Month: May 2005

T Minus Eight Hours…

Sarah General

I’m pretty sure I just spent more time packing for our trip than we’ll actually be gone for…it seems like it’s taken all week! I guess it’s just because I can only do things in bits and pieces while Carrie is sleeping. I can no longer step out of the living room for just a minute while she’s playing, because she’s pulling up on everything and generally immediately heads for the closest dangerous object in the room. And this is the most baby-proofed room we have. But I’m finding that even the end tables are dangerous – she crawls under them and then bumps her head when she tries to sit. Short of removing all furniture and window treatments from the room, I don’t think there’s much I can do besides follow her everywhere.

Anyway, I have to go check if the laundry is done, and then I’m going to bed!

Yarn Holder

Sarah Crafts

20050516_yarn_holder.jpgLooks like Carrie has caught the knitting bug early! It’s so very helpful of her to hold my yarn for me and drool all over it… Although, she was pretty cute with it. At first she just held the strand of yarn I was working with, but then she realized there was a whole ball of yarn instead of just one string. And then she discovered the fantastic ball band that could be chewed off. And when she wasn’t slobbering on the yarn she was gleefully blowing raspberries. I think she likes yarn.

I can’t wait until she discovers that the strand of yarn Mommy’s working with can be pulled and it just gets longer and more tangled. Oh, what fun that will be! (Note to self: never, not even for three-eighths of a second, can I leave my knitting within sight of the munchkin, or Destructo-Boy will have major competition…)

So, what is it we’re working on? Why, it’s Carrie’s poncho:
poncho_long.jpg

What? You mean it doesn’t look like a poncho? Is this better?
poncho_unseamed.jpg
Just a little seaming, a few ends to hide, and a bunch of fringe left to do!

Peas Porridge Hot…er…Room Temperature?

Sarah Carolyn

I bought some jarred baby food this afternoon so that I wouldn’t have to figure out how to keep the homemade stuff frozen during our upcoming trip to NYC. I also bought extra jars of peas because I wasn’t happy with how the ones I made came out and I wanted to start Carrie on them next. I do feel a little like I’m giving up, but I suppose it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing, right? Besides, I bought the organic brand our grocery store carries – Earth’s Best – so I feel a little better about giving it to her. I guess the only thing I’m really worried about is that these are much smoother than the foods I was making, and I’m afraid Carrie won’t eat the lumpier homemade stuff when we get back home!

Anyway, I gave her some peas tonight for dinner, and she loves them! She liked them alone and also mixed with her rice cereal. So far there hasn’t been anything I’ve given her – well, to be fair, she’s only had 7 foods so far – that she hasn’t liked. There’s only one thing she hasn’t eaten with great enthusiasm: we’ve been putting a few pieces of puffed rice cereal on her tray after each meal to see if she’s ready for finger foods yet. Not only can’t she pick it up yet, but if I try to put a piece in her mouth she makes the funniest face and moves away before it can even touch her lips. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m trying to poison her. She does like pushing the pieces around the tray though.

Drat! Double Drat!

Sarah Crafts

I am so close to finishing Carrie’s poncho. As in three rows away, plus the neckband. The problem? Those last few rows require a smaller set of needles than the body. And those needles are…buried in my craft room somewhere.

And they’re not the sort of needles you can just go buy at Michael’s or anything, so I’m stuck until I can get to a real yarn shop or find them. Maybe in the morning I’ll perform an archeological dig in the craft room, although I found things that I had worked on in the same general time frame already and they weren’t near those.

Drat!

Looong Week

Sarah General

I don’t really know where the week went, but it feels like it took forever to get to the weekend! Carrie had her first fever yesterday (no other symptoms and gone today – maybe teething related?) so pretty much all of yesterday was spent cuddling my poor little girl, and today I cleaned house.

There’s so much to do over the weekend, but not nearly enough time to do it all. I’m sure our neighbors would appreciate us cleaning up our flower beds and putting flowers in them. The pool needs to be opened eventually. And we still haven’t baby-proofed.

And I only have eight rows left on Carrie’s poncho, so all I really want to do is finish that. Instead, I’m going to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. There’s no predicting what time my early-bird will decide to rise tomorrow and I’m sleepy!

Don’t Panic

Sarah General

We went to see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie yesterday afternoon while my parents watched Carrie. I did enjoy the movie, although it deviated from the book quite a bit. (Plus my memory of the book is kind of fuzzy, so I had a hard time figuring out what was different and what I just didn’t remember.)

However, I’m not so sure the whole movie theater experience is worth it anymore. Aside from the fact that a matinee cost $6 per ticket (I remember when it was $3.25, $2.50 if you had a valid student ID) and the concession prices are outrageous, the actual pre-movie content was appalling. Instead of the slide-show type thing with trivia that they used to show – and that you could easily ignore – they had 20 minutes of advertising, mainly for television networks. It was loud, obnoxious, and made me want to run home and cancel my cable subscription. Quite frankly, I think they should have paid me to sit through that, rather than the other way around.

And I shouldn’t even start on the 15 minutes worth of movie previews. Is there not one single original idea left in all of Hollywood? Every single movie that’s coming up is a remake of something else – including one that is literally Jumanji repackaged as a space-themed game.

Don’t get me wrong, I like movies. But I don’t know if I’m going to bother seeing them in the theater anymore. I can just as easily wait for a few months for the DVD – in fact, it’s easier since I don’t have to worry about who’s going to watch Carrie. Of course, then I think about the new Harry Potter movie coming out in November and wonder if I can really wait to watch that one…

Two Foot, Two Inch Terror!

Sarah Milestones

Carrie started pulling up this afternoon. She crawled over to my parents’ coffee table, put her hands on the top, and ended up on her feet. She was quite pleased with this new perspective. Now, in addition to all the other general baby-proofing we need to finish, we’re going to have to start securing things to walls.

Is it just me, or does she seem to figure out several new things all at once? And isn’t it much too early for her to be doing all of this? I thought for sure I’d have at least another month or two before I had to start chasing her all over the house.

In other baby news, we started giving Carrie a second meal of solids today. So far, she’s tried – and liked – rice cereal, pears, sweet potatoes, apples and bananas. We’re going to start some less sweet things, like carrots and peas, in the next couple of weeks, so I wanted her to have one meal with something familiar and one with something new.

Being A Mom

Sarah General

Being a mom is everything I didn’t expect. I expected to love my daughter. I didn’t expect how much I would love her. I didn’t expect how much I would worry. I didn’t expect how much it would make me cry for other mothers and babies in trouble, for the sorry state of the world we live in, for all the things I have no power to change that will somehow affect Carolyn’s life. I didn’t expect how it would change the way I look at my mom, and how guilty I would feel about things I said or did as a child that might have hurt her.

It’s strange: sometimes I think I’m only aware of Carolyn as the baby who lives in our house. I spend almost every minute of every day with her, and I’m constantly aware of her presence. But then there are times when I look at her – at this beautiful, funny, vibrant child – and realize that she is my daughter. My soul weeps with joy at that recognition. I am in awe of this perfect life we have created, with her soft cheeks, sparkling eyes and busy, chubby little hands.

And then I panic a little. I am in charge of making sure that Carolyn survives to adulthood, and that she won’t need to spend a fortune on therapy once she gets there. That’s no small responsibility.

I find myself wanting to somehow make the world a better place for her. I make an extra effort to recycle things I might not have before. I think more about my political decisions, and look at how the candidates might affect the future. I want to get in shape, eat better, volunteer more – in short, become a good role model for my daughter.

In some ways being a mom is the most natural thing I have ever done. In most ways it’s not, and I’m figuring things out just one step ahead (or sometimes not) of Carrie. I’m realizing how strong I can be when I need to be. I’m more aware than ever of the importance of not taking things for granted, and of all the dangers that lurk around every corner. I’m learning how to live in the moment, and how to put my faith in God when I feel the worries closing in around me.

I’m learning how to love my daughter. I’m learning how to be a mom. And it’s wonderful.

How to change a diaper in 21 (sort of) easy steps

Sarah Carolyn

1. Lay baby on changing table.
2. Roll baby who has immediately flipped onto her stomach back onto her back.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until baby stays on her back for more than 3 milliseconds.
4. Hand baby toy to try to keep her still.
5. Retrieve baby who is trying to climb headfirst down the front of the dresser.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until baby starts crying.
7. Comfort baby until crying stops.
8. Quickly repeat steps 1 and 4 while using teeth and inside of elbow to fasten changing table strap.
9. Blow rasperries at baby to distract her.
10. Unfasten snaps and attempt to access diaper.
11. Retrieve baby who has wriggled out of straps and is now once again climbing headfirst down the front of the dresser.
12. Repeat step 8, tightening straps as much as possible without hurting baby.
13. Sing to baby while unfastening diaper.
14. Quickly place new diaper underneath baby and use wipes as necessary.
15. Attempt to fasten new diaper.
16. Roll baby who has somehow flipped onto stomach despite straps back onto her back.
17. Repeat steps 15 and 16 until diaper is reasonably secure.
(17a. If diaper has “gaskets” check to make sure they’re still secure, or the next diaper change might not be so fun.)
18. Undo straps to retrieve clothing which is now up around baby’s shoulders.
19. Repeat steps 1 through 8 until baby is once again securely fastened down.
20. Sing silly songs about snaps while attempting to refasten clothing.
21. Congratulations! Baby has a clean diaper, and it only took 20 minutes! Collapse in exhausted heap – after removing baby from changing table where she is once again climbing headfirst down the front of the dresser – until next diaper change.

If baby requires a change of clothes…good luck.

Sit & Knit & Pick Up Toys

Sarah Carolyn, Crafts

This evening Miss Carolyn accompanied me to Sit & Knit, while Denis was out at a business dinner. (At the Dinosaur Barbeque. Lucky guy!) Anyway, Carrie was really good while we were out. I set up her booster chair and gave her some toys to play with. She tested gravity the entire time, so I only managed to actually knit one row on her poncho in between picking up toys. (Granted, it was a cable row, so it would have taken a while anyway.)

I feel terrible, though. I had planned to leave at 8:00 – her usual bedtime – figuring that being up an extra half-hour wouldn’t be so bad, but we didn’t leave until 8:30, and Carrie spent most of the car ride home crying her poor little heart out. I’m such a bad mommy. I was actually hoping she’d sleep in the car and then I could just feed her and put her to bed when we got home, but no such luck. Ah, well. She’s sleeping soundly now, so I guess there’s no harm done.