Latest craze

As a girl in elementary school I always enjoyed various craft projects and spent a lot of time entertaining myself with such things.  There was this item, which allowed you to make projects with yarn without actually knitting or crocheting...

 

There was a circular one also which made a tube of yarn.  I don't know what you were supposed to do with such an item but it was fun!  I remember taking this project on car trips.

 

There were these potholders made from stretchy loops...

 

 

Pardon these huge pictures...they are obviously from google images and when I try to shrink them to better size nothing happens. 

There were a few forays into latch hook...


 I actually bought a latch hook kit featuring a cat (not the one shown) when was bored after I took my first bar exam and didn't have a job.  I still have the half finished project in the box.  Maybe when I retire...

There were these tiny beads that you could melt together with an iron...



And of course who can overlook my favorite...friendship bracelets. 



I learned a basic five string finger weave method at camp one summer and added several other types over the years.  I had an impressive embroidery floss kit with many colors.  When we went shopping at stores with floss my mom indulged me by letting me get some new colors (skeins of floss were quite cheap lucky for her!).  It was a delight to get one of the huge multipacks with a rainbow of colors.  My two best friends also enjoyed this hobby and we had matching floss winding tools that hooked onto the floss box.  I still have my floss box with it's little divided compartments.  I have the urge to make a bracelet right now!  Because I don't have anything better to do and I shouldn't be preparing the house for the impending baby...

The reason I bring this nonsense up is because, from what I gather from internet articles and such, there is a new craft craze among elementary school age girls called Rainbow Loom.  It is kind of a mix of several of my favorite childhood crafts. 



Apparently, you use the loom and those little rubber band looking things to make jewelry. 



There are tutorials all over the internet (what is shown above are apparently "beginner" level) and every color of bands you could ever want.  Girls have kits with the loops sorted by color just like my old friendship bracelet box! 

I can't help but wish I had a daughter or pre-teen cousin so I would have an excuse to get in on this trend.  It looks like the usual friendship bracelets except stretchy and removeable (and a bit less 70s macramé boho).  This would be a good thing since real bracelets made of string were on for good once the knot was tied and always got so dingy and when you wore them in the pool you were stuck with a wet stringy thing on your ankle or wrist for a few hours afterwards.  For some reason I remember them being mostly a summer vacation thing that we cut off when school started.  Probably because they were so nasty from being attached to a kid's appendages all summer long. 

Breech Update

Yesterday morning I saw my doctor and talked about the breech problem and she said she would try to do an external version if I wanted to.  I had really mixed feelings about it since I read that it can be painful.  There is also a 1 in 1,000 chance that it can cause the placenta to tear which would mean an emergency C-section right away.  I was more worried about going through the pain and having it not work than that very small risk but I decided to do it anyway.

I was really preoccupied and nervous all afternoon.  Of course, I compulsively kept reading articles and internet message boards to see how other people's experiences were and I wrote to a friend from law school who recently had this done to see what she thought of it even though hers didn't work and she had a C-section.  It turned out very well.  The worst part was the anticipation and getting blood drawn and the "in case of emergency" IV tube because the nurses chose a few bad veins and, along with the injection of medication to relax the uterus, I ended up being poked with needles four times.   I have an angry purple bruise on my arm to show for it today.  The actual version was uncomfortable but manageable and I was able to see the baby turning on the ultrasound screen.  It took, at the most, two minutes and was successful!  I was so happy and in disbelief.  I had to stay for about two hours after and be on a fetal monitor to make sure the baby was fine and that was it!  The doctor said they usually don't go that well.

Today I have been feeling uncertain though, because I think the baby might have turned right back again.  I am keeping myself in denial about this but I can't deny that it feels like I am getting kicked in my side and not my ribs.  I hope I am wrong and maybe it is still head down and I am feeling punching in my side or something.  I don't know.  I am over all of this and want to just forget about it for awhile but it is hard to put out of mind when you feel it constantly. 

I realized that today is the 7th, which means Ben is 20 months old!  All along I have told people that he and the new baby would be 20 months apart and now that month has arrived!  I will have to take a picture of him later.  He looks like kind of a ragamuffin lately.  He really needs a haircut.  Hopefully I can get that done before the baby arrives. 

Three Ring Circus

This house has descended into chaos.  Here is a little recap of yesterday...

 

I came upon this scene in the bathroom...I said it was bath time and then went down the hall to get some pajamas out an spent a few minutes putting clothes from Ben's duffel bag away and when I went to fill the tub he had filled it already.  With the pillows from the living room.  I almost said "from the couch" but that would be a lie.  Since Ben has been able to climb on the couch on his own they are on the floor 99% of the time.  I don't even notice it happening.  They are just always on the floor.  He tried to launch one in there when the tub was filling but I caught it just in time! 

 

Here is Allan playing with a rather disturbing looking toy.  It is not any sort of dead animal.  It is a piece of fake fur that snaps around the hood of a coat.  I wasn't crazy about the fur and it has been in the box with the hats, mittens, and other winter accessories for years.  He found it when we were digging out some warm clothes for tailgating awhile ago.  The couch is cushionless and padded with a quilt because that is where I have been doing my inversion exercises. 

 

Speaking of a cushionless couch...if I had known how entertaining it would be for a one year old and a cat to take a sofa cushion and throw it on the floor and leave the couch multilevel I would have done it a long time ago.  Looking back, I recall my siblings and I spending a lot of time making couch cushion forts, stacking them and generally messing everything up when we were younger so I guess I understand.  I don't even care that it makes it look even worse in here to have such a high level of disorder. 

 

This morning we took the show on the road and added a third element to the crazy train that Ben and I create lately whenever we go in public and added a cat to the mix.  We took Allan to his annual vet appointment.  Since we adopted him he has only had to go to the vet yearly and never for any complications.  This year, all he needed was a distemper shot. 

 

Last night we took out his pet carrier so he could explore it and he enjoyed hiding out in there.  He must have already forgotten the trauma of the move and being trapped in it all morning during our closing chaos.  He cried and meowed a lot in the car but was quiet at the vet.  He was the only cat in the waiting room among several dogs.  Ben had a great time seeing all the dogs/"Wal-Wals". 

 

As far as the baby situation, I don't think it has turned.  I hope to get to the Y tonight to go to the pool and try some water exercises like head stands and somersaults.  I am a pretty regular lap swimmer so the lifeguards will probably wonder what I am doing.  I am excited though.  I spent hours doing activities like that with my friends in the pool when I was young.  In our minds we were glamorous and graceful dolphins and mermaids...with stringy, chlorine damaged hair, faded swimming suits and bad tan lines!

Full Term Update

Well, here I am, it is finally November and the baby countdown is on.  Last week, on Halloween actually, I had an appointment where I got some disappointing news.  I didn't share it and tried to focus the last post on Halloween until I could come to terms with it.  It's not the end of the world and everything is fine with the baby.  The problem is that the baby is breech...again.  From my research I have learned that there is a three percent chance of a baby being breech at the time of delivery.  What are the odds of this happening twice?  So, for mostly selfish reasons, I was very upset with the prospect of a second C-section.  The main reason is that we may consider having another child and that would mean a third C-section.  Also, it was not an easy experience recovering from abdominal surgery last time and now I have a one year old who never lets me rest for a second to take care of in addition to a newborn and I won't be able to take care of him the way he needs.  It's hard enough getting up every few hours at night to feed a newborn without having the act of sitting up be painful.

My doctor was out for the week so when I found out about this I was seeing a different group of nurses and a nurse practitioner that I have never met before and they were nice but didn't know anything about my plans and how much I don't want another c-section and after I left I realized no one gave me any ideas about things I could do to try to turn the baby or anything like that and I felt like I was on my own.  I know there is a procedure called ECV (External Cephalic Version) where a doctor tries to turn the baby externally while the patient and baby are monitored and medication can be used to relax the uterus.  No one said anything about this being possible at the appointment though, since not all doctors do this and I have never heard of anyone around here having it done.  I also remembered hearing something about the Webster Technique which can be performed by a chiropractor and it turns out that there is a chiropractor that is certified in it in the same office building that Justin works so I made an appointment.  The theory behind it is that a misaligned pelvis can make the baby settle in a breech position instead of head down.  A lot of it has to do with the sacrum (tailbone) being messed up and mine has been several times since my teen years.  I fell down a spiral staircase in ski vacation house in high school and it hurt for a long time after that and I hurt it again sledding behind a snowmobile with my cousins on Thanksgiving one year.   I can also think of two bad falls on ice where it was injured again.  It usually starts to hurt after I have been sitting for a long time so in the event that any of this really works I can see how I would have these issues.  It is hard to ignore the three percent chance statistic and I have to wonder if something is behind this. 

This morning we went to the Labor and Delivery floor to specify our birth plan and go over some paperwork and have a tour if we wanted (we didn't!  It was the exact same as it was last year!).  I told the nurse what was going on and she happened to know that my doctor does indeed do ECV and is the best at it of the OBs at the hospital.  I see her on Wednesday so we will see what she says.  The procedure honestly scares me a bit but I have to weigh the short time of discomfort with the weeks of recovery and long term implications of a C-section.  After that I saw the chiropractor who said that my pelvis was out of alignment and my tailbone was messed up (but don't they say that to everyone?) and she did some adjustments and did some sort of pressure application to one of my round ligaments.  She also told me some inversion exercises to do around the house. 

Buuuut...if none of this crazy stuff works I will probably end up with a scheduled C-section next week or the week after.  The doctor has been saying all along that my due date is the 16th and according to my 20 week ultrasound paperwork the due date is the 21st.  The 16th is a Saturday so I imagine it would be a few days before or after.  If we get to pick there is the pretty fun date of 11-12-13 coming up and that is...nine!!!!...days away.  YIKES! 

OK, I have to go take a cushion off my couch and kneel with my knees on the couch and my elbows on the floor.  Wish me luck!

Halloween 2013

I don't feel like writing anything since it's gotten so late but here are a few pictures from today for all the grandparents and relatives reading this who aren't in on the Facebook Halloween costume photo fest!  Ben liked his "Brown Bear" costume and when I put him in front of the mirror he laughed and said his version of "brown bear"! 

 

It looks like he is sitting on the stem but don't worry...

 

Allan was surprisingly amicable to wearing his pumpkin costume this year!

 

My "Klingons"

For the (approximately) last two weeks, Ben and Allan have been up my "you know what" non-stop.  Whenever I sit down Ben is climbing on me, thrusting books or used tractor catalogues into my hands and wedging himself in next to me.  And if he isn't around Allan is waiting for his chance to move in and drape himself over me.  As a kitten he was like this and then as he became more confident and secure living with us he started hanging out in his favorite areas instead of plastered against us.  He would keep a respectful distance at night if we allowed him to sleep upstairs.  Now he is laying on me every time I wake up.  When Ben goes to sleep I almost always collapse on the couch with some form of Internet access for a few minutes (and I admit occasionally...most of the nap...) before I do something productive around the house.  As soon as I do, he is there like in the picture below...

 

I looked it up and apparently this is a common phenomenon, especially with animals, toward the end of a pregnancy.  They can sense something.  Why that something turns them into annoying and clingy pests no one can say.  It is cute and I should be enjoying the love I am getting from them and I try to be patient with Ben especially, since I worry about him adjusting to sharing my attention.  On a daily basis I feel bad that I physically can't play with him and hold him the way he wants and also that I don't have a lot of enthusiasm for the play of toddlers right now.  Hopefully no harm is being done!  At least he and Allan have each other!  Allan likes to lay on the floor in the baby's room, probably because it is pristine and free of toys and clutter right now and there s space because the crib isn't in there yet.  I often catch Ben sitting in there trying to play with him.  At least they have each other! 

 

 

Halloween Costume Time!

As a child, choosing a Halloween Costume was easy.  My brother and sister and I decided and my mom made it happen with her sewing machine.  Or, if you were my brother, you were a football player every year of elementary school and just wore the same crap you wore around the yard after school every day which included an old football helmet from my Grandpa Harold's high school coaching and athletic director days that was spray painted to match his team of the moment.  I was a dalmation, a Hershey kiss, and a slice of pizza among other things.  In college costumes were still a challenge since I was raised never having purchased a cheaply made but overpriced costume in a bag from a store and felt the need to be original and come up with something of my own. 

I thought I would be a costume sewing mom.  And hopefully I will be eventually.  But for now I am just too lazy and tired and huge for that nonsense.  After some deliberation I have decided that Ben should be "Brown Bear" from the "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" book.  He loves that book and it was the first book he talked about by name. 






There were some cute bear patterns at the fabric store but I am not going to stress myself out over this and instead bought a small quantity of fuzzy light brown fabric and am going to sew some furry accents and ears on a brown sweatsuit I bought at Kohls.  Then it will be comfortable enough for him to wear all day as he is dragged around to my various doctors appointments that day which I just scheduled this morning.  I will be getting an ultrasound to check the baby's position on Halloween!  Hopefully it's head down and not breech! 

There are years in the future for sewing costumes.  For now I am just trying to keep the house from chaos.  What my mom used to regularly complain about after we moved into the cavernous, six bedroom dust gatherer that I grew up in has merit...having the largest house you can get seems like a great idea until you are the one in charge of cleaning it!  I have been letting it slide around here since the place was spotless when we moved it but now, after almost two months, the dust bunnies are gathering.  Sigh...and no, this is not nesting.  I didn't have that last time and I doubt I will have a burst of energy to direct toward cleaning this time either.  It's just not that interesting to me!

Check back around Halloween to see if I actually get "Brown Bear" done or if poor Ben ends up wearing his pumpkin costume from last year again!

Back to the Paint Department

This weekend we were home.  It has been awhile and we realized the imminence of a new baby arriving in a month (hopefully not longer than that!) so we decided to paint the babies room and get some furniture moved around.  The two dressers we bought for Ben are going in the baby's room and Ben is getting Justin's old bedroom set from when he was a child. 

 

Except for fabric stores,  no place makes my imagination run wild with potential ideas than a paint department.  It can be almost impossible to choose from the different but almost the same shades you can get.  And you go there thinking you know what color you want and suddenly your original plan can get derailed by some other inspiration!  This time it was pretty easy to choose.  

 

The room was originally this color...

 

 

I actually kind of like that color, believe it or not.  It is similar to the green I chose for our bedroom in our old house except a little more extreme.  I wanted to do something different for this room though and it was not a very big job due to the wainscoting around the bottom half of the wall. 

 

And here it is finished...

 

Hehehe...we aren't telling!  It went smoothly.  We taped and situated the drop cloths on Friday night and Justin had the painting done before the NDSU game started on Saturday afternoon.  I would have liked to help.  Being around painting made me nostalgic for the excitement of moving into and painting our old house.  Someone had to keep Ben out of the room though.  Justin had Al to keep him company. 

 

 

This cat thinks everything is a bed.  Who would want to lay on plastic? 

 

A few weeks ago my sister gave us this chair that she painted for Ben in NDSU colors.  I have been meaning to take some pictures of him with his chair when he has Bison clothes on but it is hard to get done.  These did not turn out very well.  The teenager across the cul de sac was cleaning his car and their dogs were roaming around and another neighbor came out and started frolicking with the dogs and it was all just too distracting! 

 

 

At least in the ones where he isn't sitting you can see the precise details of the chair! 

 

Speaking of chairs, I also decided that I had to get these dining room chairs covered before the baby gets here or risk never getting them covered.  So while Justin was painting on Saturday morning, I dragged my wound up and crazy nineteen month old to the fabric store and hastily chose some fabric.  It is gray with white and turquoise which doesn't exactly match the room right now but I was thinking of colors I would prefer and thought of the future.  They match that table you can see in the background which I love. 

 

It was a pretty easy job.  I cut the fabric to fit and Justin is actually quite good at this sort of thing due to his experience doing taxidermy.  Yes, seriously!  It is a transferable skill! 

 

If you were curious here are the seats before.  A professional would probably have removed the old fabric but we just stretched the new fabric over the old. 

 

Last night I decided to keep going since we were on a weekend productivity roll that I would transfer Ben's clothes to his new dressers before he went to bed.  So I emptied out his drawers and piled everything into laundry baskets only to discover that the new dressers were still full of the junk that we stashed in them when they were in the old guest room/sewing room at the old house.  Among the findings...a drawer (yes a whole drawer) full of my old cds, a drawer full of desk lamps from our dorm days, a drawer full of bags of bows for wrapping gifts (once again, yes a whole drawer) and also drawers with an assortment of craft and sewing stuff.  All which is now without a home.  Ugh it never ends.  If you visit us you can look forward to a guest room that looks more like a massive junk closet with a bed shoved in the corner.  So inviting! 

Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday we indulged in one of the standard wholesome seasonal activities that everyone imagines doing with their kids.  We went to a pumpkin patch!  I haven't been to a pumpkin patch for years.  The last one I went to, besides the one my family planted just for fun and not as a business, was in high school when a nearby farm had a corn maze, pumpkin patch and haunted house (granary).  I guess I went to Acres of Terror in college a few times but that happened after dark and did not involve pumpkins. 

 

I was surprised to find such a rural environment only minutes from my house but there it was.  It was tucked away in a beautiful tree filled area along the Missouri River.  In addition to pumpkins and gourds for sale they had a playground, nature trail, various setups for photo opportunities and some sort of hay bale obstacle course that Ben was too small for.  What they did have for him was this gigantic "sandbox" full of corn seed. 

 

He didn't really know what to do at first.  That blur in the background is a girl doing a cannonball into the corn. 

 

He finally settled in.  I have no idea where that empty water bottle came from.  I think it was siting on the bale wall and he took it!  It was empty so hopefully whoever left it there didn't care!

 

They had a playground with trains and farm machinery made of wood.  There was a very impressive combine but it was always filled with kids so we couldn't get a good picture of him on there alone. 

 

I always imagined pumpkin patches as being a field where the pumpkins actually grow and you pick your pumpkin by roaming around the field until you find the "one".  That was the charm of our old pumpkin patch!  These were already picked and spread out so you could still walk around and pick one but not actually pick it.  I don't know where these actually were grown.  I suppose for legitimate businesses it is an insurance and liability issue to have people roaming around among the vines and leaves.  It is pretty easy to trip or fall into a stem or something. 

 

There was this old lawn tractor that looked like it still was used for actual work and of course Ben was drawn to that thing like a moth to a flame or any other cliché you can come up with.  We would move him back into the pumpkins and he just turned and took off toward it immediately. 

 

Before we left we went back to the corn and Justin jumped in with him and played around for awhile. 

 

At one point we noticed he put a kernel in his mouth so I did a finger sweep and discovered a mouthful of chewed up corn.  All the other parents gathered around thought it was hilarious.  At least it was just corn!  I can't imagine something less appealing to hoard in my mouth but I have found that babies and toddlers have different standards in that area!

 

When it was bath time it was no surprise to discover that his clothes and diaper were full of corn and I found a few stray kernels around the house today. 



Garden Wrap Up

Garden season is over now and the best of the garden is saved for last in my opinion!  I might be saying that because I got really sick of two months of zucchini and then really sick of several months of tomatoes.  But at the end of the garden's life, ideally after the first frost, is carrot time!  We had two rows and got to keep most of them since the thieves realized that pulling them up is not like on cartoons where you just grab the leaves and pull.  You need to actually dig them once they get big otherwise the tops just snap off leaving the carrot buried. 

Here is the pile from one row after I hosed the mud off. 

 

There were some deformities, which I believe is from improper thinning and the plants growing too close together. 

 

This one was the most absurd and deformed mutant in the batch.  I don't know what I was thinking when I left that cluster of plants unthinned!

These carrots are so delicious.  They taste so much better than ones from the store.  I don't know how to describe the difference but it is noticeable.  There is no way we can eat all of them since there were many pounds of them.  I filled four of those reusable grocery bags with them and they were so heavy they were hard to lift.  We chopped and vacuum sealed most of them to freeze.  We did this last year and it worked well.   It took quite awhile to get them all processed.  Justin washed and peeled and I chopped.  My left hand is still slightly orange from holding them on the cutting board.  I went swimming this morning and thought the chlorine would take care of it but the orange tint is still there. 

 

That's a lot of carrots heading for the freezer!  I chopped some small for soup and some larger for cooking as a side dish or in a crock pot.  Maybe this new baby will actually eat and then I can make baby food. 

And now I present the result of a summer of tending...our monster zucchini!  We left one on the vine to see how huge it could get because they will grow out of control if not picked.

 

Here it is next to a desirable zucchini that you would want to eat. 

 

Here it is next to a standard bottle of wine.

 

Here it is next to Ben's riding tractor.   I think we could have ended up with a bigger one but had some losses over the summer, the most recent to the thieves.  I hope they enjoyed eating the nasty overgrown thing! 

 

OK, now it will probably be headed to the garbage!  Sorry, big zucchini!  The big ones are not good to eat since the seeds get big and they just don't taste as good.  They can be used for shredding up and baking bread or cakes but this one is even too big for that I think.  I am over zucchini  themed foods for a few months anyway. 

 

I should mention that today is a special day...Allan came to live with us four years ago!  Time has flown by.  I still am amazed at how perfect he is for us and I am so glad Justin chose him and that he made himself at home so quickly! 

 

 

Here is a picture of him sitting with me the first night he was at our house.  He is so cute and little and the living room in the background is so pristine and free of toys and other crap!   It seems like a different life...