All about food.

I waited until Christmas Day to give Camilla her first bite of food because I’m sentimental about stuff like that. She was 6 months old and had been closely watching us put that mysterious stuff in our mouths for weeks so I deemed her ready for some rice cereal. Before we gave Camilla her first bites, I was feeling a little mopey about nursing and how she wasn’t going to want me anymore and that sort of thing. But as you can see, it turns out that I didn’t need to worry: milk is definitely still baby’s first choice.

(These photos are actually from her second taste since the lighting was terrible the first time and I was laughing so hard that all the photos are shakey. But the sequence of events is essentially the same.)

What?!? Is this for me?? I am literally shaking with excitement that I get my very own bite of food!

Slurp.

Cough, cough, splutter.

What the heck, people? This is disGUSting! There is no way that this is what you get so excited about.

Ewwwwwy ewwwy ewwy ewy ew.

An empty spoon…now that’s more like it.

Done!

We figured out pretty quickly that the most objectionable element to oatmeal and rice cereal was the texture. So we gave that a break for a few weeks and switched to large pieces of apple and pear that doubled as teething toys. They were a much bigger hit.

Yaaayyy, I know what this is!

This is the good stuff.

I don’t know who they think they’re foolin’ with that other nonsense…rice cereal is for loser babies. I only want apple.

Once, in my (ahem) absence, husband also presented her with half of an overripe cantaloupe.

After inspecting it closely, she tackled the problem with all of her baby skills.

I guess cantaloupe is pretty okay, too.

Unfortunately, the arrival of her two bottom teeth meant that handing her big chunks of fruit wasn’t such a great idea anymore since she could break off surprisingly large pieces. Enter those genius little mesh bag thingies.

We stuff a piece of apple or pear in the top, hand it over, and let her work on it for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.

Then everybody is happy.

My only concern is that the mesh part is really hard to clean sans dishwasher. If anyone has any tips, let me know…

Oh, here is a photo of those two little teeth. I know you were really wanting to see them, right?

Do not be fooled: they are adorable, but they are also razor-sharp. And gnawing on fingers is their preferred form of entertainment. Camilla has been teething again like crazy recently and I am crossing my fingers that about four more are on the verge of appearing. If only one piddly tooth shows up after a month of this then I am going to be a little put out.

Who, me? Make a fuss? You must be joking.

All I do all day is roll around on the floor while Mommy tries to sew.

I even play nicely with The Beans.

Now that I have sticky fingers and I’ve learned to throw food on the ground, she likes me more than ever.

It’s funny how that works…

She still sews sometimes.

I uploaded these onto Flickr a while ago and never posted them here, so it might be that everyone who reads this blog has seen them already. Sorry! Half-finished projects are the name of the game right now.

These are the Christmas scarves that I told you about a while ago…all of them are made from thrifted & felted wool sweaters and/or an Army blanket. So I guess I think of this as a recycling project of sorts. I had five girls and one guy on my list, and I tried to come up with something unique for each one.

(Please excuse the strange pensive expressions. It is very hard to know how to look when you’re trying to take pictures of yourself.)

The Ruched Scarf.

The Victorian.

The Kelp Scarf.

The Double Helix. (You can’t tell, but the ends do twist just like DNA.)

The Boy Scarf.

The Tree Nymph.

I tried to make all of the designs my own except for the last one, which is based on the fabulous scarf on the cover of Sewing Green.

I think I mentioned that I also did a lot of baby/child-present sewing. I made nine softies in all; seven of them were based off of this pattern by Wee Wonderfuls, and two were little robots that I forgot to take a photo of before they left the house. They were all very fun to make, but after doing so many I was (and still am) ready to take a break from softies. Those little arms and legs are hard to turn out and stuff.

For Catherine.

For Ransom.

For Ellie.

For Etta.

For Samantha.

My friend Nathalie and I have begun a little experiment where we get together every other week, pen the babies in my kitchen, and try to get some sewing done. Our inagural session went really well: my baby was fascinated by her baby and her baby was fascinated by the dog, so everyone had something to look at. The babies stayed up way to long due too the excitement and then crashed and took long naps, so we actually got something done! I finished a diaper holder for my purse that’s very handy but looks so-so since I didn’t plan my seam allowances well enough, so I don’t really want to show it here. There are a plethora of projects on my to-sew list, however, so I’m sure that something else will make the cut. (I reorganized a few closets the other day and put my sewing things in the kitchen closet, so I’m hoping I can whip out the sewing machine a little more often in the future.)

To be honest, my head has been exploding with ideas lately and my body just can’t keep up the pace. I have big projects in the works for the now-closed Etsy shop, another possible art/design adventure, some local consignment opportunities, lots of sewing and re-decorating for the apartment…it just goes on and on. I feel like half-finished projects and ideas are littered all around me at the moment. All I need is a lot of time. Oh, and money. Both of which are in short supply. Sometimes I wish that Good Ideas came at regular intervals instead of alternating between none and an avalanche.

On the baby front, Camilla has been growing like a (very pretty) weed and sprouted two teeth last week. Or was it the week before? I’ve already lost track. The teeth did not come quietly and I found myself plumbing the depths of sleep deprivation yet again. Sheesh, I think it was as bad as the newborn days. This combined with some bad sleep habits led me to believe that we needed to set some napping and nighttime goals and actually stick with them. I started a long post about this but quit because I don’t think we’ve gotten far enough for me to make any profound observations. After considering and briefly trying a variety of methods, we have landed somewhere in between Drs. Ferber and Sears…my goal is to find a sleep solution that isn’t full of crying but which leaves her in the crib. And while we have come a long way, I am REALLY looking forward to that wonderful, blissful night which must surely be in my future somewhere when I get 8 hours of sleep. In a row.

Until then, I am nodding my head a little as I watch the child roll happily around the living room. I think crawling is just around the corner, but I’ve thought that since December. Who knows…

A snippet.

We don’t own a camcorder, which a number of people have told us is a mistake since we will undoubtedly want to see videos of Camilla’s baby whatsits in the future. However, I have tried to make up for this by simply taking gratuitous amounts of photos of little snippets of our daily life.

These ones are from her new high chair, which has been declared a very satisfactory perch from which to play with toys and watch silly mom try to do a few things in the kitchen. I do wish that I could post an accompanying soundtrack…based on her current volume level I think she’s going to be a chatty little thing when she gets bigger, which would please us to no end.

Enjoy!

The Georgia Aquarium.

After our pre-baby trips to Ikea had been concluded, husband and I discovered that the largest aquarium in the world is in Atlanta. It took some self-control, but we managed to wait until Christmas break to drive back and see it.

I was initially a little scared of what the trip might entail, seeing as it’s about 6.5 hours of driving each way and a lot of city driving in the middle. But Camilla slept about 3/4 of the time in the car and, apart from some pretty spectacular poo blowouts, was good as gold while she was awake.

We decided to spend two evenings in Atlanta so we didn’t have to rush the aquarium. Thanks to Camilla’s early-rising habits, we went not long after it opened in the morning and the timing was perfect – the baby alternated naps and happiness and there weren’t too many people for the first hour or two.  If you are planning to go, I suggest doing the same: arrive between 8:00 and 8:45 and leave by noon…by the time we left, the smaller exhibits were getting quite crowded and the parking garage was a zoo. (Or should I say, an overstuffed aquarium?)

One of the main attractions at the Georgia Aquarium is the Ocean Voyager exhibit, which has the single largest fish tank in the world.

It’s so big that it’s split into two main sections with an underwater tunnel in between. As you walk slowly down the tunnel, all manner of fish swim over your head.

We never saw the hammerhead sharks, but we did see the other two main attractions: whale sharks and manta rays.

That big guy at the top is a whale shark and the one underneath is a regular small shark. It’s hard to tell because of the perspective, but a whale shark is BIG. Very big. These are the only ones in the US, and I think there’s only one or two other aquariums in Asia that have them. They shipped them to Georgia by UPS…I guess they have better luck with the delivery guy than I do. At least, I’m imagining that the package wasn’t left outside the front door.

You might think that the wonders of a bunch of fish might be lost on a 6 month old, but you’d be surprised how interested she was.

The movement and colors made for a pretty spectacular show, even by baby standards.

And when she tired of the stroller, there was always mum or dah to give her a little lift.

(See the whale shark in the background?)

While the tunnel was great, the big viewing room really took the cake. It has one of the biggest pieces of acrylic in the world as a window…you would not believe how huge it is and how much you can see.

Since the big crowds hadn’t arrived yet, we stood there for ages just watching those giants swim by.

When Camilla saw something particularly exciting, she would flap her arms like a little bird.

She has also started making a little bob-bob-bob sound where she puffs her cheeks that I like to think is fish-inspired.

My photos don’t do justice to the manta rays. One of them liked to swim up to the glass and do a flip, showing us his strange smiling underbelly. He did this over and over and over, like a circus performer. I like to think that he knew he had an appreciative audience.

Ocean Voyager isn’t the only exhibit, of course. There is also a coldwater section with some really awesome Japanese spiny crabs.

I don’t remember what these were, but they had really big mouths.

We also discovered Australian sea dragons, which are considerably more colorful and interesting than sea horses.

(Sorry sea horse fans, but it’s true. Can you believe how weird and amazing these things are?)

We had really been looking forward to the beluga whales, but the exhibit was under some sort of maintenance and they weren’t there. Which begs the question, where do you put the beluga whales when they’re not swimming in their gigantic tank? It’s not like one of the employees can take them home for the weekend.

After the Ocean Voyager exhibit, I think that the Amazon River one was my favorite. Considering that the Amazon is a really muddy and kind of gross looking river, the fish are spectacular. I think they look like living jewels.

There was even a tank full of those super-colorful, super-poisonous Amazonian frogs.

And some really weird looking electric things. I think this is a catfish of some kind.

And these are electric eels. (I start humming a variation of “Electric Feel” by MGMT whenever I think about them.)

Oh, and let’s not forget the tank of pirhanas. I don’t know why anyone would go swimming in the Amazon unless they absolutely had to.

I didn’t get very many good photos from the coral reef section since there were a lot more people by that time. Plus, it’s always a trade-off between trying to experience the exhibit and get a good photo and I’m not always very good at doing both at once. This is one of the giant reef tanks.

And this was another.

Fortunately, it was a little easier to get close to the jellyfish.

We had been really looking forward to seeing this exhibit and were not at all disappointed.

(I can’t wait until Camilla is big enough to put her hands on the glass like that!)

The jellies are so mesmerizing, with their strange blue ballet.

There was also a pretty amazing tank of lionfish.

The final exhibit featured species native to Georgia, including this friendly turtle.

Some of the lumpiest, ugliest catfish I’ve ever seen turned out to live in the Mississippi River. Ugh. I guess you don’t need to be beautiful if no one can see what you look like. These silver guys live in the Atlantic and are much more attractive.

So, that’s a little taste of our visit to the Georgia Aquarium. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Monterey Bay and Seattle Aquariums, but this one had some of the most spectacular underwater views that I’ve ever seen. I took a lot of photos because I want Camilla to ”remember” what her first visit was like, but I look forward to taking her back as often as we can afford to.

(Plus, it will give me a good excuse to buy one of those adorable little plush whale shark toys. I just couldn’t justify it this time around, but I think that next year mommy Camilla will want one.)

The Christmas Feast.

Husband really likes to take photos when we cook a big meal together, so here are some belated ones from our Christmas dinner. The menu was:

Goose rubbed with citrus and 5 spice and stuffed with sage, apples and onions
Crispy potatoes with white cheddar
Chesnut stuffing
Brussel sprouts with bacon and chesnuts
Christmas pudding

Everything turned out quite well except the potatoes, which were not as crispy as we wanted and better upon reheating. It was quite a bit of food for two people, but we invited friends over the next day to help us finish the leftovers and made a nice goose noodle soup after that. It turns out that goose is delicious and surprisingly versatile…I guess we’ll have to have it next Christmas as well!

For the fam.

Christmas 2009…

…Camilla’s first.

Anticipation.

I don’t know about you, but the Christmas anticipation is practically killing us around here. The final few days are especially hard because we are experiencing a (relative) lull in our activities. After a very stressful last week of school that involved me getting sick, Josh getting sick, me getting sick again, and–worst of all–the baby getting sick for a few days, we are finally healthy and back on our feet. Since we’re staying in Florida this year we sent all our family presents back to Washington, which forced me to get things done early to avoid paying a fortune for shipping. I completely shocked myself by coming in on time for just about everything — I think I only had to send two packages priority while everything else was ground or parcel post. This feels especially triumphant when compared to last year’s fiasco, which involved paying exhorbitant amounts for 3-day delivery on all our presents and then being thwarted by colossal snowstorms in the Northwest which held up the mail for a week.

I did lose quite a bit of sleep (hence the illness, I think), but at least it wasn’t the night before Christmas. Man oh man, have I been productive lately. You know how there are times when you feel like you haven’t gotten much done but then you start making a list of every little thing you’ve accomplished and realize that it all adds up to quite a lot? This has been one of those times. Since the beginning of November, I have painted and cut out 3 collages, sewn 9 baby presents, sewn 6 adult presents, finished one small graphic design project and four big ones, sold a heap of stuff at a consignment sale, wrapped a great big pile of presents, and shipped 8 parcels. The apartment is a bit grubby but hasn’t fallen down, there are festive Christmas decorations scattered about, we have clean clothes to wear and food to eat, and the baby is remarkably happy now that she has recovered from her cold. Hah hah! I kind of can’t believe that all this has been possible with a 6-month old baby in the house. I feel so empowered right now.

Now that the presents are pretty much done, husband and I are turning our attention to the Christmas Feast. We’re going solo for the first time this year–Christmas is a slightly awkward holiday to spend with another family (although we did have a lovely time with a family from school last year) and now that the household has three people we thought we could justify starting our own dinner traditions. And oh, what traditions they will be! I don’t know that we will have the exact same theme every year, but Christmas 2009 is going to be as Dickensian as we can manage in Pensacola, FL. The menu so far is: goose, chesnut stuffing, roasted potatoes with cheddar, brussel sprouts with chesnuts and bacon, Christmas pudding with custard sauce, and hot buttered rum. We’re making everything except the Christmas pudding, which we found at our international grocery store…I just didn’t think I’d be able to pull off an authentic one.  We’re even going to light brandy and pour it over the top. I have always always wanted to try that. 

I took photos of most of my sewing projects and plan to take some of our dinner, so after Christmas there will be lots to look at. In the meantime, I have a ton of pictures from a photoshoot yesterday with my gorgeous friend Natalie. We both have Nikon D40s and she had the brilliant idea to go on a photo date where we shoot pics of each other and our babies (her baby, Isla, is two months older than Camilla). It’s kind of like pretending to be a professional photographer but with none of the pressure. :) Some of my photos are below, and when she gives me the ones she took of Camilla and I I’ll put them up as well.

Merry Christmas to all! I hope you have a wonderful day celebrating the birth of our Savior.

(Sorry this post is so long, but I can’t resist adding a few photos of my own baby. Camilla has been making the funniest faces lately and I finally captured them on camera. She was very patient through the whole photo shoot, but you can tell exactly how she felt about it!)

Modern fairytales.

I am spending my days sewing like a maniac whenever the baby permits, but of course I can’t show you any of that stuff until after Christmas. Humph. I’m a little short on sleep (okay, a lot short) but everything is turning out pretty well and I have ripped out remarkably few seams. For me, seam ripping is one of the least productive-feeling activities imaginable. So as long as I’m sewing seams that get to stay sewn, I feel like I’m making progress.

However, I remembered today that I do have some new art that I haven’t shown on my blog yet so I’m not without eye candy. I made these three pieces in November for a show at The Storm Cellar in Moscow, ID (show date TBA). I have been wanting to do some collage really badly and this was my first attempt that wasn’t part of an elementary classroom project.

It was kind of a huge pain since I had to decide on my concept, make the drawings, decide how to group the pieces, make a color scheme, paint a bunch of pieces of paper, transfer the drawings, cut them out, and then assemble the final pieces. Plus, a couple of these pieces + backgrounds were painted multiple times since I didn’t like the first version. It’s a ridiculous amount of work for something that comes out looking relatively simple, but I think I’m okay with that. I even have plans for a couple more…

Hansel and Gretel

Goldilocks

Snow White, Rose Red

I believe that prints will eventually be available on the The Storm Cellar’s website and the originals will also be for sale at the store. The colors are a little off on my monitor…they look better in print and in real life!

[I should also mention that the characters are based on photos from The Sartorialist, which we bought as soon as it came out. If you have a copy, can you spot the originals? ;) I got the idea for the set when I was flipping through the book a few months ago and some of the figures seemed as though they lived their own fairytale lives in NYC or Paris or wherever. My copy is full of sticky notes marking different photos as Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming, Little Red Riding Hood, and a cast of other characters just waiting to be collaged.]

Catching the holiday spirit.

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while…I am working as madly as possible on some presents which of course can’t be shown until after Christmas. My mind has been chock full of ideas since October but there is a little issue with the time it takes to bring them into being. The poor baby was also a little under the weather this week and wanted to be held a lot, which is of course the first priority. So other things are getting squished into the evening after she goes to bed or into the 4:30-5:30 am morning time slot that she has taken to liking again. I figure that if I have to be awake while she practices rolling in her crib I might as well cut some fabric, right?

I realize that I never even said anything about Thanksgiving, which turned out to be a truly lovely holiday for us. We were stuck in Pensacola miles from family and I didn’t have particularly high hopes, but we got an invitation to Josh’s principal’s family celebration and had an absolutely fantastic time.

Sometimes it’s really hard to spend a major holiday with someone else’s family because they just do everything a little bit differently than yours and you can’t shake that awkward feeling. Well, this wasn’t one of those times…we had a blast.

I only have these couple of pics, but hopefully you can tell from the smiles that we were enjoying ourselves. (No, Camilla doesn’t wear the stripey tights all the time…I’m just getting maximum mileage out of them before she gets too big. Wouldn’t you?)

Since this is the baby’s first Christmas, I want to squeeze all the fun out of it and we put up our fake tree the day after Thanksgiving. I know it doesn’t smell as good as the real thing, but it’s re-usable, very cost effective, and I like being able to make a spontaneous decision that I must put up the tree right this instant and only have to go as far as our storage room to make it happen.

Oh, we also found our Santa hats. We now affectionately refer to the dog as “The Christmas Beans.”

And Camilla is “The Christmas Baby.”

Too bad these photo shoots always end the same way…

Making the grandmas happy.

We returned last night from a very successful trip home. Tim and Hilary got married, we got to see some snow from the warmth and comfort of our car, and we made two grandmas very, very happy.

Of course, it turns out that making grandmas happy isn’t all that hard to do — all you need is a pudgy, smiling baby.

(Or even just a pudgy, non-smiling baby: it seems that the wedding hubbub was so exciting that Camilla forgot to smile for a while.)

Although I was initially supposed to take the wedding photos, a professional volunteered and I got to happily fade into the background and just enjoy myself. As a result, I didn’t end up with many photos at all…I don’t even have a pic of the lovely bride and groom. :(

It was impossible not to snap a few pictures of the grandmas, however, since they snatched up the baby as often as they could.

And it’s a good thing I took these when I did, because that cute little red dress and tights got covered in what my sister calls a “poo-nami” before the wedding even started, ushering in the classic parenting scenario where the frantic mother has twenty minutes to drive back to the hotel to find outfit B.

Note to self: make sure to pack TWO cute dresses to any special occasion.

As a daughter and daughter-in-law, I’m not sure what I could have done to make these two wonderful women happier than to give them a grandbaby.

I know that they love me whatever I do, but throughout our trip I saw them bend over backward to express their joy in Camilla.

From rental cars to meals to hotel rooms to early morning babywatching sessions, we were just so blessed by our mothers.

(And fathers, of course….let’s not forget them!)

I still can’t get over the way that one little baby can make everything better.