Two Steps Removed

Story One:

1. Jasmine's favorite thing to pretend right now is that she's a baby. She crawls around and makes baby noises.

2. Hudson has started imitating Jasmine. Crawling around the room and making baby noises is pretty funny coming from someone who's just now starting to talk!

Story Two:
We now own Wii Sport Resort, which the girls *love* to play. Jasmine has become the family's Flying Ace, and Bekah's favorite thing is the "fighting games" (fencing).

Yesterday while I was making dinner, I overheard them say "let's play basketball," but the game was off. I realized they were pretending to play...the Wii version of the game.

Yay for creativity!

Crocheting

**warning** some of this will be "shop talk." Sorry to anyone who doesn't crochet!!

On Saturday, I found a pattern for a crocheted afghan that I thought would be fun and really pretty. So I took Jasmine to Hobby Lobby to pick out yarn so I could make her a blanket. It's another triple-thick one, using three strands of yarn at the same time with a HUGE hook (I think it's a P...15.5mm)
This is the first afghan I made in that style:

It's huge. And thick. It has big holes in the pattern, but it warms us beautifully. 

I liked the look of a new pattern I found online. 

 

But by mid-day Sunday, I knew something wasn't quite right.

Um, something was *very* not right.

I was about to rip it all out and start again, but decided it was the perfect dimensions for a...

CAPE! Which she's been begging me for for months now!!

Your wish is my command, Jasmine.

So the boring part (ignore if you don't crochet)
my question is: can you help me figure out if it was *my* fault or the pattern's?? I know where the problem happened, and the math works perfectly for me to be right on that. But I'm getting my brain all twisted up when I try to figure out whether I was following the pattern correctly or not.

the basic pattern was 8 rows of sc, then a row of:
1dc, skip next sc, [(3 dc in next sc) skip next two sc] repeat [] to near the end, and then end with a couple more dc.

First of all, I misread the directions. I was doing *1 dc, skip, (3dc in next sc) skip next two sc* all the way across. But does the math work out that that should have worked???

I started out with 80 chains. By the time I stopped, I had 32 stitches. I'd done the dc rows 4 times. I figured out, if there were 4 stitches in 5 spaces, the math works perfectly for it to get down from 80 to 32. But I can't figure out if that's what really happened.

Any thoughts??

Hudson, 19 months

(well, he will be, in 2 days)

Hudson's personality is really starting to blossom lately. And I'm loving him more each day.

So since he's asleep and can't tell me not to, I'm going to write about him today!
1. Hudson thinks his primary job is to make sure Bekah never cries.
If Bekah cries, he stops whatever he's doing to go give her a hug to comfort her. 99.5% of the time, that's all it takes (since most of her tears are being upset, not hurt)

2. If he were taller, he'd run the house.
In a good way.
Yesterday he reminded Jasmine that she'd left the back door open, after she'd gone back there for her jammies.
He throws garbage out as soon as he finds it.
He closes doors behind himself.
He brings people their coats/shoes as soon as they mention that it's time to leave.
His favorite activity is to use the Dustbuster to vacuum up the floor.

3. He likes clothes.
He loves to strut around the house when I put new clothes on him.
He noticed that the khakis I put him in were new.
He loves to choose which clothes he'll wear that day.
If his bottom drawer is empty, which is normal, he'll pull clothes out of Bekah's drawer to un-empty his own.

4. He loves anything electronic, or with buttons, knobs, cords, lights...

5. He likes to tell us where our phones are, and yesterday he told Josh that his phone was ringing.

6. He gives great hugs and kisses.

7. He "jumps." With one foot. And he thinks he's hot stuff when he does it.

8. He dances. And sings. And "whistles."

9. He likes to hand me the clean plates and bowls from the bottom of the dishwasher, saying 'thank you' as he hands me each one. (that's because I used to say 'thank you' to him each time he handed me one!)  :)

10. He loves me!!!

New Ventures

I just did something *huge.*

I set up my Etsy store!!

(for anyone who doesn't know, Etsy is an online "mall"-type business that allows people like me to have a small store, selling either homemade or vintage items.)

If you're on Facebook, you can like my page here. I'll try not to  "spam" your walls, though I will let you know about pictures I upload and anything special I do!

What a huge project! I started it on Wednesday and kept getting bogged down on details. So getting it all done is a tremendous rush.

Let me know what you think!!

Piggies

I like shoes.

A huge part of the reason for that: I'm not a huge fan of feet.
They're very important, but I'm glad I can cover them up with (socks and) shoes.

I don't want to show off my feet, and I'm not in a hurry to see anyone else's.

But baby feet are another thing altogether.

Aren't they edible??

Some kiddo funnies

The girls are cracking me up today.

Here are a few morsels:



Jasmine: visit w w w to go to our website
Bekah: oooh! .....what's a website?


Jasmine: don't go to a Leapster "dot com"
Bekah: why not?
Jasmine: because it will break your computer.

Jasmine: Hi Thomas
Bekah: I'm not Thomas. I'm Percy
See? I have green paint
Jasmine: you can't be Percy. You're not very splendid!
(she has no idea what "splendid" means

Bekah's dinosaur's little monologue: " I have peace, patience, kindness, goodness, thankfulness...no, I don't have thankfulness. I'm a bad dinosaur."

Siblings

Jasmine and Bekah are like twins a lot of the time; they may be two years apart in age, but are learning things side by side.

Bekah and Hudson are like twins in closeness. If she starts to cry, he's immediately by her side, hugging her to make her feel better. And his face lights up when he sees her.

 

So now we're waiting for a twin-like relationship with Jasmine and Hudson. Right now he thinks she's the perfect target for teasing, which she hates as much as I always have.

Poor Jasmine.
She looks like she's suffering, though, doesn't she?

Voting Day (non-political)

Is this just a New York thing?
In state elections, we had to choose between the Republican, who's also on the liberal line, or the Democrat, who's also on the Conservative line.

I honestly can't figure out how that would make anyone happy, on either side of the aisle.

To celebrate our patriotism today:

• all of us are wearing red, white, and blue (or at least a couple of those colors) 
• we're having a mini election-day party tonight as a family (I'll be sitting at the computer watching the numbers roll in while we do something as a family, like play Wii Bowling
• the girls and I made a button mosaic of the flag. It was a great use of the jars and jars of buttons from my family!

Happy Election Day!

new looks

I re-did the look of the blog today. Didn't change the header, though. Off to remedy that now.

Come back in 10-15 minutes, 'kay?

Okay, it's done now. Which means I can update that on my 101 list :)

So anyone reading this in their inbox or RSS feed, come see it and let me know what you think, please!!