This weekend

I'm going to start making my to-do list public and we'll see how much I get crossed off. I've been hesitant to make a real list because I thought it would just be overwhelming, but now that I've made a dent in the cleaning process it doesn't seem so bad.

Other than some laundry I haven't gotten a lot done this week, but I have managed to maintain the clean state in the kitchen. I guess maintaining the status quo is better than sliding back into messiness! I also managed to cook four of the past five nights and the fifth night was leftovers. Not bad.

Must do:
- Write birthday thank you notes
- Deal with clutter in foyer and dining room
- Laundry
- Put away items currently "hanging out" in upstairs hallway
- Sleep

Next steps:
- Deal with clutter in bedroom and dressing room
- Clean bathrooms
- Dust, vacuum and mop first floor
- Dust, vacuum and mop second floor
- Weave in ends and sew up baby items that I finished knitting this week
- Start next couple of baby gifts

In my mind I would like to get the house to an easy to main state so that during the next few visits from my parents we can deal with more long-term projects - like cleaning my office and maybe finally finishing the mural in Heather's room. ;-) At least the alphabet is complete...but I never got to add the bugs and butterflies!

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Also, a nursing note. For the past four days, Heather has gone to her high chair for a snack instead of requesting to nurse after daycare/work. I thought this was going to be the last session she would get rid of, and it looks like it is going to be the first. It will be interesting to see if she requests a late afternoon/early evening session this weekend or not.

I'm not really ready to wean, but dropping this session isn't bothering me as much as I thought it would. So I guess if she decides to wean I will probably be okay with it. A little sad but okay. And relieved that we don't have to force her to wean down the road.

We're down to 2-3 sessions a day and I guess we'll wait and see what happens!

Goal?

There's probably no way I'll get that much knitting time in the next couple of weeks...but it would be cool to wear "Ivy" on March 20th. It is a cardigan, after all. :-)

Sweater day to honor Mister Rogers

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

No one knows what the weather will be like on March 20, but the people behind "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" are declaring it sweater-wearing weather.

March 20 would have been the late children's TV host's 80th birthday, and Family Communications Inc. is urging everyone -- not just in Pittsburgh, but all over the world -- to wear a favorite sweater that day in honor of Fred Rogers' legacy. Family Communications is the production company behind the long-running "Mister Rogers" public TV series.

David Newell, who plays Mr. McFeely on the show, stars in a YouTube video created to spread the word about the March 20 sweater day.

The sweater event will cap off the "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Days celebration March 15-20, in which area cultural institutions will offer family events and free or reduced admission prices and family activities. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Days is also part of Pittsburgh's 250 anniversary celebration.

-- Adrian McCoy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Productivity

The kitchen is clean.

This might not seem like a big deal, but I feel like we've been digging out from under tons of clutter and disarray for months (House Tour - Mastitis - Holidays - Thrush - Work Travel), and this past weekend was the first time in a while that I went to bed on Sunday night feeling like real progress had been made. We are caught up on dishes, the counters are clean and I did some of the reorganizing needed to free up counter space and only keep the really necessary items out all of the time. My spring cleaning goal will be to go through all of the cabinets and drawers to organize some more, but it is not a time-critical project.

Now that Heather is going to bed rather reliably at 8pm (*Knock on wood*), I'm going to try to use my evenings to make some more dents in the laundry and clutter. It would be great if I could get more done during the week so that weekend nap time could be used for longer projects like cleaning out my office and spring cleaning/purging/organizing. It's just a matter of not sitting down in front of the TV after I put her to bed. If I do, the night is toast. :-) I at least need to find a balance where I'm not spending 3 hours every night in front of the TV. There are no knitting deadlines that require that right now!

The Tulip Cardigan

I finally uploaded some photos of this finished sweater to Ravelry, so I figured I should post them here, too. The pictures were taken at Amelia's first birthday party. We had a lovely time. :-)




I will do this pattern again. Probably not with the called for colors/yarn, but it is a really nice top down cardigan pattern.

There is enough of this yarn left that I might try to make a newborn sized sweater with what remains...

1 year

I keep thinking of sentimental and sappy "1 year ago" posts, but seriously there are just not enough hours in the day.

I just got back from two days in Canton, NY and things at work continue to be insane. I just have too much work and there aren't enough hours in the day. Period. And everyone in the office is overloaded, so there is no one to "give" any of my work to. Plus, the guy helping out with one of my jobs is new to us, new to our CAD software and has only worked in residential architecture before...so he has a steep learning curve and need very specific instructions that I don't really have time to put together.

So, I will hold you off with a super quick list update and I'll try to post some more pictures this weekend.

- Pedi appointment went well on Monday. Ear infection and thrush are gone. 18 lb, 1 oz (15th percentile) and 28" long (25th percentile) are the stats. So status quo on growth.
- I finished the back of Ivy on the plane Tuesday and cast on for the left front yesterday. As of this morning, I'm almost through the cable section of the left front.
- I watched the first episode of "Weeds" on my iPod on the plane yesterday. I love Mary Louise Parker, but I don't know that I enjoyed the show enough to pay for more episodes. I love Elizabeth Perkins, too, but so far her character is just too evil to want to watch. Any fans out there that think I should try a couple more episodes?
- I'm still not totally healed, but we can comfortable nurse in a variant of the football hold position (just like we were using 1 year ago(!)) without further damage. I think the thrush is totally gone, so it is just a matter of the tooth marks healing. I no longer dread nursing and my supply seems to be fine even without pumping all day at work...so I am a happy BFing mom again. The only downside of our new position is that it is very difficult to do discretely, so nursing will be limited to home or private rooms for the foreseeable future.
- Heather is doing a great job with whole milk in a sippy, so we are basically done with bottles! (R did use one overnight while I was gone, so we won't put them in storage yet...but we no longer have to wash 2-3 every night!)
- We are looking forward to celebrating Amelia's birthday on Saturday and I'm looking forward to knitting on Sunday. I might force myself to get out the patchwork tortoise just so it doesn't languish forever...
- I have yarn for two baby gifts. One child was born last week and the other is due in April. I need to figure out exactly what I'm making and get them going soon.

That's all my brain can handle at the moment. Back to my stairs!

Happy First Birthday, Heather!

We all had a lovely time celebrating Heather's birthday today. Personally, I had a fabulous time at her party. All of the adorable children having fun, all of the lovely friends and family chatting away and everyone celebrating our beautiful daughter.

I have to admit, we've been keeping a secret for a little while. We thought it would be fun for everyone to see Heather walking for the first time at the party. :-) She started taking steps on her own more regularly last Saturday and she's been getting more and more adventurous every day. She can even stand up on her own without pulling up!

It was a delightful and exhausting day! And we're going to the knitting festival in the morning! What a weekend...

Bye-bye pump!

It's official. I'm done pumping at work!

I was planning to pump through Friday, but after a bad session last Thursday I decided to go ahead and quit so I have time to heal during the day. (I'm still not totally back to normal, but things are better.)

I will have to pump when I travel for work and I don't have plans to wean Heather soon (assuming that my healing continues), but I am free from daily pumping! Woot!

...but I'm hanging onto my key to the storage room for a couple of weeks, just in case. ;-)

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Other tidbits

- It seems more likely that Heather associates the sound mamamama with me and dadadada with R. I wouldn't say that she is calling us by name, but she seems to use those sounds at the right time. I also think she says duck "Duh" to the rubber duckies in the bath and the other day R & I were sure we heard something that sounded like kitty while she was in the high chair and the cats were wandering around. I'm hesitant to say that any of these are real words, but they are sounds that she associates with things, so I guess by loose definition they are words. ;-)

- She rarely waves anymore. She used to love it and now I don't think she's done it in a week or two.

- She might officially be down to one nap a day. Because she is primarily with older kids, that is what she is doing at daycare, and that is what she did this past weekend at home, too. I'm just trying to be really watchful in the evenings to see if her bedtime needs to be earlier. Some mornings she wakes up while we're getting ready and other mornings she wakes up around the time my alarm goes off to nurse and then goes back to sleep. (Selfishly) I don't really want to get to a point where she wakes at the same time every day because rigid schedules really don't work for us...but I don't want her to be sleep deprived either.

- I ordered gates yesterday. I've been meaning to do it for weeks, and it is just a hard enough process given the strange and large sizes of our openings that I never followed through on it. One of us is with Heather all of the time, so it's not like she is in any danger. But someday that isn't going to be so easy anymore. Our plan is to keep her gated in the living room and dining room. At some point we will probably need a gate to put at the top of the steps on the second floor, but doors will have to work for now. We also need to make a serious pass through the living room and dining room and figure out what needs to be put up or away. There are a few shelves that need to be cleared and some lower tables that need to be kept free of clutter. Maybe with the grandparents around this weekend we can make a dent in the work.

- The tulip sweater is done. If it hadn't been 59 degrees this morning I might have sent her to school in it today. It will probably make its debut later this week. (Note to self, I need to buy some sew-in labels. The iron-on ones just don't work.)

- Ivy is going well. I'm about halfway up the back. I'm a little sad to be in the 'boring' stockinette section on the bus, but I know it will get interesting again.

- I keep forgetting that my birthday is tomorrow. We don't have any specific plans and I don't even know if Heather can stay up long enough to go out to eat after work. I would normally take the day off, but there are a number of reasons why I'm not doing that this year. Heather and I will just have to celebrate on the 18th when we're home together. :-) I guess the most surprising part is that I don't really mind. Strange coming from someone that used to start counting down to her birthday a month in advance!