Scenes from a Halloween

It was a busy (but fun!) weekend. We went to our friends' house for a housewarming yesterday. Their younger son was born the same day as S, and it was a blast watching the 2 kids interact with each other. They spent a chunk of time crawling all over the same toy. They never got grabby, just explored their own parts of the toy and occasionally checked each other out. S also got to spend time with some older kids, and it was so neat to see her with a bunch of other children.

Today was spent hanging out at home, pondering our next steps in babyproofing, and preparing for Trick or Treaters. Over the course of the weekend, we had S in 4 different Halloween-themed outfits, so she's covered ;) Here's a look:


Frankenstein pumpkin cookies


S in "baby prison" in her onesie that says, "Baby's First Halloween"




Ready for dinner in her personalized First Halloween bib. This one's a keeper.




S in her panda costume. Doesn't she look happy? And adorable?



Our little panda looking at the panda in her book

S in her pumpkin sleeper (her final Halloween outfit), with Daddy

We were thrilled to get some Trick or Treaters this year. Since we're on a hill (that's on a hill), it's usually pretty daunting to get to our front door. But when all was said and done, we had about 20 kids this year, a record. I think it's because it was cold and windy outside, and a lot of parents drove their kids from house to house. Hey, whatever works ;)

I'm such a geek

I wore my floral scarf today. With the same green shirt I wore to photograph it for my blog.

I was so excited to wear something I made that looked so cool.

S liked it as well. She was chewing on it before we left the house.

Colorful crafty update

Not long ago, I posted a crafy update, including a really cute newborn Santa-style hat and a floral scarf in a rainbow of colors. I may have mentioned I wanted to repeat the hat, but in a blue and white stripe.


Done!

I also mentioned I was working on a hat to go with the scarf, again in a rainbow of colors.


And...done! I love this hat. It came out the perfect size (which is a miracle, because I typically crochet big and have to majorly alter things to get it to work out right). It's also some of the softest wool I've played with in a while. It's successes like this that makes me pine for colder weather.


Here it is on my head in a close-up so you can see the stripes in living color.

Of course, this has freed me up to add more projects to my queue. I've been meaning to start some mittens for S, and I have a hat I started for J that needs some work, and I found a great pattern to go with the sky blue alpaca I bought last weekend.

Thank God my child naps.

Cuteness abounds (oh, and she loves her daddy)

This is slightly out of focus, but I couldn't resist.



Note the 2 bottom teeth



J got home relatively early today, so we got to have an early dinner and chill in the living room. S got to play with Daddy.




My friend Amy sent this adorable outfit for S. Doesn't she look adorable?





Note the plaid ruffles on the butt.

Fun weekend

I spent the weekend in Baltimore, leaving S in the capable hands of her daddy. When I came home he showed me the cute pictures he took of his little girl.



This is from a set of cloth nesting "buckets" that S plays with. J figured out that the biggest bucket fits on S's head, and it made for good photo opportunities.

This was fun to see when I got home :)

Big, big day

We finalized S's adoption today!

We drove down Monday night so we wouldn't have to get up before dawn on Tuesday morning. We still got up before dawn on Tuesday morning, we just didn't have to drive as far.

We made our way to the courthouse in the rain, parking just in time to head in to our court appearance. We met up with our lawyer, and after a brief wait, we were ushered into court.

The judge had each of us "testify", which basically meant we took a seat in the witness stand and confirmed basic information like our birthdates, birthplaces, when and where we were married, when S was born, and when she came to us. After going over all the information, our lawyer requested finalization of the adoption, and the judge agreed!

Then we posed for pictures.




To celebrate, we headed to Babies R Us and Buy Buy Baby and got a convertible car seat and baby gates for the next stage of S's life. And a few toys and clothes, of course.

We are all super tired, but super happy to officially, and forever, be a family.

Crafty update

Welcome to Dr L's Craft Time!

My friend Amy had her baby girl Elsie last month. She and her family were waiting until Elsie's arrival to find out the gender, so I held off on making her something until I had a color in mind. As soon as I heard "girl", I found this beautiful wine-colored washable wool, and a pattern for the 5-hour sweater. It took me a bit longer than 5 hours (don't ask), but not much, and I love how it turned out. So did Amy. I hope it's nice and warm for Elsie this winter.



While we were at our photo shoot last weekend, our friend Jen complimented me on S's pumpkin hat, and asked if I had any patterns in mind for a newborn Santa-style hat for her Christmas sessions. I cast about and found a great munchkin hat pattern. I used the same wonderful washable wool in wine, along with some white stripes, to knit what turned out to be an adorable hat. I may try this again in blue and white to have in my stash.



In the meantime, my crochet bug caught up with me, especially with a new book and yarn I talked about here. I made the first project that caught my eye, a scarf of interlinked flowers.




I was originally going to make this for my sister in law (and they can fight over which one it was ;), but I loved it so much I decided it's staying in my house.



That's OK, I have enough yarn to make 1 or 2 more, so maybe both sisters in law will have a cool homemade Christmas present from me. Maybe...

Stay tuned. There's a striped hat in similar colors to the floral scarf that's on my hook, and a few more projects kicking about. And I'm going to my knitting circle Tuesday night :)

What my life is like these days

My, how times change


Baby bottles, ready to wash. And a sippy cup.


Sophie in the dish drain

Our daughter is famous!

Well, not really, but I like to think so.

Yesterday we had pictures done. J has a good friend from high school who now does photography, and her work is great. We decided this was a good time for S to have some fancy-pants pictures taken, and we knew just who to contact.


Jen was fantastic. She pulled out all the stops to get our daughter to smile and do all the cute things babies do. She got Mommy and Daddy in on the act here and there too ;)

She already posted pictures to her blog, hence the "my kid is famous" line. So go here to check them out.

Follow up to Wachovia/Wells Fargo

True to form, they called again yesterday. Same woman, even.

I asked to be put on the no-call list. The woman told me it may take 30 days to go into effect.

I'm fine with that.

Dear Wachovia/Wells Fargo

Stop calling me.

Every other day, you call asking for my husband. When I tell you he's not here (because you're calling our house in the middle of the day and, um, he's at work) and ask to take a message, you refuse. You ask me for a better time to call him, and I say he's reachable in the evenings. Yet you never call in the evenings, just wait a day or 2 and call me back in the middle of the day.

When I last pressed you for information, you said you had information on a new product the bank was offering. When I said I was his wife, and you can simply share the information with me, you stated I'm not listed on the account (of course you picked the one account I'm not listed on) and are bound by some rule to not tell me anything.

At this point, my husband wants me to tell you he's in a coma and can't come to the phone. But I'm too superstitious for that. I will pointedly ask you to put us on your no-call list.

This is getting ridiculous. I'm almost looking forward to the political phone calls.

Thank you, and good-bye.

A rare photo

Yes, someone took a picture of me with S, as opposed to me being behind the camera!

Anniversary weekend

Our annniversary was this weekend, and we spent a quiet one at home this year. In part because we haven't found a reliable babysitter, in part because J wanted to spend time with his family after a long week at work, and in part because the rest of October is slammed, so it was an opportunity to be homebound.

I bought a cake:


Pretty, no? And yummy.

J bought me flowers.




And chocolate



We drank wine. This is a rarity in our house, despite a dining room full of wine.



We drank more wine.



We posed for our annual anniversary picture. BTW, this was before the wine ;)

Happy anniversary, J! I can't believe it's been 5 years already.

7 Months!

Time to get out the blocks!


A rare moment of stillness



That didn't last long




It was a challenge taking her picture this month




It didn't matter how far away I put them, she just launched herself in their general direction

Happy 7 month birthday, S!