ECF - Nine Month Old Edition

Yesterday Miss M was 9 months old. Time really flies.

I won't bore you with the height and weight stuff. Only parents find that interesting. But she's changed in so many other ways over the past month. She's got 3 teeth now (ouch) and she still figuring them out. She crawls pretty fast and cruises on all the furniture. She climbs over and under anything that gets in her way. She is not interested in walking yet but I'm sure she'll get there soon. She just needs to be able to balance.



Our girl is sweet and smily and in pretty good spirits most of the time. No talking yet but she babbles and skreeches and makes all kinds of sounds.

She loved her first trip to the library.

Diving In

Me: Stinkerbelle, have you ever gotten up on the diving board and looked down and suddenly been afraid to step off? You know, you look down and you know it’s going to be cool but it just freaks you out a little.

Stinkerbelle: No.

***

That’s my girl. Never hesitates to ruin a perfectly good analogy. I’m pretty sure that she knew exactly what I meant though. At the time we had this discussion it was the night before our huge construction project started and I was feeling really apprehensive. I know that it needs to be done. I know that it’s going to be awesome when it’s finished. But I also know that getting there will suck. I learned that lesson from watching endless hours of HGTV.


So this is what my house looked like after day one of construction. Obviously we are in demolition phase. Mostly things have gone smoothly except for an unintended and unexpected skylight in DQ’s room. Yes, she was there when it occurred. No, neither she nor her posters were injured. Truthfully, her room needed a little airing out anyway. Just sayin’.

ECF - Fragile Beauty Edition

This weekend there will be all kinds of festivities going on in DC to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the gift of Cherry Trees . It will rain through most of it which is unfortunate because rain is the enemy of Cherry Blossoms. It's ironic that the celebration will be starting in earnest just as the blossoms themselves do a quick fade. Here's one more blossom shot for you.

Cherry Blossoms Day 3

For today's dose of blossom I have a classic shot of the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin. And it's fresh!



The blossoms are peaking now so I wore my sneakers to work today so that I could go walking during lunch. It's quite a hike to the Tidal Basin from my office - about an hour round trip - so not only did I get to see the blossoms but I got real exercise in the process. The real bonus was running into a good friend of mine on my way back. Seeing her was worth being late for my meeting.

Fertilized

Here are today's cherry blossoms.



This is proof that fertilizing your trees and shrubs is a very good thing. Last year I only had a few blossoms. So few that I could've counted them. But that would've been depressing. So at the end of the season I fertilized it and hoped for the best.

And I was rewarded. Yay!

Birthday Blossoms

A little over a week ago I took this picture of some buds on the Cherry Blossom tree in my front yard. I planned to post a progression of their development.


Just one week later, this past weekend, they looked like this. I took this picture after hearing reports that they were revising the dates for the expected peak of the blossoms.


And now look at them!


And that's just the show in my front yard. Judging by that, the display around the tidal basin must be spectacular. Just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival which started today. It's their centennial. And in honor of their centennial I have more blossom shots this week.

Schmutz?

Look at Miss M. What a mess! What did she get into now?

Nothing. For a change it isn't Miss M's fault. Her big sister decided to "share" her eye black after her double header. Miss M was thrilled! She loves any attention her sisters give to her


This was the first game that Miss M and I attended this season but it won't be the last. It is the last time there will be eye black shared among sisters. I hope.

The Kippot Report

Someone remarked to me the other day about the Bat Mitzvah being only 2 months away. I nearly bit their head off, insisting that it's two and a half. I need every minute of that to get ready. I am soooo not ready. I'm getting there though, and I have every expectation that I'll pull it off somehow.

To that end I continue to plug away at making kippot. I like them so far and they're coming pretty easy when I have the time for them. That means when I'm not holding Miss M, working, doing errands, attending meetings (scratch that, I crochet there too), helping the girls with stuff or doing any of the zillion other things I do.

When I took this picture I had 22 kippot finished. Now there are 28. I'm sure I won't get anywhere near the 80 I made for DQ but I really think that 60 is a reasonable goal. It's a loose goal. The real one is to keep going until the yarn or the time runs out. It's not hard to keep going and it's even easier now, after a Bat Mitzvah I was at over the weekend. My friend had a family member make kippot for her daughters celebration and told me that it was inspired by me. Then, at the party I met someone from our congregation who said that he was at my daughters event and kept the kippot because he liked it so much. That felt so good. Appreciation is an excellent motivator.

Ten on Tuesday - Ten Songs That Put You in a Good Mood

Right now my family seems to be in an endless cycle of illness. Pink eye, sore throat, sniffles, cough, stomache ache, repeat. We don't all have the same ailments at the same time but it does seem to be a continuous loop and I just want it to stop. I understand that it's the cost of having a child in daycare but it still sucks and makes me want to retreat for a week to get us all healthy.


What better time for a list with a positive theme? Here are a few songs that out me in a good mood right now. It's not necessarily the lyrics as much as it is the beat of a song. Most if these are songs that make me want to pump up the volume, open the windows (and the roof) and sing out loud as I drive along.

1. Loud Music by Michelle Branch
2. Fire Woman by the Alarm
3. Teenage Dream by Katy Perry
4. Why Can't I by Liz Phair
5. Glittering Prize by Simple Minds
6. Why Can't This Be Love by Van Halen
7. Want You Bad by The Offspring
8. Don't Stop Believin' by Journey
9. American Idiot by Green Day
10. Learning How to Smile by Everclear

It's a crazy list but it's my list and I like it.

Moving Parts

There's an expression in vogue right now that describes my life quite well. To say that there are a lot of "moving parts" is an understatement of the highest order. It seems that nothing stands still.

My baby is in constant motion. She crawls after me all around the house and cruises along all the furniture. She even follows me with her voice and eyes. As we drive home from daycare she does a version of call-and-response where she laughs then I laugh then she laughs differently then I repeat it. Sometimes she mimics me instead. And when we get home she is leaning forward as far as the straps of her cars eat will allow to see me come release her.

Perhaps nobody is on the move as much as DQ who is street legal as of last Saturday. I'm not sure that she'll ever be home again. I am surprised, no - shocked, at the number of folks that are only too willing to let her take their children places in the car. I know and trust her more than anyone and I still get nervous when she drives her sister places. She's a new teen driver. Those 3 words strung together ought to give anyone pause and yet, a few parents are already expecting her to give their kids rides places. Am I missing something?

Not to be left out, Stinkette is quite busy too. It's softball season again! She is on a select team again this year but it's a little more intense. They've got fancier uniforms and more strenuous practices. I'll be there on the sidelines watching Miss M while I crochet kippot and knit sweaters. I'm back on track with the kippot so I'm rewarding myself with a new baby sweater.

It's not for Miss M. In fact, I'm not sure exactly who it's for. I'm not sure how to explain this so that it makes sense to anyone but me but here's an abbreviated version of the logic involved.

I want to make Miss M a certain very colorful sweater but I couldn't get the color selections ironed out. I also want to make a sweater as a baby gift for one of my cousins. My preference would be to make a cardiganized version of the twisted tree sweater but I'm not sure i can get it right so I need to ponder that. So I found another interesting but not earth shaking pattern which will look good in this lovely red Cascade 220 and I'm making it while I ponder the other sweaters. And if the cardiganized sweater I really want to make for my cousin doesn't work then I'll have this as back up.

Does that make sense to anybody but me?

ECF - After The Virus Edition

People who create computer viruses are evil. Who does something like that? Who creates a tool to anonymously ruin someone else's property?

I am incredibly thankful that I have friends who can eradicate such things and help me start to put things back together again. My laptop is still not back to normal yet but I can start to figure it out now.

All this by way of explaining my blog silence this week. I do have an iPad but blogging on it just isn't quite the same.


If I had blogged this week I would surely have mentioned that my baby girl was 8 months old on Wednesday and we had formal portraits taken last weekend. This is one of them. She was so cooperative during the photo shoot. Such a ham.