Z: April 2008 Archives
A few random things, related to my daughter:
- Z will eat almost anything, except, perhaps, tomatoes. The baby food I tried to give her today (spaghetti with sauce and cheese) was rejected whole-heartedly. Would it surprise you to know that neither of her parents like tomatoes? But we both do love spaghetti sauce!
- Z likes almost anything soft and acrylic. Mr. Ducky (above) came home with us from Whole Foods because he made her giggle like crazy and she couldn't put him down after we gave him to her.
- Cruising, cruising, cruising! It's all about going places and exploring things.
- Given a choice, Ms. Z will pull out shoes (mine in particular) from our shoe rack by the back door and pull my purse off of any place she can find it. She seems to like shoes and purses more than her own toys sometimes! My keys come in a close second to shoes and purses. At the same time, you can't keep her away from laptops and iPhones when they are around. Are we creating a girly-girl geek?
- Her favorite book right now is Go, Dogs, Go. She will pick this book out specifically and likes it read to her multiple times in a row. She also likes the books that she has that have tactile components.
- Some women nest while they are pregnant, I feel like I am nesting now. I have this intense desire to go throughout my house and purge and organize things. You might just think "spring cleaning" but this is probably the first spring where I've really been bitten by this bug.
- I can't get enough of Rachael's "Relax" Vanilla Chai yogurt. All organic, completely yummy, good probiotics and some omega oils for good measure.
- If you watch House, apparently Amber and I have the same taste in handbags. In the scene where House and Amber negotiate "Wilson Rights" with Cuddy, Amber is sporting the same purse John got me for Christmas.
- iPhones can get you into all sorts of trouble. Just this afternoon I purchased "Splish, Splash" and (earwig alert!) "Safety Dance" -- Ms. Z likes to bop to both of them.
- I'm reading an excellent book, The Eighth Day of Creation
, by Horace Freeland Judson. In spite of what the title may seem to imply, the book has nothing to do with Intelligent Design or any other religious debate going on now. It's a history of the rise of molecular biology and biochemistry, in particular DNA, RNA and proteins and the people who were formative in developing molecular biology as a major part of the biological sciences. Because it talks about the personalities and not just the science, it's a great read, even though it's dense. If you like history of science books, this one shouldn't be missed.
With a baby in the house, I don't really have the space any more to be growing two stashes. However, I am beginning to understand how addictive fabric stashing can be. In some ways, it is easier than stashing yarn. When I buy yarn, I really do have a good understanding of how long it takes to knit a project and I am much better than I was at knowing my limits even when a good deal or something beautiful is at hand. With fabric, this is much harder. When I sit down in front of the machine, all those stitches seem to happen so fast and it makes it easy to think that fabric will come in and fly out of the stash into wonderful projects.
This project idea was "stolen" from Alison at the blue blog, who has also been bitten by the quilting bug. Sometime back she talked about a project that involved making fabric books. And, in fact, there are all sorts of novelty fabrics out there that are geared to doing that. Baby Z has been changing by leaps and bounds lately, and one of the things that she has taken an interest in is books. Right now, I think the thing she likes most is flipping the pages, but it's easy to see that the books that have vivid images also grab her attention. So I went on line and started looking for some fabrics that could be used to make into books. I figured that not only might I end up with something sweet for Z, but I might be able to practice some machine quilting skills as well.
These fabrics come from Hancock's of Paducah. Z is going to get a collection of funky monkeys jumping on the bed (how could I resist counting with sock monkeys?) , an introduction to Paddington Bear and an introduction to fairy tales (I had forgotten about Rumplestiltskin and the spinning wheel!). I love the idea that they can be washed, squished and loved in whatever way a baby wants too (right now a lot of baby love still gets demonstrated through chewing,,, which wouldn't be so bad except for three sharp little teeth).
And this week has brought us another amazing gift from our baby -- a 9:30 bed time. One thing I am learning about babies -- no matter what a parent says, you really can't take that much credit for your kid's sleep patterns. Z has been a good sleeper since about 8 weeks, and while there have been 4-5 nights since that time when she's gotten us up at strange times in the night, by and large, John and I have had it pretty good, even with a baby that liked to go to bed at 11:30 at night. Once she got mobile, though, it became almost impossible to do anything because danger baby always seemed to be headed for some disaster. This earlier bed time comes at the perfect time and is an incredible blessing from whatever baby gods exist out there. So now I have time to blog, and get back to doing some more crafting.
Since it's been a little while since a Z picture appeared on the blog, here she is, all 8 and a half months of her, on her first time out in a swing. She absolutely loved it! The higher she got pushed, the bigger her smiles got. She does all sorts of wonderful things now. She waves bye bye (which is sweet and heartbreaking at the same time when I have to go to work), she babbles in all sorts of syllables, she can crawl like the wind and can manage crawling upstairs. She pulls up on everything and is beginning to cruise. She can handle big pieces of apple all on her own and likes to try new foods. She is fascinated by my iPhone -- both the shiny images and the fact that she can hear Daddy's voice when Daddy is not around. Clearly for Z, the world around her is a wonderful place -- at least when it isn't reaching up to smack her on the forehead!
This project idea was "stolen" from Alison at the blue blog, who has also been bitten by the quilting bug. Sometime back she talked about a project that involved making fabric books. And, in fact, there are all sorts of novelty fabrics out there that are geared to doing that. Baby Z has been changing by leaps and bounds lately, and one of the things that she has taken an interest in is books. Right now, I think the thing she likes most is flipping the pages, but it's easy to see that the books that have vivid images also grab her attention. So I went on line and started looking for some fabrics that could be used to make into books. I figured that not only might I end up with something sweet for Z, but I might be able to practice some machine quilting skills as well.
These fabrics come from Hancock's of Paducah. Z is going to get a collection of funky monkeys jumping on the bed (how could I resist counting with sock monkeys?) , an introduction to Paddington Bear and an introduction to fairy tales (I had forgotten about Rumplestiltskin and the spinning wheel!). I love the idea that they can be washed, squished and loved in whatever way a baby wants too (right now a lot of baby love still gets demonstrated through chewing,,, which wouldn't be so bad except for three sharp little teeth).
And this week has brought us another amazing gift from our baby -- a 9:30 bed time. One thing I am learning about babies -- no matter what a parent says, you really can't take that much credit for your kid's sleep patterns. Z has been a good sleeper since about 8 weeks, and while there have been 4-5 nights since that time when she's gotten us up at strange times in the night, by and large, John and I have had it pretty good, even with a baby that liked to go to bed at 11:30 at night. Once she got mobile, though, it became almost impossible to do anything because danger baby always seemed to be headed for some disaster. This earlier bed time comes at the perfect time and is an incredible blessing from whatever baby gods exist out there. So now I have time to blog, and get back to doing some more crafting.
Since it's been a little while since a Z picture appeared on the blog, here she is, all 8 and a half months of her, on her first time out in a swing. She absolutely loved it! The higher she got pushed, the bigger her smiles got. She does all sorts of wonderful things now. She waves bye bye (which is sweet and heartbreaking at the same time when I have to go to work), she babbles in all sorts of syllables, she can crawl like the wind and can manage crawling upstairs. She pulls up on everything and is beginning to cruise. She can handle big pieces of apple all on her own and likes to try new foods. She is fascinated by my iPhone -- both the shiny images and the fact that she can hear Daddy's voice when Daddy is not around. Clearly for Z, the world around her is a wonderful place -- at least when it isn't reaching up to smack her on the forehead!
