random thoughts

We’ve been back home for almost 2 weeks now and it feels like we were never gone.  Barbados seems so long ago.  We had a great trip and enjoyed the fact that our choices for entertainment were going to the beach, swimming in the pool, going to cricket and going to the Concorde museum.  Oh, and eating lots of good food.  We stayed in a rented house with Phil, Vlad and Stuart who put up with all of Sam’s shenanigans with good humour.  Stuart tried to get her to walk while we were there but she wasn’t ready.

Sam enjoyed swimming a lot:

Playing with the wheel of the Concorde:

Watching it rain:

and sitting on the beach:

In 2 weeks we head off to see Zach and Alice!

Phil and Vlad: “How much rum should we add?”
Stuart and I: “add a cup of rum and see how it tastes and add more as needed”

after the cup has been added: “I can’t taste it, add more!”

Tomorrow we will be exploring this: 12 Egg Yolks 40 oz Canadian Whiskey or White Rum 40 oz Dark Rum 26 oz Kahlua 10 oz Maple Syrup 40 oz Whole Milk 40 oz Heavy Cream (Whipping Cream - not canned!) 1 cup Sugar

I don’t think I fully understood a year ago how happy pulling up to standing and being able to “find the cat” in Goodnight Moon would make me.

Sam pulled up all the way for the first time this morning.  The funny thing was that I had just gotten off the phone with my mom in which I had said that I thought we had no more then a week until she could do it.  It was almost as if in her sleep she heard me and had to prove that she could do it now.

As for finding the “kitty cat” she has been doing it for me for a week, but we had not gotten 3rd party confirmation until this evening.  She can only find the kitty cat that looks like Miah (two toned) I don’t think that she realizes that the white cat in the book is a cat.  I figure that will come with time, I’m still very proud!   Sam also now has a very specific squeal of delight that she does when she sees a cat.  It doesn’t seem to matter if the cat is Miah or any other cat (Macchia and Terro are the latest “victims”), it just as to be a cat.  Hopefully she will keep it for a while because I think it will be handy to have when she is more mobile and I can use it to go rescue the cat.

I also finally had time to make latkes this morning.  I discovered that Sam likes them 2 weeks ago when I bought some on a whim at Trader Joes and figured that it was high time I figure out how to make them for real.  Many years ago (at least 10) I tried to make them on a regular basis.  I never suceeded in getting them right.  Armed with my increased knowledge of cooking as well as Mike’s  Bobe’s latke recipe, graciously provided to me by his lovely mother Judy, I tried again.  It turns out that I was missing a few key ingredients all those years ago.  For some reason it never occured to me to use egg as a binder back then.  I knew that edd was a binder, I used it often but for some reason it never occured to me to use it in latkes.  Anyway, we had sucess!  I added some sweet potato to the regular potato to try and make me feel like I was giving Sam something a little healthy.  I also omitted the salt since she can’t have that yet.

This was the result:

I think she enjoed them.

and just because I love this picture (it really shows a side of her most don’t get to see):

Today will be the last time that I pump breastmilk for Sam.

She stopped nursing at 3 months old and I have been pumping ever since.  I have thought a lot (possibly too much) about why she stopped nursing and I think that there were a variety of factors at play.  One of them being that she wanted to sleep for long periods of time (which she did and still does, I will not disclose just how many hours for fear of being killed by other new parents or my OB who wished that her teenager would sleep that much) and nursing didn’t get her enough milk to be able to do that.  I also think that nursing was harder then a bottle and she decided it wasn’t worth it, it generally is for everyone but there were some physical issues that made it more challenging.  Thirdly at that time my hormones were changing, I have read that babies can pick up on that and sometimes that will prompt them to stop nursing.

Between what I had managed to store up and pump, she never got formula until she was about 7 months old and until now she has been getting a mix of formula and breastmilk.  Since then my supply has been steadily decreasing as my need for sleep (and a life) has been increasing.  The decision to stop completely came when we decided to plan a trip to Barbados with some friends in June and I decided that I really did not want to bring the pump with me.  So I have been slowly working on weaning over the last month and today will be the culmination of that.

In some ways I am excited about this, I can have a beer again and not worry about getting my child drunk, I can go on a diet to finish losing my baby fat, I can sleep on my own schedule and not have certain parts of my body waking me up, now it will only be my child waking me up.   On the other hand there is a part of me that is sad about this.  I will no longer be directly supplying my child with the nutrition she needs to survive.  I will instead be relegated to serving her the food that she eats on a plate or in a bottle but it will be grown/produced by someone else.  I know that every mother has to go through this at some point, and I have talked to many of my friends about it but it is still difficult and emotional. Especially when it is me making that decision and not my child weaning herself.

I leave you with some photos

the reflection in the ball is almost like the baby in the mirror

she’s getting better at standing and cruising

Jessie and Eamon taken by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee herself and posted here.  They are in the moms and baby section, he’s the one chewing on the truck.

I had a “run in” with Chris’s razor after my shower on Friday morning and am now missing a piece of my left index finger making it very hard for me to knit, well technically purl.  Hopefully sometime soon I’ll be able to purl again.  On the upside Sam loves playing with the band aid!

Jessie, Jaimie, Eamon and I went on a little road trip today in search of a Yarn Harlot.  We found her! (I forgot to get a picture but she has one of Jessie and Eamon)  As well as many other knitters.  WEBS sure does know how to host an event, given the number of people there everyone seemed to be in good spirits and relaxed.  Eamon also did really well all things considered.  We spent a lot of time running/chasing him around the sale warehouse (it can’t be described in any other way) and at least for me, being goofy and trying to find new and random things to entertain him.  Needless to say I got my exercise for the day.

It was nice to be off mommy and just on distraction/play duty for the day.  From the looks of things when I got home Chris and Sam survived.  It was the longest that I’ve been away from her in one stretch, and I must admit a little weird to not have her along as she usually goes everywhere with me.  I have to say it was somewhat liberating and yet there was an absence I’m not entirely sure I was happy about.  I guess I will get more used to it as she gets older and more independent.

On that note, at 9.5 months we are finally seeing some signs of mobility!  She really hates being on her tummy and rolls off of it after a few seconds so we suspected that crawling would be slow in coming, if ever.  We are seeing some scooting while sitting and a lot of effort is being spent learning to pull up and stand.  She also loves playing with her ball and we have a regular circus performer at times.

At the doctors on Tuesday she weighed in at 19lbs and 28″ long.  She also gained 2 cm in head circumference but I don’t know the actual measurement on that one.  We also got the go ahead to try wheat which so far she doesn’t seem to be reacting to which is good since she has really taken a liking to her wheat products.

On the knitting front I haven’t been doing that much.  I finished the back of Reid, I’m maybe 1/4 of the way through the second half of Anouk, and am just finishing the cuff on my second ever sock.  I also have to finish the seaming on my sweater but with the arrival of spring I have lost most of my motivation on that one.  There is one soon to be (all I need to do is sew on the buttons I got today) FO that I will write about next time.  With that temptation I will go in search of my bed and sleep very well after a good but exhausting weekend.

My niece (she’s 9 now!) started IM’ing me this evening. It was really fun to talk to her, even though talking to my niece over IM is a bit out of context for me. After having talked about mixing soda and juice, which turned into a conversation about Mimosa’s (they drink them in the Incredibles, who knew) and how many people dislike lawyers, the best comment of the night that came out of our conversation was this one upon finding out who her uncle works for:

“UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH REALLY???????? You are kidding. He works for Mozilla Fox? That is our Internet icon.”

So cute and very astute. I think that Mozilla should consider somehow working “Mozilla Fox” into their strategy
“csfetfx” Have I mentioned that Samantha loves keyboards now? She has also figured out how to use keyboard shortcuts, some of which I don’t even know how to do. I guess it takes a 6-month old to figure these things out.

I can’t believe it’s been six months since my world turned upside down. Samantha is sitting up (shown here wearing Zana’s beautiful sweater) now and seems to have finally cut her first tooth. It only took a week and a half of fussiness to get us there. Hopefully the rest won’t be as bad. We are working on baby proofing as mobility isn’t too far away, the cat provides a good incentive. We are also working on introducing solids, so far we have: sweet potato, peas and avocado in our repertoire. At her 6 month doctors appointment she was 26.5″ long and 17.5lbs, it’s amazing how fast infants grow in their first year.

On the knitting front I finished all my xmas (I managed to not get any pictures of them) presents on time, thankfully 2 weren’t due to be given until Jan 4 otherwise I wouldn’t have made it. I am still diligently working on the larger projects I have going, the dress for Samantha which is now in the finishing stage, and the cable sweater (maybe for me or maybe to be given away depending on how my gauge issues turn out). I also knit up a quick hat for Samantha because we lost her other winter hat, it also got really super cold and the first one wouldn’t have been thick enough anyway.

I have grand plans for 2008, a sweater for my mother, she purchased the wool when she was here visiting, I get to knit it since the arthritis in her thumb makes it near impossible for her to knit anymore. I can’t wait to get to knit it up, it is a beautiful wool/mohair blend that feels great. I also got yarn for Christmas from my mother, purchased during her trip to Spain this fall. It’s a little unclear exactly what the yarn is composed of, but the burn test indicated that it’s a man-made fiber. I was thinking about maybe using some of it to make knitty’s square cake. I also want to make ice queen but and I think I have the fiber to do so I just don’t have the beads. Or rather, it’s likely that somewhere on the back porch in my pile of beads I do in fact have the right beads it requires a lot more effort then I’m willing to put into it at this moment. Another one is the Cobblestone Pullover it will be made and given to one of the few men I know who wears sweaters, he knows who he is and will get to see it when it’s done, which may be a while.
There is more fiber on the way but what I ordered was out of stock so I’m patiently waiting for it to arrive. I’ll feature it when it gets here. There are many other things that I want to knit that I know of and many more that I’m sure I’ll find as the year goes on. My ravelry queue keeps getting longer and longer and it would be much longer than it already is if I could remember to add things as I find them.

Christmas time is here again and that means that all the knitting I was previously working on: a dress for Samantha, a sweater for me, another sweater that I was planning on but haven’t gotten to yet, a “harf” (hat/scarf) for me and a hat (done) & scarf for Chris, have all been put on hold. I have just finished a hat, am working on a blanket and a scarf for people for Christmas. I can’t tell you who they are for but it will all become known in due time. At that point I will be able to put up pictures, hopefully of the recipients modeling them. I really wanted to give more hand knit gifts, but there just isn’t enough time for me to do that. Maybe next year.

Ten years ago today I married the love of my life and my best friend. We have been through good times and bad, lived in 4 cities in 2 countries and learned a lot about each other and ourselves in the process. As we now enter a new phase in our relationship I’m sure we will be tested and entertained in ways we never knew possible. Here’s to another ten years and more!