Archive for July, 2010

Attractive eyes


28 Jul

Posted in Nathan's third year | No Comments »

Nathan still adores his trains, and Toby loves destroying tracks and sucking on trains.  We were in HobbyCo on the weekend and decided to buy Nathan a new train.  We asked him to choose from three different trains.  Nathan had other ideas though, and wanted one not on offer.

“I like the one with the eyes.  Mummy, I really like the one with the eyes.”

He doesn’t know the Thomas trains or associated characters by name, but he is still drawn to them.  Who would have thought that eyes would have such power over a 2-year-old!

7 months old


21 Jul

Posted in Development, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Toby has become quite a proficient crawler, and perhaps he aspires to be a mountain climber.  He crawls over big bulky things like the vacuum cleaner and wicker baskets.  Sometimes he get’s stuck and makes it well known that he needs help, but mostly he manages just fine.  He loves standing and will use anything above ground level to hang onto during his standing practice.  The vacuum cleaner is useful for this too, though the couch is even more interesting, with a laptop computer to be often found there.  What is it with kids being attracted to technology?

Meal times are very messy.  Toby drops so much food on the floor…it drops into his lap and then goes through the leg holes and onto the floor.  I try to use towels to pad the holes but the food still manages to find a way down.  The unfortunate side effect of eating more and more food is that Toby has been having problems with his poo being too hard.  Nathan suffered from hard poos for along time after starting on solids, and it does look like Toby is having similar issues, though perhaps not quite to the same extent.

Toby now has three teeth, with the fourth looking like it is not far away.

EC is still going well, though at best we are part time with it.  Almost all poos go into the toilet (poos in the nappy are very very small, as if he starts and doesn’t like doing them in his nappy and stops until I notice and put him on the potty), and we do catch quite a few wees, though it’s always easier to catch the ones after naps than others throughout the day.  We aren’t doing much at night, and the dry nappies at night are now a thing long past.

6.5 months old


08 Jul

Posted in Development, Toby's first year | No Comments »

Toby can sit on his own now.  It’s a funny, lopsided sort of position but he has both feet in front of him. His crawling is just getting stronger and faster every day, and he seemed very pleased with himself a few days ago when he reached the kitchen for the first time. He still finds every scrap of paper on the floor, but he also gravitates to shoes that are great for chewing on, or so he thinks. It’s funny how Toby is doing all the same things that Nathan did at around the same age, but I forget about them until Toby starts doing it. I’d forgotten that Nathan also had a shoe fetish.  🙂

Sewing


08 Jul

Posted in Sewing | 2 Comments »

Nathan has been going to sleep early most nights lately, and even though Toby doesn’t let me have much time to myself at night I have still managed to do quite a bit of sewing. I feel like my sewing is done in rushed, stolen, moments. I guess that could explain the enormous amount of unpicking I have to do at times, though it gets less the more practice I have.

I started a few months ago by making a mei tai to carry Toby in. I totally love this carrier and have plans to make myself more.  It has become my most valued carrying and sleep tool so I take it with me everywhere I go.  When I finished making it, a friend (who was a pregnant at the time) really liked it so I decided to make one for her. That’s when I discovered how hard it is to choose fabric for something you make for someone else. Eh, it’s often hard enough for me to choose what I want without worrying about whether someone else will like my choice. Thankfully my friend loves her carrier and says her new baby sleeps well in it.  I also whipped up a little mei-tai-like carrier for Nathan’s teddy bear, since Nathan had been trying to use my carriers for Arthur.

After about a year of wondering what the Ottobre patterns were like and how easy they were to sew, I finally got a magazine to test drive.  Nathan decided he wanted me to make him overalls, and he got very excited when we went fabric shopping and he got to choose the material for the lining.  The overalls turned out quite well (even though I made some mistakes), so I decided to take the plunge and get a subscription.

Committing so a subscription really cemented my desire to make the kids some clothing. I really can’t work out what the attraction of sewing their clothes is. Well, I hate shopping, so maybe that’s a part but there are so many cute kids clothes around that shopping for them has never been too stressful. There are, however, lots of clothing that have characters from TV and/or movies plastered all over them and that is not the sort of clothing We want for our kids. I’ve found that making some of Nathan’s clothes allows me to use fabrics that have designs that interest him without pushing some branded garment. I also find it a challenge to make each item of clothing well, but when something I make looks great then I feel very pleased with myself.

After the overalls I made some black jeans that are no longer black…they look more blue than anything else, due to the colour running or wearing off….and a t-shirt. Next on the list were some pajamas for Nathan. I made another pair of overalls for the birthday of a friend’s son, then some brown cords and another two t-shirts for Nathan.

So I’ve now made Nathan the majority of his current wardrobe, though he has pretty much grown  out of the jeans already.  There is something satisfying seeing your child dressed in home made clothing that looks pretty much like it came from a shop (particularly if you don’t look toooooooo closely).  Now I just need to get onto some new bibs for Toby, some training pants for him, my second mei tai, some more things for the kids to play with (I’ve been making some felt food and have other projects planned)  and, of course, more clothes.

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