What a Life!

I’ve found the perfect new baby gift (for those who I don’t have time or desire to knit for, at least): Babyproofing Your Marriage.

From this book I have learned:

1. I am not alone. Other parents face many of the same challenges I am facing.

2. Ideas for how these challenges might be addressed or overcome. Ideas, not solutions. I don’t believe in solutions from books anymore. But that’s another story.

3. A great conversation piece that I can enjoy with my husband. If nothing else, we can page through the book and laugh at the cartoons.

I’m buying it as a happy Valentine’s Day gift to us.

Incidentally, we were planning to eat out this weekend (to celebrate Valentine’s Day), but Steve went to have his this morning. There was this tiny chance that he would need a crown. Yeah. Let’s just say that by the time they were done drilling the filling out, the tooth had four fractures instead of just one. Ladies and gentlemen, he’s getting a crown.

And if you want to know what parenting is really like (the part nobody tells you about)…this blog post (and the comments that follow it) is well worth your time. Some things you won’t ever understand until you do them yourself…so if you don’t have kids, don’t necessarily go over there expecting to be enlightened. Some things you just don’t know until you do them. But if you’ve been there, it is a post that you will understand in ways you never thought you would.

I remember when we were doing the pre-marital counseling thing, Fr. Bush told us that we should have children early in our marriage because children are good for marriages.

In a lot of ways, I agree. Children give you something that you both have in common that you are willing to fight to the death for. A united front to stand behind. Married couples without kids don’t have that kind of glue holding them together.

At the same time, the craziness of it all can leave your little “plant” of a marriaged quite wilted and in need of attention. [Thus the book I mentioned above.] You put so much into caring for your children that there isn’t much left for yourself. [Thus the blogpost I referenced above.]

But all in all, I would rather have kids than to live my life without them.

I think kids make you a better person. Having someone to invest everything you’ve got in develops a kind of self-less-ness that you would never aquire otherwise. I mean, pets are great, but kids take it to a whole nother level. Before I had kids, I just didn’t have a clue, and now that I have kids, I see that same cluelessness in people I know who don’t have kids. Not everyone is able to have kids (for many reasons), but if you can, I think you should.

Even if it means eating grilled cheese and tomato soup for Valentine’s Day.

Ben has been expanding his list of approved foods – ones he can eat without a spoon.

Interestingly enough, I’ve always had to keep bread out of his reach because he likes to poke his fingers in it an crumble it. You don’t know how many loaves he’s ruined doing this!

So here are some pictures of Ben eating brownies…

and bread (quick bread, not yeast bread).

He has fun crumbling it all up first, and then he refuses to eat the crust…the latter being something that other toddlers are known to do as well. He’s starting to blend in with the crowd…

Here he has such a cute look on his face…priceless.

This one is more like what we see every day.

If my news yesterday about having our taxes done spurred you into action, you actually have a day of grace. I didn’t touch my taxes yesterday. It’s not that there’s some glitch I need to deal with; rather, it’s that I was tired of sitting at the computer.

Instead, I spent my day doing this:

It all started here. Since that post, I found actual kits for that same pattern that I liked, and I bought them the day after Christmas 2005. I didn’t touch them until June 2006 when Steve left for a week to take a workshop at Iowa State (for his master’s degree) – while he was gone, I did the quilt top for one of the quilts. I did the other quilt top some weekend in July or August. I bought the batting back when I bought the quilt-top kits, but I didn’t get any backing at that time.

I was hung up on the backing for quite some time. I spent a pretty penny on the quilts, so I didn’t want to use just some old cheap fabric for the backing. The quality stuff I found that coordinated with the rest of the quilt was $8 or $9 per yard, and I needed 5 yards per quilt (or something like that). I finally got over the cost and bought the fabric in August. Then I called a friend and asked her to help me pin the quilts – it’s much easier with two people – but we never managed to get together. Finally, when my mom came after Joey was born, before she left, I had her help me pin them.

That was three months ago, and I had not touched them since. I was beginning to worry about the safety pins rusting while attached to my quilt, so they’ve been on my to-do list every week since, well, December. December was a crazy month, though, and January…I just couldn’t get myself motivated to work on them.

You see, I used to love sewing. When I was in high school, I took ever sewing class the home ec department offered, including pattern design. My senior year of college, my parents bought me a nice sewing machine – a Viking 230. It was the nicest model that wasn’t computerized. Namely, it does buttonholes and stretch stitching in addition to the normal straight stitch and zig-zag.

When I lived in Maryland, I did a lot of sewing. Some weekends that was all I did. I made myself cute dresses and business suits and most of my own clothing. I loved sewing and I did it to relax.

Then I moved to Nebraska and met Steve. I was busy spending time with him instead of sewing. After Ben was born, I got tired of the cloth diapers I was using and started making my own. At that point, I invested in a serger – a Janome. I still make the cloth diapers we use because I cannot find any like the ones I make out on the market at a reasonable price.

The problem is, though, that every time I get my sewing machine out, it breaks and needs to be taken in for service. Seriously – 70 bucks a pop. The guys servicing it actually sell new Vikings, and that is where I bought my serger as well – a mom and pop shop where she sews and sells the machines and he repairs them. They tell me that the machines should actually be serviced once a year just for the sake of being serviced, and that they can get out of adjustment just by sitting on the shelf so it doesn’t matter that I haven’t used it for a while. When I lived in Maryland, I never had to have my machine serviced. But now it’s like it’s so over-engineered that it’s always getting out of adjustment and quits working.

Add to that an active toddler who finds the sewing machine pedal extremely interesting as well as the knobs and buttons which he likes to play with when I get up to press a seam open or something…it’s easy to understand why I’ve gotten to the point where I enjoy sewing just about as much as I enjoy childbirth.

Yes, I enjoy sewing about as much as I enjoy childbirth. I dread every seam just like I dread every contraction because each seam may be the one where it quits on me and I have to take it in and spend $70 to get it serviced. And the fear of having to get it serviced is like the fear of having a c-section. When I’m done, having a nice quilt or diapers that fit my children perfectly is worth the effort, but the process is nothing but agony. Sheer agony.

And that is why it is taking me over a year to make these quilts.

Speaking of grace…my machine did not break yesterday. I had to re-thread it many, many times, sometimes after each seam. Once I got it adjusted right (finally), it did pretty well, but I was using invisible thread and quilting “in-the-ditch” and occasionally the invisible thread which is like fish-wire would get wound around the machine and break. Yeah.

But I managed to finish quilting one of the quilts. I just quilted around the blocks. I would go straight across the row, and then do short seams between the blocks down to the next row.

One of the problems with machine quilting (which adds to why I compare sewing to childbirth) is that if you didn’t get the layers all tight when you pinned the quilt, you can get tucks in the backing (on the bottom side). That fear looms over you the entire time. In fact, I have one quilting book that says as long as the tuck isn’t big enough to get your finger caught in it, you shouldn’t worry about it…as though tucks on the back are normal with machine quilting. But thanks to my mom who helped me pull the backing really tight underneath before we did any pinning…I only had one small tuck yesterday that I was able to remove by re-doing about 8″ of quilting. That was some serious grace.

So one quilt is done – no rust marks from the pins. If I were single and lonely, I probably would have gotten both quilts done in a single day. But since I was supervising two children while I was working, I consider getting one finished a fabulous accomplishment.

Now I just need to do the binding on that quilt and then decide if I want to do any additional quilting inside the blocks. It would really add to the quilts, but I think I shall leave that decision until I have them technically finished and then I can decide if I want to put that kind of time and effort into them.

Mom and Dad are supposedly giving us the furniture that Traci and I had in our room when we were kids, which includes a set of bunk beds (which is why I am making two of these quilts). They are coming to visit the first weekend of April, and may be bringing the furniture then.

I decided some time ago that quilting is a winter hobby and gardening is a summer hobby because I feel about the same way about doing both. I love having handmade quilts, and I love eating fresh vegetables from the garden – so the effort is theoretically worthwhile. But I can only handle one “hobby” like that at a time.

That said, my goal is to have these quilts finished by the beginning of April so that I can put them on the beds (if we get them) and start working in my garden at that time.

Well, in case you were trying to get your taxes completed and filed before me, you only have a few hours left. Steve’s W-2 came in the mail Friday, and the rest of the tax forms I needed came Saturday. I did a quick run-through with the taxes Friday night and made a list of everything I needed to research and/or audit. Then yesterday I worked through the list. Today I simply need to print the return, look it over to make sure it makes sense – at least as much sense as taxes can make – and then file them. So if you were planning to beat me, you’d better get busy…

Speaking of grand accomplishments…remember my griping last month about not being able to get myself out of bed in time to have a few minutes to myself in the morning? Well, that struggle seems to finally be over as I have been getting out of bed by 5:30 or 5:45 at the latest for long enough for me to not remember when I wasn’t. That means it’s a habit now, right?

The little sweater I am making for a friend has been blocked and just needs buttons sewn on. Pretty?

(And no, my washer and dryer do not match but they’re downstairs in the utility room where nobody sees them…unless I post pictures of them on the internet or something)

And yes, I have a sweater deal for drying sweaters where it lifts them up off a surface and air can circulate underneath, but I still prefer using the dryer to block things because it’s warm (when it’s running) and I think they dry faster. Just me…

I bought the buttons for it this weekend, as well as some grosgrain ribbon as Grumperina mentioned in the bottom of this entry. If you go to the link she is referring to, the ribbon is on the right side. I’m thinking of using it on the wrong side instead.

Thinking is a key word here. I can see how it would add stability, but if the sweater stretches with use, it might make it look odd by forcing the button band to be what it once was rather than evolving with the rest of the garment. Do sweaters evolve? I don’t know. That’s why I’m hesitating to use the ribbon. If you’re a fellow knitter, feel free to give me advice even if you don’t know what you’re talking about – all I ask is that you tell me why you think whatever you think. The yarn is Lamb’s Pride Superwash 100% wool. Wool tends to lengthen, doesn’t it? How much? It didn’t seem to change with blocking – should I block it again and perhaps be a bit more rough with it? The yarn is supposedly machine washable, but I put it in a sweater bag and just ran it through the rinse portion of the handwash cycle. I’m not very brave, am I?

Enough about that.

Here is a picture of Joey wearing the sweater that my friend saw and wanted one just like it for her five-year-old daughter in purple and pink. He’s wearing the sweater when he was still little enough to fit into it…my baby’s growing up!

Joey and I both have colds. The version where you get really congested. I have to suction his nose before I feed him, which he hates. He cries hysterically, but if I don’t, he can hardly nurse because he keeps gasping for breath.

As for me…maybe I’m weird but when I don’t quite feel like myself (this cold seems to be accompanied by fatigue that leaves you dragging), my emotions, shall we say, sharpen a bit. If I’m irritated, I’m about to blow my gasket. If I’m sad, it’s all I can do not to sob. If I’m amused, I laugh so hard I almost can’t stop.

What this means is that Ben’s usual mildly obnoxious behaviors are requiring me to muster up all of the self-control I have. If he goes over and tries to turn Joey’s head or rocks the bouncy seat to hard or tries to tickle him while I’m nursing…

And no, the door to the basement does not need to be closed, and you do not need to have a tantrum if I open it so I can go through it.

And if you drag that toy phone across the wood floor one more time and wake Joey up, I’m going to scream.

Okay, enough. You get the picture.

Here’s some humor for your day.

Last summer Steve wanted to make Beer Can Chicken. Basically, you take a whole chicken and a can of beer, drink a little bit of the beer, and then stick the chicken on the can of beer and stand it on the grill to bake. Supposedly the beer evaporates and keeps the meat moist, and it gets the nice taste of having been cooked on a grill. Or something like that.

Steve followed the recipe I found for him to the letter. He’s a scientist, you know. [I did great in Chemistry class, but never got better than a C in lab because my experiments always failed…which makes you wonder how on earth I manage to cook…but that’s another story…]

He set the chicken on the grill and went out to check it 45 minutes later. He lifted the lid on the grill…and the whole chicken burst into flames!

Steve’s a pretty steady kind of guy, and I’ve never seen him get this upset over anything. It was hysterical! He came storming into the house and told me what had happened. It was everything I could not to just laugh…at him and the situation.

In fact, I have never been able to tell this story in real life without laughing so hard that I had to attempt it three times before the people I was telling it to caught enough of the details to have an idea of what I was talking about.

But for the record, here is a picture of the blackened chicken before he trashed it.

The meat was charred on the outside and raw on the inside, so it did not qualify for “Blackened Chicken” which I believe is also a recipe I come across from time to time. I think I’ve even seen something like that in restaurants but I’ve never been interested in it enough to even read the description.

Oh my!