Runaway October

So, is a crochet-a-long really a crochet-a-long (CAL) if no one else is cro­chet­ing with you?

When I saw news of the Lion Brand CAL pop up in the blog-o-sphere I knew I wanted to par­tic­i­pate, espe­cially since most “A-Longs” are for knit­ters. The pat­tern selected was for a sam­pler afghan, which is cool because it might have kept my atten­tion. Of course I don’t have much of a yarn stash so I had to wait to get yarn until the spouse was in an agree­able mood. I decided on using a Bernat Berella “4” in a nice heathered gray. Typ­i­cally I steer very clear of acrylic yarns, but it was on clear­ance. By the time I had every­thing together I real­ized that I was already weeks behind on the CAL. 

The orig­i­nal pat­tern turned out to be 10 blocks each of three dif­fer­ent pat­terns. Meh. I decided to ven­ture on my own, so I picked up Basic Cro­chet Stitches — 250 Stitches to Cro­chet by Erica Knight.

The book is well writ­ten and dis­played. It gives a brief intro­duc­tion to sev­eral basic stitches and how to read cro­chet­ing dia­grams. It doesn’t cover every stitch used in the book, so I have had to go look­ing for some of the more obscure ones. But so far so good. As I near the end of a cur­rent square, I become anx­ious to start and learn a new one. With 30+ squares in this afghan it’s essen­tial that I keep interested.

This color is more true to the actual color.

I def­i­nitely want to get my hands on more of the Har­mony Guides, such as The Har­mony Guides: Edg­ings and Fin­ish­ing Stitches: 250 to Cro­chet,

and The Har­mony Guides: 101 Stitches to Crochet.

They even have some inter­est­ing look­ing knit­ting books — The Har­mony Guides: Cable & Aran Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit. I do love a nice cable.

I fig­ure that if it comes out nicely I can give it away as a Christ­mas present, and if it doesn’t… well, the boys wont mind a few wonky squares as long as it’s warm and snuggly.

Oh! And what post is com­plete with­out pic­tures of my helper?

Thanks for read­ing.

What projects are you cur­rently work­ing on?

I wish I could go back to sleep 3 hours after wak­ing up.

I’m sure some would agree that it would be for the good of us all.

Okay, so some of you know this already, but I am 1000% for what I call “nat­ural” par­ent­ing. To me this means home­births, breast­feed­ing, intact gen­talia, lim­ited immu­miza­tions, etc etc. I feel that we’ve made it this far, thou­sands of years, with­out all the inter­ven­tions and place a lot of trust in our bod­ies and the com­plex inter­nal sys­tems that keep us alive.

Every now and again I’ll run across some­thing that just totally solid­i­fies me in my want to avoid all inter­ven­tions when pos­si­ble. Here are some exceprts from “10 Home­birth Facts No One’s Telling You” on Indiebirth.com by Maryn Leis­ter. Please read the full arti­cle here.

2. The US has the high­est obstet­ri­cal inter­ven­tion rates of any coun­try. (1) The US is cur­rently ranked 28^th for infant mor­tal­ity (that means 27 other coun­tries have a bet­ter rate of infant sur­vival than we do). 

• How is it that med­i­cine is one of the most advanced coun­tries, in the world, yet our babies die in such numbers?

4. You are very likely to have a c-section if you chose a hos­pi­tal birth. The WHO con­cluded that there is no rea­son for any region of the world to have a cesarean rate of more than 10–15%. As of 2004, the US has a 29.1% c-section rate. This rate is up from 27.6% in 2003. (2, 20) (3) C-section infants also are four times more likely to die than those born vaginally. 

• 4 times! 4 times more likely to die!! Granted a C-Section is a major abdom­i­nal surgery but still. Why would any­one be okay with a C-Section that wasn’t absolutely required?

Both of my boys, arrived early and were hos­pi­tal births because of it. My old­est son spent two weeks in the NICU becaue the doc­tors felt that my womb was not the best place for him. They felt that they could help him bet­ter than I could. In the end, the doc­tors were wrong and should have left him alone.

My youngest son was just in a hurry to get here. I was 2 days, maybe it was 4?, from being able to birth at home. Had I stayed home any longer he would have been and if I remem­ber cor­rectly (oxy­tocin has a ten­dency to make you for­get any­thing com­ing from some­one over 6 months old) my mid­wife stated she would not have sent us to the hos­pi­tal. Although he was early, he was strong and healthy. The hos­pi­tal kept him in the NICU for a week “just to make sure”, fed him for­mula and pumped him full of med­i­cine pro­phy­lac­ti­cally. Had they known my water was bro­ken for 10 days prior to deliv­ery they would have flipped a  lid.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that any and all of my next child­births will be attempted home­births. You’ll only find me in a hos­pi­tal if some­thing is actu­ally wrong and med­ical inter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary. Some­times I strug­gle to keep my mouth shut but in the end I also respect a mother’s right to birth how she wants, granted that it was an edu­cated decision.

What were your child­birth expe­ri­ences like? Is there any­thing you would change?

A cou­ple week­ends ago we rounded up the kids and my mom and hit up the Ari­zona Sci­ence Cen­ter. We had a sur­pris­ingly good time with a 2 year old in tow.

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When  we would try to move on Declan would get upset because he thought we were leav­ing, not just mov­ing to another room full of cool stuff to do. The Grossol­ogy exhibit was tons of fun.

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Thanks again to Grandma Ann for gift­ing us with the mem­ber­ship. Hope­fully it’ll cool down soon so we can use the Zoo mem­ber­ship too.

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Check out the ‘Pix’ link at the top for more new pic­tures of the boys.

Where are your favorite places to take young kids?

When I saw this recipe a knew I had to make it. Elise of Sim­ply Recipes not only has the best recipes, but some of the best food pho­tog­ra­phy too. That pic­ture up there? Yeah, that’s hers. My food never ever looks that good, though it tastes deli­cious! Macros, like those below I can han­dle though.

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This was my first expe­ri­ence of work­ing with tomatil­los and there wasn’t much to learn. I do believe that next time I will try and remove some of the seeds before blend­ing the sauce and more spice! I’m afraid to make things hot usu­ally because of the kids, but they chowed like no other!

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Chicken Enchi­ladas Verdes Recipe