Hooray for Fun Fur!

I made a sweater. :o)

Pattern: Easy Baby Cardigan by Diane Soucy, with lots of alterations. I made the whole thing a little longer, didn't decrease the sleeves so they wouldn't be fitted, only made one tie, and made the hood about 3" longer. And I added gobs of Fun Fur, just 'cuz I can.

Needles: size 7 circs and dpn's

Yarn: Bernat Satin (white) one and a half balls; Lion Brand Fun Fur in "Tropical", one and a half balls. (both were stash yarn, yay!)

Super cute, took a little longer than normal, but I haven't been knitting as much.

Please excuse my sicky baby in the pictures. It'll be cuter when her hair is combed and she's not wearing it over pajamas. ;o)

===


Speaking of sicky baby, ugh. This poor kid.

What I've determined is that she has a sinus infection that's draining out of one of her eyes occasionally, which both looks, and probably feels, really gross. Lots of greenish yellow sticky baby snot. Fun times.

I'm doing warm compresses with chamomile tea five or six times a day, salt water nasal rinses three times a day (which is horrid when you're an adult, and maybe worse when you're a baby.) Last night I gave her a bath in lavendar essential oil and I've been putting another oil on her feet and chest to help her breathe a little better. (But actually, her breathing isn't all that bad. A little rattly but not enough to worry me.) She's still having a fever every now and again, but nothing that lasts too long, it always breaks around 102.

Hopefully all of that, plus lots of snugglin', will get her better pretty soon. I'm gonna pick up some colloidal silver while I'm out today too.

===

Phantom Husband is home! He's actually in bed right now, sleeping. I saw him! ;o) He'll be leaving shortly for work, I'm sure, but he's home right now. I better go take a picture... it's the start of a new week, I might not see him again for awhile. Life sure does get lonely when he's gone for so long.

===

Why is it that you can buy a baby hundreds of dollars' worth of new toys, and she will pick the two dollar bag of wooden blocks to be her favorite?

She sat here for the good part of an hour the other day, putting the blocks into the bag, then taking them out. Over and over again. It brought her much joy and satisfaction. Silly kid. Love how babies are so easily entertained!

Misc. Rambling

So we went to Old Chicago's last night for Cora's birthday. We told the waitress it was her birthday, and could they please sing and give her a dessert (just like we did for Chloe on her birthday.) The waitress seemed entirely annoyed that I would request such a thing for a baby. After our meal, she showed up with a pitiful little scoop of ice cream (they usually give you a cookie) and stood there while we sang "Happy Birthday" to her. She said the other wait staff was too busy to sing. That's what I really wanted the most - to see Cora's expression when everyone sang to her, something she'd love. But no, they were too busy. I emailed Old Chicago's. I'm ticked that they couldn't be bothered to celebrate the birthday of a one year old. I hope that girl gets in trouble for acting so annoyed with us.

===

Poor Cora is actually kind of sick. She had a fever Thursday night, 102.7, but woke up Friday morning with a normal temp and acting fine. We played and had fun yesterday for her birthday, went to dinner, and then last night her temp spiked again, to 101.8. She's a little snotty, but not terribly, but her eyes are kind of runny. I'm not sure if it's some kind of conjunctivitis or if it's just part of a cold. I'm wiping her eyes and face down with warm chamomile tea several times a day and hoping it goes away. She's acting fine though, for the most part.

===

The Phantom Husband returned last night. At least, I'm fairly certain he did. There's a big pile of laundry in the closet, and a beer is missing..... He was gone before I woke up.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. I actually spent about an hour talking to him after he got home last night, but he really was gone before I was out of bed, something like 5:00. He left Sunday night, got home late last night, and all I got was an hour before he was asleep and then off to work again. I'm getting so sick of these long hours! One hour a week just isn't gonna cut it.

Seriously, I can complain all I want, but no one else I know gets 17 paid weeks off in one year. I'll take the long weeks on for the weeks off that he gets.



===

So yeah, he's back at work, Cora's a little sick, and Chloe's going to Mark's house for the weekend. (If he calls - I'm not holding my breath.) I'm not sure what's in store for today, maybe a bit of scrapbooking, snuggling, and a bit of shopping? We'll see. Only have one kid is almost like having time to myself. :o)

Happy Birthday, Littlest One

Vocabulary Lesson

"Mom, what does 'sacrifice' mean?"

Hmm...

"It means 'To have children.'

;o)

===

I love that all of our party guests were so kind as to bring gifts for Cora. And each one of them picked out the toy that looked the most exciting and interesting. Apparently, lights, obnoxious noises and lots of little pieces intrigue adults tremendously.

===



I still feel like I'm playing catch up from last week. My sisters-in-law called today and asked if I could give them a ride home from Glenwood Springs, about an hour and a half from here. Three hours in the car didn't make Cora a happy camper, but it wasn't too bad. I enjoy chatting with them, even if it is at times rather awkward.

Andrew's gone, this time to Utah. We're hoping he'll be home Thursday, but I'm not holding my breath. I always feel like my weeks are spent just waiting for the next week off. I should change that. It makes for long days though. That stretch from around 4:00 until bedtime is the worst. Tonight after we ate dinner we walked to the park. Everyone was having a great time until Chloe broke her leg and fractured her skull. (Read: skinned her knee and bumped her head.)

I have a problem of over-estimating how much food to make when serving others. As a result, we have enough barbecue food left in the fridge to have another whole party. I'm getting mighty sick of hot dogs and potato chips, and I've probably gained five pounds!

I suppose that's all the rambling I'll do today. Tomorrow: errands in the morning, sitting around in the afternoon. Surely I'll have something interesting to write about...

Presto, pesto!

Anyone else out there absolutely love fresh basil? I grew it last year and really didn't know what to do with it. Other than a few batches of spaghetti sauce, most of it went to waste. This year, I discovered pesto. :o)

I planted two plants this year, and two more volunteers sprouted up in a flower pot. From those I get about two cups every other week, enough for this recipe:

2 cups fresh basil, packed
2 cloves fresh organic garlic
1/2 cup organic raw pine nuts
1/2 cup extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil
1/2 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese

Put everything in the blender except the cheese, process until creamy. Add the cheese and pulse just to blend. Makes about 1 1/2 cups

Sooooo good. 1/2 cup is enough for a pasta dinner for Andrew and I. I usually divide it in two and freeze them - what's left after dinner I spread on sourdough or french bread and snack.

If you have cherry tomatoes, try this: Cut just the tops off the tomatoes and scoop out the pulp and seeds, leaving little cups. Fill the tomato "cups" with pesto. Serve as an appetizer or atop a salad. I did it with grape tomatoes and they were great, but more labor intensive.

I'm all about the pesto. Hopefully I'll get a couple more batches before my plants bolt so we'll have pesto well into winter.

Cora's Party

Oh, it was a huge success! We had fewer people than we expected, but it was still great. She was such a good baby - didn't fuss once, and really had a great time. She only had one short nap this morning, so I was worried, but she was a doll the whole time, friendly and social and happy and loving her attention.

She LOVED the slip n' slide.




Mmmm cake. I can't believe how dainty she was about it.



Sharing her carrot with Grammy (my mom).
Big sister had to help open presents... and play with everything to make sure it all worked properly. ;o)


Ooh, and she loved the balloons too.

Her pile of presents was a lot bigger than she is!

It was so much fun. Everyone had a good time - even the in-laws. (I think.) I was so worried something would go wrong, but it was honestly really great, and I loved it.

And now both girls are sleeping VERY soundly, and I'm about to head that way myself!

Little Bits

I was totally super mom today. I did a HUGE shopping trip for the party on Sunday. Then I baked two cakes and a dozen cupcakes, decorated them, and did it all while helping Chloe with school work, keeping the baby happy, and I didn't get all crazy and stressed out like I usually do when cake decorating is involved.

I really hate decorating cakes. Neither one is perfect. Not even close. And after all the flippin' work I put into them, I don't really even care. For Pete's sake, they're for a ONE year old. She won't even know any different.

I also made a black bean and corn salsa (with home-grown tomatoes and peppers!) and a cole-slaw that needs to sit for a couple days to really be good. I made lunch, made dinner, washed and folded two loads of laundry, dealt with Mark when he picked Chloe up, and probably a million other things that I just do out of habit and can't think of at the moment.

And now, I am sitting here, enjoying my second margarita and listening to the thunder storm that's starting and watching my baby wreck havoc on the pets. I feel rather good about myself, very accomplished. Now if only I could muster up the energy to bathe her....

===

I was in Wal Mart earlier (where inevitably there are half a dozen children screeching and running wild at any given time) and this girl, probably about my age, was scolding her maybe three year old son. She scooped him up, obviously frustrated and angry, and said "That's it! You're going to grandma's house," whereupon the little boy started screaming "No!!!!!!!!!" as she dragged him from the store. Seriously, how sad is that? My kid would be skipping out the door singing if I told her she was going to grandma's house. I can't imagine what kind of grandmother that poor boy has, and it makes me feel sad for him.

===

My dad called last night to let me know he won't be attending Cora's party, because he's going fishing. In Alaska. Yeah. I'm really not that upset, though I suspect he thought I would be. Heck, I'd pass up a toddler birthday party if I could go to Alaska! While we were on the phone though, he said "Those sure are some special little girls you have." He proceeded to tell me how much he loves them and how much he enjoys our Sunday morning breakfasts and that he misses them when we aren't there.

There aren't words to describe how happy that made me feel, to hear him say that. I know he loves his granddaughters, but he must really love them if he's willing to tell me about it. My daddy isn't usually the mushy type.

===

There is a heck of a thunder storm going on right now. Andrew's out scouting for elk, and Chloe's at Mark's. Cora's completely oblivious. I wish there was someone here to share it with me. I really love thunder storms.

Yesterday I went out and worked in the garden while it rained. (did I already mention that?) It was awesome - muddy, but so pleasant. There weren't any wasps flying around, and it was peaceful to listen to the rain land on my garden.


===

Andrew has to leave as soon as Cora's party is over, to go to Wyoming for work again. I hate this Wyoming crap. I always say I want to move there - if he keeps going there for work, we may as well! At least then we'd see him more than once a week, eh? And he's got hunting licenses for pretty much everything, which means his weeks off from now until mid-November are going to be taken up hunting. I have a feeling I'm going to be a very lonely mama for awhile.

===

Baby is a climber. She pushes the laundry basket around to climb on to things. Yesterday she pushed it to the couch, climbed on up, then promptly fell off and cried. As soon as she was done being comforted, she pushed it up to the recliner, leaned over the side, and fell off and cried. Then she pushed it up to the window, stared out for awhile, then fell off. Some day she's going to learn how to get down, right? :o)

===

Chloe collected a pocketful of rocks while we were camping, which made it into the washer (and some into the drier too.) I told her "Chloe, I just found a bunch of rocks in the washer." She said "Oh, thank you for washing them! They're all clean now!"

===

Cora's got a runny nose. I don't think it's too much of a cold, just a little stuffiness. Chloe had it the day we left to go camping.

So all day long I hear "Mom! Cora's got snot!" ...... "It's a really big one!"......."She's licking it now!"..... "Ew, Mom, it's kind of green this time!"

All day, my daughter narrates the nasal secretions of her baby sister. It's lovely.

===

Ooh! It just rained! It poured. For about 30 seconds. I wonder if that means I can skip watering the garden tonight....

===



Baby climbed into the laundry basket full of laundry. And just fell out. I suppose I should go. :o)

Garden Bounty

We've finally been getting some rain, and some days that aren't 98 degrees, and my garden appreciates it.

===

I managed to get everything put away from camping yesterday and all of the laundry washed. I also did the shopping for Cora's party decorations (we're having a butterfly party for lack of anything cuter.)

Parties stress me out. The thought of that many people and their children at our house makes me kind of twitchy. And we're not even really inviting that many, mostly just Chloe's friends and their parents, plus our parents.





I still have a million things to do. Mostly making food, and I need to make and decorate the cake (and then hope that neither the cat nor dog manage to eat it before the party.) And of course, I need to clean the house. I'm feeling rather overwhelmed, which is why I'm sitting here in front of the computer rambling to my blog instead of actually starting on it. Probably not a great plan...

Cathedral Campground, Del Norte, Colorado

Pics from our camping trip:









It was fun. It was a four and a half hour drive, and for what we got out of it, we could've driven less than an hour. But that's alright, at least we saw some places we've never seen, and got away for a few days. The girls had a good time, and we did get to relax quite a bit.

===

And now that we're back, I have three days to get ready for Cora's party on Sunday afternoon. I have shopping to do, the cake to make, the food to prepare, plenty of cleaning, and I'm getting a box of peaches this afternoon so I'll be canning all day tomorrow. I'm sort of exhausted just thinking about it. Andrew should be home Sunday morning to help out, and maybe Saturday too.

Oy, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I guess I better go get started!

Dealing with Mark. (again)

I love to watch my children sleep. Perhaps it is the fact that they have an almost unfathomable amount of collective energy that, by evening, has me exhausted and ragged, and then they turn into such peaceful little beings. They're just such beautiful little girls. :-)

===

So I'm (as usual) frustrated with Mark, Chloe's real dad. He got fired from his job a couple weeks ago (again), this time for sexual harassment and possibly stealing. Therefore, he's not paying child support again. What he told me was that he had to put in his two weeks notice because his job was just so stressful that it was detrimental to his health. He worked at a flippin' shoe store. How stressful can that be, really? Anyhow, so now he's trying to find a new job, only (his words) "They all say he's over-qualified for their positions". Ha f-ing ha. Seriously, it was all I could do not to laugh in his face. Surely it's not because the interviewer can tell within three minutes of him opening his mouth that he's an idiot? Nah, that couldn't be it.

So he was supposed to have Chloe yesterday. He said he'd be ready for her around 1:00 and would call. (His car broke down and he doesn't have money to fix it, so I have to drive her now.) He never did call. At 5:30 I decided to heck with it and we went to McDonald's and took it to the park to have a dinner picnic and play. He called at 6:30 asking "What's up?" I told him I didn't feel like waiting around for him to call anymore so we went and did something. He said "Well, I tried to call you at 1, but you didn't answer and never called me back." Apparently, Verizon just hates Mark, because this has happened several times. Now, when anyone else calls, my phone says "MISSED CALL" and if they leave a voicemail it says "NEW VOICEMAIL." But with Mark, my phone company has a personal vendetta against him and won't tell me that he has called. Either that, or he's lying. Hmm. So he managed once again to try and turn it around to be my fault, which he does in every situation and always has.

It's just flipping draining to deal with him. He tries to make something my fault, and when I call him on it and let him know how it really is, he gets all pouty and develops this attitude reminiscent of my teenage years and says things like "Whatever dude" and gets all stormy and mad. (This is what I dealt with for five years before our divorce. Is there any wonder why I left? It took two years just to realize everything really isn't my fault.)

Right now, he's expecting me to drop Chloe off whenever he calls today. Except that the Olathe Sweet Corn festival is today, going until late this evening, and I think we're going. So he's going to call, and I'll just tell him I won't be dropping her off. I bend over flipping backwards for him, always making sure he has Chloe whenever it's convenient for him, and I can't figure out why I do except that I like to keep the peace. He hasn't kept up one iota of his end of the court-ordered bargain: he doesn't pay child support (he's 8 months behind now, if you count August.) He doesn't carry her medical insurance (and never did, though lied about it for a year.) He doesn't show up when he's supposed to to pick her up, and now expects me to drop her off. BUT he still claims her on his taxes (how is that fair?) And yet still, I do everything I can to keep him happy, just like when we were married. He's like a ticking bomb, you never know what might set him off, so you just tiptoe around and try not to do anything to upset him.

But I think I'm done with that. I need to muster up the balls to tell him I'm not going to walk his little tightrope anymore, that he can start holding up his end of the bargain or he can stop expecting to see Chloe whenever he feels like it's convenient.

---On a side note, Chloe's making a "Me" book, where she uses pictures of the family and then writes about them, with help. When we got to Andrew, I wrote underneath, "This is _____. He is my _____." She asked if she could write "Dad" instead of Step-dad. I told her it was up to her, and she said "Well, he acts like a dad, and I love him like he's my regular dad, so I'm just going to say he's my dad." :o)

===
I'm posting two other pictures of my baby girl, because she's cute.

I'm not usually one to just stick her in front of a movie, but one night, after a day of just fussing and whining and crying (and probably teething) I was desperate for just half an hour of quiet. So I turned on a movie, let her sit in her recliner, and she's was a happy camper.


Silly baby is starting to climb.... she struggled a little with getting out though, once she got in.