Madeleine - Week 47

Madeleine continues to progress a little each day and week. I can't believe she'll be 11 months next Monday!

She's doing more cruising rather than always relying on crawling, and she has a remarkable amount of speed going up stairs. She's still hesitant going down the one stair into our family room, so we haven't encouraged her to try going down the big stairs.  

Madeleine has been signing pretty well the last couple of weeks. Vocally, when we repeat a word to her, she is often imitating the intonation with her response. Yesterday, I would swear that she repeated "dog," but we're having a bit of debate on whether it's her first word. Thankfully, it was caught on video, so we can replay it a million times. I'm sure she'll love that at her 21st birthday.

Madeleine is still a great eater; last night she ate a large quantity of gnocchi and bit of fresh mozzarella. 

I'm really pleased with her social development and was in motherhood heaven yesterday when I watched Madeleine and her friends chase each other through a tunnel during a play date. They were really playing with each other! 

I need to measure our tall girl because several of her pants are suddenly too short. Perhaps growing pains (and never ending teething) could be to blame for much (much, much, much) interruption in the sleep department. Unfortunately, Madeleine still doesn't have any pearly whites poking through. 

Nursery Updates

I mentioned that I was crafting away last week. Aside from one homemade gift, all the projects were bound for Miss M's nursery. What can I say? I had a lot of pent up creativity after spending a week recuperating away from my crafting space.

Before we get into the specifics of my new creations, let's take a look at the evolution of Madeleine's nursery. It was nearly a year ago when I revealed her completed nursery at our old house (see the original post for the source list and more photos).

This nursery served us well during those early months in the trenches of new parenthood, but we moved house when Madeleine was a mere 15 weeks old. The curtains and attached shelves stayed behind for the new owner. The Kiwi alphabet didn't survive its removal from the wall.

Otherwise, the nursery pretty much came with us to our new house. In the new nursery, we had the walls painted Benjamin Moore Seaside Resort, hung some picture ledges for books, and moved in our old nursery. Over the past six months, we also changed out the old blinds for blackout shades (in snow) and changed out the partially painted gold knobs for clears ones on the closet doors. This is more or less how the nursery looked from getting set up until this weekend (you know, on a good day).

There are a few things that sparked my recent surge of projects and updates to the nursery. One, I was annoyed every.single.time I looked at the crib skirt. I'd never loved it, and I loved it even less as I tried to make the longer skirt work after the mattress was lowered to the lowest setting. Two, I knew that crib damage was inevitable if I didn't make some rail protectors before Madeleine sprouted some teeth because she has already shown beaver-like tendencies when left alone in her crib. Finally, I felt the wall with the windows was sparse without curtains, valences, or something.

Armed with some ideas and the estimation that I'd need about four yards of my primary fabric, I spent part of Mother's Day fabric shopping (alone - such a treat!). After ruling out many fabrics for being too kiddo, too trendy, too flashy, or too plain, I found my Goldilocks fabric: this cute polkadot print (Mini Mikes Mini Dot by Michael Miller).

When I came home, I discovered that it's the same fabric manufacturer and same colors as the fabric that inspired the nursery color palette more than a year ago (Michael Miller Lolli Dots).

One week of feverish sewing later, I'm thrilled to show you Miss M's corner of the world now.

I made a new crib skirt to fit the current (and final) mattress position. I had very low hopes for my ability to get it to accurately fit both the length of the crib and height from the floor, but I seem to have succeeded. And I am way too excited about that pretty little pleat.

I removed the rug because I thought it'd be too much with the pattern of the new skirt, but I'm having second thoughts because the floor seems so bare after I'm used to seeing it with the rug. I'm going to give it some time and then reconsider.

Although there are lots of really simple ideas for how to make crib rail protectors, I ended up designing my own because I didn't want to lose the pretty curved detail of the crib by putting something frumpy and rectangle on it. Come back on Friday, and I'll show you how I did it and go into more detail about these little beauties.

I was originally planning to make some simple valences for the windows, but the shades are mounted too far toward the front of the window to attach any sort of curtain rod inside the window. So, my solution for dressing up the windows consists of a $2 craft store letter painted in (spoiler alert) the red that will soon be appearing on our front door and leaving the shades down a bit when they're not in use.

Because I was already working on things for Madeleine's room, I went ahead and made a modified version of the Noodlehead divided basket (yep, I'm obsessed) to store overnight diapers and other bits and bobs. The interior fabric, binding, and red finishing stitching on the basket may be my favorite details in the room.

To coordinate with the other fabric items in the room, I made a handy, dandy trash bag holder for old grocery bags (from this tutorial). This thing is huge. While I wish that I would have followed my gut and made it smaller than the tutorial suggested, I'm pretty sure that we won't need to refill it until Madeleine's going to school. 

To top it off, Madeleine also got a new shelf, a new set of hooks behind the door, and some cable management for her webcam cord. 

Yep, that's yours truly with my grandma. 

My favorite items, by function, are the chair and the webcam. That said, the details and the occupant are the parts of the room that really make me smile.

I hesitate to say that Madeleine's room is "done" because I know it'll continue to evolve, especially little things like the trinkets on her shelf. That said, I have high hopes that the fabric creations I made last week will serve her well through the rest of infancy and toddlerhood.

And now you can go rest your eyes after making it through 498,573 photos. Happy Monday, world.

Spring Garden Tour

Each season of the first year in a new house brings surprises in the garden department. So far, we have been pleasantly surprised - especially this spring. We wonder why the previous owners didn't list this house for sale in spring, but maybe there are even better surprises waiting for us in August...? 

Anyway, I thought I'd show you some of what is blooming at the moment. 

The backyard is dripping with the scent of lilac at the moment.

We have a bunch of rhodies, this one blooming in both white and pink.

More rhodies...

And lots of azaleas...

I'm not sure what this is, but I love the cute little pink flowers and bright green leaves.

It's hard to beat new growth green, the color that inspired our wedding colors.

When we left for Arizona, these trees didn't have leaves, and now they're full of birds and green.

In case it's not already obvious, let me tell you that we love (love, love, love, love) our yard. At every opportunity, we try to get out and enjoy it. The quiet. The green. The sound of birds. The occasional "clip clop" of a horse. The squeal of our baby crawling through the grass being "chased" by her daddy. 

So, what's popping up in your garden this spring? If you've moved, are you getting good or bad surprises as you live the first year of seasons in your new abode?

Madeleine - Week 46

It's been another rough week in our house as I'm dealing with some surgery complications (allergic reaction and/or skin infection...think lots of itching) and Madeleine is teething up a storm. There are two pronounced bumps in her lower jaw that are showing a bit of white. This, along with lots of unexplained crying, exciting diapers (too much information?), and a baby with her hand constantly in her mouth, tells me that Miss M is not going to be a toothless wonder for too much longer.

Madeleine continues to be a rock star eater. We really only feed her "baby" food when we're having something she absolutely can't have; otherwise, she eats what we eat. She loves roasted red peppers and devoured her spaghetti and lamb bolognese sauce last night. Over the weekend, George introduced her to Vegemite (she liked it), and yesterday I gave her her first bit of chocolate, Whittaker's dark chocolate (she liked it). Any frustration in the messes she leaves behind is far outweighed by the happiness I derive from seeing her enjoy food. And she does enjoy it!

Miss M takes after her father as a climber. Over the weekend, she twice got herself onto the couch by putting her table up to it, climbing onto the table, and then climbing onto the couch. She is standing unassisted for longer and longer, up to about 20 seconds, but she always ends up seated as soon as she realizes what's going on. It's interesting to see how she is fearless in some ways and utterly cautious in others. Madeleine doesn't stay where she doesn't want to be for long because she is a speed crawler and avid puller upper.

Evidently, the language center in her brain is working at top speed because she has returned to signing within the last week or so. I much prefer a sign of "all done" to banging on the highchair tray, so this is very welcome! Madeleine will sometimes imitate things we say, like repeating two syllables of gibberish after "hello" or three after "banana." Again, really neat to see develop!

Enough talk...or did you skip to here? No judgment passed.

Here is this week's photo, showing a girl on the move and chewing on her hands:

I was lucky enough to catch George on his way out the door for photo assistance this morning. I thought you might like to see what it's like as I have the camera ready and George tries to keep Madeleine in one place for more than a second.

Even though I've been slacking in the blogging department, I promise that I've been crafting up a storm, averaging a project a day this week with two more slated for tomorrow. More posts are coming, so check back later this week.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Grand Canyon

...Or we went to Arizona and I came home without an appendix.

Here's a little much longer version of the story:

As much as possible (and when they want to), we try to meet up with our international friends when they're visiting elsewhere in the US. It's fun for us to see other parts of the States, to see our friends a bit more often, and to get to know their other friends.

Last Friday, we flew to Phoenix to meet up with some friends from overseas who were visiting Phoenix on their way east. Over the weekend, we had a beautiful time catching up with our friends, meeting and getting to know the friend who they were visiting in Phoenix, and exploring a bit of the area.

Desert Botanical Garden
This is the species I most tracked during my Earthwatch research in Costa Rica.

Desert Botanical Garden

At the Desert Botanical Garden's Butterfly Pavilion

Desert Botanical Garden

Madeleine enjoyed her first Vietnamese culinary experience.

Sunset

That was the happy part of the trip.

After I fed Madeleine in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, I didn't go back to sleep because I had this weird, dull but nagging pain. It was like a stomach ache and muscle pain put together...but clearly not either of them. By the time real morning arrived, I was exhausted and feeling like a fool. See, I'd been to a free yoga class the day before, and I figured that I must have pulled something while thinking that I was a lot fitter than I am in reality.

Namaste.

At the same time, the pain kept nagging at me and forced me to do things like leap up and scream when I bent in half to pick up something from the floor. Hmm. Doctor Google told me that pain on my right side could be my appendix, so I started to pay attention and noticed that my left side felt fine. Hmm. Then I had this voice in my head telling me that my mother listening to her body probably saved her life when she sought attention for what turned out to be a brain tumor. Hmm.

To summarize the rest of the day, the urgent care doctor had his staff register me at the local hospital, where a CT scan showed that I had appendicitis. By 5pm, my appendix was on its way out. Shortly thereafter, I spent my first night away from Madeleine. Would you know it - I got about 3 hours of sleep total. Who designs hospital rooms with a 24-hour flood light facing the bed? Who thinks that a patient can sleep through her blood pressure being monitored every half hour? I digress.

Not a bad view for a hospital room but not one I want to revisit.

Even though I only spent about 24 hours post-op in the hospital, I'd rather never have this view again.

While George wasn't busy entertaining, corralling, chasing, feeding, and generally caring for our beautiful but very busy 10-month old, he canceled the arrangements we'd had for the next two days in Sedona and Flagstaff and made arrangements for us to stay four more days in Phoenix. He's pretty much a superhero for all he's had to do this past week.

As part of those doctor-ordered recovery days in Phoenix, he and Madeleine did some swimming while I captured the moment on film. If there's a silver lining to this ordeal, it's that George and Madeleine got to build some really special memories while I was able to witness so many of them.

While George is the super hero of this story, Madeleine is super baby. She went where we took her, skipped and shorted naps where necessary, mostly slept overnight, and ate what we fed her. All the while, she brightened a lot of people's days with her contagious smile and sweet laugh and made us feel like good parents even though we were reading Brown Bear Brown Bear, Haiku Baby, and Very Hungry Caterpillar for the 8 millionth time.

We're longing to leave, too, Madeleine.

Where are we now? I am thrilled to tell you that we were able to fly home on Friday, and I'm not sure I've ever been so glad to be home. It's not just the bed and similar creature comforts, but I actually have some clothes that will fit my swollen belly (think of me, looking six months pregnant). If you could have seen Madeleine in her Jumperoo, you'd know that she's glad to be home, too.

The next month is going to be...interesting. I'm not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds for four weeks. More realistically, I'm trying to listen to my body (I'm pretty good at that) and stop when or before it tells me I've done too much (I'm not so good at that).

"Take me home, Alaska Airlines."

So, we didn't make it to the Grand Canyon or even out of Phoenix this trip. But, as I told George on our flight home, I guess this is life's way of reminding me that I can't plan everything.