It's A Wonderful Life

This past week has been extremely frustrating in the emotional department. It seems like nearly every person I've talked to (who isn't family) has said nasty things about their own children, or been shocked and disgusted when they have found out that I have four and I stay at home.

The protective side of me wants to yell at them and tell them how awful they are and that I love my children deeply and wouldn't trade anything. But I know that arguing with these cruel people won't get me anywhere.

So instead, I'll just say

You sad people have no idea what you're missing.

~Meg

Going on Around Here

This is half ours and half from the farmer's market

First thing from the garden this year: sage and a head of lettuce, plus two tiny little radishes! We also got an artichoke the other night that Ben and I split.

The garden is... well it's coming along. I'm still waiting on sprouts from a lot of stuff, and I'm battling slugs and reseeding on other things. See the headless sprout in back right there? Yeah... This is going to be a year of war!

Draining curds

I made some Farmhouse Cheddar last week, and after it sat over the weekend to develop a rind...

It was waxed on Monday. Now it needs to sit and age for at least two months. I'm pretty excited about this. I've done a hunk of Parmesan that won't be ready until October, but I'm afraid it won't turn out because I didn't have optimal conditions for it's rind developing process. It got a little cracked and dried, so we'll have to see what happens.

I have no idea what Jack is doing

Mr. Munchie has been walking more than crawling now. This is one of my favorite stages, because he looks so adorable in his awkwardness. This little montage is what I call Baby Jaws. ;)

After my woe-is-me post about aching for land, I've been gently reminded of my post about blooming where I'm planted, and to be content where I am at the moment. You know who you are, and thank you. :) It was also reinforced when I got to the very end of my current Countryside magazine with a tiny little article entitled "Being Content Right Where I Am... For Now".

Yep, message received! I will try harder to be content with where we are.

I've been researching places to find lard for rendering. The few places I've called have just said I can get some if they happen to have it that day. So I will have to get lucky. I need to make good friends with a butcher and have him hold it for me.

I've started the edging of the shawl, which is good since it's due next week. The last part of the pattern is a little shorter than I had planned, but I ran out of yarn. I think I might release this as a mystery shawl pattern at first... We'll have to see.

And, I may or may not have ordered a plethora of yarn... I'd like to make a sweater (you know, cuz summer is coming...) and I thought it would be good to build my worsted weight stash... and Webs is having their Anniversary Sale... Which might have been the thing that swayed me.

And today, it's Friday!

Huzzah!

~Meg

Random On a Monday

It's a beautiful spring Monday here at Chez Crumb and that means laundry and cleaning! It feels wonderful to have all the windows open with the heavy scent of on grass and Wisteria drifting in.

We started the morning off with rushing around to get ready for an early doctor's appointment, getting everyone buckled and then mama getting in the driver's seat only to find that the car was dead as a door nail. We all went back inside, the appointment was canceled, and I have happily spent the morning cleaning and baking muffins. (I didn't want to go.)

We had a wonderful storm over the weekend which poured on us all day yesterday. It was just perfect.

Here is one of the crafts I've been working on. I tried recovering a three ring binder with scrapbook paper to use as a recipe binder. I wanted something more lively than my plain ol' black vinyl officey-looking binder. I think it turned out pretty good. I'm not in love with the paper, but I didn't want to use something really nice if I screwed it up. It was the test run, and now I know how to do them a bit better (and prettier).

I'm also trying to hash out an apron design based on one that I saw, but I'm kind of stuck. Sewing construction is not my forte. Hopefully I can get over the hump soon and I'll have a new apron! Add to that the skirt patterns I've found and want to make and I'll probably be spending a good amount of time with my sewing machine soon.

I found a new menu/recipe helper called Pepperplate.com. One can input recipes and then put them into the planner/menu and generate a shopping list from it. I like that it's free, unlike some other similar sites I've seen. They have an app so I can take the shopping list with me on my iPod. I think I'll try it for our shopping trip this weekend. If I have time to input recipes...

 I've been slowly putting a few rows here and there on my shawl design. I've gotten to the part where I want beads, and it's been fun to see the contrast of the beads and yarn and watching it come together. I ran into a few layout snags, but I think I've got it now.

 I have blossoms on my cherry tree! I'm so, so excited. It's just this one little bunch right now, but it means spring is really here, and I will hopefully be able to stuff myself silly on cherries this year. While going out to take the picture, I noticed the berry blossoms are opening too. Let the onslaught begin.

Now that it's warm I've started Duder on his way to being a "big boy" with potty training. (I wait til it's warm so he can run around in just a shirt and underwear.) My favorite part is every time he flushes the toilet he lets out a loud Roar of Manly Triumph and jumps around. It's hilarious.

We went to Lowe's yesterday to get lamps and as we were going through check out this book just up and jumped right into our cart and found it's way home with us.

Just about every single recipe looks wonderful and delicious and I want to make them all. The kids have already put in their orders. Looks like I'll be busy for awhile.

I have found that the littlest one sleeps really well if he gets a bath before bed. Thank goodness I found the trick. I found it out on accident when he slept for two hours after I gave him a bath. So I tried again the next night and he did the same thing. The night we skipped a bath? Up all night. Last night, with a bath? Mama got sleep. As Daddy said, looks like he's going to be a really clean baby.

The little guy was almost 8 pounds at his checkup last week. He has a triple chin. It's adorable and I keep kissing it up and he doesn't like it. He gives me dirty looks but there's nothing he can do about it because he's too small to run away! Muahaha!!

Happy Monday! Go bake some cookies!
Meg

Life With Baby

Good Sleeps

I have spent all week thinking I would take pictures and post them... But I've been too busy snuggling the baby. He's such a sweet little snuggler, he just burrows right into your arm or your shoulder.

He also eats a lot, so that helps with the snuggling.

I snapped a few shots with my iPod though, just so I had something to share. 

We've pretty much adjusted to Life With New Baby. I bounced back a heck of a lot faster than I thought I would. By Tuesday I was pretty much back to doing things, albeit slowly still (it took me two days to wash laundry and it's still not folded). A bit sore still and I'm not exactly running, but I have been making meals and slowly doing chores. I am glad I got some ready to cook/eat things frozen - it helped a lot the first few days.

Ben went back to work Friday and changed his schedule a bit for this week to facilitate being home more during the day, which has been a tremendous help and relief. He takes such good care of us. We are both ready for the normal schedule again though, which we'll go back to on Monday.

Yar, I'm a pirate

The boys have pretty much adjusted to the little guy too. After a few days of "Is this the new baby?!?", "I have a new brother??" and "Is your tummy small now?" (yes, and hopefully it gets smaller) they have realized that the baby is staying with us, and no he doesn't have to go back to the doctor.

Duder is adjusting better than I thought he would. While he's been a bit more snuggly and slightly crankier than usual, he isn't as upset as I was expecting him to be which I am thankful for. He likes to tell me "That's the baby" and that "those wipies/diapers/clothes/etc. are for the baby". They all like to tell me that the baby is "so cute" and they want to pet him and give him kisses. It's very sweet and I'm so glad it's not "Kill the intruder!".

I feel like I have so much energy and there are so many things I want to do, but I am telling myself to take it slow and let myself return to completely normal and recovered before I try to go crazy. I tried doing too much too fast with Duder and I think it took longer to recover than it should have. So I will just enjoy the time to sit and "relax" with this little guy. I really want to exercise though, but it's only been a week.

I have been reading a lot (not much else to do while nursing :) ), and knitting a bit. I am working on a shawl design that I started before Corbin came, and I am so very excited about it. I am hoping to find a tech editor for this pattern though, so it will probably be awhile before I release it. Especially since it's slow going. I also put a few rows on the blue blanket when I get a chance. It's just funny how knitting is so not a huge desire right now when I have a baby to sniff (gosh, he smells so good). I have a ton of ideas for new designs though, so hopefully you'll be seeing some new stuff over the next few months.

Is anyone else excited for Easter? I have been waiting for Easter since January. I don't know why I'm looking forward to it so much this year, but I am. Also, I want to plant seeds something awful, but something tells me I should hold off just a bit longer. Maybe I'll start some seedlings on the windowsill though...

Happy Friday!
Meg

Introducing

Corbin Matthew

February 28th, 2012 at 5:27 am

6 lbs, 6 oz

19.5 inches long

First few hours

 Whew! Our newest little guy has blessed us with his presence a week early. Boy did it go fast this time! I am so glad to have him home and we are all settled and happy to have our newest member with us. I know most of you have heard of his arrival from Gama Kim, so here are some pictures, and the story for those who want to hear it.

The Details

Over the past week I had been nesting really bad. I kept cooking things and baking bread and cleaning and organizing parts of the house I've barely even looked at since we moved in 3 years ago. When we went grocery shopping on Sunday I had grabbed extra diapers for Duder even though he still had plenty. On Monday morning I started laundry earlier than I normally do. I figured the little guy would be coming soon, but I thought it would be closer to his actual due date. Through Sunday night I was woken up by contractions a few times, but didn't think much of it as they weren't terrible.

By noon on Monday I was starting to have some pretty noticeable contractions. They were a little sporadic though, so I thought maybe it was another false alarm like we had with Duder. By 1, they were 3-5 minutes and pretty strong. Still not believing, I put the kids down for their nap and went to lay down myself thinking I was just doing too much and they would stop.

By 2 o'clock they were still 3-5 minutes and getting more painful so I called Ben and gave him the heads up, saying I don't know if it's real but I'll call him again if it gets worse and/or my water breaks. I said I would try a hot shower, because I was still in denial. I called Gama to let her know what was going on and we agreed a shower was a good idea. She did say I needed to tell Ben to come home though.

By the time I got out of the shower I was 1-2 minutes and starting to hurt pretty bad. I couldn't believe how fast it was coming. I called Ben at 3 and told him he needed to come home right then. I got the kids up and told them to put on their shoes and when Ben got home we decided to wait a bit and see if my water would break. Well, 30 minutes later still no water but I was starting to feel pressure every time a contraction came. I told him I wanted to go right then.

We took the kids to Gamas, and got to the hospital a bit later. After we got checked in a settled in a room I was already at 5 centimeters so I am glad we decided to go and not wait to see if it was a false alarm.

Over the next 9 hours I slowly progressed from 5 to 8 centimeters but my water still had not broken. I opted for an epidural somewhere in the middle after I started throwing up after each contraction. I did the same thing with Duder, so apparently that is just how my body reacts to labor. Once the epidural kicked in I was able to settle down a bit and let my body work without stressing the little guy out too much. Each time they flipped me to my right side his heart rate dropped and it took him awhile to recover. They would flip me to the left and while he did better, it still wasn't great. My contractions were still about a minute apart, so they had to give me drugs to actually slow down the contractions because the little guy didn't have any time in between to really "breathe" and relax. Once they gave me the drugs and I got about 2 minutes in between, he did a lot better.

Around 2ish the doctor came in to finally break my water, even though baby was up pretty high still. But once he did that, the contractions came stronger and more painfully again and I started feeling pressure around 5 am. Once that happened it pretty much went from there with a bit of pushing, Jerk Doctor barking orders for forceps (supposedly to relieve the pressure on my previous scar) which made Ben and I pretty antsy, and baby coming out with the cord wrapped around his neck twice.

Our kids like to scare the crap out of us. But once he got untangled he started breathing and fussing and then crying a bit so I knew he would be OK. They got him all cleaned up, took all his vitals, and kept him under the warmer to pink him up.

They kept us another 24 hours, which I hated. Sometime during the night I started having a bit of a melt down because I had only slept 2 hours since I got up Monday morning and every time I started nodding off either someone came in or the little guy wanted to nurse.

But we made it through and came home around 1 yesterday after picking up the boys. I missed them so much and I am so glad to have all our babies in our house again.

I am so sore, but it's so worth it and I love this baby so much it hurts.

And now I must go because the little prince calls. Pray for milk - it hasn't come in yet and he's hungry, so he doesn't sleep very long on an empty tummy. Other than that he is wonderful though.

Love,
Meg

The Monday Update

They aren't up yet. I wait (un)patiently for the return of the violas.

 Since apparently I only update once a week now.

How about a baby update? We had an appointment this morning and all is fine - blood pressure is fine, I'm fine, baby's heart beat is perfect, everything is fine. Which makes me so incredibly happy. Even though #3 went perfectly in every way, I still get nervous since our first time into parenthood was so scary.

The doctor said that as of tomorrow (at which point I will be 35 weeks) if baby decides to come then they will just let me go and he should be fine. Obviously, they want me to get to at least 38 weeks, but if he were to come tomorrow he should be just fine and probably without the need for NICU or any help. Which also made me happy because, again, I get nervous.

Baby blankets are washed, I am starting to pull out clothes (oh gosh I forgot how tiny and adorable they are), and I will probably be setting up the bassinet soon even though I keep telling myself I still have time. It claws at my heart to put it up. I am pre-registered and pre co-payed with the hospital so we are pretty much ready to go.

We had such a nice day yesterday, complete with a new water heater that is appropriately sized for our household (yay for showers longer than 5 minutes!), and 60 pounds of ground beef.

Yes.

60.

It was on sale and I had money set aside from knitting that I had been holding onto to see what we needed it for and I haven't bought beef in so long because it's so stinking expensive so... Well, wouldn't you have bought 60 pounds too? One package became hamburgers for dinner and a mess of meatballs for the future, and the rest went into freezer bags in one pound measurements.

I wish I had taken a picture of our dining room table after we were done packing it in bags. It was a beautiful (albeit odd) site. Ben said that based on a 1200 pound steer, we just bought 5% of a cow, which made me laugh. And now my freezers are absolutely jam packed full of meat (because I bought on-sale chicken breasts two weeks ago), and meals I have been prepping, that we really cannot buy anything else that requires freezing until we eat some of this stuff up. It makes my little heart happy.
 

For knitting I am working on a pair of socks for myself and

A new design. This color is no where near what it is in real life. The colorway is called "Port", so imagine more burgundy-red than purply-magenta. Even though at first I didn't like the color of the socks, the color changes are starting to grow on me now and I think they will turn out nicely.

I want to make a baby sweater but am having a hard time finding one that I like. So either I will pick one, or design one. Not sure which yet.

I have a few finished projects to show you now that I know the recipients have received them.  But with my recent track record, you might not see them until Monday!

And now I must go, because this post is way longer than I meant it to be. If you made it this far, thank you!

Today is Monday and that means laundry with the addition of banana muffin baking (oh they smell so good), Downton Abby watching, and of course - knitting!!

Have a wonderful week,
Meg

Wednesday Random

- Tomorrow is the first day of Winter and the weather is making a good effort at proving so. The roofs around us have been frosty every morning this week.

- I am knitting. Constantly. I have two shawls that I want to finish before the end of the year because I don't like having unfinished things carried over (just starts the year off wrong, you know?). One will probably be finished (the green one). One will probably not (the purple one). Since I have orders and a gift left to knit.

- My laundry is still not folded. Washed, but not folded.

- I still need to wrap Ben's gifts.

- The boys presents, however, are finished.

- We found a picture last night of me at 28 weeks with Duder. I am 29 weeks with this one and I am SO MUCH BIGGER.

I am a giant cow. Moo.

- A step on the scale shows I've already gained 20 pounds with this kid, and I still have three (weight gaining) months left to go.

- I'm a little depressed now.

- It could be the See's candy....

- At least by butt is still small.

- Today is the 21st. That means there are 3 days left until the Christmas is officially here.

- I might be a little panicky, even though I have no reason to be.

- Ben might have to work on Christmas Eve. At least a half day.

- I'm pretty pissed about this.

- I had a dream that Ben's co-workers liked my cinnamon rolls so much (he took a batch with him this morning) that they were buying me yarn as a thank you.

- I think this would be the best thank you ever, ever, ever.

- Knitters are the nicest people. I have received permission from three separate designers to sell the finished shawls that I have made from their patterns. I will be adding them into the shop when I can find time to take decent pictures. Probably after the first of the year. Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!
Meg

Pronunciation, According To a 2 Year Old

Since the "According to 4 year olds" was so popular, it's time for another addition!

"Gacos"

"Go"

 "Woks"

"Happy Cake" (Because that's how it makes you feel, right?)

Happy Almost Friday!

Meg

P.S. - We're still here, still alive. I have been so busy alternately knitting and stressing/panicking for the craft show (unfortunately not at the same time, and the stressing is becoming more predominant). We've also started to redo the living room. After a "oh, well that color just isn't going to work" paint fail on Monday, we're going try yet another color this weekend and hopefully the whole thing will be revealed sometime before Christmas. Heh.

Pronunciation, According to 4 Year Olds

"Oxapus"

"Cockaracho"

"Barfacue" (even though they like it!)

"Froggy"

Guess What

It's a boy! Heeheeeeeee!

Love,

Meg

P.S. Yep, you're counting right. That makes 4 boys! :)

Pictures

I can always tell where Duder has been.

It's the first day of fall and it's hot and muggy! There should be a law against this sort of thing, don't you think?

Progress of the Brain Goblin. No, I won't be calling this pattern Brain Goblin. It's just the "working title" ;)

The sick is creeping through our house and now it's my turn. We're all tired and grumpy. :( Lots of knitting and reading and movie watching being done.

16 weeks

After reading through the "Your baby this week" stuff on babycenter.com (because I forget the milestones) week 16 says that I might feel the baby start to move this week, but likely won't feel anything til 18 weeks or later.

Umm, I felt this kid moving at 12 weeks. I'm not sure if that's good (yay healthy!) or bad (Oh noes, already running). Either way I love feeling babies moving.

Ugh, I think tonight is going to be a take out night.

Happy First Day of Fall,
Meg