Baby Gifts :: Part One

I finally got to meet Amanda's newest family member, Eleni, earlier this week, which means that I can finally share what I made for her. (Eleni was darling, of course! I can never get over how small newborns are, no matter how often I see them, which is fairly often these days.)

My mom traditionally makes a quilt for all of the new babies in our family and then another family member uses leftover fabric to make what we call a grab ball for the baby. I also have one from my babyhood. As soon as I heard of Amanda making a crib skirt for Eleni's nursery, I had the idea to use those fabrics to make her a ball. Turns out, Cara had similar thoughts and happened to make a baby blanket for Amanda with those same fabrics. (Great minds, I tell ya!). So...here is my contribution to this running theme. I sure hope Amanda is not getting sick of her fabric choices!



I also made this soft block with ribbon tags, since all mothers know how much babies love tags.



As it turns out, a pattern for the ball can be found in Joelle Hoverson's recently published, Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. She calls it a puzzle ball. It was kind of neat to see that she had this in her book, but I have to admit that I'm also a little bummed that this will likely become a more common item as a result. So much for my unique go to baby gift...

And the award goes to....

Now, I realize there is probably a lot of competition in this category, but I kind of feel like I should get the bad blogger award.
So much to say, so little time...that's my excuse.

Since I haven't taken the time to open up Finn's baby book in a while either, I'm going to note some things here as a record and hopefully others will find some enjoyment in reading about them.

1. He's a walker! He started walking one week after his first birthday and he's getting better and better every day. The first day was so much fun (for me)...every time I'd see him go I just got really excited, because it was happening so fast.

2. He finally has his third tooth, top left (I don't know tooth names). It made it's appearance last Monday, Dec. 10th. And I think that teething period explains some occasional unwelcome chomping he had been doing when nursing. Which brings me to...

3. We've made it to the one year mark and still nursing. I did let him try some cow's milk, and he drank about an ounce, but in place of nursing...he's not interested. I tried that once and he cried his eyes out. I honestly don't know what the weaning approach is going to be, or when it will be. I can certainly think of personal reasons to stop, but as far as his health it's still a good thing so we're gonna keep going for now.

4. Finn recently had his first little accident that led to a cracked lip and tiny bit of blood. Just before bedtime, R set him down on the floor and he sort of threw his head forward to the ground and managed to hit his mouth on the metal railing on the floor for our pocket doors. He cried. He got over it.

5. We've also made it to the one year mark on cloth diapers and homemade food. I have yet to buy a disposable diaper (yay!), although there was a time or two when forgotten laundry almost had me running to the store. And there were times when the thought of just going to buy a jar of baby food came up, but that hasn't happened and now Finn is mostly eating with the big kids (that's R and I). I do buy baby cereal, so don't think I'm a total nutcase.

6. He finally says Mama with some definite meaning to it. It's nice. I'm going to enjoy it now because I'm sure the days of being nagged with it are not far off. Aside from Dada, I don't think he says much else. I think he's trying to say kittykat, but it sounds like di-da which is very much like dada.

Aside from baby, I've had a lot of projects going on and I do hope to share them here soon. That's the idea anyway. My last knitting project was a sweater for Finn that he got for his birthday. He has not been interested at all in posing for a photo in the sweater, so I'll share this one from the party.



Please note the big thumbs up that Finn is giving the sweater. And I do believe he was saying, "Oooooooh!!!!"