I have a confession to make... I love Coinstar. You know, those things in the grocery store where you can cash in your piggybank for real money? I get amazon.com gift certificates and use it to splurge on little things for the boy without feeling guilty. I ususally buy him board books, but last week, I cashed the piggybank in for some American Apparel baby clothes and Sophie the giraffe, an overpriced teething toy that is so precious and old-timey looking that I couldn't resist. Here are some pics of him playing (in his new shirt) in his toy basket (Sophie is in there somewhere) this morning. Ok, he didn't exactly crawl in there by himself... but he was hamming it up on his own while I snapped a few pictures. He'll probably be too big to fit him inside a pumpkin when Halloween rolls around, right? Oooh, that reminds me that I need to start thinking about costumes. Any ideas/suggestions?

Here's a little teaser... some of the new skills we've been tackling lately. We also met the milestone, Baby's First Fever, this week. Guess what else?! Four days off in a row!!! Ooh, the mail-lady just left... Let's see, what did she bring? Jackpot-- the mortgage statement. Why is this a good thing? Because our loan/escrow account was reassessed, and the monthly payment went down about thirty bucks, that's why! What else? A package of goodies for the little one. He's asleep, so I'm going to tear into this package, and then maybe try to make some pumpkin scones in the food processor.

I have a confession to make... my bathroom has a name, and it's Pretty Paradise. You see, my bathroom is pink (with lavender tile on the floor.) This weekend-- Saturday, August 23rd-- marks our second anniversary in our home, and we moved here from a little lake house with only one bathroom that had a small stand-up shower. You see, I am a bath-taker. I knitted myself a special-edition lavendar cotton washcloth to commemorate my first bath as a homeowner.

When we bought our house, we decided to embrace the very 1970s bathrooms, instead of viewing them as a flaw. I bought a lovely floral shower curtain, began taking long baths nightly, and made a fairly stringent No-Boys-Allowed rule. Pretty Paradise has been completely disrupted since The Flood. In April, the toliet in the yellow bathroom (aka the men's restroom) ran and ran all day (on my third day back to work after maternity leave) with a broken donut or seal or something (excuse me for not knowing anything about plumbing, but you get the gist...) and flooded our entire home. We had to tear up the flooring and were out of our house for over a month, during which time our son quit sleeping through the night due to the disruption. We moved home in May but never took the time to fix our plumbing issues. When the toliet in Pretty Paradise started leaking around the base, it was time to take action! I was also tired of finding wood chips, beard hairs, and toliet seats in the upright position in my pink bathroom.

While the plumbers were here to fix both toliets, they installed the new faucet I ordered online. I knew exactly what I wanted, but it took me a fair amount of time to find it. It looks soooooooo cute! Here is the old faucet. The knob that held the hot water handle in place fell down the drain... and it was a bit rusty.

And here is my shiny new one!

What a forgetful day I've had! I changed up my routine a little bit this morning-- I didn't wake the little man up to nurse, but he woke up anyway as I was leaving. I ended up walking out the door with him in my arms, getting in one quick snuggle, instead of the lunch I had packed. Later at work when I took my first pumping break, I realized I didn't pack any milk storage bags either! If there hadn't been another breastfeeding mother on the job, I don't know what I would have done... Pump into sterile specimen cups or a colostomy bag??? I had to stay late for a training tonight, so I didn't get to see the little one at all when I got home. Man, that lunch made a good supper, though! I made a cauliflower-mushroom potpie with an olive biscuit crust from the Veganomicon cookbook last night for supper. It was a definite do-over.

The little one has been doing the cutest things lately... sleeping on his belly with his little rump in the air... and he's figured out how to get into a seated position by himself. It's a four-step process that involves rolling to his belly, getting up on his knees and then plopping back on his bottom to play. The past two mornings when I've gone to get him out of his crib, he's been just babbling and playing and sitting upright like a real little kid. I can put him on the rug in the den with a basket of toys, and he will rifle through it like he's at a rummage sale, playing with it all (which means putting it in his mouth or banging it on the ground.) He does a lot of "revving" and rocking on his hands and knees. Here is a video of him rocking out in his crib--

He seems soooo ready to crawl, with just a few minor details to work out. With all of his activity, there hasn't been much knitting lately. I cast-on my my sister's Jaywalker socks on the way to the airport for our Vermont trip. I did the second size of the pattern (84 stitch cast-on, I believe?) and I hope they are not going to be too large. My sister has long, narrow feet. I was so surprised and excited when she asked for handknit socks, and I want them to be right. She plans to only wear them as house socks, but I think she will discover how practical they are and how nothing else really compares! She just moved to London, so I know she will get good use out of them.

P.S. After typing this post (in the spirit of being forgetful) I left a whole bag of freshly-expressed milk out overnight! Ack.

Vermont is for knitters! I had such a relaxing, wonderful time in the Huntington/Burlington area for my dear friend's wedding this past weekend. I narrowly avoided a knitting disaster with the Flower Basket Shawl, and it turned out PERFECT (if I do say so myself!) Two Sundays ago, as we were driving to Charleston to take my sister to the airport, I somehow lost the pattern to shawl... It must have fallen out the car at some point with all the loading and unloading of sister, luggage, baby, stroller, etc. On the same road trip, I knitted up the last few yards of my last skein of yarn with five rows and the bind-off left to complete the project! It was not my day... My friend who taught me how to knit, Dawn from California who is pregnant with a little boy, emailed me the pattern with lightening speed-- Thanks, Dawn! One disaster down, one to go. I guess the yarn shortage wouldn't have been that big of a deal if I hadn't run out on Sunday, discovered that the yarn store (in Columbia, one hour+ away) was closed on Monday, and scheduled myself to work from 7am to 7pm on Tuesday. That left me only Wednesday to procure the yarn, finish knitting the shawl, pack our family, and ready the house for leaving Thursday morning. Then what about blocking??? While at work on Tuesday, I called the store and had a momentary freak-out that the yarn was sold out. I realized at this point that maybe I should have ripped back the last repeat and made the shawl slightly smaller instead of waiting and packing all day on Monday! The wonderful and friendly store owner at In The Loop, Lara, found me a skein, and my mom drove to Columbia to pick it up. How am I 29 years old and my mom is still taking care of me? Anyway, moving on... I finished the shawl Wednesday morning and decided not to block it (which I wasn't exactly sure how to do) until I got to Vermont. The good news about this is that I would get to visit a local VT yarn store! On Friday in Vermont, after some coffee and maple syrup, we drove to Essex Junction to the knitter's heaven, Kaleidoscope Yarns. The shopkeepers were so helpful, and so I had to pick up a few extra souvenirs... the long-coveted Namaste Newport bag in the saddle color... a ball of Opal Rainforest yarn in Daggy... and the super-cute Prehistoric Pals pattern by Knitting at Knoon. My kid needs a Noro Triceratops!.. Oh, and I picked up some T-pins for blocking. The shawl was blocked and dry by Friday night... Here is a picture of it blocking on the daybed in our room at Sleep Hollow Inn. Honestly, I had little idea what I was doing when I pinned it out. I figured the bride was going to be holding still very much, so it didn't matter if it wasn't perfectly symmetrical. I would love to become a better blocker... as I see more lace shawls on the horizon.

Here is the lovely bride in the FO!

Nooknook pics, posted especially for Aunt Lolly-

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Dinner is simmering, the boy is down for the count in a spiffy new pair of PJs... Ah, where were we? He is eating like a champ... peas, carrots, rice, oats, sweet potatoes, winter squash, apples, bananas, plums, blueberries, peaches... His first (and only) spice was cinnamon. Here is a picture from his first feeding. He started off fairly interested, shoveling down bite after bite of liquidy rice cereal. He eventually was making terrible faces, even at an empty spoon... and then tried to escape from the Bumbo chair all-together.