A bunch of things

First off, it's January 20th, 2009. I remember when Bush began his second term. Hannah was 5 and I thought, "oh my gosh, Hannah will be nine when we get a new President". And while I voted for Gore and Kerry, I was never truly excited about them as candidates. So here we are, on inauguration day, and for once, I am really truly excited to watch Obama be sworn in.

On to less important but still exciting things.... I am knitting my first sweater for myself. I've knit a few for the kids, but knitting an adult-sized sweater seemed like a huge undertaking. I've never knit a proper swatch, where I cast on more than 4" and knit for more than 4" and then washed and blocked. However, I figured that if I'm going to spend hours and hours on a project, I do not want it to fit poorly or not at all, or to blossom after the first wash.

So here goes, my first sweater, still in progress...


So I'm still working on it, and I think I'll be done by the end of the week. Then I have to find a shop that carries the buttons I have in my mind. Ha!

Chris and I really need some time for us. We pretty much spend NO time alone, with the exception of some events we've needed to attend without kids and a very few dinners together. Early on in our relationship we spent a weekend on the Cape, where I vomited in every toilet in Falmouth. It was nice though, in the moments I wasn't puking. We were going to spend the night of Chris' swearing-in in a hotel room in Providence, but I just couldn't see spending $200 to sleep 15 minutes away from our bedroom.

So we've been talking about going away for our fifth wedding anniversary. It's not going to happen any time around our actual anniversary, which is in early June, when House sessions are going to be crazy long. Maine, the Cape, New York, and DC were all mentioned, but we decided on Newport. We both just want to have a few nice meals, spend some time reading on the beach, and do some RI touristy stuff- downtown Newport, the mansions, Ocean Drive, etc...

I'm really excited, even though this is a LONG ways away.

Merry Kissmas!

So for Christmas this year, I wanted to go a little more handmade. In past years, I've made a late November declaration that I'm doing an entirely handmade Holiday. Then my friend Beth reminds me that I say that every year and then I go shopping when it doesn't work out.

This year though, we took it easy on the shopping. Chris made the little ones a play kitchen and I made some clothing for the girls' dolls. I also knit for my mom, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law. We gave a lot of pictures, and really made an effort to give one special gift instead of a lot of unspecial gifts.

For Felicity and Mia, the American girl dolls, I improvised my first sweater pattern. This was really easy because they're so little that screwing up doesn't require much ripping out. I was a good knitter though- I knit a "swatch" and did my math. The pattern is very loosely based on the miniature sweater ornaments in Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

Hannah's been asking for a guitar for like 6 months or so. Pretty much all of her homeschooled friends play guitar, so I relented and she got a 3/4 size classical guitar. She was super excited.
Last but not least, the greatest Christmas feat Chris pulled off this year- Making a wooden kitchen 4 days before Christmas. The sink still needs a faucet and the oven still needs its window, but it's already gotten a ton of play. I think they'll need a fridge next, because we suddenly have a lot of play food.

come on now it's the first day of summer

so i've had these placentas sitting in my freezer for quite some time. Annabelle's has moved with us twice, Enzo's once.
We've made jokes about accidentally cooking the placenta, and made grand plans about planting a tree and burying the placentas underneath. Today, we actually did it. We buried the placentas underneath our brand-new anniversary-money tree.


The children were a little grossed out by the actual placentas. Enzo kept pointing and saying "bluck". They were in pretty good shape for being frozen for nearly 4 and 2 years. Into the hole they went. Hannah had a little pout about the fact that her placenta was not available- she was born in a hospital-based birthing center and bringing the placenta home wasn't an option. I don't think I'd want to mess with a 9 year-old placenta anyways.

ta da!

Gretel!

She's done!

At the beginning, I had a bit of trouble. The tubular cast-on was no biggie, but after 6 rows or so, I started to think that the brim was too small or that my head was too big. After much obsessing and many hours researching the subject on Ravelry, I decided to go up a needle size. I then obsessed about whether a six was too big or not for... the entire time I was knitting.

It turns out that a six was perfect. It fits snugly, but not too snugly, and if it stretches I'll add some elastic. I don't often knit for myself, so I derived a little extra pleasure out of knowing I could actually keep this FO.

I'll make a few more for the girls. It was a fun knit and I'm glad that my cheap-ass self sprung the 3pounds ($6) for the pattern.

April Fool's

So I had the best plan for an April Fool's joke yesterday, but Mother Nature had her way.
The plan was to dig out my last pregnancy test (out of a pack of two) that Chris had bought when I was pregnant with Enzo. Well, he bought it before we knew I was pregnant, but anyhow...

My friend Wendy is pregnant and my plan was to get her to pee on the stick and have the little digital window say "pregnant" and then to spirit the test home and give Chris a little M.I. Except, this would be really unbelievable because I have my period. So no April Fool's for us.

This weekend is Hannah's ninth birthday party. Nine years ago I was hugely pregnant and a freshman in college. I was in class the day before I delivered and I was back to class within a week.

Here she is at birth. She weighed 8lbs, 15oz and was out in 4 pushes. She's still really not into taking things slowly.




She was a totally mischievous toddler. I once found her hidden between a bed and a wall,
furiously eating a Cadbury Cream egg.





It was only her and I back then, and she was my little buddy. We pretty much went everywhere together. She traveled where I traveled. We had fun. Being a single parent wasn't easy, but I think I did an okay job.










In this one she looks exactly like I did at that age. So many people commented on our similarities. By 4, her hair was down to her waist and it was SUCH A PAIN. I can't count the number of hours I spent brushing it.




Chris and I started dating around then. The first time she met him she jumped on him like he was a jungle gym. He took it pretty well.



When she was five, she got a new sister and a haircut.


For the most part, Hannah is a really great big sister. She's definitely got a future as a babysitter. She has decided she wants twins- a boy and a girl. Better her than I.




Now she's turning nine. It's her last single-digit year. She'll be driving off before I know it.

Happy Birthday, kid.

Cynical and frustrated

That was the theme of work yesterday. I've been increasingly disgusted with the amount of drug babies we've had, and there are either as many or more child protective service cases.

The other nurses I worked with last night vented the same frustrations. Why can't people get it together enough to get into rehab while they're pregnant? Why are people so neglectful of their children that the state issues warnings to all the hospitals before the kid is even born? Why don't they just do their drugs and use birth control? Why can't people act like adults and own up to their shortcomings? There have been so many times that the patients have blamed other people for their drug use. The last hospital I worked at was a total yuppie hospital- Most of my patients were in their mid-late thirties, had IVF or some fertility assistance, and didn't come in stoned out of their minds. It was a BIG DEAL if someone didn't go home with her baby- so much so that in the 2 years I was there it only happened once. If someone at the Yuppie Hospital had tested positive for drugs, ALL of the nurses knew. Now, I come in to work and I'm really surprised if there isn't at least one baby who is withdrawing or in state custody. I've become really cynical, and my standards for what's okay during pregnancy and what's not have gone way down. Now when someone wonders if it's okay to have sushi or MSG during pregnancy, I'm like "Hey! It's better than snorting coke!"

And... on to happier things.

I made Annabelle the Ganomy Hat from ELizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac. I knit one for myself a long time ago and found it to be a fun knit. The last time I was at Webs, I picked up some Araucania Nature Cotton to make spring hats for the kids. Annabelle chose the "elf hat", and insisted it have a flower. I had some extra Mission Falls Cotton with which to make the flower, but it was white, and Annabelle insisted the flower be blue. So, we dyed it with food coloring. Food coloring wasn't my first choice, but the fiber-reactive dyes are a pain. I have yet to sew it, but I'm considering it pretty much finished. Hannah chose a purple for her hat and is requesting a pillbox style. Enzo hasn't put in his request yet.


Chris is choosing signs for his campaign, and his friend made some really great ones. This one is a joke, but I'm tempted to make a little magnet from it...

I confess

That I hadn't moved over to Blogger because I thought it was complicated. Ha!
Since Chris' Photo-a-Day is defunct, I feel the desire to keep a photographic record of the kids.

So I'm kicking it off with Princess Enzo. I knew it was only a matter of time before he'd be playing dress-up. He got a real kick out of this one, even if it was wayyy too long.

Switching Over

So apparently LiveJournal has been bought by some new company and I think I'm jumping ship. The whole thing changed, the FAQ is gone, and I just don't like it.

So here I am. I mainly write about my kids and my knitting, hence ThreeKidsTwoSticks. I'm going to have to work at figuring out the layout stuff, but I think it's time for a switch.

Now's where I add a picture, just to see if it works.

My girl and I went grocery shopping alone today. She's such a good shopping companion. For some reason, she calls this "the hospital picture". I don't know if that means she hates it, because she sure hates hospitals.