recommended reading (lucy edition)

Tags

baby, books, childrens' books, kids' books, reading

Whoo boy. I just might have messed up my kid. Just a little.

(No, not her face. She messed that up herself. Yesterday. At the park. On the asphalt, throwing a tantrum so intense that she BARFED. And then scraped up her face. Yeah. We’re still reeling. Given that the kid has a 50+ word spoken vocabulary, tries to sing along to the ABC song, understands 120% of what we say to her, and has the two most stubborn willful people on the planet as parents, we suspect the Terrible Twos have just begun a little early. My mom claims I started them at 18 months, and we’re close to that.)

This kid is a READER. In an intense way. This kid would rather be read to than watch TV. She’d rather be read to than eat. If she had to choose between oxygen and one more go at The Cat In The Hat…well. Let’s be glad she doesn’t get to make that call.

Here are some weirdo non-classic kids’ books that she totally digs right now:

Here Comes the Cat, Frank Asch and Vladimir Vagin (please be more mature than me and don’t giggle at the authors’ names. They didn’t ask for my immaturity. Or yours). When we got this from the mail from McSweeney’s, I basically grunted and put it way up on the top shelf. The only text in the whole book is “Here comes the cat!”, which a bunch of little mice run around shrilling at each other until, well, the cat comes. Then the cat leaves. Riveting. But to a 17-month-old? This stuff is fascinating. Lucy finds the book especially fascinating if you read “Here comes the cat!” in your shrillest mousiest voice. The pictures are also lovely with lots of detail and movement.

Bink and Gollie: Two for One, Kate DiCamillo, Alison McGhee, Tony Fucile. I’ve discussed this book before so I will just say that this book has been promoted from “one Dad reads at bedtime because he likes it but Lucy would way rather read The Monster At The End of This Book again” to a book that Lucy slings at us, over and over again, hooting and whimpering until we read it again. Why? I think she likes the part where the woman and the cat “sing” at the talent show. I think she loves understanding the pictures where the Whack-a-Duck man gets honked in the face with a baseball. She loves finding Bink and Gollie in any of the pictures. I’m glad I bought the hardcover, because her ARC is going to bite it any day.

I Must Have Bobo!, Eileen Rosenthal, Marc Rosenthal. Holy cow. We got this book from Amazon on a Thursday. By Friday morning, Lucy was spending half an hour at a time on the floor with this book, shouting “Gibberish burble blub BOBO!!!” She’d hold up her hands, look at me pleadingly, and say, “Bobo?!?” And then she’d shout “EARL!” Seriously. The plot of this one is also simple, but the drawings are line-based, comic-book-ish drawings (think Tin Tin). A little boy, Willy, wakes up missing his sock monkey, Bobo. The prime suspect is the family cat, Earl. Hilarity ensues.

Don’t get me wrong, we do our share of The Bear Snores On, Where’s Spot, and Elmo’s entire literary oeuvre. Lucy’s taught me, though, not to automatically decide she’s too little or too young to understand some more big-kid type books, and she has gotten so much more enjoyment out of these “real” books lately than she has her old board books. I’d encourage any parent of an 18-month-old to branch out. I’m thinking we might even try some poetry with her next?

Any weirdo kids’ books your baby loves that you’d love to recommend? I love buying books other people have enjoyed and raved about.

apple picker

Tags

baby, family, photos

The skinniest, baldest, and–dare I say–the cutest? apple picker in the orchard yesterday:

I had so much fun taking pictures, and then even MORE fun playing with the photos in Photoshop. I downloaded the Pioneer Woman’s Photoshop Action Sets and had just. a. blast. last night.

I’m super-late to the Photoshop Action party, but I have a feeling I’ll make up for lost time this week.

repro granny squares (and baby feet)

Tags

baby, quilts, repro granny square quilt

Two of the reasons we haven’t stopped by this blog in six weeks or so.

The month of August flew by in a flurry of toddler-chasing, moving (not ours, thanks goodness!), furniture shopping, husband-sicky, toddler-sicky, and…summer life. I’m hoping to show up here more often now that the siren song of the beach isn’t quite as sweet and loud. When I wasn’t here, or at the beach, I was making, doing, and reading up a storm. I finished my plus quilt. I got this granny square quilt all the way to basted and half-quilted. I planned and cut and made 50 HSTs for a baby quilt (again, not ours!). I read Gloria. I read (sigh) Gone Girl. I’ve watched waaay too much Gossip Girl (sheepishness). 

More to share in this blog space soon. For now, granny. Tutorial for the blocks here. Fabric is Kona Bone (I pulled a Jo Ann’s scam wherein I purchased 6+ yards for $20, using a 60% off a single cut of fabric coupon; now I have a bolt that should last me through the next two or three projects) and two Aunt Grace “Jolly Packs,” Fat Quarter Shop’s version of the charm pack (which, honestly, I don’t think they’re doing anymore, a shame). I’d been hoarding the Aunt Grace for *just* the right project. This was absolutely it.

Here is a very crummy photo of my first six blocks. I found that the actual block construction was a breeze, and it was a lot of fun. I enjoy making blocks that are sort-of-planned, sort-of-not. Choosing the fabrics as I made each block encouraged fabric and color play, sometimes a lot more fun than just cranking out a certain number of blocks in a certain prescribed color scheme. I was nervous to trim them down, but you know what? It wasn’t bad, and I didn’t lose any triangle points. Go me. At my 16-month-old-chasing-feeding-cleaning, summer-laziness pace, this whole quilt top took me two weeks, about three blocks a session. NOT BAD.

I’ll post more pictures when I get the delicious lavender dotty binding on it. Have you had a recent color crush on lavender and yellow? No? Just me?

 

honey lately

Tags

baby, family, photos, she only smiles quilt

Oh. my. gosh. Two weeks since my last post! There’s no excuse. But, in my defense, we’ve been busy. Good busy, corn-on-the-cob busy, Old Town Hill busy, biscuits-and-honey-and-brand-new-quilts busy:

But we’ve also been plenty of bad busy too. Lucy had a minor infection that required a week of antibiotics. She didn’t feel well or eat great because of it, and I also had to clean the house–WITH BLEACH–from top to bottom. Several times. I’m just now getting my feet back under me. Lucy’s back to 100%, thank goodness for her kind pediatrician, sulfa drugs and Elmo On Demand. (Needless to say, we’ve been indulging in a little too much television.)

I was able to finish my green She Also Smiles quilt, and gifted it to a friend who is moving to Portland. I think she was pleased. 

I had a heck of a time getting a picture of it, because when Lucy hears that camera beep, she’s pretty sure she’s supposed to be posing. Also, she’s got this thing about walking on differently-textured surfaces, so she loves to have a quilt spread on the floor to play, sit, and watch television from.

Today? More cutting. I have a new quilt top to show you sometimes this week (as soon as I can snap a toddler-free picture of it) and I’m already ready to start a new project! Here’s hoping to avoid any baby-illness-related unexpected hiatuses. 🙂

cutting days

Tags

baby, plus quilt, quilts

I’ve been busy recovering from our vacation all. week. Not only did I bring home the world’s biggest sandiest dirtiest pile of laundry, I brought it home to one of the world’s dirtiest apartments. This week I scrubbed the kitchen floor! On my hands and knees, with a brush and a bucket! (Swiffer generation.)

So it’s been nice to finally pull out the stack of greens and blues I sorted out before the trip and get into some cutting. This pile, mostly Hello Pilgrim, is destined to become a simple plus quilt, to be shipped overseas to a lovely couple we know from Groningen who just got married. This past weekend. Yeah, I’m a little late. It’s simple patchwork, so barring disaster, I should be able to get this shipped off by the end of August.

And here’s a terrible picture of that little Kona fat eighth stack I won from Elizabeth over at Oh, Fransson! square quilted throw pillow shams at this point, quilted with thick black embroidery floss. I’ve either got to find a backing print to coordinate with these sort of odd colors, or use the Kona Tangerine yardage I impulsively bought and have had hanging around for two years. I’m certainly interested to see what I decide.

And just in case anybody wonders what I do with the baby during all of this…well. Usually she’s asleep. She takes good 2-3 hour afternoon naps at this point. (I’m convinced she only sleeps 1.5-2 hours of this time, needing the rest to decompress by herself in her crib. She loves her crib, and is clearly her mother’s daughter.) But sometimes I do try and get a few things accomplished while she’s awake, and she looks a bit like this:

That is the striped bar from her Tiny Love baby amusement mat thing, the one she used to lie under when she was 2 months old and bat at the toys. She dragged it out of her closet today. She also sports an Ikea coster, and my favorite Crate and Barrel dishtowel. Why, yes, she does get stuck trying to go through doorways.

summer dinner, vintage pyrex

Tags

baby, kitchen, summer, vegetables, vintage pyrex

Yesterday Lucy and I hit our favorite farm stand and bought a big pile of summer produce. Have you ever heard of a black apricot? Neither had Lucy. We enjoyed one together after lunch today. But last night we made a lovely dinner of corn on the cob, real tomatoes (!!! Lucy’s first real tomato, sentimental tear), pattypan squash, local spinach, farmstead cheddar, and…some Trader Joe’s turkey burgers ahem. Lucy has this little problem. It’s called corn.

She ate most of my ear of corn after I cut it off the cob, and then started up the point-and-hoot thing that toddlers do so well until I handed her the rest of my ear. I think I got three bites. She was *so* happy.

After dinner I sent Lucy off to the tub (bathtime is and always has been Dad’s chore) while I cleaned up and unpacked a very special box my mom brought up from Tennessee for me last week. This box, an old egg box filled with newspaper and vintage Pyrex and glass, has come all the way from Oklahoma to Massachusetts without once having been mailed or brought on an airplane. You can’t replace your late great-grandmother’s Pyrex dishes if some doofus breaks them.

These nesting mixing bowls are clearly the prize. Funny how the colors exactly match Lucy’s summer tomato-squash-corn dinner from last night! This morning I carefully washed every piece and reorganized my cabinets (read: finally packed away the stupid clutter of bottles and sippy cups that my picky kid always refused in the first place) to find a home for each piece. Because I’m going to USE these suckers, baby. After I googled around to make sure it’s still safe to use 30-year-old Pyrex, natch.

P.S. My mom texted me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she saw a similar set of mixing bowls in an antique store for EIGHTY-SEVEN DOLLARS. Seriously.

 

 

 

back from vacation

Tags

baby, beach, photos, vacation

and oh, so sad we are. Somehow one can never drink enough pool drinks, enough pitchers of Bud Lite, soak up enough sun, or laze and read enough books, to justify the huge pile of laundry one must face upon vacation’s end. We spent seven days on the GA coast (one of the Golden Isles), with a day trip to Savannah thrown in for kicks.

Because I’m new at this and didn’t quite manage to plan ahead, things have been quiet here on the blog front, and quiet on the sewing front (one can’t expect to bring one’s machine to the beach! one has toddler chasing to do) but geez oh man what a pile of reading notes I have coming! Stay tuned. This week has me digesting the eight (or so) books I’ve read in the past ten days, cutting into two piles of fabric for two different quilt projects, rushing to finish hand quilting the green quilt, and…I mentioned the laundry and toddler chasing, right?

Maybe I should just buy her a wading pool and park her in it so I can get my work done, eh?

thank goodness for pinterest

Tags

baby, family, pinterest, rainy day

I only have one kid, and she’s a) easy to get along with, and b) still really little, so I cannot. even. imagine how difficult rainy summer days are for most moms. It rained most of the day yesterday and Lucy and I felt pretty cooped up, despite having gone out for a quick power walk before the storms started.

Thankfully, I’d “pinned” this idea a few weeks ago. (Pin here, original post here.) I’d NEVER in a million zillion years have come up with this on my own: squeeze finger paint into a ziploc bag, tape it to a window, and let the baby finger-paint, mess-free! Lucy loved it. And I love that there are waaaay smarter mommas than me out there, who share their good ideas on the internet.

ladylike

Tags

baby, family, photos

I’m not particularly invested in teaching Lucy to act “ladylike.” I think it’s much more important for her to learn to act “kind” and “polite” and “respectful.” But on a warm evening walk, she pulls a move like this…and I have to bite back my “little girls don’t sit like that!” words. What, Ma? It’s hot. Don’t want my legs to stick together.

more like daddy

Tags

baby, family, photos

When Lucy was born, she looked like me. The midwife traced her tiny newborn brow with her forefinger and said, “Yeah, I think she looks like you. Your eyes, nose, brow…” When she smiled her first smile, there was no doubt she was MY KID. Poor Nate couldn’t find any resemblance to himself. These days, as Lucy starts to make more expressions, and as her face becomes more a kid face and less a baby face, she favors her daddy more and more. 

This is a good thing. After all, Daddy is pretty much Lucy’s fav these days. She asks about him all day long, from the moment she gets up (pointing, from her changing table, towards our bedroom: “Daddy?”), through every meal (pointing at the door: “Daddy?”), all day long until Nate calls to let us know he’s headed home from work. She knows when the phone rings between 5 and 5:30 pm that it’s Daddy coming home! 

You couldn’t ask for a bester set of buds than Lucy and her Daddy.