What's Old is New Again

My first-ever knitting project was a sweater for my then 8-year-old nephew Reid. I was so proud. And it looked so cute on him. At some point the sweater endured a bit of an accident -- it ended up in the wash (fatal for wool) and it transformed from a very sweet sweater to a very very small piece of felt in the shape of a sweater. I reclaimed it and rather than a burial, I handed it over to my godmother.

She just happens to be a felting expert -- yes really, she used to make felted garments for sale internationally. Knowing just what to do, she took the sad little thing, cut it up the center, stitched on a zipper and some ribbing and voila! A coat. I've had it since Harry's birth and it finally fits him. So I am now proud to present....Harry's new jacket...a joint venture in fiber love. He wore it today for the first time and I actually think it kept out the arctic winter chill. We're due to have snow tomorrow. Bring it on!

Multitasking

I'm blessed to have a daughter who is fascinated by yarn and will, for short periods of time, be content to sit on my lap while I knit, mesmerized by the click, click, click of the needles. In hindsight, she may be a cat. I hope one day she's interested in learning. If not, Harry is quite fond of pulling the dry spaghetti noodles out of the box and declaring "mommy I'm knitting you a hat."

How Long Does it Take.....

......for one mom to make and consumer one martini? I found out on Friday. At the close of two weeks of college finals-like cramming for our latest issue of DIY Boat Owner, I offered to buy one of my writers a well-deserved martini when I see him in Miami for the International Boat Show. Then I got to thinking...why wait? A martini sure sounded good. I deserve this, I told myself.

So, with babe in arms and toddler clinging to my knees, I shuffled around the kitchen in search of the ingredients. Vodka? Check. Vermouth? Check. Olives! Yes, yes! I had olives! Shaker? Check. But where to find a martini glass. I know I had one the last time I needed a martini -- I remember it well -- the night I had my braces installed and got toasted in my own living room to dull the excruciating, throbbing pain in my mouth, just a few months before I got pregnant with Harry. Could it really be that long since I'd made a martini? Three-plus years?

So I took Charlotte down to the basement with me to seek out the glass. Returned to the kitchen to wash off the layer of dust. Maybe I should wait for Paul to join me....Nah. And as I reached up into the cabinet above the refrigerator to grab the vermouth....down tumbled a brandy snifter. CRASH!!

So my chilling martini (quickly turning into a water-puddle of melted ice) waited on the kitchen counter while I painstakingly swept and then vacuumed up every shard of glass from the linoleum.

I am pretty sure my celebratory drink took close to an hour to make. Just as I went to drink it Harry tossed a jar of baby food across the counter, just grazing my drink, half of which spilled.

I will not be bothering again, any time soon. Check back in three years.

Cheers

In the Line of Fire

It takes a good friend to understand the nuances of potty training. But our buddy Sabrina not only has tried to share her expertise with Harry, she gladly sits in the bathroom with him when while he's getting in his daily practice. Last week, after a drenching spray of pee was misdirected at her, she did not flinch (ah, youth) but simply cheered Harry on as he chanted "I did it! I did it!" Is there an award for this kind of devotion?

We still keep a very special toy behind the potty for the day all deposit are delivered on time. Paul suggested to me last night we tape half a $20 bill to the wall and tell Roxana she too can collect a prize if the deed is done on her watch. It's wrong on sooooo many levels. But at this rate, with summer camp approaching and diapers still squarely on Harry's bum...I'm tempted. Is it me? But I don't want the nanny to potty train my kids. I'm pretty sure that's mom's job.

Lost and Found

No one, namely my husband, will ever EVER trust me again when I say I've looked somewhere (one, twice, three times) for a missing hat/coat/mitten/shoe/fill-in-the-blank. Because frankly I'm unreliable. Or rather my eyes are. As I like to see it, when you move at warp speed all the time with two little kids, a job, heavy volunteer responsibilities and a household to run, everyone -- namely your spouse -- should cut you a break. Or die trying, ahem.

So it with great happiness and a lot of embarrassment that I announce the discovery of the lost hat. The one that I searched for twice at the preschool (inside and out), the one that caused me to send out a list-serve APB, the one that I scoured the house for for days. The one that I found at the bottom of my knitting bag. It was the first, second and third place I looked. Sigh.

Paging the Tooth Fairy

My girl likes to walk as fast her her tiny little feet will carry her. And last night, sippy bottle in mouth, she slipped, landing face-first on the living room floor. The bottle stayed put. Her front tooth did not. Rather than fall out, it was jammed up into her gum line. Yes...ouch. A little blood and a few tears later I had her (rushed her) to my dentist who took a look and confirmed that indeed, she'd ripped the membranes that hold the tooth and managed to get it embedded.

There is no treatment but for soft food. It could take as long as a year for the tooth to descend and after it does there would be permanent scarring to the adult tooth bud growing beneath. But she's doing fine, eating bananas and trying to walk as fast as her little feet will carry her. I'm hiding the sippy bottles.

APB: Blue Striped Hat

Woe is me!! How can something as trivial as a hat make me so sad? Harry and I have lost his new chapeau, on third wearing, no less, at preschool. I scoured the lost and found, I walked the playground. Nothing. So I put in an all-point with the school list-serve today. An someone indeed saw my lovely knitted topper sitting on the stairs on Friday. But so far, it remains lost. I'm positively weepy.

China Syndrome

Big victories are hard fought with little kids. So you take the small ones and pat yourself on the back, with gusto, when something goes right. Like today after the preschool pickup. The kids were really having fun playing with each other by the train table, giggling, totally engaged with each other. So I stole away to the kitchen to fill out the form for next year's preschool admittance. And at that moment, as I inked Harry's name into the blank fields, I really felt proud. What a great mom I am, I reflected. And that's when I heard it, the faint tinkling of fairy wings.

Funny, I mused, we don't keep fairies in the house. But we do keep crystal.... In the cabinet.... Right next to the train table. HOLY S***! screamed my brain. Racing into the dining room I found my brilliant toddlers on the floor, still playing with each other, and their great-grandmother Charlotte's gold-leaf crystal sherry glasses, stacked one upon the other. Charlotte, who clearly has a future with Cirque du Soleil's plate spinners, was doing all the work. Harry was watching, laughing, as he eyed my mother's Ginori coffee cups, which he was already digging out. Aside from grabbing everything I could as fast as I could, I simply could not believe they didn't break anything. The above photo is an exact replica of my 15-month-old's building skills (sorry Lego, but crystal is clearly more fun). It is my fervent hope that the cabinet will be as impenetrable as Fort Knox by the time I upload another post.

Slumber Party

Yesterday we had overnight guests in the form of our friends Dinah and Sabrina who were camped out with us while some work was being done to their home. The kids turned the cushion-less sofa into an indoor moon bounce and then we all decamped in our jammies to the TV after dinner for a showing of "Cars." While the movie does not include princesses or mermaids, Sabrina agreed to suffer through most of it with her buddy.

She has taken to telling the nanny "Harry is not listening to me!" That's OK Sabrina, he doesn't listen to me either. But they did have an awful lot of fun.

Potty Training

Yes, we've used the potty in 2010. As a hat.

Day of Decadence

My girlfriend Cathy and I have a long, long, long standing tradition on New Year's Day, it goes back more than a decade. It involves really bad-for-you food, the Rose Bowl and, well...really bad-for-you food. Not Cheetos. We dive into Champagne, smelly cheeses, pate and Caviar. Just us and assorted hangers-on, which this year included the kids, the grandparents and Cynthia. It is a very good tradition, I recommend it to everyone before the Year of Dieting commences.

Knit Happens*

While I did not achieve my goal of four custom-designed, hand-knit Christmas stockings by the time Santa arrived, I have finished one of them....just in time for the Rose Bowl. Harry is the first recipient, followed next year, I pray, by a stocking for Charlotte and Paul. They'll all be argyle, with different colors (Charlotte's will incorporate hues of purple and pink..so original for a girl, I know, but the yarn spoke to me).

I also (to my feeble credit) whipped up a new hat for Harry -- to make up for the stocking debacle. It's a copy of the hat I made him a year ago (being modeled by Baby Charlotte). Little bugger's head grew. Now I'm making a matching hat for Paul and another one for Paba. Damn these Barneses and their huge heads. They have promised to model them when we visit in February.

*This blogpost headline brought to you, in part, by my dear friend Kristine, who opened the store "Knit Happens" in Old Town Alexandria years back. I still recall her going before a perturbed City Council committee to defend the store's name...she is such a brilliant B-S artist...and somehow convinced a room full of dubious listeners that Knit Happens was not a play on an uncouth expression, no...it's "a feeling......something magical that happens when knitters come together to make...fiber." Ha.

Thank God for Godparents

A final note before we launch digitally into a new decade - I don't know how we'd have coped in 2009 without our friends Cynthia and Al, who bring so much joy (and pie) into our world on a regular basis. Not only has Cynthia taken on the role as my adopted Godmother, but she is a huge source of love and handknits for the kids (and most of you know the value I put on handknits). If I've have a model for good behavior since the passing of my mother, it is surely Cynthia, who still juggles enviable travel, artistic endeavors, whipping up scrumptious meals for weary parents and always being available to help a frenzied mom with both imbecilic and fun tasks, including but not limited to wielding a paint brush during home improvement jags, reading to the kids while splayed out on the floor, always picking just the right toys (Hess trucks, anyone?), or just being a good ear when I want to poke everyone's eyes out with a fork (my children excluded).

We were so happy to share Christmas (and our lives) with them.