Runaway October

Declan get­ting ready to take pic­tures. Check out the Megan Noël print here.

Declan loves to help these days. Just this morn­ing he picked up a paper towel that the dog had shred­ded (obvi­ously 4 pounds of raw meat a day is not enough) and all I had to do is ask if he would help pick it up. Some­times his help is more of a hin­drance, like doing the dishes. He loves doing the dishes because he gets to play with all the scoops, uten­sils and what­not, includ­ing the nifty lit­tle faucet adapter that turns it into a sprayer. This usu­ally cul­mi­nates in a sop­ping wet boy.

So I made him an apron. I once got the hare­brained idea to make my own cloth dia­pers at one point, so I have yards and yards of PUL lying around. Per­fect! Once again I used only what I had already in the house, so it’s not the pret­ti­est but it works.

It didn’t seem to bother him too much while doing the dishes and it’s fully wash­able — obvi­ously. He wont be able to get it on and off by him­self, as I made it to tie at the neck and waist but it’ll fit as he gets big­ger. Maybe I should try some snaps?

(I fig­ure if it’s going to be blurry any­way I may as well play around with some blur filters)

I think I’m in love with aprons cur­rently. If I’m going to spend the rest of my days around kids, cook­ing and clean­ing, I might as well do it in style right?

I can­not wait until this pat­tern is avail­able: Emme­line Apron

And I’d love to make a whole pas­sel of these and these to have on hand for the kids

I really wanted to join in The Sassy Apron Swap, but I don’t know if I could pull off any­thing wor­thy of send­ing to some­one else with as short on cash as we are. Hope­fully I can get in on the next round.

And this is just plain cute: Apron Evan­ge­lism

I’ll have to admit that I saw this recipe on TV one night dur­ing a mid­night nurs­ing spree. Unfor­tu­nately for me I had for­got­ten my robe and it wasn’t my belly that was being filled with warm good­ness. So as I sat there shiv­er­ing (seri­ously! It had to be 60° in the house at the time) I watched Sam the Cook­ing Guy make this super easy soup and decided I must have it.

Of course I didn’t have all of the ingre­di­ents, except for pota­toes. When I told Matt what I was plan­ning on mak­ing I could see his eyes kinda fall. He’s got­ten smart enough to not let his face fall any­more. But he trudged on, like a trooper, to the store and back and ate my soup like it was directly feed­ing his starv­ing soul. Lo and Behold, it was amaz­ing! It was like eat­ing thin mashed pota­toes with all the good­ies, but BETTER! The cream just gives it an extra oomph, I think.

Potato Soup (adapted from Sam the Cook­ing Guy)

Ingre­di­ents

• 5 pounds bak­ing pota­toes, peeled and diced
• 2 big red onions, diced
• 4–5 cups chicken broth, diced — just kid­ding I nor­mally use just enough to cover the pota­toes when boil­ing, so this may vary)
• 2 table­spoons butter
• 3 cups whip­ping cream
• 1/2 — 1 tea­spoon cayenne
• 3 table­spoons fresh chopped parsley
• Diced Ham or Sausage (because it’s not con­sid­ered a meal in my house with­out meat in it {insert eye­roll}) (optional)

This recipe makes alot, 10–12 serv­ings, so feel free to cut down the amount of ingre­di­ents if you’re not feed­ing the entire Horde.

Here’s the Pho­to­Shop goodie I was talk­ing about. It wasn’t made in Pho­to­shop though. For most of the image edit­ing and align­ing I used Krita, which has a more PhotoShop-style GUI. But I used GIMP for the text and layer shad­ows. I guess they both have their spe­cial­ties. The pic­tures aren’t per­fect but I did the best I could with a cam­era I’m not used to. The sub­ject is cute enough to make up for all of that though.

Click for a larger version.

I must admit that the idea was not mine. I “bor­rowed” it from another mama on one of my forums.

When I was preg­nant with Declan, I briefly heard about teach­ing babies sign lan­guage. I looked into it some and found the Sign­ing Time DVD’s and ordered one when Declan was still very young. The research I had done said that chil­dren who learn a sec­ond lan­guage (Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage, or ASL, is con­sid­ered a lan­guage) not only have higher IQ’s, but that sign­ing helps elim­i­nate the ter­ri­ble twos and teaches accep­tance of peo­ple who do things “differently”.

The lit­tle boy that I pro­vide day­care for has Down Syn­drome, just like my older sis­ter Bon­nie. I remem­ber my mom men­tion­ing that they thought Bon­nie may never be able to truly talk so they started teach­ing her ASL. These days we can’t get her to be quiet! Part of this lit­tle boy’s ther­apy is also sign lan­guage, because whether they talk or not, it usu­ally hap­pens a lit­tle later than nor­mal. Imag­ine under­stand­ing so much, but not being able to com­mu­ni­cate or respond.

So we’ve pulled all out Sign­ing Time DVD’s out, we have the first 6, and we’re try­ing to use as many signs as pos­si­ble. Not just when he is here, but through the whole day. Declan is really doing so well. It seems like overnight he knew 15 new signs, and it makes me won­der if there was just a cer­tain stage that he reached where it all kind of clicked in his head.

He knows:

• Mama
• Papa
• Orange
• Baby
• Shoes
• Sock
• Moon
• Play
• Apple
• Milk
• Cheese
• Cracker
• Help
• No
• Stop
• Potty
• Water
• Hun­gry
• Full
• Warm
• Hot
• Cold
• Grandma (kinda)
• Blue
• Share
• Play
• Sit
• Dance
• Eat/Food
• Wet
• Cereal
• More
• Want
• Please
• Sorry
• Horse
• Bird
• Dog
• Cat
• Car
• Plane
• Baby
• Cry
• Dia­per
• Cheese
• Ball
• And more I’m sure.

We’ve found this is be very help­ful: ASLPro.com — It has videos of just about every sign!

Speak­ing of how grown-up Declan is get­ting, he always wants to help wash dishes, but ends up soaked every time. I’ve got my next craft project all planned out. Stay tuned!

Yay! They’re finally com­pleted. I know some of you are just dying to see them.

If there’s any­thing par­ent­ing has taught me, it’s that kids play with the darnedest things. Just now I had to take a backscratcher away from Declan because he was play­ing in the dirt with it. Right next to him sat a whole set of sand toys, includ­ing lit­tle shov­els and rakes. One thing that seems to be uni­ver­sal is cars and balls though.

Unfor­tu­nately throw­ing has become great fun. Most of the balls we have are wooden and belong to wooden play­sets in one form or another. Hello Arca­dia Door!!

So I made these:

They were very sim­ple to make — 6 iden­ti­cally shaped pieces sewn together, stuffed and hand-sewn shut. I didn’t even spend a dime, using only what we had on hand. Like I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post my plan was to dis­em­bowel some old stuffed ani­mals and use the stuff­ing, but Mud­der guilted me out of it. Instead I washed up an old grungy pil­low really well and used that stuff­ing. Now that’s using my nog­gin. The stuff­ing was a lit­tle lumpy, so they’re not per­fectly round, but the kids wont notice. It also would have­been eas­ier if I had a nice pair of pink­ing shears. I bought a pair, but didn’t real­ize that pink­ing shears in the scrap­book sec­tion are only going to shred the fab­ric not cut it. To think I thought $4 pink­ing shears were a steal!

I also had some square scraps, from some bean bags, lay­ing around, so we made a cube while we were at it. I think it’s my favorite so far.

Today is a busy blog­ging day. Keep a look­out for more entries!