Mum a bub are both doing well. Mr0 was 10lb (4.53kg) when he got weighed. We don't know yet how long he is but he's already out of the 00 size stuff.
Now to survive night feeding...
Read more...
Aug 30, 2009
He's arrived!
Mum a bub are both doing well. Mr0 was 10lb (4.53kg) when he got weighed. We don't know yet how long he is but he's already out of the 00 size stuff.
Now to survive night feeding...
Read more...
Aug 26, 2009
keeping on keeping on
Yep. Still pregnant.
For a general pregnancy/quilting obsession update, see after the cut...
The final few days of pregnancy suck. (Oh please let it only be "days"!) I feel like I've been in the early stages of labour for about 3 weeks now - I get a couple of hours of proper contractions here and there - strong enough to stop me in my tracks and get the wheat-sacks out - but just when I'm thinking it might actually be ready to roll it all dies down and goes away. Very frustrating!
I'm not sure what's worse - worrying that when I finally decide that I am in labour I'll be 10 minutes away from pushing it out and have to give birth in the carpark - or the other nightmare scenario of turning up at the hospital thinking that I've been labouring well for a while and must have made some progress to find that I'm only 2cm and have hours and hours of work still to go! My midwife plans to do a 'stretch and sweep' on Friday (the 40 week mark) so I guess I'll find out then a little more about the state of play.
As far as 'schooling' goes, we've gone ultra-unstructured the closer we get to the baby's due date, so the kids' 'work' has mostly been colouring in, role-playing with dolls and puppets, reading, chasing the chickens around the yard, helping Daddy cook tea... just generally living life.
As far as 'what do you do all day?' goes, I've discovered hand-piecing patchwork and am now subject to a whole new craft addiction
I had been carrying on with piecing a quilt that my Mum had only just started (having finished the other one), but found the paper-piecing technique to be tedious, and the colour-scheme she chose to be dull and boring. So I checked some quilting books out of the library for inspiration and found one which has step-wise instructions for hand-piecing using a running stitch (instructions are great - Jinny Beyer doesn't even assume that you've threaded a needle before). This is much much much faster, so I've set Mum's 'boring quilt' aside and am making a bright scrap-quilt using random bits and pieces from my fabric stash. I plan to use the 'Squares and Triangles' pattern from this book by Lynne Edwards (also from the library), but have just started by making the random-fabric four-patch blocks so there's room to be flexible with my final pattern if I change my mind!
I never thought I'd enjoy hand-piecing. But it really is more convenient than machine piecing. I'm sure the machine would be tons faster - but I just never get around to sitting down in front of it. Hand-piecing is easy to do on the couch in the evenings, and in odd moments here and there, so it actually gets done.
Other than that, we're just hanging around waiting for the baby to be born. It all feels a bit surreal, really. I've been organised and ready for almost too long now - I'm starting to un-organised again (taking things out of the hospital bag because I need them for something else, the bassinet is somehow not made up properly anymore, the 'baby' corner of our room has had a few piles of non-baby stuff stashed there 'out of the way'...)
Read more...
For a general pregnancy/quilting obsession update, see after the cut...
The final few days of pregnancy suck. (Oh please let it only be "days"!) I feel like I've been in the early stages of labour for about 3 weeks now - I get a couple of hours of proper contractions here and there - strong enough to stop me in my tracks and get the wheat-sacks out - but just when I'm thinking it might actually be ready to roll it all dies down and goes away. Very frustrating!
I'm not sure what's worse - worrying that when I finally decide that I am in labour I'll be 10 minutes away from pushing it out and have to give birth in the carpark - or the other nightmare scenario of turning up at the hospital thinking that I've been labouring well for a while and must have made some progress to find that I'm only 2cm and have hours and hours of work still to go! My midwife plans to do a 'stretch and sweep' on Friday (the 40 week mark) so I guess I'll find out then a little more about the state of play.
As far as 'schooling' goes, we've gone ultra-unstructured the closer we get to the baby's due date, so the kids' 'work' has mostly been colouring in, role-playing with dolls and puppets, reading, chasing the chickens around the yard, helping Daddy cook tea... just generally living life.
As far as 'what do you do all day?' goes, I've discovered hand-piecing patchwork and am now subject to a whole new craft addiction
I had been carrying on with piecing a quilt that my Mum had only just started (having finished the other one), but found the paper-piecing technique to be tedious, and the colour-scheme she chose to be dull and boring. So I checked some quilting books out of the library for inspiration and found one which has step-wise instructions for hand-piecing using a running stitch (instructions are great - Jinny Beyer doesn't even assume that you've threaded a needle before). This is much much much faster, so I've set Mum's 'boring quilt' aside and am making a bright scrap-quilt using random bits and pieces from my fabric stash. I plan to use the 'Squares and Triangles' pattern from this book by Lynne Edwards (also from the library), but have just started by making the random-fabric four-patch blocks so there's room to be flexible with my final pattern if I change my mind!I never thought I'd enjoy hand-piecing. But it really is more convenient than machine piecing. I'm sure the machine would be tons faster - but I just never get around to sitting down in front of it. Hand-piecing is easy to do on the couch in the evenings, and in odd moments here and there, so it actually gets done.
Other than that, we're just hanging around waiting for the baby to be born. It all feels a bit surreal, really. I've been organised and ready for almost too long now - I'm starting to un-organised again (taking things out of the hospital bag because I need them for something else, the bassinet is somehow not made up properly anymore, the 'baby' corner of our room has had a few piles of non-baby stuff stashed there 'out of the way'...)
Read more...
Aug 10, 2009
still hanging in there
Just a short note to say that I haven't forgotten about my blog, but nothing has happened around here that has struck me as particularly bloggable lately.
So I'll just give you the boring update...
The baby and I are now past the 37 week mark, and my midwife says that 37-42 weeks is 'full term' so if I go into labour now then that is a good thing.
Bring it on, I say.
The quilt is finished - I sewed the binding on last night, and it got washed this morning. I was a bit worried about this as the quilt had some rust stains in it from when my Mum stored it - she'd (very uncharacteristically) left the needle stuck into the fabric. 25 years in a not-always-dry cupboard does horrible things to needles. But, wonderfully, most of the marks came out with a very ordinary warm wash on the delicate cycle in the machine. There's a brownish shadow where the worst mark was, but it's not very obvious, and I'm now confident that it will come out with a gentle spot remover. So that's brilliant.
I'd post a photo but the camera is packed away in the 'going into labour, get me to the hospital' bag, and I just know that if I take the camera out of the bag, it won't make it back in, and the poor child will the first one without newborn-birth photos. So you'll just have to use your imaginations. It's a 'Grandmother's flower garden' single-bed sized bedspread - slightly shorter than a proper single blanket, but wide enough to sleep under without gaps at the side. Mum used calico as the background colour, with the 'flowers' being navy blue centres, with bluey floral then green gingham surrounds.
I finished it with a straight binding, no border, since this was the easiest thing to do. Before she died, I did ask Mum how she'd intended to edge it, but with the combination of a 25 year time-lapse and chemotherapy induced exhaustion, she (understandably) couldn't remember. There were a couple of half-hexagons missing from one edge, too, so I compromised as best I could, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
That's about all that's been happening here - hopefully there will be news of the happy variety in the near future. I tell ya, if this baby goes over the 40 week mark, I will cry.
Read more...
So I'll just give you the boring update...
The baby and I are now past the 37 week mark, and my midwife says that 37-42 weeks is 'full term' so if I go into labour now then that is a good thing.
Bring it on, I say.
The quilt is finished - I sewed the binding on last night, and it got washed this morning. I was a bit worried about this as the quilt had some rust stains in it from when my Mum stored it - she'd (very uncharacteristically) left the needle stuck into the fabric. 25 years in a not-always-dry cupboard does horrible things to needles. But, wonderfully, most of the marks came out with a very ordinary warm wash on the delicate cycle in the machine. There's a brownish shadow where the worst mark was, but it's not very obvious, and I'm now confident that it will come out with a gentle spot remover. So that's brilliant.
I'd post a photo but the camera is packed away in the 'going into labour, get me to the hospital' bag, and I just know that if I take the camera out of the bag, it won't make it back in, and the poor child will the first one without newborn-birth photos. So you'll just have to use your imaginations. It's a 'Grandmother's flower garden' single-bed sized bedspread - slightly shorter than a proper single blanket, but wide enough to sleep under without gaps at the side. Mum used calico as the background colour, with the 'flowers' being navy blue centres, with bluey floral then green gingham surrounds.
I finished it with a straight binding, no border, since this was the easiest thing to do. Before she died, I did ask Mum how she'd intended to edge it, but with the combination of a 25 year time-lapse and chemotherapy induced exhaustion, she (understandably) couldn't remember. There were a couple of half-hexagons missing from one edge, too, so I compromised as best I could, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
That's about all that's been happening here - hopefully there will be news of the happy variety in the near future. I tell ya, if this baby goes over the 40 week mark, I will cry.
Read more...
Jul 22, 2009
Fossils
Remember this post about rocks?
Barb-Harmony Art Mom (of Outdoor Hour fame) suggested in the comments that a rock that we thought was just a pretty painted rock, might be a rock with shell fossils embedded in it.
And she was right!
I finally got around to having a closer look at the rock, and you can clearly see that those white circles are little shells - like pipi or cockle shells.
I found a good New Zealand shellfish identification guide, here. It's hard to tell what sort of shellfish these are, since the outer surface isn't really visible - the ones which would have been on the outside have broken, leaving only the outline shape of the shell. We are not going to break it open to see more!
So that's pretty cool. We now officially have fossils in our rock collection!
The only downside is that we found this rock in our garden, quite clearly placed there by the previous owners of the house (now both deceased), so we have absolutely no idea where it was collected from. It would have been nice to be able to 'complete the paperwork' for this specimen, but we're pretty happy just to have seen it and to know that it is possible to find them ourselves.
Read more...
Barb-Harmony Art Mom (of Outdoor Hour fame) suggested in the comments that a rock that we thought was just a pretty painted rock, might be a rock with shell fossils embedded in it.
And she was right!
I finally got around to having a closer look at the rock, and you can clearly see that those white circles are little shells - like pipi or cockle shells.
I found a good New Zealand shellfish identification guide, here. It's hard to tell what sort of shellfish these are, since the outer surface isn't really visible - the ones which would have been on the outside have broken, leaving only the outline shape of the shell. We are not going to break it open to see more!
So that's pretty cool. We now officially have fossils in our rock collection!
The only downside is that we found this rock in our garden, quite clearly placed there by the previous owners of the house (now both deceased), so we have absolutely no idea where it was collected from. It would have been nice to be able to 'complete the paperwork' for this specimen, but we're pretty happy just to have seen it and to know that it is possible to find them ourselves.
Read more...
Jul 17, 2009
And it will get bigger...
Just took another belly photo.
I'll be 34 weeks tomorrow.
That leaves another 6 weeks for this baby to get bigger.
And then it has to get OUT.
Read more...
I'll be 34 weeks tomorrow.
That leaves another 6 weeks for this baby to get bigger.
And then it has to get OUT.
Read more...
Jul 13, 2009
bed rest
Well, almost bed rest.
Self-imposed couch rest, really.
At 33wks of this pregnancy I've been having braxton hicks contractions on and off for over a week now. So far they've tapered off after about an hour and half, and they stay about 8 minutes apart and never last longer than about 30-45secs, but each time I get them they either last for a little longer, or they are a little stronger, or they take longer to settle down.
Last night was the first time they've woken me in the night.
So, in an effort to stay pregnant for at least another 3 weeks, I'm self-imposing as much 'bed-rest' as I can manage. The more time I spend upright, the more frequently I have contractions, so my goal is to keep horizontal as much as possible. Merl has dropped down to half days and I'll be using DVDs to babysit the children in the mornings!
Meanwhile, I doubt there'll be much internet browsing or blogging happening. So if I'm not around for a few days or so, that is why!
On the plus side, I'm getting some quilting done on a quilt that my mother started for me for when I moved into my big girl bed. Yes, you read that right - it's a UFO (unfinished fabric object) from 30 years ago. Mum passed it onto me to finish about 6 years ago, when I made my first quilt - by machine. I've never really had the patience for hand-quilting (and this is an entirely hand-pieced, hand-quilted beastie), but now I've got little else I can do, and the sewing is very therapeutic and rhythmic and I can even read stories while I do it, so long as the kids hold the books up for me!
I'm hoping to get it at least mostly finished before the baby arrives, or it may well spend the next 30 years in a cupboard. And I'd really rather sleep under it myself. A precious joint-project with my Mum, whom I'm missing horribly at the moment.
Read more...
Self-imposed couch rest, really.
At 33wks of this pregnancy I've been having braxton hicks contractions on and off for over a week now. So far they've tapered off after about an hour and half, and they stay about 8 minutes apart and never last longer than about 30-45secs, but each time I get them they either last for a little longer, or they are a little stronger, or they take longer to settle down.
Last night was the first time they've woken me in the night.
So, in an effort to stay pregnant for at least another 3 weeks, I'm self-imposing as much 'bed-rest' as I can manage. The more time I spend upright, the more frequently I have contractions, so my goal is to keep horizontal as much as possible. Merl has dropped down to half days and I'll be using DVDs to babysit the children in the mornings!
Meanwhile, I doubt there'll be much internet browsing or blogging happening. So if I'm not around for a few days or so, that is why!
On the plus side, I'm getting some quilting done on a quilt that my mother started for me for when I moved into my big girl bed. Yes, you read that right - it's a UFO (unfinished fabric object) from 30 years ago. Mum passed it onto me to finish about 6 years ago, when I made my first quilt - by machine. I've never really had the patience for hand-quilting (and this is an entirely hand-pieced, hand-quilted beastie), but now I've got little else I can do, and the sewing is very therapeutic and rhythmic and I can even read stories while I do it, so long as the kids hold the books up for me!
I'm hoping to get it at least mostly finished before the baby arrives, or it may well spend the next 30 years in a cupboard. And I'd really rather sleep under it myself. A precious joint-project with my Mum, whom I'm missing horribly at the moment.
Read more...
Jul 8, 2009
Honest Scrap award
I am still making up my mind about the whole blog 'award' thing. Part of me thinks of them as chain-letters (albeit fairly benign ones), or thinly veiled self-promotion (hey everyone - I've given you an award and now you have to link to my blog on your blog!). But on the other hand, it's an award. And it is nice to know that someone out there, who doesn't actually know me in real life, is interested in my aimless ramblings. And I like her blog too, so I don't mind promoting it here :)
Alecat at Serenades and Solace has awarded me the Honest Scrap award.
To keep this award, there are some rules by which I (and future recipients) must abide:
1) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.
2) Share "ten honest things" about myself.
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
4) Tell those 7 people that they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving it.
So, here are 10 "honest things" about myself (warning, I am tired and unimaginative - these are not the 10 wittiest honest things, or the 10 most interesting honest things... they are just things)
1. we have ugly carpet in our living room
2. the mouse infestation continues unabated
3. I am 32 1/2 weeks pregnant
4. I love the Princess Bride
5. both Merl and I need to refer to the commemorative cross-stitch to double-check the date of our wedding anniversary (thank goodness my sister-in-law gave us one!)
6. I read a lot of mystery novels and am ecstatic that our local library has just stopped charging rental for them
7. We are at the library almost weekly
8. We have fish and chips for dinner every Friday night
9. We don't have a television, but do use the computer for movies and other media
10. Star Trek - the Wrath of Khan gave me nightmares for weeks and weeks when I saw it as a kid. The thought of little grubs crawling into those poor men's ears...
As for passing the award on, these are a few places that I visit...
Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth no longer accepts awards because she gets so many, so I won't pass it on to her - but I'll keep her on my list of 7. Lots and lots of old-fashioned cooking and gardening and soap making and philosophising on the wonders of simplicity and greenness.
Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers is one of my must-visits. There's always something new on her site, and its always thought-provoking, informative or just plain helpful. And frankly, she should win an award just for the name of her blog.
Missy at Caffeinated Jive is a good read. I first came across her as a contributing author to some no-longer active unschoolers combo-blog thing that I can't remember the name of now. Refreshingly non-republican (has anyone else noticed how few non-republican american homeschool bloggers there are in the world? I found Missy's blog about the time of the last US election and was utterly ecstatic to find someone who didn't view Obama as the antichrist - who in fact thought he'd be a good thing - yay!)
Katherine at No Fighting, No Biting is a homeschooling US Navy-wife convert to devout catholicism. I like reading her blog because she is quite different to either myself or anyone I know around here, which is also refreshing.
OK, I know that's only 4, but I really really need to go to lie down now. My belly is aching and it needs to be horizontal. I haven't finished - but I may do so later. Or not. We'll just have to see.
Read more...
Alecat at Serenades and Solace has awarded me the Honest Scrap award.
To keep this award, there are some rules by which I (and future recipients) must abide:
1) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.
2) Share "ten honest things" about myself.
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
4) Tell those 7 people that they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving it.
So, here are 10 "honest things" about myself (warning, I am tired and unimaginative - these are not the 10 wittiest honest things, or the 10 most interesting honest things... they are just things)
1. we have ugly carpet in our living room
2. the mouse infestation continues unabated
3. I am 32 1/2 weeks pregnant
4. I love the Princess Bride
5. both Merl and I need to refer to the commemorative cross-stitch to double-check the date of our wedding anniversary (thank goodness my sister-in-law gave us one!)
6. I read a lot of mystery novels and am ecstatic that our local library has just stopped charging rental for them
7. We are at the library almost weekly
8. We have fish and chips for dinner every Friday night
9. We don't have a television, but do use the computer for movies and other media
10. Star Trek - the Wrath of Khan gave me nightmares for weeks and weeks when I saw it as a kid. The thought of little grubs crawling into those poor men's ears...
As for passing the award on, these are a few places that I visit...
Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth no longer accepts awards because she gets so many, so I won't pass it on to her - but I'll keep her on my list of 7. Lots and lots of old-fashioned cooking and gardening and soap making and philosophising on the wonders of simplicity and greenness.
Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers is one of my must-visits. There's always something new on her site, and its always thought-provoking, informative or just plain helpful. And frankly, she should win an award just for the name of her blog.
Missy at Caffeinated Jive is a good read. I first came across her as a contributing author to some no-longer active unschoolers combo-blog thing that I can't remember the name of now. Refreshingly non-republican (has anyone else noticed how few non-republican american homeschool bloggers there are in the world? I found Missy's blog about the time of the last US election and was utterly ecstatic to find someone who didn't view Obama as the antichrist - who in fact thought he'd be a good thing - yay!)
Katherine at No Fighting, No Biting is a homeschooling US Navy-wife convert to devout catholicism. I like reading her blog because she is quite different to either myself or anyone I know around here, which is also refreshing.
OK, I know that's only 4, but I really really need to go to lie down now. My belly is aching and it needs to be horizontal. I haven't finished - but I may do so later. Or not. We'll just have to see.
Read more...
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