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Finished/Unfinished

Finished: gestation
Unfinished: raising our kid!

Our little baby is a boy, John, and he arrived in the thick of a snowstorm on December 19. We have decided not to post public pictures; hope you'll understand.

I went back to work on the 18th, having run out of things to do around the house, and had insistent but widely-spaced contractions all day long. I was pretty sure we'd meet the baby on Friday, so we went out to our favorite Indian restaurant "one last time" that evening, and then curled up on the couch and watched a few episodes of MASH. When I went to bed (10 pm) I was just starting to have to use the hypnobirthing relaxation techniques during contractions.

At 1 am I woke up and started breathing through contractions; I headed to the living room so Tim could get a little more sleep. At 2 am I called the doctor to let them know where things stood. Then I took a hot shower and got back in bed to try to relax some more; Tim hit the shower, and we headed back downstairs around 4. It was hard to get comfortable and at 4:20 my stomach decided to protest all the unusual muscular activity. We threw the last-minute things into our bags and headed to the hospital.

I'll spare you the details of the following 14 hours and 20 minutes. :) Suffice it to say that John entered the world in the traditional manner, a very healthy 7 lbs 14 ozs, 21 inches long, and promptly started to outgrow everything. Right now he is snuggled up in my Moby wrap, and starting to wake up, so I've got to wrap this up!

You might be wondering, whither this blog? I certainly am. Knitting time has been severely curtailed, and cooking is more of a survival tactic at this point than an exploration of creative impulse. However, I'll do what I can do keep posting, and to keep the baby from completely taking over the subject matter. Expect to see more knitting-for-kids, though! (And when the weather gets warmer, there will be biking.)

Back on the Wagon

The last three months have been... well, to get it out in the open, they've been your typical first trimester blah (plus two weeks of nasty poison ivy rashes). Of course that does mean I got on the proverbial temperance wagon, but I fell off the blogwagon around the same time. Sorry about that.

Things have gotten better over the last week, though, and I had enough energy today to:

• start cleaning up the guest room (inlaws coming!)
• run multiple errands
• go through 4 boxes of hand-me-down maternity clothes
• spray Roundup on the poison ivy
• GO TO THE FARM! YAY!

Thank God I got my groove back in time for One Local Summer signups! Barely in time. Today's the last day, so if you meant to sign up and haven't, get over there! I have definitely been eating non-local what with trying to get enough greens in my gullet, during a cold New England spring, but our CSA share should be starting up in a couple of weeks, and our garden has baby spinach and lettuce and onions and more. A strawberry patch, too. That was a complete surprise as the snow melted.

We've been greening our garden in other ways, too -- we installed a couple of rain barrels so that we're not watering from the town wells. Except for the Roundup, we're not using any industrial pesticides or fertilizer. Just compost and manure and soap. (I wouldn't even use the Roundup but severe allergic reaction means we have a zero tolerance policy for the plant, and it's nowhere near the food plants.)

We were biking in Western MA yesterday, out near Zoar, and we rode past one small homestead with a long road frontage. The veggie garden gave way to the rhubarb patch, which was followed by a dozen or so blueberry bushes, which yielded to a few venerable old apple trees. Blessed people!

Keep Those Babies Warm

Booties for Miss Gracie Dow, born towards the end of February. While I love the look of the booties, I have some serious beef with the construction. Something so small and knit-in-the-round-able shouldn't require so many seams. I reduced the number of seams from the pattern, but still. If I do them again, I'll probably knit the strap-band first and then pick up stitches from it to knit the rest of the shoe.

This, while a much longer do, was inherently more satisfying.

It's a large baby afghan, crocheted in Lion Brand Baby Soft, begun last January and finished last month. (There was a 10-month hiatus in there.) That photo shows it folded in half. I think I will leave out the bobbles in the future, but overall the ripple pattern was very relaxing.

Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern. The picture doesn't show it well, but for half of the white sections, I used glitzy (pompadour?) Baby Soft, and for the other half, I used plain white. Just to mix things up a little.

This will probably be donated to the Lowell Wish Project or to Project Linus. While everyone I know seems to be pregnant right now, the combination of probable girls, "please no pink or blue", possible twins, likely deluge of afghans from other relatives, etc. means I'll be making something else for each of the babies.

Teach By Example?

Hook 'em while they're young

This got my dander up. And if there's anything you don't want in a kitchen, it's dander up.

"Who has time to inculcate the next generation in the ways of the culinary world?" You, that's who. Your kids are far more likely to imitate you than some teacher in yet another after-school lesson. You don't have to be able to make souffle or brioche to teach them the culinary basics: Wash your hands. Use tasty ingredients. Point the knife away from you. Enjoy yourself.