Fun in Texas

We recently went down to Dallas for a few days to visit our besties John and Aimee. 90 degree weather, great food, lots of fun, and drive through margaritas (that is a strange story for another time). It was a nice way to spend the limited amount of time I got off between semesters and a fun way to spend Mother's Day.Vivi's favorite sculpture at the Nasher. Seriously she kept running back to it and pointing and staring.
I love Texas!
John and Aimee on our walk home from dinner.
Rosey cheeked. A little sweaty from our time at the arboretum.
Playing in the frog fountain.
Peter Rabbit's house. Do you like my sun hat?
At John and Aimee's loft. I love this chair, it is just my size. Where did that kitty go?
In the tee pee with Daddy.

Vivi charms everyone she meets. She loves people so much. It was a nice trip overall! We can't wait to see J&A again.

Our Girl is One!

Wow, time flies by. After the holidays we went into crazy mode for the month of January. I won't get into all the details but things are quieting down now. On February 23rd we celebrated Vivian's first birthday! Well, we didn't actually celebrate until the weekend but I just wanted to post a few photos of our girl.Here is Vivi on the day of her birthday, striking a pose. Really she is thinking "why the heck am I on the table?". She is with her pall Charlie the Cheetah, her favorite stuffed animal. At this point she is in 18 month clothes but we are finding them snug already. She weighs 23.5 pounds and is 31 inches tall. That is almost 14.5 pounds and 10 inches of growth in 1 year! Amazing. Vivi has 10 teeth, two of which are a little toward the back and have been tougher to cut. She is a very active walker who practically runs around the house. Here she is pulling out items from her hiding spot. I like to leave things in this little cubbie next to the tv for her to discover. Vivi has been climbing stairs for a while now so we have to be ever vigilent to put up the gate. She has learned to climb off the bed and couch but has had a hard time continuing that training onto the stairs. She will do it for a couple steps but then gets bored with it and wants to turn around and step off like a grown-up! Yikes. We will keep working on it. Her shirt is wet here after being cleaned up from dinner. You have seen how messy she can get feeding herself! Speaking of which she is a master eater. We are working on self feeding with a spoon. She is completely off of bottles and drinking from sippy cups though we are also working on using regular cups. At daycare Vivi has been moved up to the one year old room where they no longer use cribs or highchairs. They sit at little table all together as a group and eat their meals. We decided to continue this at home and have Vivi sit at the table with us which means her highchair is more like a booster seat. No tray. We put her food on a plate and she has done well with it so far. We are trying to teach her that if she doesn't want to eat anything she can move it to a pile to the side instead of throwing it on the floor. She still prefers the out of sight, out of mind approach. I however, am tired of cleaning food off the ground.Here is Vivi at one of her virtual birthday parties. We had a little Skype party with each set of grandparents so they could watch her open her presents and have some cake. Lots of fun. When my parents were on the computer Greg held the laptop and she followed him around "chasing them" for 15 minutes straight. It was very cute. We are still waiting for hair to grow. The mohawk region of her head has gotten a lot thicker and MIGHT have a little curl to it but we are still waiting for any real length. Here is Vivi "brushing" her hair. She copies my hand motion but doesn't actually touch the brush to her head. Such a funny girl. Here is Vivi practicing wearing her swim cap. We signed up for swim classes at the YMCA and they require everyone in the pool to wear a cap. We were a little nervous because Viv hates to have hats or headbands or anything else on her head. However, when we put the swim cap on (it is pretty big as you can see) she just acted like it wasn't there. Good thing. That was a battle I wanted to avoid. I bought her a cute pink skirted swimsuit and a swim diaper and we were all set.I wish I had a better shot of us at the pool but photos weren't allowed. Greg caught this shot on the down low which is why it isn't very clear. Vivi likes being in the water and seems to enjoy our classes. We mostly just bounce around and sing songs at this point. It is more about being comfortable in the water than anything else. She is the biggest baby in the 6-12 month class and is pretty good a kicking her legs. I think we may sign up for music together once swimming is over. It has been fun spending Saturday morning hanging out with Vivi and other kids/parents. Not something I get to do a lot since Greg is the one who handles all the daycare interaction. So after one year Vivian is doing great. She is a high spirited and happy baby/toddler. We were just commenting on how much easier parenting is at this point since she is more self sufficient and it is certainly more fun everyday as her personality grows. She just learned to shake her head yes and no and it is hilarious to watch since her whole body shakes along with it. Happy Birthday Bubba!!

Gift Wrap Find

Just a fun find. Soule Mama did a post today on fabric gift wrap! She showed a way to use ribbon without doing drawstrings that totally makes sense. I can't believe I was considering a much more complicated alternate plan involving velcro! I am totally inspired to finish my Christmas gift wrap and get it tucked away for next year. She wraps gifts that are being given away too. Something to think about.

Table runner redo

Another item I found in the office was our holiday table runner. I used to put it on our dinning room cabinets. Recently we got a new cabinet system for our dining room that would offer much more storage space. However, it has a smaller surface area and due to the unique shape, a table runner would not be able to hang over the edges. So the runner got tossed into the office for alterations.

I measured the length of the cabinet at 71 inches. I marked that spot on the runner and then gave myself about an inch to work with before I cut. I now had a long and short piece. I practiced my technique on the short piece first (good tip!). Turned out the runner was made from 2 different colors of red velvet. I had never noticed this before but it was going to make the alteration much easier. I used a stitch ripper to pull the 2 pieces apart for about 2-3 inches. Then I worked to make mitered corners on the bottom piece. Pinning it to the ironing board as I worked really helped to keep everything in place. Once I was happy with the shape of the bottom half, I trimmed, folded over the top piece of velvet and pinned everything into place. Stitched it all together on the sewing machine and it was done. My end was pretty bulky compared to the manufactured side but I don't think anyone will notice. I never really learned how to do proper mitered corners. Someday I will have to look for a tutorial on that.

It turned out really nicely and makes a nice spot for our nativity to stand.

For the daily Vivi, here is a shot from this morning at breakfast time. She was very pleased that she could feed herself yogurt! The trick to getting a kid who can't use a spoon but is totally into self feeding to eat a liquid is to put it in a cup and let her drink it (another tip is to use a dipper to eat the liquid). Despite the photo she actually ate a lot and isn't just wearing it all!

Crib Sheets

Sorry! I got a little delayed by a sick baby who was kind enough to pass her cold on to me. Why is it that the mama always gets sicker than anyone else? Anyway, back to the office clean out.

Up until about 4 weeks ago Vivian has been sleeping in her co-sleeper (pictured here). Of course as she got bigger and could sit up and then stand up we had to continually lower the bottom until the co-sleeper was more like a play yard. No problem really, Vivian was perfectly happy to sleep in there. At one point though, we had to move the bed into her own room because she kept bonking her head on the wall through the soft sides when she was learning to stand. In her room we had the space to keep the bed away from the walls. Once she was in her own room we didn't see the point in not getting her a real bed. It took us a while to agree on a bed but once we had the opportunity to lend the the co-sleeper to a friend having a baby a fire was finally lit under us to make a decision.

One of my first projects for the new crib was to make some snazzy crib sheets. Prudent Baby had a really easy looking tutorial (a great blog for sewing projects by the way). I found some cute fabrics, got them all washed up and then got derailed by the dirty office. I couldn't measure the fabric out when it was all wrinkled up and I didn't have room to pull out the ironing board. So first I cleared a big space to get out the ironing board and got the fabric squared up, measured and cut. That probably took longer than actually making the sheets by the way. Next I cut 8 inch squares from the corners. This is how you make the pockets in a fitted sheet. Seems so hard when you look at a sheet but that is all it takes. Once the squares have been removed I stitched up the corners, right sides together. Next I serged around the entire edge of the sheet to seal up the raw edges. Without a serger you would fold over the edge and straight stitch instead. Next I cut 10 inch pieces of elastic, pinned them into the new corners, stretched as far as the elastic would go and then stitched it in place. Repeat for all corners and the sheet was done.

I stuck with my nursery color scheme by choosing bold fabrics in pinks, greens and browns. I made 2 flannel sheets for winter and 2 cotton sheets for the rest of the year.

I especially love the stripes. I can't wait for warmer weather to use that one. The other flannel is the light pink. I got a little extra stripy fabric to make a crib skirt if time permits.

Vivi seems to like her new sheets. They are not only cute but much much cheaper than designer sheet. I think interesting sheets are an easy way to make a nursery pop!

Lap Towels

For the next project to make sense you need a little background info. When Vivian was 6 months old we introduced solids to her using the traditional method. Rice cereal followed by all kinds of purees. I bought jarred food and made some of my own. About a month into this process I discovered (through a blog) the book Baby-led Weaning. I think most moms discover this method on their own by the time they have their second child and have less time to fuss with special foods. The idea is that you never give your baby pureed food but instead start them out young (at 6 months) on finger foods allowing them to explore foods in their "regular" form as well as develop the ability to chew and safely handle foods in their mouths. It totally clicked with me on some of my concerns with what we were previously doing so we immediately switched Vivian over to this method and were blown away by what our 7 month old baby could do! She was actually eating the same thing we were at every meal. It was awesome. I wish I had read it earlier and had just skipped purees all together. It would have saved us some catch up time. Anyway, it is probably worth a post all on its own.

One of the only drawbacks to this method is that you have to let the baby do their thing unhindered so it is rather messy. Our highchair is great except that the gap between the baby and the tray is kind of big so Vivi would drop stuff down there all the time. No big deal if it is dinner but if it is breakfast or lunch then her clothes got covered with food for the rest of the day. I would put a kitchen towel over her lap and belt it in place but, 1. I was going through kitchen towels too fast and 2. the belt would pull the towel up in the middle. If I didn't belt it on she would mess with it while eating and next thing you know it would be on the floor.

Last time I was at the fabric store I found some terry that was very inexpensive so I decided to make some lap towels for mealtime. So simple! Just cut a rectangle. Then cut a slit in the middle. Serge all the raw edges and they are done. Now her lap is completely covered from falling foods. These probably won't be necessary after a few more months since Vivian is getting more and more proficient at eating as her motor skills develop and her appetite grows but that is OK because they were so easy and cheap to make. If you wanted to you could upcycle these from old towels you already have or ones from the thrift store.

For the daily cutie I thought it would be fun to show you some of the mess I am speaking about. This was a dinner of quesadilla, black beans and carrots. A little mess is totally worth it to see her taste and try all foods and handle them herself. She gets such a sense of satisfaction from having control over her meals and is more able to listen to her hunger and fullness signals when we aren't shoveling spoonfuls of stuff into her mouth.Daycare was apprehensive at first when we told them to just give her the food in large chunks like this but after one meal they were amazed.

Another tip is that we took the big plastic mat that used to be under the computer desk up in the office and moved it down to the dining room to protect the carpet. It is bigger than most commercial spill mats and I like that it is hard plastic. I can spray and wipe it down at night. This creates a clean surface so we can pick food up that is dropped on the ground and give it back to her. Dropping food is a big part of the method since the baby is allowed to make a mess.

Drawstring Birthday Bags

About a year ago I got an idea to move to reusable Christmas gift wrap. The idea being that for gifts given at home we would no longer use paper which is on a package for just a few moments before it is ripped up and thrown away. So I have been milling around with this idea for a very long time. Recently I was at the fabric store and they were running a sale on Christmas fabric so I bought some. It of course ended up in the piles above because this year we will not be home for the holidays and have decided not to buy gifts for each other due the recent purchase of a new car (awesome by the way! We love our new Forester). It also doesn't make sense to ship gifts in reusable wrappings to then require people to mail everything back to me.

BUT!

I found some cute birthday fabric while I was at the fabric store and since Greg is a December baby I thought I could try out my idea there first. I decided to make drawstring bags. They will hold gifts very nicely and would be the most logistically easy to figure out compared to my fabric wrapping paper idea. The internet is full of drawstring bag tutorials so this is a very simplified version. Please note that I wouldn't normally choose a fabric that is so garish but now that I have a kid I always wonder what a small child might think is cool. I think someday Vivi will be excited to see the Birthday Bags come out in February for her birthday. I did try to pick something gender neutral.

I only got .75 yards, it was all that was left on the bolt. I folded it in half and cut it into two pieces for two bags. For each bag I serged up the raw side edges. The other edges were manufacturer finished so I didn't deal with them.

Next on the edges that will be the top of the bag I folded the top over and stitched it down to leave a channel. This is where the string will go.

Then I folded the bag in half (since I was using one long piece of fabric), right sides together and stitched up the sides stopping right where the folded over piece starts.

Then I folded out the bottom corners and stitched across so the bottom is square. I like this effect but it can always be left out. That flap can be cut off.

Lastly I turned the bag right side out and threaded long pieces of ribbon through the holes left on the sides where I didn't stitch. I did 2 overlapping strings so that I could use them to tie the bags shut (so no one can peek at their gifts!).

I purposefully left the strings really long so that when a small gift is inside the bag it can be folded in half and the strings can wrap around and tie into a nice bow/bundle. Here are the bags, one with a small gift and one with a larger flat item inside.

I love the way these turned out. They went right under the tree where we always keep Greg's gifts until his Birthday. I will definitely be making some Christmas draw string bags. They were just too easy not to.

And here is the daily cutie. In her highchair waiting to eat breakfast yesterday morning. She was my model for a project I am finishing up tonight!