10 cool things for babies

(As Grady gets older, these kinds of posts are obviously becoming more about toddlers and kids. Oh well. I’ll probably change the name eventually.)

Love this. Free pattern found at Denyse Schmidt Quilts.

Gah! So cute. Free tutorial found at calico.

Adorable pants from a t-shirt. Free tutorial found at Rookie Moms.

Helmet tutorial found deep in the archives at Made by Petchy.

Swing coat by 6.5st on Flickr.

Hat by Paula Birdy on Flickr.

Reclaimed jumper by selenesian eye on flickr. Also, that blanket in the background is amazing.

Yup, another helmet. By MaryAndHerBabyBits on Flickr. I get the feeling that Jenn is going to love this.

I’m pretty certain I’ve shared this before, but it’s cute enough to share again. Free tutorial from Chez Beeper Bebe.

Found via  Craft.

Resilient

This little lady is astonishing. As you can see, she’s been really busy lately acquiring bruises and scrapes. She’s got quite a collection going.

A couple days ago she fell headfirst onto the edge of a bookshelf, scraping her nose and cutting just below her eye. She cried, but just for a little while. I cried much longer than she did. And once she was done crying, she didn’t give the wound a second thought. If I got hurt like she did, I’d be looking in the mirror applying ointments and whining all day. She’s just such a trooper.

10 cool things for babies

Homemade treasure chests. I don’t dig how gender normative these particular ones are, but that’s the beauty of tutorials – you can always adjust it to your desires.

Easy quilted playmat.

Adorable sailor dress for toddlers.

This homemade Belle dress is pretty amazing.

Sundress/romper for girls.

Babies can make anything cute.

Make your own skirt with built-in shorts.

No tutorial for this, it is just super cute. And it looks like it would be easy enough to make, or to add the doily yoke to another dress pattern.

Tipnut has about a billion tutorials listed for baby stuff in this post.

Felted earflap hat tutorial from Martha Stewart.

Written Nov. 13.

One year later: My breastfeeding experience

This post is going to be long, because I have so much to say about my experience nursing Grady for the past fourteen months. I’m posting it here for two reasons – so I can come back to remember, and so that new moms can see the benefit of the months of struggle breastfeeding can be. I’m here to say that it’s so rewarding.

Please don’t be offended if you can’t or don’t breastfeed. I just want to share my experience.

Anyway, I’m going to do this in lazy bullet points, because I think worrying about cohesive writing will stop me from sharing everything I want to.

• Most importantly, Grady loves nursing. It is her favorite thing and that’s why we continue. Often when she sees that I’m getting ready to nurse her, she’s so obviously thrilled.
• It means I can take my baby anywhere with me. She comes with me to the school whenever I have to work in the newsroom there, and I don’t have to worry too much about packing enough food for her, because she has plenty of nourishment as long as she is with me.
• It means that I get to (and have to) stop my life several times a day to basically cuddle. Everything else is put on hold, and I’m able to sit or lie down, relax, and think about my little girl.
• Alternately, it gives me time to read; really I wouldn’t be able to read much at all if I weren’t breastfeeding.
• It’s like a little reset button: no matter what kind of unhappy Grady is, a nursing session will help her feel better. On that note, it’s an easy way to get her to just stop crying.

• It is an easy way to remember how to be a good mother. This is difficult to explain. But sometimes I become completely overwhelmed, and lose my grasp on this whole “motherhood” thing. Breastfeeding always brings it back to me.
• It is so reassuring. In many situations, I would be worried about Grady’s well-being if she were bottle-fed. Especially since she had a difficult time starting solids – is she getting enough? Is her diet well-rounded? Am I feeding her too much? Nursing assuages all of these worries.
• It helps my self-image. Even though it continues to change the shape of my chest, breastfeeding gives my body a purpose; and that makes me feel beautiful.
• It strengthens our mother-daughter bond.
• It’s an accomplishment that I can be proud of. Though I had it very easy in comparison with many women, breastfeeding was extremely difficult for months and months. Grady wouldn’t do it, I was in pain, she spent days in the NICU, nurses were dismissive, friends were uncomfortable, I accidentally flashed people all the time, she stubbornly demanded the nipple sheild … it is a difficult task to get used to breastfeeding. But now I’m so grateful that I kept going. Unless Grady crowns a new tooth, our nursing schedule is effortless, and each session is just completely tender.
• It is one of the few things that only I can give to my baby. It keeps her close to me, it keeps me from drifting.
• I can eat like a cow, and I do. Though this will probably come back to haunt me when we stop nursing, right now I can just eat and eat and eat and not have to worry too much about gaining weight.

There’s just an endless number of reasons I’m thankful we’re still nursing. For me, it is absolutely worth the difficulty. I wanted to point out the benefits that don’t make it onto lists of scientific reasons to nurse; like the ones on this list here.

Grady on Nov. 24

Sweater: thrifted; Dress: vintage; Tights: Tuesday Morning.

She’ll give her creepy little babydoll kisses, but will never ever ever kiss me. I’m so jealous of that stupid doll.

Yes. These tights have faux bois hot pink cowboy boots. They also have faux bois jean pockets and a zipper, complete with a fake bandana hanging out of the fake pockets. LOVE.

My dad is probably Grady’s favorite person in the world. No matter what is going on or how distracted she is, if grandpa walks in the room she needs him to pick her up. It is adorable.

 

The Gradinator: A Study in Movement

(Jenn, don’t look. You’ll get nauseous.)

I am obsessed with these.

And for today’s prompt: Describe the plot of the next book you want to read, even if the book doesn’t exist yet.

Okay. I’m excited about this.

So it’s basically a book that’s almost exactly like the plot of Firefly, the TV show. (I know, that makes me sound pretty unintelligent but this is my fantasy and you can back right up, imagined disapproving masses.) Here are the differences:

• Captain Mal has a first mate, and his name is Harry Truman. And he’s exactly like the president Harry Truman, but, you know, also a space cowboy. And they have a relationship akin to Kirk and Spock.
• It’s written by a Whedon/Steinbeck/L’Amour hybrid.
• You finally get to find out about the preacher’s mysterious past, and it is totally satisfying.
• In general, more nudity. And more knitwear while we’re at it.
• It’s longer. The most important thing is that this imaginary book is longer than the series was.
• David Bowie writes the foreward.

Edit: If that’s not enough Grady for you in one day, here‘s a video.

Grady’s antics update

Photo by Kaitlyn Waters, Grady's aunt.

At dinner tonight, I was reading a book to Grady that aims to teach children what noises various animals make. Each page has a picture of an animal and lists the animal’s name and the noise they make.

We turned to a page with a brightly-colored frog on one side, and a vaguely Winston-ish kitten on the other. This is always Grady’s favorite part of the extremely abstract plot of the book; mostly because of the kitten.

After reading this book to her about a hundred times, it is necessary to my sanity to improvise additions to the plot. If I have to say only “Toad, burrpp; bee, buzzzzzzzzzzzz; alligator, snap snap; etc” one more time I may lose my already-tenuous grasp on the English language.

(For example, I had to look up “tenuous” just now after writing that sentence, to make sure it means what I think it means.)

Anyway, tonight’s improvisation was about the dangers of the treefrog. Grady is unabashedly orally fixated, and I figured now is as good as any time to teach her about licking brightly-colored animals and their brightly-colored poisonous excretions.

“Don’t ever lick a frog like that, Grady,” I said. “You can lick neutrally-colored animals, but never those with red or orange or yellow on them. That’s science’s way of telling us that an animal is poisonous.”

Grady looked at the frog for a moment, pointing at it with her overused left pointer finger. And then she licked the picture of the cat.

I KID YOU NOT.

 

Grady loves to swim!

Miss Grady has never been much of a water baby, but today we got into an actual pool, and she loved it! Well, she wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t screaming either. And there was definite kicking and splashing. She was at least mildly in favor of it.

And yes, she is wearing a bikini. The part of me that idolizes Naomi Wolf is disgusted by the fact that I bought Grady a bikini. But then the part who can’t help but cuddle her when she’s asleep and embroiders pictures of her is so blinded by the sheer cuteness of that belly poking out under that little rosetted top that I lose all sense of reason. Plus, it was $4 cheaper than any of the one-pieces. I wonder what older-Grady will think when she sees how I’ve dressed her. I’m sorry? You’re welcome? I love you.

Anyway, we were in the pool today because we are on a bit of a vacation – one that I think I’ve alluded to several times but not directly mentioned. We’re at the Utah Shakespearean Festival for my 8th time (and Grady’s 2nd, if you count fetuses) with a friend/co-worker from this amazing newspaper. So far I haven’t seen any of the plays, but tomorrow I’m going to catch Macbeth. And guess who’s in it? TONY AMENDOLA. I know, right? Your mind was just blown.