If you give a boy a camera

{Photos by Ezra, age 4}

Worthy Subjects

:: Your brother's shirt

:: And his head too...

:: Superhero sticker book (that seems to go to every appointment with us these days)

:: Architecto in progress

:: Um.... feet?

:: Architecto complete!

Yarn Along

I had a knitting dilemma about 2 weeks ago. I cast off my last planned baby knit and spent two days puttering around wondering what to knit next. My queue is certainly not a problem- it has a very healthy amount of projects in it- and most all of them already have yarn purchased. But nothing was quite catching my eye and I felt a little pull to keep up the baby knitting until the baby actually arrived.

{She hasn't, by the way. That's why I'm still here going on about knitting.}

So I did what any good knitter would do and cast on for a few different things. I put a few hours into each one to see which one would really catch on, so it came to be that on my needles I now have a February Lady Sweater, Froot Loop socks, and Vertebrae.

The winner? Vertebrae. I really took off on it about 3 days ago and since I'm on maternity leave already just waiting for Baby Girl to show up I've been spending most of my time with yarn and needles while my boys play. I finished the little sleeves last night and started picking up for the body edging between the 3 baseball games I attended last night (1 for Ender, 2 for Brian- baseball is such a lovely sport for knitting!)

The yarn is Simplicity, and it has been beautiful to work with- I'm hoping it will hold up to baby washing. It seems like it will, but one never knows about that sort of thing.

Just a little more today (and I'm back to visit with my doctor this morning so more time to wait and knit) and another little baby knit complete. I think it may need a little hat to go with it since I have an extra skein. It certainly doesn't seem like Baby Girl is in any hurry to arrive. Perhaps I'll just keep knitting little baby things until the moment she comes.

And since I should report on my reading, I re-read the Hunger Games trilogy while I've been knitting this week. My husband just read the books (I read them about a year ago for the first time) and he wanted desperately to talk about them so I read through them again to refresh my memory and in the hopes that the third book had gotten better. He had quite a reaction to Mockingjay; it actually woke him up at night thinking about it. I hoped I was just remembering the ending in a poor light, but no- it truly did end the way it did and we both felt a little bit like the author sucker punched everyone. We both read a lot of fiction each year and a lot within this particular genre and we both felt like she cheated.

What I need now is a palate cleansing read. So I'm on to Working Stiff by Rachel Caine. I love her work in the Weather Wardens series, but I've heard mixed reviews on this one so far. Hopefully it's a better read than what I just finished!

Middle

{Flowers from my boys}



I'm back, but no baby yet. I've had several times this past week where I found myself timing contractions and thinking it was actually regular enough to make a call. And every time I'd get ready to make that call all the action would stop dead.



And now for two full days there has been nothing but her poking me every hour or so as if to say,



Just Kidding.



This little girl is proving herself fiesty.



My attention has been taken with finishing up work for the semester (and on to maternity leave now!) and being as present as I can be with my boys. One little guy is ready for the day to "just get here already!"



The other has been quietly worrying about his place.

On one hand he is very proud that he is the only one in the family to have the special position of being both a little brother and a big brother.

On the other hand he won't be the "little one" anymore and he's very aware of that fact.

Lots of time with mom and dad has helped his happiness meter, but he still snuggles in and says things like, "I'm not little anymore" and "Can you still always hold me?"

And my favorite: "Will you always love me a million cows? Because I love you a million cows."

And that's the highest honor with this little boy.

Because in his opinion cows are the best animal in the world.

I always tell him I love him a hundred million cows (because that's the highest number he can think of) in the hopes that he knows I love him ever so much more than that.

{And more flowers from my boys... I don't think I will ever get over my boys bringing me lovely things from outside.}