What a Life!

I kiss Ben all the time – after I nurse him, when I put him on the changing table to change his diaper, or just whenever I pick him up to hug him. I’ve seen little kids before who will give you a “kiss” – they’ll open their mouth and then touch their lips to your face and that’s a “kiss.” But Ben’s never done anything that resembled a “kiss.”

Steve doesn’t kiss Ben. He doesn’t think that father’s should kiss their sons. Every morning when he leaves for work, he pats Ben on the head. Ben has learned to expect that, so when he sees Steve going over to the door and kissing me good-bye, he’ll pat himself on the head, reminding Daddy that that’s what he’s supposed to do. It’s pretty cute!

So this morning I was sitting at the desk writing an email and Ben came over and wanted to nurse. I lifted him into my lap and let him nurse for a bit while I took a break and surfed the web. He always gets this happy little drunk look on his face when he’s done nursing because his tummy is full and he feels good. So when I was finished, I kissed him and put him down. He stood next to me for a moment and then he gave me a big kiss on my arm. It wasn’t one of those little lip-touch kisses either – it was a smacker! As in, you could have heard it across the room if you would have been here! It was so sweet! I got tears in my eyes, and he did it again and looked up at me an smiled!

What a sweetheart!

Steve loves wearing a cap. The first thing he does when he comes home is find a cap and put it on. When he has a cap on, I know he’s comfortable. On Saturday’s, he doesn’t even comb his hair – he just steps out of the shower and puts on a cap.

Ben, on the other hand, hasn’t shown the same affinity for caps. The first winter after he was born, I always put a stocking cap on him when we went outside to keep his head warm. Last winter, he would have nothing of it – as soon as I put a hat on his head, he reached up and took it off. We have a cute little ball cap like the ones Steve likes to wear, and when we’ve tried to get him to wear it, he’s always done the same thing that he did with the stocking cap.

Recently, Ben has been in the monkey-see-monkey-do stage where he mimics everything we do. If Steve stretches, Ben will stretch. If I yawn, Ben yawns. If I stop knitting and shake my hands to break the repitition, Ben shakes his hands.

This evening when Steve got home from work, he put a cap on as usual. Ben’s cap was nearby so I put his cap on him. And this time he didn’t take it off.

Ben and Daddy wearing caps

Ben adjusting his cap (not taking it off)

I have terrible eczema on my hand. I’ve had it since Ben was born, though until this winter it was mostly on my fingers and not this severe. Ben has also had it on his knees since last summer. I put stuff on it every day, but he scratches it all the time. We get after him, but he still does it. I’ve tried prescription creams and over-the-counter remedies. They will start to improve it, but then a few days later they seem to lose their potency. If I switch products and come back to a product later, it will work again for about a week and then quit. So eczema has just been our ongoing nightmare.

Here is a picture of the eczema on my hand as it appears today (no bleeding cracks at the moment, but it still looks awful).

Well, Mothering magazine has an article in their current issue about treating eczema naturally. I’ve never been one to take vitamins because I think they are better absorbed and more useful if they come from food so I strive to eat a balanced diet. However, at this point, I’m desperate so I’m willing to try some supplements if that will work. The article said that people with eczema are often deficient in zinc, magnesium and vitamin B-6. They also said that Evening Primrose Oil is what was prescribed for eczema before the 1940s when hydrocortisone was introduced because it helps the body make chemicals which calm inflammation. So here are the vitamins I am going to be taking:

I’m also wearing a cotton glove that I bought at Walgreens and applying very emolient cream to the area as needed…aka often enough to keep it from drying out.
If this doesn’t work, I think I’ll just cut off my hand. It’s painful to use my hand because any movement irritates the already irritated skin. There are days when I can’t even knit it’s so bad. I’m just so tired of dealing with this. Wish me luck!

Well, I completed the Padded Footlet this weekend and began the second one in the pair. Here is Padded Footlet #1 from the side:

I’m about half way through the second one, and it is going much better. I haven’t gotten the knitting so tight when knitting the sole, though I can’t say I feel much of a difference in the knitted fabric.

Steve’s comment when I complained about it not feeling “padded” enough was that he didn’t understand how I was thinking I was going to make something “padded” out of “thread.” He does have a point – sock yarn is quite fine.

I did have an idea for how I can do the toe differently so that it will last longer and won’t look so messy. I will just do the whole area with the decreases with two strands and be done with it. If I do that, I would have to rip out the toe on the first on and re-do it in order for them to be alike. However, depending on how this one comes out, since I am doing my decreases at even intervals (unlike the first one) and I have kept my tension at a better level (unlike the first one), I’m thinking I may just knit a third one and forget about the first one. It’s looking like I should have enough yarn, and I would much rather knit one correctly with “virgin” yarn than to re-use yarn that’s already been used up once. We’ll see how tired I am of this project once I get the second one finished.

In the meantime, this project is going to be on hold because I get to test a new pattern for Theresa at Little Turtle Knits. The new pattern is for a soaker like Ben already wears but it has an elastic waist instead of a drawstring and a little bit different way of doing the crotch area. I shared with her my design idea for making soakers fit children with buddah bellies, and she thought it was “brilliant”! So it may be appearing in one of the new patterns. I would far rather have her benefit from it than to keep it to myself, and I own most of the patterns on the market and I have yet to see anything else like it.

Saturday night Steve and I left Ben with his mom and went out on a date to celebrate our three year wedding anniversary. Steve’s mom watches Ben once a week on Tuesday evenings, but Steve uses that time to study and I use that time to do Mary Kay. So when Steve and I are around each other, Ben is always with us. Occasionally we get brave enough to eat out, but the adventure is always complicated by getting Ben in and out of his car seat, changing his diapers, and mostly, keeping him entertained. Sitting at a table together and having a conversation with each other where we each could actually continue talking until we expressed thought in its entirety…you just don’t understand what a luxury that is until you have kids! I told Steve we need to have date nights where we leave Ben with his mom at least once a month.

I think God made little children cute and gave them innocent expressions so that we would forgive them for interrupting us all the time and turning a fairly simple lifestyle into complete chaos. So with that in mind, here’s a cute picture of Ben:

Ben wears cloth diapers. We started out using inexpensive prefolds, but I found them bulky and I didn’t like the wraps I was using. Then I went through an experimentation stage where I sampled many styles of diapers and covers. Eventually I settled on fitted diapers with a short rise in front. In other words, they ride underneath his Buddah belly rather than starting at the waist and falling down to that point which in turn creates a big bulge. Here is a picture I took of him wearing this style soon after I tried them:

Then I designed a pattern that was similar to the one pictured. I treated the purchased ones (new) and my own the same way – used in pefect rotation, washed in the same loads, dried in the same manner (hung on the line in the summer and dried in the dryer when it was too cold). The elastic in the ones I bought, however, didn’t last more than six months. We have white carpet in our basement and if we were down there and I didn’t notice right away that Ben had a dirty diaper (vs. wet), there were problems. It looked kind of like this:

I know – Yuck!

Needless to say, I have since fixed those diapers by sewing the good elastic I used in mine on the outside. They’re serged around the edges and there is no way I’m going to rip that out so the elastic can be inside. My “fix” works okay, but the good elastic is like a rubber band (doesn’t have thread woven around it like regular elastic) and sometimes I see marks on his legs.

So a few months ago, I cut out eight new diapers to sew up for Ben. The only problem was that I didn’t have a chance to sew them up. It’s rather tedious and time consuming, though if everything was set up I would say it only takes about a half hour to make one diaper. The big problem is that when I have the sewing machine out, Ben likes to play with the pedal. With the regular machine, that’s bad enough. With the serger, it’s suicide because pushing the pedal moves the fabric through the machine which includes a knife which cuts off the seam allowance. Not good!

Well, today Steve got Ben to sleep after lunch. Isn’t he cute?

Every time I get film developed, it seems that half of the pictures I took were of Ben sleeping on Steve’s lap. I think it has to do with my feelings relief at the thought of Ben being asleep and how trully cute he is sitting there next to Steve.

Okay, back to the ranch. So Ben was asleep (I did move him to his crib so Steve could study), and I made hay while the sun shined and sewed the soaker and elastic into those diapers I had cut out. I even took a picture to memorialize the event since it was such a big deal for me to actually have an uninterrupted moment to sew.

I got the soakers and elastic sewn into all eight of them while Steve studied and we both listened to the Huskers win their baseball game as well as the #1 slot in the Big 12 going into the Big 12 tournament. Now I just need to find an afternoon when I can set up the serger and finish them. We’ll see how long that takes!