remember the super-cool plush my sister made nathaniel? well, dan deposited his wig from halloween on him, and it's been like this ever since. i think it makes him look a little like roger from american dad.



( more pics: encounters with street musicians, slides, and whatnot )

ah, the saga of FAKE continues.

playing with playdoh, i rolled up some balls, nathaniel poked and smashed some, and then noticed that this one had an eerie resemblance toward FAKE. he made this all on his own, i swear. chalk it up to unintentional art therapy?

now that you have heard the halloween traumatizing, i should share the fun/cute pictures.

i really wanted to make nathaniel a gnome for halloween this year, but the costume i bought him on super-clearance last year fit so well i decided to put the gnome idea off until next year.



( many more within )

last weekend we went up to the NY sheep & wool festival in rhinebeck. i love this place and usually pilgrimage with my knitting friends. this year it was more of a family affair - i hung out with munchkin and also tried to hunt down some wild-goose-chase-yarn (matching an impossible-to-match color for a project i ran out of yarn for before completing). sad conclusion: i didn't find any, but i have a plan B, plus my knitting friend found a vendor who had yarn in a similar shade who is willing to try dyeing a batch to match, so that's plan B now and the other plan B has been moved to C status.

the weather was supposed to be rainy/snow (yes, very cold), but it turned out to be a gorgeous day if a bit cold. all the better to show off some knitwear!

nathaniel had fun with the animals there. it was funny to hear him declare "dog!" when he saw the llamas. sadly, i missed out on his hanging out with the sheep & goats because i was busy chasing down the impossible yarn. dan said at one point he was playing peekaboo with the goat and everyone around him was dying, it was so cute.



( ah well, at least he took pictures. )

Hard to believe, but the munchkin turned 18 months old yesterday. He is such a trip these days: giving hugs (with accompanying "awwwwwwwwwww" sound) on request and of his own volition, talking up a storm, and just generally cracking us up. As always, it’s time for a little photo catch-up.



( milkman and grapes and camping, oh my )

We’ve been back 2 weeks from our trip to Israel, and we’re, thankfully, rested and back on schedule. I must say that the 11 hour flight and 7 hour time-difference was nowhere nearly as bad as I feared it would be with a 17 month-old. We are lucky - the kid travels pretty well.



( Read more... )

the lead teacher of nathaniel's daycare room told me she wants to make a laminated picture-book for each of the kids containing some of their favorite things. she also told me that he's been going around petting the family picture of us, saying "mama!" and "papa!". sooooo cute.

i had a hard time coming up with ways to depict nathaniel's favorite things. he likes the broom, and the toilet handle, and the bath, and milk from mama .... yeah, not the best/easiest things to take pictures of.

( i finally came up with a few things he likes and recognizes easily )

* sometimes i feel like having my kid in daycare is cheating. he knows things that i haven't taught him - i just have to discover the password to reveal a skill. for example - i learned this week that he knows how to spin and to dance on command. also, he just started saying and signing the word "please", and i have a fellow classmate who signs to thank for that one. i swear it's the cutest thing he's ever done, because half the time he makes the circular motion on my chest rather than his.

Summertime is always invariably busy. I realized I hadn’t downloaded any pictures from the camera in a month, so here is a rather large photo catch-up.



( summer lovin )

our garden delights:


this is just one day's raspberry harvest. we have had an amazing crop - almost every night i go out to pick the ripe ones. nathaniel loves the foraging (or maybe he just loves food). the peas were planted by my 6 year old nephew ian - we photographed this to share with him how much they've grown - he lives in manhattan and we don't see him much.

( more pictures )

we flew down to the texas hill country and spent a week at the kerrville folk festival. we hadn't been to the festival since 3 years before, so it was a great big reunion with many folks. nathaniel proved to be a great traveler & camper yet again (he had been in the past, but I was a little nervous that it would be much harder since he's now more mobile.)

yes, again with the drumming. i think we have a budding percussionist on our hands. we also had some wild baby bed-head with the camping in the texas heat.


( + many )

we have been busy busy of late, but it's time to play photo catch-up. here are some from before our trip to texas.




( +3 )

i am a few weeks late in posting this, but here we are on our 2nd wedding anniversary. the spot we got married is close, so it's become a tradition to visit it on our anniversary.


( obsessed with balloons )

in other excitement, he's been doing more sign language. he actually put 2 signs together this morning: "eat" + "more". oh, and at his 13 month check up, he is in the 50th percentile across the board.

i started this book over 6 months ago because i know my hands-free time is slim these days. i figured i'd work on it slowly over the course of time, but of course i ended up taking a hiatus and still rushing to finish it towards the end.



( the rest )

i'm rather proud!

x-posted to craftgrrl on 5.9.09

spring is certainly in the air. actually, we had some days that felt like summer, but i am glad we're back to more spring-like temperatures, because i'm not quite ready for summer yet. people seem to be out of hibernation mode, and we've had a lot of playdates recently.

we visited my knitting friend and her baby boy (who turned 1 yesterday. happy birthday rowan!) nathaniel got to ride his cool horsie:



( a slew of pictures )

just trying to keep up with photos. i have more that i need to upload, but here are some from nathaniel's birthday party and a recent excursion.

i was really obsessed with getting him with the blooming forsythia. i love the giant shocks of yellow everywhere announcing that spring has come. i'm gonna tell nathaniel that it blooms for his birthday every year.



( cut for kindness )

i know, i know. i have been out of the posting scene. things have been busy, and it's crazy to think, but we have a one year old on our hands. take a look at him:

yep, eating some leaves:


( these span the last month or so )

so, i've been majorly out of the LJ and internet loop for the last few weeks, because we've been in mexico. i was working a lot of extra hours (going in to work at night after nathaniel went to bed) trying to meet a deadline, and of course, as is typical at my place of employment, they decided to wait on using it wile i was away and i have to again put in some overtime to get stuff done, but now i just don't know if i have it in me anymore.

but, enough of that, let me show you many many pictures of our trip. 55, i think. i am a cheapskate and only have the free version of flickr, so i include every single picture when i post on LJ so even f they go into hiding in my flickr account, i can still see them here. tricky, eh?



( i am so glad we decided to go to the coast of oaxaca rather than the yucatan )

now that we're home and somewhat settled back, nathaniel woke up with a fever this morning and was cranky all day. i had to cancel 2 playdates. i hope he feels better tomorrow.

what, some knitting content? i have been knitting more than i have been posting about knitting, actually.

the yarn i used for this scarf was actually the first yarn i purchased for my first project. it was a very very long crocheted scarf. since it was my first project, the edges were rather "organic", since i added and dropped stitches throughout the project. it was a charming enough scarf, but it sat in the closet unworn. largely because when one wears a very long scarf and then finds oneself indoors, there is now a big mass of fabric to remove from one's neck and find a place to put along with all the other bulky winter accessories.

i was taken enough with this pattern that i harvested the yarn from the first project and remade it into this:


( one more photo in which i model the scarf )

more details can be found on my ravelry page

i noticed that i hadn't taken any pictures of nathaniel since his stitched-lip incident. i rectified this with a little photo session recently which concentrated on some baby cowboy boots that my sister bought him before he entered the world. i told her he was sporting them a lot of lot, and she wanted proof.



( photos that actually feature faces )

in other news, we started sleep-training this weekend. i was torn about it, but so far he's doing well. i honestly think he's happier knowing there's something predictable about his schedule, and hopefully will be happier with the ability to put himself to sleep. i do still enjoy some cosleeping in the morning, but i also enjoy knowing i won't be on baby duty as early as 11 pm or 1 am.

as usual, i have a bunch of pictures of the munchkin. also, recent adventures include a trip to manhattan on the train, complete with dim sum in chinatown and a subway ride. nathaniel did great. another recent adventure was a trip to the ER yesterday - nathaniel fell & split his lip & needed 5 stitches. i swear my soul aged a bit during that ordeal. he's a trooper and is in fine spirits, though.



( a slew of pictures )