for a quick nosh in the afternoon before supper, or when she is very upset about something. HRH gives her a bottle at night, and that’s their time together. She used to fall asleep in his arms, but now when she’s finished the bottle she squirms, so her puts her down awake in her crib and says good night, and she beetles about and plays with her stuffed rabbits and reads her cloth books until she falls asleep.

The summer camp routine really helped structure her day. Now the day runs roughly like this: She wakes around 6:00, nurses, then has some Cheerios for breakfast while she plays, then has fruit as a second breakfast at the table around 8:30 or 9:00. She goes down for a nap around 9:45, and sleeps about an hour and a half. Lunch is at 12:00, and the afternoon nap happens around 2:30, again for about an hour and a half. Supper is around 6:00, and bedtime routine starts at 7:00. She’s usually asleep by 7:45, and sleeps all the way through the night now, as a rule.

She is great fun to be with, although she seems to be a bit of an accident magnet these days. In the past seven days there have been four incidents of broken glass, three of which have involved her directly somehow (a jar being knocked out of the fridge while she’s standing there looking into it, a floor lamp falling over while she tries to slip past it and the glass shade shattering, and so forth). She loves to pull toys out of boxes, gloves and scarves out of baskets, and dishcloths off rails. She is terribly social and loves to be out and about, especially in grocery stores and shops of any kind because she can people-watch.

We may be her world, but Sparky is her hero. She adores being with him, and will kind of stalk him with a low ongoing giggle and open, eager smile, her hands out to touch him. She wants to do anything he’s doing, and if he plays with her she’s in absolute heaven. We put both of them in the bath together the other night to play, instead of just dipping her in and swishing her around to get her clean, and they splashed one another and played with the stacking cups and giggled for ages. He kept giving her hugs and saying, “You know, having a bath with you is really fun.” He does get a little frustrated when he tries to build a full tower with her blocks for her and she knocks it down three blocks into the endeavour, but we remind him that he used to do the same thing, and that she is having fun no matter what.

The other day I carried Owlet in the ring sling at the library, as it was just a quick visit to drop off books and check the new releases shelf, so getting her into the stroller wasn’t worth it. I grabbed a book and was standing in line to check it out when she waved her hand at it and said, “Boh.” “Yes, book,” I said. “Boh,” she said, a little louder. “Yes, it’s a book,” I said again. Then she slapped the book good and hard, with a crack that echoed through the tiny, silent library, and squawked, “BOO!” with a huge grin.

You can’t shush a baby who has just gleefully identified a book in the library. I’m sure there’s a moral law against it.

(For comparison: Here is Sparky’s twelve-month post.)

More Brief Bits Of Daily Life

It is official: Owlet is walking. We have decided to formally confirm it as of Saturday. She’s been doing about three steps solo from here to there for a few weeks, of course, but Saturday she was following her brother around as he played with the cat and a remote-controlled R2D2, trying so hard to keep up with one hand along the wall or a table… until she finally got fed up, and just started walking determinedly after them. And now there’s no stopping her.

Saturday night was also the first time we left the kids alone with a non-family member babysitting them. Everything was peaceful and there were no hiccoughs. That’s a huge milestone for us, and opens up so many possibilities. Yay!

Among the wonderful things I received for my birthday, I got my very first pair of handknit socks from Ceri, about which I am positively giddy. It’s a lovely leaf pattern knit in a yellow and green Koigu yarn, the exact colours of willow leaves turning to yellow in fall. I adore them and I really ought to photograph them. I now need to start stalking the thrift shops for the perfect pair of shoes to wear with them.

Sparky is loving camp. There was an unfortunate beginning on the first day where the bell rang suddenly to signal the start of the day, and as he was already feeling trepidatious because he didn’t know what to expect and knew no one, he ended up in tears running after his first teacher and the rest of his little class as they all moved off casually, but the rest of his day was brilliant and he adores it. (I put a lucky penny loaded with love and kisses into his shoe to help him through the first couple of days, and I am told that it helped.) I wish we could afford to send him for all six weeks.

We’re working on slowing Owlet down when she eats. Most of the time she remembers to sign for more once she’s stuffed something in her mouth, so that’s an improvement. The other day we were in the car and I was passing bits of toasted bagel back to her. We had a run of green lights so there was a lull in the passing. She started making the “more” sign, but I didn’t see her, of course, because she faces backward and I was driving. She got very annoyed at me and started squawking to make me look up and see her making the exaggerated motion through the rear-view mirror. Hey, Mum, I’m doing everything right, and you’re not feeding me! What kind of reinforcement is this?

The Tour de Fleece spinning continues, and ends this coming Sunday. I plied and skeined my Teeswater samples, and I quite like them. In the top photo, the woollen-spun two-ply is on the left, and the semi-worsted two-ply on the right; in the lower photo, with the customary penny for comparison, the semi-worsted is on the top and the woollen on the bottom:

Stats for posterity:
Woollen: 16 wpi single, 10 wpi two-ply, 11g, about 28 yards
Semi-worsted: 36 wpi single, 20 wpi two-ply, 13g, about 75 yards

I don’t think I’m going to make it to the corespinning, because it would take a lot of time to find the right core yarn and decide on the fibre with which to wrap it, but today I started spinning my sample of the Cormo/silk blend Bonnie did that has been sitting in my stash for a couple of years now, and oh dear my. Zomg, people. Cormo. Cormo/silk. It’s like… like… spinning clouds. Or butter. Or buttery clouds. (But not cloudy butter.) It’s so soft. I was fully expecting to do just a couple of grams today, but it wanted to be spun really, really finely and really quickly, so I blazed through it at high speed and now I have just a couple of grams left to go. And then I think I’ll chain-ply it, because it doesn’t want to be a two-ply, and I’m not winding it off onto three separate bobbins for a three-ply.

And here is a spinning story for you.

I was setting up to spin the last of the drafted Teeswater. Owlet came up to me and gently touched the nests of fibre on my lap. “Baa,” she said. (She has previously made the connection that the fluffy white stuff I spin is sheep. Or maybe just that it’s white and fluffy like the baas in her books.) “Yes, baa,” I agreed. She watched me spin for a while, getting all over the wheel as she always does, yanking on the Scotch tension cord, getting her hands thwacked by the flyer and the hooks as they spun, grabbing the footmen, and trying to stick her finger into the metal orifice as the single disappeared into it. Finally, to distract her, I said, “Where’s Owlet’s Baa? Where’s your sheep?” (A friend’s daughter gave her a little stuffed lamb dressed up in an Easter bunny suit, which she calls Baa, like all other sheep.) Without hesitating, she turned around and looked at where it was in a small basket of toys, then trundled off to get it. I got to concentrate on the Teeswater for a minute before she was back. “Baa,” she said, and pushed the toy at the orifice.

She pushed the sheep at the orifice. Where I was feeding the wool. The white, fluffy baa is spun, and goes to be fed onto the bobbin.

True story. The level of comprehension and complexity of connection involved astound me.

Random Updates From Daily Life

(This was written, then I forgot to hit publish. Your RSS feeds aren’t confused; I backdated it to when it should have appeared.)

Owlet is walking, albeit stealthily. This morning I watched from the kitchen as she stood up in the middle of the living room, bounced in place for a bit, looked over at her toys by the wall, and walked over to them before plopping herself down. Ha ha; we see you, baby. It’s not a secret.

Sparky starts camp on Monday. His info packet arrived a few days ago, and his personal schedule came by e-mail. Guess who needs his own set of drumsticks? (We have one. It’s just amusing.) He’s doing science, karate, choir, drums, and art/cartooning. We also got the info packet for the International School, so we have supply lists and fee deadlines and so forth. He’s going to start halfway through the last week of August, and the first two days are mornings only, with the Friday being the first whole day, followed by the three-day Labour Day weekend. The ped days at this school are scattered through the weeks instead of being clumped into a long weekend, which is nice in a way.

HRH has painted the front awning! (Or whatever the thing over the front door is called. We call it the awning, even though it’s solid.) It was a horrible faded purple, once brown, we suspect. I chose a lovely dark green, and it looks wonderful. He’s going to continue the green up around the trim that’s the same faded purple-brown later this year when it isn’t so stupidly humid and hot. Next year we’ll tackle scraping and repainting the white ironwork and it will be the finishing touches on the front exterior.

(That’s actually not a very good colour match for the real thing. It looks more blue than dark green here. But anyway.)

I’m participating in the Tour de Fleece for the first time this year. (I’ve also signed up for the Ravelymics Ravellennic Games for the first time. Hanging out with my online July 2011 babies group of knitting mamas is doing weird things to me.) My personal goals were to spin for about fifteen minutes a day, to sample the Teeswater I got in a swap last year, to sample the Cormo/silk that Bonnie blended, and to attempt a new technique like corespinning. So far I am good on the first two, so now I get to choose one of the last two and give it a go. I’ve got one week left.

I received another freelance project, this one editing a YA science-fiction/paranormal title. My publisher recently launched a couple of fiction imprints, one for YA, and so this is my first pro fiction copyedit. It’s very exciting. I’m ahead of schedule because it’s good and an easy read. This is a nice switch from trudging through the fiction manuscripts from the self-publisher I used to work for, where I had to read them in order to evaluate them. I was instructed to edit this with a very light hand, which also helps. It’s also a nice switch from the last book I edited, a non-fiction book on manicure art, where I handed it back more red than black after rearranging and rephrasing and clarifying steps. Step-by-step instruction is hard to write for most authors, pro or not, so a lot gets reworked in the editing stage to clarify what the reader doesn’t know simply because they’re not the author.

Owlet: Eleven Months Old!

Someone has turned into a walking, talking, eating machine!

Yes, we have walking, although Owlet prefers to still hold onto things to get around. She has taken casual solo steps here and there, up to two or three at a time. One day, walking with stiffer legs so that she doesn’t collapse like a wet noodle just kind of clicked. She does a great job of ambling along beside someone, holding on to a finger. She’s also mastered the art of crouching down to get something and standing back up again without pulling herself up, and of getting to her feet from a sitting position unassisted. The coordination required is just amazing, and it’s incredible to watch the constant readjusting of balance and position so that she doesn’t fall over. It’s particularly impressive when she does it on our bed, which is a non-solid surface and requires even more constant balance adjustment. She walks everywhere there’s something to hold on to, only getting down to crawl if the gap is too big to cross by stretching her arm out to grab the next solid object. She’ll stand casually next to a table or shelf if she wants to use both hands. She can get down off the chesterfield on her own, too, by getting onto her tummy and wriggling her legs back over the edge of the seat, then sliding down on her own. If she’s walking holding on to someone’s hand (or being carried) she’ll point to direct us to where she wants to go next.

The talking is finally happening more. I will admit, I knew Sparky was an early talker (and a late walker) so I wasn’t counting on words too early, but even so, I was watching Owlet with a bit of anxiety because she didn’t seem interested in mimicking sounds. Well, that slammed into gear this month. She can now repeat sounds if she’s in the right headspace. “What does the sheep say?” I asked her again one day. (Actually, in Owlet’s world, everything that isn’t a cat or a dog says “baa.”) “Aa,” she said. “Baa,” I corrected her. She looked at me and thought for a moment, then said, “Buh–aa” so carefully. Pointing made its debut this past month, along with the word “Da?”, so we’re giving her news words all the time at her own request. New words include up, more, book (boh), bugs (buh), tiger (tiya), that (da), up, meow, uh-oh, oopsie, cheese (shee). She was chewing on Sparky’s hat the other day, then held it out to us and said, “Eeyahn!” before smiling and hugging it. She uses certain words consistently, like Mama, Dada, ba (bottle), meh (milk), and ca (cat). Her comprehension is developing independently of her spoken language, too. She knows what “Drink your milk!” means: it means ‘stop looking around and get back to nursing,’ and she does so when I say it. She knows what “Do you want some milk?” means, too; it means we’re going to sit down and nurse. “Do you want a cracker?” makes her grin and huff with delight and make a beeline for the pantry (which she can now open and pull out the cracker box, yikes).

As for food… good grief. The problem is slowing her down, she is so enthusiastic about it. We’ve made some progress using utensils. The fork works better than the spoon, but is still problematic because there’s a big ball on the end of the handle, which is much more attractive to put in one’s mouth than the food on the other end. Using drier food seems to help, too; goopy stuff like oatmeal doesn’t work as well when she practices. We found a secondhand wooden high chair in the local classifieds (IKEA stopped making these somewhere around Christmas, right after we decided we’d wait to buy it, grr) so we can pull her right up to the table now just like the rest of us, which delights her to no end.

We discovered that she is a monster for garden strawberries. Sparky and I picked the first ones on a sunny day in early June, and I bit some off and gave it to her. Then she promptly tried to climb me to get the rest. Halfway through June we sat next to the garden and ate our way through handfuls of them. She loves them so much. Actually, I don’t yet know of a food she doesn’t like. She adores eating, and I’m enjoying it while it lasts. All too soon I know the beige diet — chicken, pasta, bread, potatoes — will hit. New foods this month include lasagna, hot dogs, hamburgers, homemade granola bars, kiwi, oranges, and a taste of vanilla ice cream! That went over so well she kept banging the table every time I dipped my spoon into my bowl so I’d give her more.

The big food-related news is the introduction of cow’s milk. A couple of nights ago after our baby velociraptor had stuffed herself with her heaping bowl of pasta, mixed veg, and cheese, she polished off her sippy cup of water and then started pointing at everyone else’s drinks and making the “gimmee” grabby hand sign for more. Ron said, “Do you want some milk like Liam?” So I shrugged, got a different sippy cup out of the cupboard (the one made like the bottles we’ve been using), put two ounces of milk in it and handed it to her to see what would happen. And she guzzled it back with delight. So, er, no adjustment issues there. I’ll give her a couple of ounces per day and see how she does, but not replace anything with it yet.

Books are finally interesting… still to chew, but now to sit and turn pages, too. One of her favourite pastimes is pulling her board books off the various shelves we’ve put them on for her to sort through, and sitting amid the pile to page through them. It’s a relief to finally be able to sit and read to her. The books do have to be board books, and there can only be a few words on each page because she is very enthusiastic about flipping pages (forward or backward, it matters not), but it’s a huge stride forward from before when she wouldn’t sit for books at all.

About halfway through June we took the twin bed I’d been sleeping in out of her room, and moved all her furniture back to where we’d originally planned to put it. She’d been waking up only once a night after about eight hours of sleep for a brief nursing session, so we felt safe in moving me back downstairs where I can respond to the monitor, and she doesn’t panic if it makes me an extra minute or two to get to her. It’s nice to be back in my own bed, although I miss being with her, too. Starting the last week of June she slept all through the night, but her daytime naps promptly went screwy. When she wakes up on her own, she’ll read her cloth books that are in the corner of her bed, and it’s fun hear her talking to herself as she explores flaps and crinkly pages. She can entertain herself for twenty minutes like that.

These days her schedule sort of looks like this: She wakes around 6:00, naps from 8:30/9:00 for an hour to an hour and a half, lunches at noon, naps again from 12:30/1:00 for another hour to hour and a half, supper is at 6:00, then bed is around 6:30. If she misses a nap or they’re cut short by teething or whathaveyou, she often has a catch-up catnap around 4:00 to 5:00, and then bedtime is a bit later, between 7:00 and 7:30. And she’s starting to sleep round the clock till 6:00ish the next morning. Lately there has been a middle of the night wakeup again, but she either self-soothes back to sleep or just needs her back patted and her soother found, or a cuddle.

We’re at an awkward stage during the day. We can’t let her play alone, because she’s mobile and at the into-everything stage. (My wheel has a child lock thorough the spokes now, and has been relegated to the front entryway which we don’t use; she’s still determined to get into it, though.) I can’t just sit with her; she demands full attention, which drains me. So we kind of go back and forth between the two, although I am trying to teach her to entertain herself while I bake or tidy or do laundry. Her favourite toys are paper catalogues. (Eating paper is one of her pastimes, much to our frustration.) She still loves to jump and bounce. Coasters are among her preferred things to gnaw on. Knocking down block towers is a great new game, as is rolling balls back and forth. I bought her a cloth doll to see if something with a human face would grab her attention as a lovey more than a stuffed animal, and we had great success; she loves it with a fierce passion. We show it to her and she absolutely lights up, reaches her hands out for it and bounces or giggles, then crushes it to her chest with more wiggles of delight once it’s in her hands. Then she usually stuffs it in her mouth, because she’s teething, but when she’s quiet she often holds it in her lap and looks at the doll’s face, stroking it and playing with the yarn hair. She called it “Fff,” so I named it Evie, and now she can say that, too (although it does come out as “Eeefee.”). I need to buy a second identical one and switch them back and forth, because after only two or three weeks this one has a certain sour aroma and needs a wash.

Her first big party kind of outing was this past Canada Day and my concert. She adored the parade, kicked her legs and clapped for the bagpipes as they went by (much to her father’s delight), and kicked her legs and tried to sing along at the concert, too, so HRH had to take her outside. But she is so social that the entire night was fun for her.

Tooth #8 finally arrived, the second lateral incisor on the lower right. She keeps stuffing her fingers along the left back of her jaw; we think her first-year molars may be starting to grumble deep in the depths of her gums.

She is wearing size 4 in disposable diapers (we had to start using one at night because she feels the wet in the cloth ones too easily and it wakes her up completely in the middle of the night when she gets to the surface of a sleep cycle; the disposable lets her go back to sleep), her shoe size is something like size 4 or 5 (I have no real idea, as she hasn’t worn real shoes yet, just the soft leather ones), and in general she is still wearing 18-24 mos clothes. Her face, trunk, and arms are slimming out with all this new activity, while her legs still solid and adorably chunky-fat.

Yesterday I saw Owlet toddle by under her own steam holding a small sippy cup of cow’s milk (now a treat), pause, tilt it back to drink, and then keep going on her way. Our baby is perilously close to toddlerhood, and only one month away from a year old.

Sparky: Seven Years Old!

Is anyone else in denial about Sparky being seven? Because HRH and I are having weird time-fluctuating flashes where he cannot possibly be seven, because we remember what it was like when he was born so very clearly. And yet, at the same time, we are very aware of how much he’s grown up, and that takes a lot of time… so is he only seven? Really?

Seven years ago today, during a humid heatwave, we unexpectedly found ourselves with someone who wasn’t scheduled to arrive till after the Wicca book proofs were handed in um till after the first draft of the green witch book had been handed in er till the nursery was ready well till we were fully unpacked from the move for another nine weeks.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

Five…

Six…

SEVEN!

Seven years ago he was born nine weeks early, and we’ve been trying to keep up with him ever since. (That thing about preemies sometimes being slower at milestones and having to adjust gestational/chronological age expectations? Totally untrue in our case.)

I love his sense of humour. His jokes are starting to make more sense, thank goodness; he no longer comes out with non sequiturs then laughs like crazy. We’ve had to dissect his punchlines and explain why they’re not funny, then offer an alternate and point out why it is. Reading lots of jokes in kids’ magazines and joke books has helped, too.

I am so very proud of how he’s worked on cello. Most of the time he whines and drags his feet, and getting him to actually start practice is like herding something worse than cats, but when he steps up, he steps up, and he mostly enjoys it while he’s actually doing it. HRH tells me every once in a while that he wouldn’t be able to handle managing the practices, that he’s impressed we keep on, but I know what it’s like to practice because you Have To, and there’s a natural resistance to doing it even if you like playing. He did brilliantly in his little piece at our recital yesterday, remembering to reach for his F sharp and his G, and reach back so his E was in tune.

He is reading at an early grade six level, according to the final reader assigned to him by his language arts teacher this year. That means he can read just about anything. There are hilarious mispronunciations sometimes, because he does sound a lot of stuff out and doesn’t know where to put the emphasis, or sounds the whole word out all at once as a unit instead of doing it slowly, and so misses some sounds or jumbles them up. It’s hard to choose books for him now, because his reading level is above his level of comfort or interest with the potential subject matter. We have this problem with Lego, too. He’s gotten to the point with Lego that because he’s seven, he loves the superhero sets and the police sets and that sort of thing. However, he whips the sets for 7-14 year olds together and it’s over in five minutes, while the 14+ stuff is too complicated for him and really can’t be played with once it’s built. He can play with the 7-14 year sets afterwards, but since the main fun is in the building… well, we’re looking for something a bit different. Maybe some Knex, or Meccano.

He’s wearing size 6-7 shirts, size 6 pants for length (we cinch the waists; in fact, he’s wearing a lot of his size 4 shorts this summer, because they fit the waist and the length doesn’t matter the way it does with pants). He’s in size 13 shoes. His appetite is finally slowing down. In fact, Owlet often eats more than he does at a meal. We need to remember to adjust our servings sizes and our expectations regarding how much he’ll consume.

His imagination runs non-stop. He is constantly pretending to be something or someone, and narrating a story, like he’s a living storyboard artist. Fortunately our lines are handed to us, which eliminates the need to keep up with him by thinking on our feet. He does exhaust us physically and runs us to the edge of our patience, though, with constant repeated requests for things which have already been denied and a reason provided, or by ignoring us when we call or give him instructions because he’d rather be doing whatever he’s doing at the time. But that’s a general kid thing.

He’s got a lot of challenges ahead of him this year. He’s going to an arts-focused day camp for the first time; he starts at a new school this fall, in French. His reading skills and strategies are already helping him, though: I brought home a couple of easy French picture books from the library last week and he either outright read some pages, or sounded words out and puzzled out the meaning from the context of the words around them that he knew and the accompanying pictures. It’s going to be hard for the first month, and the trick will be keeping him optimistic and his outlook positive when he feels like he’s behind instead of leading the class, like he’s used to doing. Then everything will fall into place. He’s a bright kid. It won’t take long at all.