Working on Sundays is POO Cupcakes

2008-06-29T23:01:00.001-07:00

because working on a sunday is big-time poo, i made these cupcakes for marco and his co-workers. it's a little pick-me-up for them and an easy craft for me to do with mia, who helped eat the leftover strawberries :)

Forever needing more carriers ;)

2008-06-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

wee! we love carriers :) and here's a link to a contest where some lucky person can win a whole wardrobe!

Win the Essential Babywearing Stash from Along for the Ride (one Beco Butterfly, one Hotsling baby pouch, one BabyHawk Mei Tai, one Zolowear Ring Sling, and one Gypsy Mama Wrap)

mine love

2008-06-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

i just found this one story that survived The Great Computer Crash of '08 in which the entire contents of my computer save two stories i wrote for a creative writing class. i wrote this one for an assignment that asked me for a story about the most important person in my life.
------------------

They told me I would love her the moment I felt her. I honestly don't think I did. She felt a lot like indigestion and really, how much can you love the stomach pangs of indigestion?

Sometimes people would ask me how she was doing. Like I had some sort of window straight into my belly where she squirmed and stretched and stuck a big foot straight into my rib. She had a nasty habit of pointing her toes and making me double over to my right. When I doubled over, I looked like I was about to fall over dead but really, bending over made her move positions, so that she'd draw that little foot in and press it against something much less painful -- my kidneys, my pancreas... wherever she could wedge herself.

I never wished pregnancy on anyone. I hated it. It was possibly one of the most uncomfortable ten months -- yes ten! they tell you it's nine, but if you do the math, 40 weeks divided by 4 weeks in a month... -- of my life. The first three were spent hunched over a toilet every morning, or trying to eat something before I got there so that I'd have something to throw up because the alternative was to throw up bitter green bile that looks like loose sludge with little yellow bubbles to accent its disgustingness. No toothpaste on earth gets rid of the taste of bile in your mouth. How much can you love a bout with bile after your morning bagel?

They told me I'd forget the pain of labor when I saw her. But twenty four hours that felt (again) like the worst indigestion ever (like when I eat that pizza with the Louisiana hot sausage I so love, but that kicks my ass every time), coupled with an epidural that only worked on half of my body and a catheter that ended up giving me the worst UTI known to man is just a little difficult to let go. I still shudder when I think of being on that hospital bed, my legs heavy and numb, my stomach growling and my mouth sticky because Nurse Ratched doesn't even let me have a glass of water... only ice chips. I hate ice chips.

When we met, I was exhausted and STARVING and although I felt something, I wasn't sure it was love; i had never had this type of relationship with anyone before and she was sweet and cute, yes, but was this love? They told me I would love her immediately and I worried because I didn't know.

Three weeks of crying -- both of us -- and changing diapers and all the stuff that happens after labor they never tell you about (and I won't either, because it's SO not right what happens to you) and I was getting the hang of things, of the colic, of the weird schedules, of everything. But I still wasn't sure because she was a lot of work, and what is there to love about feedings every two hours and 12 dirty diapers a day?

I don't know exactly when it happened, really. I thought it would be like falling in love with a man, where you got a rush and butterflies in your stomach; I thought I would moon over her and love would be love and would sweep me off my feet. It never happened that way. All I know is that one day, after I had already loved her a long time, almost forever, I woke up and opened one eye and my love smiled at me and cooed, drooling on my nice, freshly washed sheets, and I knew I was in love.

copyright sandra isla 2007

when i see these cupcakes, it makes me feel like i'm the best mom

2008-06-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

i saw these amazing cupcakes in a woman's day magazine and i thought that i could make them exactly the same. i fully expected my very first cupcake (not only the first one i make with those instructions, but my first cupcake EVER) to be as perfect as those glorious, professionally made cupcakes with the amazing morphos butterflies (but since mia's theme was monarch butterflies, i made them in orange wings). yeah, and so thirty pairs of butterfly wings later (all done freehand, i'm so proud), i finally got them to look halfway decent... not completely perfect, but oh well. i'm thinking of remaking them for my babywearing meeting :) they do make me feel like i'm the best mom, though, because i made them ESPECIALLY for her birthday... and especially for her :)

My big one year old!

2008-05-31T23:43:00.000-07:00

my big girl turned one today! we had a big butterfly themed celebration, with a fairy who came to entertain and face paint, and a live butterfly release! it was tiring, but fun, and the big girl got tired and crashed toward the end. i know she won't remember it, but she'll have TONS of pics to remind her :) this one is my very favorite :)

i made a doll!

2008-05-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

so mia is turning one on the 31st and i decided to make her a special "mommy" gift from me to her. so i made this doll for her :) yep, i sewed it with my own two hands! and embroidered her face and all :) she's "waldorf"-style, which means that her face is almost blank so that the kid can use her imagination and project onto the doll itself... it's all very theoretical... :) anyhow, so i bought this kit and followed the instructions and VOILA! here she is :D i hope my little girl loves it!

Acorn Head Toddler Shedir

2008-05-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

so being in italy, you would think i'd have plenty of time to just sit around and do nothing, happily vacationing, reading books and sleeping in, knitting away (yes, in my sleep, that's how all great knitters do it!) but alas, i have an almost one year old, which means i probably won't get a vacation for another... oh... 17 years. so i've basically been taking care of her this whole time (with help from marco, of course, and my mom and aunt when they were here). so it took me forever to finish this, my second shedir, for my little one. it's unseasonable, it's totally going to be outgrown before she can wear it, but here it is, my acorn-head toddler shedir. acorn-head, 'cause i made some modifications for size and that caused the end of the hat to get pointy a la acorn. so that's what it's called :)

ah and let me just say that i love the goofball picture of my goofball at the end. it's.just.perfect. and exactly how i want to remember her babyhood.

a really long time since i've posted and... a baby fakedir (shedir)

2008-05-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

i remember a time when i used to post silly things on my blog, simply because i had the time and the inclination. no one told me having a baby was going to be this much work! yes, i blame my inefficiency and lack of posting to my blog on the baby. she is the cutest time-vortex known to man :)

another thing i was doing was getting ready for our european trip 2008! for family bonding time, we decided to visit marco's family in italy. they had never seen the baby and this was quite possibly the only time they would have to see her quite so much. i took the opportunity to visit some of my side of the family as well. my cousin, pina, just had her baby (who will be turning a month this coming saturday), alana, and i went to germany (specifically bonn) to visit her. it was very fun to see her and the trip included a cool road trip to the didymos (baby wrap) store in ludwigsburg (about 4 hours away from bonn) and a visit to the surrounding castles and an aquarium around bonn.

after a few days in germany, we made our way to italy, where we saw marco's family and soon afterwards were joined by my mom and my aunt who came over for a week and a half. needless to say, family fun ensued! we had a great time. my mother and aunt left today and we are still in italy; we have a couple more weeks to go.

i made a baby shedir for alana so she could wear it on her little newborn head and here she is in all it's splendor. it's a bit long so it's cuffed (which i don't care for) but she looks adorable there. she's only 10 days old in this picture. additional pictures show the hat by itself and the stitch detail :)

here are my pics from the european trip!

strawberry toddler hat

2008-03-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

nothing terribly original about a strawberry hat but i've always wanted to make one and since Mia can't really wear the incredibly wintery fake isle hat i made until next winter, i decided to make her something more "immediate" to wear. enter the strawberry hat :) it's simple and fits into her various berry hats (that barely cover her head now -- my baby is growing up so fast!) and she seems to view it as acceptable as she doesn't rip it off her head for a whole two or three minutes.

nakey nakey

2008-03-04T22:33:00.001-08:00

i just wanted to take a nakey picture of my little one, as all mothers should have of their babies because they will need one (or more) for future blackmail purposes. :)

a definite loss & a baby fake isle

2008-02-26T12:43:00.000-08:00

it's official, my computer, who was named Mr. Slate, is no more. all recovery efforts have been completely futile and he's been pronounced dead (and takes all my data with him). we are now rebuilding :(

out of the sadness of loss, comes creation... sounds poetic, right? well, it just means that since my computer died, i started knitting like mad, both as a stress-reliever and because, well, i had no computer. so out comes this completely unseasonable hat, which is wayyy too warm to wear in sunny california at this point. i hope it still fits her when winter comes! it looks much more complicated than it really is, and i love fair isle (i like to see it knit up); the pattern is a very clever one, using a striping yarn in what is really a two yarn hat, but looks a little like those complicated multi-color fair isle designs. and i have enough to make myself a hat too (or maybe some baby legwarmers) so those might also arise from my grief! either way it'll have to wait as i have already started another hat for mia, LOL!

and the cherry on top of all of it is... mia hates hats; i had to bribe her with some yarn to sit still for the first picture and then the second picture is the classic one of her ripping the hat off her head. sigh.

danger will robinson! danger!

2008-02-21T00:52:00.001-08:00

so my hard drive crashed. it crashed in a fatal way, in which no professional drive saving companies could save it (we tried). it died and took with it my entire image bank, my grad school career and, oh well, everything. all i can do is sigh :(

so this is my excuse for the lateness of this pic! i actually finished this a few days ago but i didn't put it up 'cause i had no computer to really do it. i still don't, really. i'm borrowing the laptop i'm on... sigh.

it's the mary jane pithy hat with a brim. it's for a someone's birthday but she doesn't know it. i hope she does actually like it! more photos here. all i did was knit the mary jane pithy hat and then i added the stitch n' bitch newsboy brim. i think it cam out pretty good :)

sigh.

we won a photo contest :)

2008-02-09T22:58:00.000-08:00

i love photo contests 'cause they challenge me to better and better pictures. Lemon Balm Essentials, an online retailer of baby carriers wanted shots of sleeping babies in wraps :) and here were my submissions!

we won a spot in the website's upcoming homepage (soon to be redesigned! keep an eye out!) and a little prize money toward a future wrap purchase :) (which was promptly credited toward an existing wrap order, LOL!) i'm so happy we took these shots 'cause i'll forever remember her sweet face sleeping against my chest and a time when all i needed to do was carry her to make everything alright.

porkshops & appleshauce

2008-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

so yesterday we tried applesauce for the first time. let me say i don't like applesauce, so this is not wholly unexpected. ;) i don't think she likes it either.

butterfly hat

2008-01-27T02:26:00.000-08:00

two full weeks of not leaving the house because of sickness (first me, then my little one) has allowed me plenty of time to knit. so on a roll of prolific-osity (sooo not a word!), i knit this butterfly hat for myself... i had this random ball of patons SWS natural blue that i bought on a whim and wanted to use it up. i don't like the way it knit up, honestly, and i think a beautiful hat like this might knit up more elegantly with a solid color. unfortunately, this hat needed just a tad more natural blue than one skein, so i'm still stuck with a random skein of natural blue! bummer. oh well, i'll see what i can do.

i do love the way this hat looks from the back though! so beautiful, in my opinion. the stitch is super easy to do. oh yeah! i got the pattern here :)

the wee wig

2008-01-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

i finally got around to making a hallowig! i've been wanting to make this forever but haven't gotten around to it. give me two weeks of being completely shut in my home, first due to my being super sick and now mia being super sick (but getting better)and here is my wee wig, a little toddler version of the original adult hallowig. i love it! my little one has always had a ton of hair but never like this! it looks so cute on her! and for a girly-effect, i made a little flower (no pattern, just winged it) to go on the side! i love it.

i didn't care that much for the way the pattern because i couldn't visualize how it came together (and some of the directions were sort of confusing) but making it made me realize that my modifications for my toddler size (100 stitches total) had to be modified mid-pattern. it took some improvisation but i managed through it. i did get some good directives on modifying the pattern, however, from this post on this blog.

before i attached the flower, i did get my poor rusty (my little BOY dog) to model the flower i made and then tried to put it on mia but she quickly crawled away! my girl is getting big in no time :( she even took her first steps today! i was super excited but scared at the idea that she's now MOBILE! oy vey!

finally! some knitties!

2008-01-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

i'm finally done with some knitted stuff! to get me back in knitting i did a black and gray kitty hat for a swap (which i forgot to take a picture of!) and a basic cable hat from stitch 'n bitch. the hats then put me in the mood for yet ANOTHER kitty hat, one that i've been meaning to do for a while! here is my little one, in full kitty hat-love. i thought it was kind of appropriate that she was wearing her halloween pajamas (well, i bought them after halloween 'cause they were on sale for a dollar, and who was going to see her pj's anyway? lol~ i guess, the world) i love seeing my sweet girl giggling like this (which she usually does) and i finally have a brown and pink hat which replaces the one i lost that i made her :(

belated christmas pictures

2008-01-09T00:36:00.001-08:00

it's been a little bit since christmas but here are our christmas pics :) including us trimming our first christmas tree, our family christmas celebration, and our trip on new year's day to christmas in the park (see how much fun mia and I are having?) i wish i had a picture of something i've made so far, but honestly i've been in a creation standstill as far as craftiness... i am working on some projects however... so more to come ;)

walking with dinosaurs

2007-12-30T02:34:00.000-08:00

(more pics here)

when i was around 7 years old, i saw the movie baby: secret of the lost legend. it featured (in retrospect) a quite fake looking baby dinosaur that moved (a little robotically) and interacted with its co-stars and i was mesmerized. in all my seven-year-old innocence, i watched it wide-eyed and amazed because it looked so real to me. this long pre-dated jurassic park or any cgi dinosaurs, so hey what did we dumb kids know then? nothing! ok well i was a bit of a dino-nerd and did know all the facts that my picture books authoratively stated, but although i did know baby wasn't real, i didn't dare question what he really was (wires? mesh? plaster of paris? not my baby!)

today my mom and i went to walking with dinosaurs, a sort of play/live experience of how the dinosaurs evolved. it was super cool! we loved the lighting effects and of course, the dinosaurs. i didn't know you could take pictures there so i didn't take my "good" camera, but here are some phone pictures that i took. the play featured real-sized mechanical dinosaurs that moved very realistically and interacted with their co-stars. it didn't quite have the impact for me that baby did, but for being 30 and jaded, i had a fun time and was entertained.

i so do wish i were 7, though, because i think this would've been life-changing for me...

the craziest year

2007-12-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

so in the last year i've:

Moved TWICE
Had a baby
Got diabetes (and got rid of diabetes)
Started my FOURTH year in Grad school

so yeah it's been quite a year. i'm absolutely EXHAUSTED. fortunately, yesterday was my last day of school for the semester :D i've been so busy i haven't even had time to update my blog :( but i'm back and hopefully will be doing much more posting :)

so here i go ;)

this is one of a set of photos i took of mia for the holidays :) she's wearing her very first holiday dress :) and she looks so super sweet. Here are the other photos. soon to come... photos with santa! i never thought i'd be a cheeseball who wanted to make her kids pose with santa but i've become said cheeseball.

and... after claiming that gnocchi were sooo easy and after years of not making them... marco finally made fresh gnocchi from scratch! my husband is sooo hot when he makes gnocchi!

where i've been

2007-11-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

Get Your Own Map

View Larger Map

marco (and a class project i need to work on) convinced me that good ideas are out there; so he suggested i should join stumbleupon.com and i "stumbled upon" this map that shows where i've lived (in red), where i've been (blue), and where i want to go (green). totally interesting to see my travels past, present, and future (i hope) all in one place. i hope mia likes to travel...

is it just me or...

2007-11-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

do they look exactly the same???

Halloween 2007 - Mia's First

2007-11-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

so for halloween we originally had a costume but it didn't quite fit her right so i decided it was her first halloween so we would go with a costume that i made myself! so miss mia was a Monarch Butterfly and i was her prop (the Twig She Landed On). it was so much fun to make this costume! it was basically a skin on a baby carrier we have (a beco) and it came out great! i was wearing a brown tracksuit and had green leaves to show my twig-ness. she was a hit at the boo at the zoo and a hit trick or treating last night with her cousin, emily. we had so much fun and she was pretty comfy in there (she was only wearing a onesie, some baby legwarmers, her antennae, and some black socks). and best of all she got (me) a ton of candy :) the first pic is the whole costume, the second is my little ones' antannae, and the third is us in the pumpkin patch! more pics here.

in the stuff i made her before she was born

2007-10-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

so i made her all this stuff before she was born, right? well, not a whole lot of stuff but some, and finally she's fitting into them! so i thought i'd show her wearing her stuff :)

the first one is the 5 hour sweater, which i now call the five hour plus sweater, 'cause it ain't taking five hours unless you knit the entire day without stopping for potty breaks or food. here it was flat and sad and baby-less (waiting for little mia to wear it).

i also made a couple of fruit hats for her, the first one being the little periwinkle fruit hat, also being called the eggplant hat, currently. hard to see in this pic, but it has a little stem and leaves. here you can see the hat in all its glory, pre-model.

the third pic is another hat i knit in a hurry, 'cause i realized that the first fruit hat didn't match what she was going to wear on her way home from the hospital. i know that sounds crazy, but i was waaaaay deep into nesting mode and on the hunt for the perfect coming home outfit at the time. i never took a picture of that one by itself, so here it is, on my best model :)

custom onesies

2007-10-03T02:27:00.000-07:00

i made these three onesies for the crafty onesie swap :) i love them, even though they're not for miss mia... well, i might make her one like the tie one (actually i got all the stuff together to make one!). i love that one! anyhow, i also made a little orange hat that goes with her one of the onesies... my partner said she loved them and i hope her future baby will at least enjoy wearing them :) i hope she really did!