Four months

Max is four months old now and such a happy kid. He still spits up quite a bit, but not in the huge volumes that he did before. He laughs a lot. Last week he rolled over from his tummy to his back! All is well.

Ten weeks

Max is ten weeks old tomorrow. Things are definitely good now; I'd say the first five or six weeks were very difficult for me. At around eight weeks, something seemed to click on in him, with lots of smiles, lots of movement, super-alertness, and a good long sleep at night. Earlier this month we flew out to B.C. so Max could meet his grandparents and other relatives, and he was a champ with the travel as well as with all the new faces, voices, etc. Now I'm looking forward to him holding up his own head and feeding less frequently during the day. Also wondering if those blue eyes are going to change. They're so blue I find it hard to believe they'll turn brown (like mine). Maybe green (like his dad's)?

Five weeks

These have been the longest five weeks of my life ... but Max is a beauty, I must say, and he's getting more alert every day (i.e., more fun).

It's a boy!

Maximilian Charles
born at 7:16 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 10, 2010
9 pounds, 3 ounces (4.18 kg)
20.5 inches (52 cm)

Day 1:


Day 7:


Day 10 (yesterday!):

All is well with us. I'm feeding him right now and typing one-handed, so no big story. But I'll be back! Just didn't want to keep you hanging for too long. Also, we wish you all the best for the holidays and the year ahead! Much love to all, from Alison and Max. xoxo

3 weeks out

My due date is in three weeks, on Dec. 8. We're feeling pretty on top of things -- we're taking our weekly prenatal classes; we've taken a tour of the birthing centre at the hospital; we've got the cloth diaper service set up; we're taking an infant CPR course this Friday; we've got the crib up (but it's filled with other stuff at the moment); the base of the carseat is in the car; and I've finished my part-time job. We've got pretty much everything we need, according to lists like this one, this one, and this one. I think we're as ready as we're going to be! And we're definitely excited. So watch this space -- I may check in again before the baby comes, or the next post might contain the big news...

Tag, you're it

I came across one of these on some website or another a while back and didn't really understand it, but I did some poking around online and the ribbon-tag blankie became my newest obsession. (I guess this kind of object is just something very tactile to occupy a baby -- the different textures and colours are fun and stimulating. Seems like a good idea.) This one, for example, is just so sweet. Some are smaller, like these ones. (And this ribbon-tab "monster doll" is inspired and awesome.) I had to make one of these little blankies, too. So I had a look at the instructions on the Craftzine.com blog, bought some short lengths of ribbon to add to my own meager scraps (several in black and white, for the recommended high contrast), and did just that:





I cut 16-inch squares of a cotton print and a plain white flannel. (Lots of people favor super-soft Minky fabric, but it's too expensive for me.) I cut the ribbons at 2.5-inch to 4-inch lengths -- short enough that the baby won't get tangled up in the loops. Pressed, pinned, sewed, top-stitched, and voilà. It's very cute! I have ribbon left over, so I might make another, smaller one. Plus it was fun to make -- a very rewarding result with little effort.


Have any of you made one of these before? If so, was it a success with the baby? (And how old of a baby would dig this kind of thing? Is my friend's 14-month-old too old for one?)

Noooooooooooooo!

First of all, please imagine my "Nooooo" in that slowed-down, cinematic way -- like when, in a movie, something precious is falling and someone dives to catch it, all in slow motion, shouting in that low, distorted voice. Thank you. That will be sufficiently dramatic.

I saw my doctor this morning and told him that for the last three or four days I've woken up with stiff, numb hands, and that some swelling and stiffness persists throughout the day. He said this is (pregnancy-related) carpal tunnel syndrome, and that to keep it from getting worse, I need to stop doing anything repetitive with my hands -- like typing and knitting.

"No knitting," said Dr. K. "You need to stop knitting."

Gulp.

Now, I have to admit that normally, I might not actually stop knitting. I might tell my doctor I will stop knitting, and then keep knitting. But he said I should stop knitting and typing. And there's no way I can stop typing, unless my supervisor will accept a five-hour thesis on tape. Stopping typing is simply out of the question, which means I'm going to have to sacrifice knitting in the interests of getting my work done.

It had occurred to me at that at some point in this pregnancy, something might go wrong with my health that would lead to bed rest. I figured that would be bad, but I could still have my laptop and knit. But "don't use your hands"? I hadn't anticipated this one, and I think it's worse -- for me, anyway. (It's funny -- I've never thought of myself as a person who works with her hands, but I am. Bed rest would be devastating for an athlete, or a bike courier, or the mother of a toddler, but "don't use your hands" is worse for someone who spends most of her time sitting and typing and reading and making stuff.) (And I know this carpal tunnel thing is quite common in pregnancy, and the doctor said if I was at 37 weeks it wouldn't really matter. But since I'm only at 27 weeks, there's plenty of time for it to get a lot worse. The word "splints" was mentioned.)

So I guess you'll be seeing more sewing around here...

Wowza

As I clicked "publish" on that last post, I gave myself a little pep talk about how blogging probably wouldn't be like it used to be after all this time -- it might take a while for people to notice me again, etc. And when I checked back the next day and saw "0 comments," I was OK with that. And then a few hours later (thinking, "Really? Not even one?"), I remembered that I have to approve comments before they appear. And lo and behold, more than 40 lovely notes were waiting for me in comment-modification limbo, making me feel very happy and humbled. I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart. Welcome back to you, too.

And thanks for the burp cloth comments! I'd like to make more that involve simply adding a fabric trim to cloth diapers, or with flannel over one whole side. (Where does one even buy cloth diapers these days? Zellers? Do I have to go to Walmart?) I'm spending most of my time this week polishing off a couple of draft chapters, but I have a second flannel receiving blanket on the go, too, so I can take a break from writing and just roll my chair a few feet over to my sewing table. So far, I've cut the fabric and pressed/pinned the hem around it. At some point this afternoon, I'll do that sewing. From my googling, I see that lots of people sew double-layered receiving blankets, but I'm just using a single layer. A 40-inch-square piece of flannel is big, and I think getting two pieces to match exactly in size -- and to sew them together perfectly so that the blanket lies flat -- would just be needlessly frustrating. I'd rather make a pile of single-layer blankets and just use two if the extra warmth is needed. I'm all about layers. It's because I started dressing myself in the '80s.

So life is all about flannel and writing these days. As for other baby stuff, we're slowly amassing the things we'll need. I've bought plenty of baby clothes secondhand (PLENTY); I scored a Boppy pillow (with a dinosaur-patterned slipcover) on eBay; and my best friend found a really good carseat at a yard sale last weekend. I've signed up for prenatal classes, which don't start until October, and I've put the baby's name (i.e., "Baby") on the city's central daycare waiting list. (Quebec is good to babies, offering things like subsidized daycare, because they need more of them -- but the waiting list is long.) I'm 26 weeks pregnant today. It feels to me like I'm right in the middle of "we've still got lots of time" and "not too much longer now." It's a nice place to be.

In the meantime, here's a gratuitous shot of Mooky, keeping it real on the back porch.


ETA: Funny -- I just noticed that the last photo I posted of Mooky was almost exactly one year ago. That's a long time without Mooky! I apologize! (It obviously wasn't so hot at this time last year, or he never would have been sleeping in the house.)

Are you there, blog? It's me, Alison

I've been thinking for a week or two about how to make a drama-free return to this little corner of the Internet that I've got here. I lost interest in the whole thing last year (obviously), but I never did say goodbye or officially shut things down, just so that I could come back if I wanted to. I'm still not sure whether I'll start blogging again with any regularity, but I have been finding myself wanting to post certain things, and this seems like the most appropriate place to do that. So hello to anyone who may pop by after all this time!

I'm not going to try to summarize the nine months that have passed since I last posted, except to say this: I'm still living in Montreal and working on my Ph.D. (writing the dissertation draft). In news of the new, I'm expecting a baby in early December -- and that’s what brings me back to the blog. Yep, I'm 25 weeks pregnant and, I must say, feeling excellent.

For me, Ravelry took the place of knitblogging. I could put all the info and photos about knitting projects there, and I no longer felt the need to duplicate that stuff here. But now that a baby is on the way, I'm doing a little bit of sewing and bookmarking a lot of stuff online, and I don't have another place to keep track of that stuff. Also, I probably want to talk about baby stuff more than my friends want to hear about it, because -- let's face it -- stuff can be boring if it isn't about you. I'll be the first to admit that when knitting bloggers had babies and started talking about the babies instead, I often tuned out. If you're not interested, you're not interested -- and I wasn't, but now I am. Life changes like that, doesn’t it?

All this is to say that I might start blogging a bit, and it's probably going to be about babies. OK, about my baby. (But I'm more interested in yours now, too -- I promise.) And I'm jumping right in with burp cloths. What could be more fascinating?

A couple of Christmases ago, I made flannel pillowcases as gifts (a big hit, by the way), and I had some flannel left over. With more than a yard of one print, I made a simple receiving blanket: trimmed off the selvedges, cut about a 40-inch square, turned over a hem all around and sewed it. With smaller pieces of leftover flannel, I made three burp cloths:


I looked at several patterns/tutorials online and settled on this one. I cut out six pieces, paired different patterns together for each cloth, sewed the pieces together, and topstitched. Easy -- once I figured out the tension on my machine had to be set at 1 for the topstitching (only 1!?).


Et voila. I'll probably need dozens more. Several patterns recommend layering a cloth diaper inside the burp cloth because some babies barf that much. This, along with about 273 other things I've read in the last five months, terrifies me.