End of March Summary

March has been a busy month, first with work, and now with family events. We had the little guy's cowboy birthday, so I was busy making pennant banners for it and then a stick horse. Every cowboy has to have a horse.  The little guy and I made cookies for favors to send home with people, cutouts in the shape of boots and hats and some cowboy cookies with everything in them.

 

Grandma thought her little cowboy was really cute, especially in his hat, boots, and western shirt.  The little guy ended up spending a couple nights before the party with me because he had a cold and there was out-of-town company visiting his family.  There was a lot of running around and the little guy needed his sleep, so he came to Grandma's. 

I commented to my daughter about how many disposable diapers she was using, since normally she uses cloth diapers.  I was informed that the little guy has outgrown his medium diapers.  I guess Grandma needs to get busy sewing the larges.  Now I see why I had so much diaper supplies left over.  I forgot I had bought ahead for the next size and then didn't sew them.  This week has been a riot of sewing monkey and owl print diapers.  Next week I'll work on the plain white ones.  It is amazing how much money you can save with the cloth diapers. 

My other sewing project for the month was a pair of pajama bottoms for my husband.  My mom gave me tons of guy print flannel some years back and I'm trying to use it up.  The pea pod sweater is progressing for the new baby and I ordered yarn for a sweater for myself.  I've never knit a sweater for myself before.  I've attempted a couple but never finished, but I am determined this time to do it.  That's it for March!

~Jane

The Little Guy

There is nothing I love more than watching the Little Guy.  He was able to come visit Grandma and Bapa on Saturday and stay the night.  He is just so much fun.  Every time he comes he has more language and says the funniest things.  I tickle him just to hear him squeal, "You got me!"  and I love hearing his, "Oh, no, what happened?" usually after something has come apart.

He is a picky little eater but he loved Grandma's Mexican cassarole, which is spicy, go figure.  You never know what he's going to eat from time to time.  He ate enough chunks of tomato out of the salad to equal a whole tomato.  For dessert, he knows he can mooch most of the ice cream from Grandma's bowl.  For some reason, we never give him his own bowl.  But then he loves mooching.  :)

Notice Miss Piggy is driving. 

My sister-in-law sent over a Tonka truck she picked up at a garage sale.  It was love at first sight.  "A BIG fruck!"  Notice the pronounciation of the word truck.  It has improved since he now adds an "r" into it.  :)  He spent the evening playing with all Grandma's and Bapa's trucks.  The coffee table he labeled the fruck table.  The big truck parked in the bathroom during bathtime and parked next to the Pack N' Play at bedtime.  He really enjoyed it.

I wasn't sure how he would take to still sleeping in the Pack N' Play, since at home he's moved into a toddler bed.  I don't have bed guards yet on the twin bed in the guest room so don't want him sleeping in it.  Also, it's pretty high up off the floor, so it would be a long way to fall if he did fall out of bed.  He went to sleep as usual.  Apparently it's what he expects at Grandma's house.  I did give him a pillow though since he now sleeps with one at home.

All-in-all, a very enjoyable time with our Little Guy.

~Jane

Halloween 2011

We had our pumpkins lit, but no little trick or treaters came a-knocking at our door.  We live out in the country with not many children near by.  The local school has always done a big party, so we didn't really expect any, but this is the first year in many that our church hasn't had a party of some sort so we didn't have anywhere to go.  I spent the evening looking for my knitting needles (still haven't found the ones I'm wanting) and watching Once Upon a Time episodes on TV while working on a felt food project for the Little Guy for Christmas.

I finished the Little Guy's costume yesterday.  It turned out really cute and he loved it and the plastic pumpkin I sent to collect candy in.  This was last week's project.  It was a lot of fun.  There are not many different clothing projects to sew for boys, so getting to make him a costume was fun.  Here's my little pirate captain.  He especially loved the hat.



~Jane

Busy, Busy

I realized today that it's almost been a couple of weeks since I posted a new entry.  I've been busy working on projects and not so much on the computer.  When I am using the computer, I'm watching old TV series on it, since the computer is in my sewing room and I watch it while ironing and sewing.

One of my daughter's friends had a new baby and I promised her a baby quilt.  She has a jungle theme going for her nursery, so I found a cute flannel print with jungle animals on it and have been piecing the quilt.  The top is together now, just need to sandwich it together with the backing and batting and tie it. 

Halloween is approaching and I'm sewing my little guy a pirate costume to wear.  I have the striped pants and the hat finished with just the jacket to go.  This is a priority project since the holiday is only a week away.

The cold weather has hit and I've been busy working on knitting the little guy some warm mittens.  I've made him a couple pairs now, a brown striped pair and this green pair with brown squirrels on them.  They turned out really cute.  They're a little big, so I thought I'd make one more pair a little smaller with a train engine on one, and the caboose on the other.  It's a good project for work, easy to pick up and put down as the case may be.

I have a swap project I'm working on that was due last week.  I accidentally left it at my daughter's on Friday night and spent a couple days looking for it before she mentioned it was there.  Hopefully I can get it back tonight and get it finished up and sent by Thursday.

I've been doing a lot of sewing, so I've also been doing a lot of Netflix watching.  Currently I'm hooked on "Lie to Me."  It's a pretty fascinating fictional TV series about deception experts who read a person's body language and facial expressions to determine whether they're telling the truth. 

~Jane

Garage Sale

I'm still working on clearing out my mother's house.  We had a garage sale on Saturday.  I had wanted to have one a few weeks back, but my brothers' claimed other obligations every week.  Finally we scheduled one for yesterday and, of course, the weather refused to cooperate.  It's been dry and sunny for weeks, but yesterday the rain rolled in.  It rained steadily from about 8-10 a.m. and then started tapering off.  My brother had put up a large tarp awning which kept everything dry, but I'm sure lots of potential garage salers got up and looked out the window at the rain and decided to do something else Saturday morning.  We stuck it out though and people came.  Because I didn't want to pack everything back inside, I gave really good deals!  The dozens of boxes of fabrics and linens stored in the greenhouse have been reduced to about 15-20.  There are still about 20 boxes of books - the same ones my brother promised to take to the used bookstore last summer.  I told him I'm taking a box a week to the Goodwill starting next week.  If he doesn't do something with them, they will gradually disappear. 

There is still alot of stuff in the house, but we are going to start working on something different for a while.  We're going to tear the kitchen apart.  It hasn't had a good cleaning or sorting out in at least 15 years.  My brother keeps telling me he's going to do it, but it hasn't happened so Elsie and I are tackling it next since I've had it with his promises. 

We were so tired yesterday but we had the Little Guy come spend the night.  He brought all the old trucks and cars he's been collecting at Great-Grandma's.  He was playing on the stairs and when I went to see what he was doing, this is what he had constructed on the Christmas advent wreath waiting on the stairs to be stored upstairs.  A car perched on each candle.  Too cute!

~Jane

The Wonder of a Little Child

Today I had the privilege of watching the Little Guy for a while.  He had just had a late breakfast, so I got him all dressed and went off to do some Christmas shopping with him.  I wanted to get him a rocking chair for Christmas.  We have a child's rocking chair here that was my husband's when he was small and the Little Guy loves to come over and sit in it.  I wanted him to have one at home also. We found our rocking chair and came home.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the Little Guy wanted to play in the puddles with his froggy boots.  So Grandma managed to get a couple pictures.  He just had so much fun!  He was trying so hard to jump in the puddles with both feet but hasn't quite managed it.

Grandkids are Wonderful

I got a call from my daughter yesterday.  She was calling to inform me what "Your Grandson" did.  Uh, oh.  Already I know someone's in trouble.  She went on to tell me that she put the Little Guy down for a nap and instead of going to sleep, he managed to reach through the crib to the wall and peel off the wallpaper border that I put up in his nursery.  Since his crib is pulled away from the wall, she doesn't know how he even managed to reach it, but says he obviously spent a lot of time at it!  :)  My reply, "Oh, well.  When I come over tomorrow, I'll bring some glue and put it back up.  Did we have any leftover wallpaper?"

This response I immediately recognized as a definite mellowing from how I'd have responded if it had been Elsie who did it as a toddler 28 years ago.  Then I would have been frustrated, mad, etc.  All my hard work in vain.  I made a comment to that effect to Elsie, and she said, "I know!  I'd have been in big trouble."  :)

What can I say?  It's not the end of the world.  I'm pretty sure it's fixable.  The Little Guy is so cute, this Grandma just can't get mad.

~Jane

P.S.  He managed to get a lot more down off the wall than I expected, but it was pretty easy to glue back up and luckily was in fairly large pieces.  I was expecting parts of it to be shredded.  I left the bottle of glue, so Elsie can glue down any suspicious spots that might pop up again.  :)