Stop for five minutes and let Phil Plait refresh your perspective about what awesome feats humans are capable of. Let him infect you with his enthusiasm for scientific discovery. His energy is inspiring. If the video doesn’t embed, you can see it here.
Thanks to Dale for sharing this.
Even ordinary sprinkler droplets become interesting in morning sunlight.
Today has been a day of accomplishment for Bean. She is now crawling on hands and knees; the army crawl still gets used, but she’s definitely using the other method, especially outdoors.
But that’s not all!
As of today (who knows what neuron finally developed?) she claps her hands. Sing the “If You’re Happy and You Know It” or play Patty Cake and that starts a round of clapping. So cute! She looks very proud of herself, and delighted. And when I say “kiss kiss” she makes a kissing noise. At the playground the 2-year-old son of a friend gave Bean a kiss on the cheek. He loves babies. When he attempted to give her another one, she turned her head as if to try to kiss him! We had a good laugh — and a glimpse of the future. (Eek!)
But wait! There’s more!
She drank from her sippy cup. At first I helped by holding it, but soon she grabbed it and ended up consuming 3 ounces of water from it.
Bean also played in the park sand today. She didn’t put it in her mouth. She desperately wanted to put a toy that was in the sand in her mouth (the wheel of a little dump truck) but I’d say no and redirect her. She went home with socks full of sand and dusty clothes. I think we’re entering the days of daily baths now.
Knitting is love, looped and warm.
–Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Yarn Harlot: the Secret Life of a Knitter
Since Bean was born, very little else has captured my eye, and I’ve not taken the time to learn all the tricks my new camera offers. However, I was out this morning watering our backyard plants, and the new light coming in (one benefit of the Oleander removal) inspired me to grab the camera. I took a number of shots that I’ll be posting here.
This photo is a close-up of a rusty cat ornament that I’ve owned since my early days living in Austin. The spider web threads caught the light and thus my attention.
Cleaning and scrubbing can wait for tomorrow,
For babies grow up, I’ve learned, to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.–Ruth Hulburt Hamilton
Today Bean and I visited a new yarn store, Green Planet Yarn, in Campbell. They feature yarns that are organic, plant-dyed, US grown, fair trade and recycled fibers. I ended up buying one skein of yarn to make a scarf that will teach me a new skill. While there, Bean modeled a baby hat that one employee was designing, and she looked very adorable. Once the hat is done maybe she’ll model it for a photo. She was a hit there and enjoyed every minute.
While there I also picked up a pamphlet describing the Mother Bear Project. The pattern can be purchased for $5, and it’s a great way to use up old scrap yarn. Check out the photo gallery. It’s inspiring!
How do I begin? Nine months have passed since Bean’s birth. She’s becoming more autonomous each day.
Her eating habits are fickle. (However, I realized her refusal a few days ago might have arisen out of the fact she didn’t want to eat the Gerber ground up turkey mixed in with her veggie; I don’t blame her, as it smelled like cat food to me.) Her before-nap habits can also be fickle (sometimes she doesn’t even require — or tolerate — five minutes of rocking and cuddling). Bean has four upper teeth emerging now. She sits and bounces on her bottom for fun. She squeezes and hugs her super soft teddy bear from Aunt LR. When shown teddy or her baby dolly or anything with pronounced features, if you say, “Show me the nose. Where’s the nose?” Bean will press the nose with her thumb.
She likes to press buttons: on her exersaucer, there is an apple which, when the button is pressed, causes a smiling little worm to pop up and say “Hi there!” or “Peekaboo!” or laugh. She also presses the garage door button to open and close it (at my request only). Bean has started to pull up on things (sofa, stairs) — all with supervision. She even went into her play yard a couple of times and played happily; but only if someone is nearby. She has begun to crawl on her hands and knees, though she still prefers the “army crawl.”
When feeling happy, Bean slaps her hands on her legs, smiles, and does the Pant of Joy. Sometimes when she laughs, she sounds like Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter.
Today I read Sandra’s Boynton’s Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book twelve times in a row. Every time we get to the number nine, I read (with great drama): Nine dogs on a moonlit night!, and Bean shudders and squeals with a thrill because that is always followed by a hearty “Awwooooooooooooooooo!”
Bean spends hours each day playing with her books. I think she plays with them more than with her other toys. She pulls them off the shelves and pages through them. She will lie on her back and hold them with her hands and feet, turning the book around, opening pages, lifting flaps. She enjoys the touch-and-feel books, such as That’s Not My Dragon. She is beginning to understand words. There was a butterfly in one book; she has butterflies on her bedroom walls. When I asked, “Where’s the butterfly?” Bean pointed to it on the page. She’s also fascinated with flowers in her books (she has flowers, bumblebees, ladybugs, and butterflies on her walls).
She enjoys pawing through the magazine basket. The New Yorker covers are sturdy and, when torn off, withstand a lot of abuse while providing many minutes of crinkly wrinkled satisfaction. Bean is starting to understand the word no, which is usually uttered in the phrases No! Yukky! and No! Ouchy!
Whenever she is finished (with eating, being in her exersaucer), I ask “All done?” and use the sign language gesture for that. She has begun to make a gesture in response — it’s not the exact same, and I don’t think she understands what it means quite, but she is imitating. That’s important progress. Eventually (I hope) she’ll sign back to me in confirmation, and maybe she’ll even initiate someday.
Bean definitely knows her name. And I think she is beginning to understand that Mama and Dada are specific names as well.
I love how her eyes smile and twinkle when she makes fish mouth; she knows she is being amusing and cute and is so happy in the moment. I love when she tucks her head against my neck and burrows in when she’s sleepy or feeling cuddly. I love her curiosity; she has figured out how to turn on the floor fan (which is well-protected against little fingers). I love how she lets me smooch and smooch her cheeks, neck, head, chin; she smiles and presses her head against my lips. I love that she follows me into the kitchen and hangs out when I’m cooking. I love how vocal she is. I just love this kid, period. There are a ton of new photos and videos at my Flickr page (restricted to friends and family). Go visit my adorable daughter if you have the time and inclination.
I’ve been knitting small items. I’ve got four done, and I plan to get at least four more made. I have a draft post for Bean’s ninth month, but I can barely stay awake at this moment (it’s only 8:24 p.m.!) so it must wait.
And if you live in Santa Clara, it’s possible for you to catch it too. At the end of the summer, Bean will receive a free book, and since I’ll participate, I’ll get one too!
On June 14 will be the third Worldwide Knit In Public Day. From the website:
Knitting is such a solitary act that it’s easy to knit alone somewhere and sink into your work without thinking about all the other knitters out there. Neighbors could spend all their lives never knowing that the other knits. This a specific day to get out of your house and go to a local event (with your knitting in tow) just for you and people like you. Who knows you might even bump into your neighbor! Consider this a spark, to ignite a fire; getting all of the closeted knitters out into fresh air.
In the past some people have used this event as a means to show the general public that ‘not only grannies knit!’ and while that’s great and all, keep in mind that without those ‘grannies’ we wouldn’t have the wealth of knitting knowledge that we do.
WWKiP Day is really about showing the general public that knitting can be a community activity in a very distinct way. In some places there are many different knitting groups that never interact with each other, on WWKiP Day they come together in one place, making them hard to miss.
When I started knitting it was already so popular that it doesn’t seem like a too-solitary activity to me. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that some of my friends own a yarn store and live and breathe all things knitting-related. Not everyone has that, though, so I can see the point of having the day. To find one near you, check this link.
I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
–Henri Matisse
I LOVE LOLcat stuff (I Can Has Cheezburger?). Well, there is a political site for similar humor and I couldn’t resist sharing.
I knew Bean was cutting one upper tooth. The other day I got a peek inside and saw that the one next to it had broken through. And this morning I looked again (she doesn’t make it easy and hates have my fingers in her mouth now), and there are two more upper teeth coming through. That’s four teeth emerging at the same time.
Wow.
Also, here are some stats from her 9-month doctor visit yesterday. She is 27 inches tall, has a head circumference of 44.5 cm (about 17.5 inches) and weighs 16 lbs., 5 oz. She had one immunization. Overall the verdict is that she’s beautiful and in perfect health. 🙂
In 2006 I began knitting for the Snuggles Project. I was working for Hands On Bay Area; I wanted to establish a monthly project where creativity was involved and also allow opportunities to socialize and build friendships. It started off well, but when I left the job the project lost momentum. No problem. It’s something one can do anywhere.
The point of the Snuggles Project is to knit or crochet small blankets to donate to animal shelters. I have a lot of machine-washable yarn (it was donated), which is what shelters need. When I want to knit but am really tired (or want to talk with others instead of keeping track of a pattern), I knit something simple like this:
This Snuggle is 17 x 17 inches and was knit with one skein of Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick n’ Quick on size 13 needles in the American Moss Stitch pattern.
I’ve got another one started. You’ll be seeing posts on this project often.
Thanks to those who reflected with me about the multiple-blog dilemma. I decided to quit keeping several blogs. I have now integrated the posts from Knit Together and Aenigmas into this blog.
If you want to read them (since they reside and mingle with the archives), you can find them by reading the Domestic Arts (107 posts) and Poetry (48 posts) categories. Comments are closed on all of them; while I don’t think there’s anything there to wow readers, if you do read them and happen to have an opinion, you’re welcome to leave it on this post or email me a kathryn at pobox dot com.
If I knitted something with a complicated pattern, where I constantly had to be counting rows and stitches, I often made a mistake the moment my mind began to wander. Sometimes I would rip out rows to correct the problem, sometimes not, but I began to appreciate these mistakes as small lessons in mindfulness or humility and as expressions of the spirit or soul of the knitting, which seemed to exist apart from me, the knitter. My experience of knitting was enriched the more I knew of spiritual matters, and vice versa. And I found that once I could accept my lack of perfection in both areas with humor and grace, the whole business of knitting, as well as of living, became far more pleasurable to me.
–Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice
If you say to Bean, “Fish mouth!” this is what happens:
It makes me want to scoop her up and kiss her, and so I do!
In 2005 when I learned to knit, I assumed that writing about and posting photos of my knitting might be boring to readers here, so I started another blog. It focuses not just on knitting but on domestic arts: recipes, cleaning tips, and I toss in a few silly quizzes for variety. (Because silly quizzes don’t really fit with “serious tone” of this blog.) Then in 2006 I started exploring poetry again. And again, because I didn’t want to bore or alienate readers here, I started a separate blog for that.
And I must admit, it was fun for awhile, and I really enjoy the look of all my blogs. There is such a variety of stuff I like and the styles of the other blogs reflect this. Knit Together is warm and cozy looking; Aenigmas is sleek and austere. There are content-specific links there as well.
And yet… I stopped writing poetry in 2007 (my brain is on sabbatical). I plan to write more someday whenever the inspiration arises. And I stopped knitting in earnest for awhile in 2007, because of pregnancy carpal tunnel and a new baby. Now that I’m knitting more, I’m feeling a disconnect with the idea of managing more than one blog. Sure, I like how nice they look, and yet I don’t know that I want to be split like this. I find that my knitting friends only have time to read and look at my knitting blog, but that’s not the core of me, and they miss out by not coming here. Also, that and the poetry blog have almost no readers, so why keep them?
If I were to integrate these other two blogs with this one, I’m trying to envision how I can bring over some of the extra content as well. I suppose I could list the extra links for poetry under the “Express” page and the knitting/domestic arts ones on the “Create” page. I could put the blog rolls for each on those pages as well. And I could just trust that readers not interested in knitting or poetry would just skip reading posts pertaining to that.
Any opinions?
Until recently Bean ate her solid food (stage 2) with gusto. Twice in the last three weeks, though, she has refused most solid food (she’ll take a tablespoon or two of cereal and fruit in the a.m.) in favor of milk. Previously she was eating 3 tablespoons of cereal and a 4-ounce jar of fruit for breakfast, then a 4-ounce jar of veggie for lunch and another for dinner; her daily milk intake was 19-21 ounces. The first time it happened for about five days, and she returned to eating solids again for nearly a week. This latest boycott began on Monday. She’s drinking good amounts of milk (actually increased her intake). She’s otherwise happy and healthy. She’s napping a bit more often and longer as well; this morning she took a two-hour nap. Possibly is this a growth spurt? Or maybe she’s getting tired of semi-liquid solid food and it’s time to offer small bits of our regular meals? (Though she has refused bananas when offered, and it’s her very very favorite food.) Maybe babies instinctively know what they need. She is very clear when she’s hungry and doesn’t want the fare I offer. My question is: has anyone else encountered this? If you have, I’d be interested in knowing your experience.
