What a Life!

Steve has both today and Monday off for Christmas. When I told him some of the things I wanted to do this weekend – while he was watching Ben – his comment was “You just want to get away from Ben.” Okay, so maybe so. I mean, I love Ben, but do you blame me for having a list of things to do when I can have a complete, uninterrupted thought?

So today Steve decided to do a few things around the house while he was watching Ben and I was doing things on my list. He vacuumed downstairs, swept a little upstairs and mopped all of the linoleum floors. While he was mopping the bathroom, he noticed the ever-growing problem of mildew in that room. It has been haunting me for a while, because when I scrubbed it, it didn’t come off very well, so I wasn’t sure what to do about it. And for me to climb up on something and scrub the ceiling…let’s just say it’s different for someone who is 5’6″ than it is for someone who is 6’1″. He says he just used a sponge and hot water, but it looks beautiful. I’m telling you, the ceiling is white again. I was working downstairs in the office, organizing my Action drawer in my desk, and when I came upstairs and discovered what he had done, I got tears in my eyes. What a wonderful husband I have!

Shortly after lunch, we got one of the three packages we were expecting today. This morning, we got calendars from my parents via DHL. Then at 11:30 the UPS man brought a Terry Linden picture that Steve ordered from Cabellas with his 5-year anniversary gift card that he received from his company. And shortly after lunch, the new notebook computer that we had ordered last Sunday for Steve to use for his graduate studies arrived. It’s nothing fancy – 40 MB hard drive and just 256K of RAM. But it was only $499 with free shipping and it’s more than enough for what Steve will use it for.

He’s getting his masters in agronomy via distance classes from Iowa State and he needed a computer that could read a CD, could save information onto a memory stick (via USB drive) and had a word processor. Really, simple specs so a simple computer would do. We looked into buying a used computer, but the best things we could find in that price range had a 4 MB hard drive and 56K of RAM, if you can imagine. Yes, in that price range too. It only ran Windows 98 and didn’t have the memory for the current version of MSWord and other simple programs Steve uses.

The computer came, and after all the work Steve had done all morning cleaning the house and watching Ben, he certainly deserved to spend some time playing with his new toy. Of course, Ben wanted to help. So Steve put one of the CDs my parents gave Ben for Christmas – Heaven is for Kids by the Heritage Singers…the exact same version Traci and I listened to as kids – and put the headphones on Ben’s ears. You should have seen Ben’s face light up when he heard the music come on. He just sat there next to Steve, happy as could be, listening to music.

After a while, he did what little boys do when they sit still – he fell asleep. If you took the headphones off his ears, though, he work right up. So we left the headphones on his ears until the CD ended. He’s so cute when he’s asleep [says the mother who just wants to get away from her son].

This is precisely the question I asked myself many times yesterday morning. We had an appointment at the dentist at 11:00. It takes twenty minutes to get there. I was ready to go at 10:30…all except for putting on Ben’s coat and shoes.

Shoes. Did I say shoes? Where did Ben put his shoes? When he puts his toys away in odd places, if you ask him where one of them is, he gets this smile on his face and goes straight over to his odd place and retrieves it. He loves his shoes. You would think he would also know where they are. But no – not a clue. He just gives me this blank look when I ask him where his shoes are.

So I started looking. I started looking in previous odd places where I had found his shoes before. On the low shelves of the bookcases. In with the mixing bowls in the lower kitchen cabinets. The laundry hamper (that’s where mine were…and I didn’t put them there!). Behind the computer. In my Mary Kay bags. Under the lamp table next to the couch. Under his bed. Under our bed. Under the couch. Did I say in the laundry hamper? There is a reason why I do laundry every day…and it has nothing to do with not owning enough underwear.

I looked and I looked and I looked some more. Where would Ben’s shoes be? If I were Ben, where would I have put my shoes? It’s not like our house is a pigsty or anything. We don’t store things under the beds. Keeping a house immaculate at all times with a toddler at all times is impossible, but each room gets “reset” at least once a day. It was only 10:30 in the morning, and Ben had only been up for three hours. We don’t have a ton of toys because we only allow so many to be in circulation at once. So it wasn’t like they were laying out on the floor in the middle of the room and I just couldn’t see them for all of the clutter.

I looked and I looked and I looked. Time went by: 10:35, 10:40. We’re going to be late now. Ben, where are your shoes? Still, he has no clue. This is the point when I become eligible for the Bad Mother Award. No, I didn’t spank him, but I can’t say I didn’t yell at him. Just a little. Like, “Ben, WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES!?!?!”

I kept looking…in places I knew I had already looked. I had already laid down flat on the floor in front of the couch with my face pressed to the rug and scanned for foreign objects under the couch and the results had been negative. But I decided to go around the back of the couch and try that wonderful exercise. Sure enough, on the far end, stuck up underneath the couch in all its wonderful innerds that hold it together were Ben’s shoes, very safely stashed, I might add. Gracious!

You know how, when you work at a company with lots of employees, they have this chart of all the job descriptions and who does each one? Generally it’s one job per person. At our house, we have a similar little chart, though the latter one-job-per-person part doesn’t really apply. We have a new position, though: Shoe Police. Whenever shoes are seen and they aren’t being worn on someone’s feet, the Shoe Police confiscate them. That’s right – gone! Poof! Disappeared. Like magic. They get put in one of the few places left where toddlers do not explore. And that’s where they stay until it’s time to go outside again.

That’s right – if your shoes are not on your feet, they will disappear. Remember, if the adult Shoe Police don’t get them, the toddler Shoe Police will, and then you never know where you will find them. So the rule is for both adults and children alike.

And in case you’re wondering, we were only five minutes late.

When you’re a toddler, sometimes you just need to have your own opinion. The only way to actually do that is by saying “No.” If you say yes, you might be simply obeying instead of doing what you want to do. But if you say no, it’s definitely your own opinion…and everyone knows you have an opinion.

One of the best opportunities to exercise you’re opinion is when eating. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hungry or full, whether you like the food and have eaten half of it or if you haven’t even taken a bite. You have a captive audience, because you know Mom’s not going anywhere until you eat your food, and there may be other people seated at the table as well. To make your point really clear, get on your knees in your high chair, do a 180, and put your arms up in front of your face (hands work okay, but arms are much stronger). If you don’t want to go to all that trouble, just shake your head no vigorously. No-no-no-no-no! If Mom asks you if your tummy is full, shake your head no even harder – she might even shake her head with you – then take a bite. The fact that your opinion changed from “No, I don’t want another bite” to “No, my tummy is not full so give me another bite right now” is just a technicality. It’s letting people know that you have an opinion that matters.

When you go shopping with mom, if she unzips her coat when you go into a store, don’t let her unzip yours. It doesn’t matter if you’re hot or not – if she wants to unzip your coat, you do not want it unzipped. Start out by vigorously shaking your head no, and if she keeps going, scream really loud. Everyone in the store will turn and look, and they will all know that you have an opinion.

When Mom wants to change your diaper, it doesn’t matter if you’re walking funny because it’s so full. When Mom says “Let’s go change your diaper” and walks toward the bedroom, run and hide behind the couch. Crouch down really low at one end and giggle. If you’re really lucky, she’ll get mad and start yelling. “Ben, get out here right now! It’s time to change your diaper.” It’s great if you can have an exit route on both ends of the couch – that way if she decides to go behind the couch herself to “arrest” you, you can get out the other way and run giggling to another part of the house.

These are just a few of the ways in which you can exercise the right to have your own opinion. All it really boils down to is, no matter what they want, the answer is No! Got it?

I wanted to take a picture of our tree, and of course Ben had to pose in front of the tree…so here is our Christmas tree.

It really doesn’t look as bare in real life as it seems to in this picture. Last year when we bought the tree, rather than spending another wad of money on a bunch of ornaments, we decided to use the ones we had (or that Steve had from when he was a kid) and then add a few every year as gifts in our stockings Christmas morning. So some day our tree will look much fuller than this, but this is what we have now.

Now, as for what’s going under the tree and my current knitting dilemmas…I knit this sweater for Steve. Isn’t it a nice sweater?

He has no idea he’s getting a sweater for Christmas. I showed him the pattern last summer and asked him if he’d wear that sweater if I knit it for him and he said, “Yes.” A couple months later, I was in a yarn store that called the yarn the sweater pattern called for, and the yarn wasn’t horrendously expensive so I decided to knit him a sweater. I knit the front of it in September, the back in October, and the sleeves in November, and then I seamed it all up in December.

Since Steve doesn’t know I’m making a sweater for him, it is rather tricky trying to make it the right size so it will fit. In the picture that accompanies the pattern, the sweater looks a little oversized. When I bought the yarn, they only had ten skeins of yarn in the color I needed, and the pattern called for eleven in the size I thought I would probably need to make. (When you buy yarn for a sweater, it is important to buy it all at once so that it is from the same dye lot – otherwise, even though the yarn is theoretically the same color, there may be differences that will show up once the garment is knit.) The salesperson at the yarn store pointed out that the sweater was a bit oversized and said that if I made it a little less oversized, I should have enough yarn even though technically I was one skein short.

So I bought the yarn and started knitting. I measured all of Steve’s sweatshirts to figure out what size to make the sweater. I figured, if he wore the sweatshirts, they must fit him, and if the sweater was the same size as the sweatshirts, it would fit too. I did shorten the body of the sweater by about three inches, and once I did that, based on how quickly I was using up the yarn, I was pretty sure I would have enough yarn to complete the pattern.

Well, I did not run out of yarn. But on the sleeves, the increases that widen the sleeve as you go up were every five rows instead of every four rows as they usually are in patterns. I didn’t really think much of it as I was knitting the sweater. Once I finished the sweater, I laid it out with one of his sweatshirts to verify that the size was correct. The body of the sweater was perfect, but the sleeves…alas! they were too long!

I didn’t really have time to re-do the sleeves at that point, nor did I really want to. When Steve has had shirts that shrank in the wash and no longer fit, it’s always the length of the sleeves that he complains about. And when I buy him new shirts, he’ll wear one size in short sleeve shirts and a size larger in the long sleeve shirts just so the sleeves are long enough. So it is plausible that the sleeves on his sweatshirt are on the short side and that the length of the sleeves on this sweater won’t be a problem. Yes, possible. So I am taking no action at this point. In fact, the sweater is wrapped an under the tree as we speak.

While we’re speaking of sizing issues, I have another knitting project where I am again doing the project based on my best guess of the correct size.

Steve mentioned in November that he wants some hybrid gloves. Mittens are warmer than gloves, but if you wear mittens, sometimes you need to use your fingers and not just a “paw” so you have to take your entire mitten off in order to complete the task and your hand gets cold. Well, they make these gloves with shortened fingers and then with a mitten flap that goes over your fingers so supposedly you can get the best of both worlds. This would be what I have completed thus far:

I would really prefer that he try the first one on before I do the second in order to make sure it fits. But, of course, since these are intended to be Christmas gifts, that is not an option. I could make just one, give it to him for Christmas, and then make the second one after Christmas once I knew for sure that it fit. Yes, I could do that, but then he couldn’t show off his gifts on Christmas day when his family comes over for Christmas dinner. Perhaps I’m being a bit vain, but them perhaps there are times when vanity is not a sin. Like with Hybrid Gloves that you design and knit for someone.

So yes, Christmas is coming…but ever so slowly. I mean, I’ll be so relieved when it finally gets here because then I will know whether or not these things I am working so hard on actually fit. That’s right – fit, fit, fit!

Yesterday I had to go to town to return a library book for Steve. Of course, while I was in town without a long list of errands to do, I made use of the opportunity to spend some time at my favorite store, Barnes & Noble.

One of the sections I visited was the Craft section where all of the knitting and quilting books are. In my browsing I did find an interesting series of quilting books from the Thimbleberries. I must say, I like their style. The quilting book I have right now is strip quilting, which is fun and easy and looks nice, but I wanted to expand my horizons a little. I’ve paged through many magazines and books looking for patterns I like. So many quilting books these days have these modern art style quilts – they may technically be quilts because they are made with pieces of fabric sewn together and then quilted with batting between two layers of fabric, but they are certainly not what I think of when I think of quilts. The Thimbleberries quilts, though, look very “quilty” to me.

In looking through their patterns, I found one that I want to make for Ben for him to enjoy once we move him to a twin bed some time next year. I’m thinking that making the quilt and talking about the transition will help make it easy and fun (at least theoretically). Ben can be quite slow to warm up to new ways of doing things, to put it mildly. Here is a picture of the quilt I want to make:

From what I gather based on what I’ve read online, they sell the specific fabric used to make that particular quilt. But from the looks of it, I’m sure I wouldn’t have much of a problem finding fabric that would work. The main colors in his room are blue and yellow, but we also mixed in some red and green with the wallpaper border we put around the top of the room. I’ve seen some great fabric that would work well around the edge, and finding small prints in blue, green, red and yellow shouldn’t be too hard.

It looks like a fun quilt to make. It won’t be as systematic as the stip-quilting technique, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m thinking that if I go back into town today or tomorrow (depending on the weather), I’m going to stop by a couple quilt shops and see if I can find the pattern and look at fabric.

I wanted to make Ben a quilt that would cheer up the room and would be interesting to sit and look at if you were sitting on your bed. I think this one fits the bill. One step closer to getting Ben into a regular bed…

Dare I say I am anxious for Christmas to come? I am, and it’s because I am tired of leading a double life. You see, I have public knitting…and private knitting. Yes, the cat’s out of the bag. Well, not really. But, you know.

Actually, I have all of my official holiday knitting projects completed. Many of them have already been gifted. You can see some of them here:

Slippers for Dad and Mom.

Slippers for Lou.

The others you will see after Christmas…when I am once again leading a normal, non-double life.

Like I said, the official projects are completed. But since I had a little time left over, I thought of more projects I could do…and that is why I am still leading a double life. Since these projects are new and exciting, it goes without saying that I would want to work on them. But alas! I cannot! I must wait until I am alone, and then I must knit as quickly as I can in hopes that I can get all these new projects done too.

Really, there is joy in this. The additional projects will most certainly create more joy when Christmas actually rolls around. Between now and then, I have many happy hours of knitting…alone. I am sure Rush will be keeping me company as well as my dear friend Oprah. Maybe my knitting group which meets the third Saturday of the month will still meet because everyone else has Christmas knitting projects they need to finish too. Hopefully. Knitting is always more fun with friends.

That’s all I can say now. Sorry. Must go knit…