What a difference a few days can make.

Wow, my husband took the boys out yesterday, and they spent today at a friend’s house, and while they were gone, I cleaned. I just had baby girl, so had a lot of time to clean up. I should have taken before pictures of the playroom, I pulled out a kitchen trash bag worth of garbage, and piled the toys up, and having little guy make his bed, made a huge difference too.

There is still lots to do, like my clutter catcher desk.

I’ve made good progress on my sweater too, not all in the last two days, but I want to share, and I’ll have time to work on it, after supper. Here is baby girl trying it on, a week or so ago,

And here it is today, I have a few rows left on the button band, and the sleeves to do.

Teaching Kids to knit, and knitting continental

I’ve taken up a couple challenges lately.

Today, like most days, my boys wanted to learn how to knit, Little Guy has his stitches cast on already, in bright orange yarn, on 4.5mm needles, we average a row each time we pull it out, before he gets bored, it is about 1.5″ long now, plain garter stitch, I use the simple, in, around, through, I know through isn’t the right word for what you do, but it’s what stuck, off never did. We are at a stage where he can do it, when my hands are over his, or 3-4 sts in the middle of the row on his own, before he has trouble again. He has learned to pick up his dropped stitches, when his needle falls out, too.

I just cast on for little man today, I thought he was too young, but after showing him two rows, I handed him the needles, and put the yarn over his finger, and through his fist. he lacks any kind of confidence in what he is doing, while knitting, I can tell, because, when I hold my hands lightly over his for in, and off, and take my hand off his for him to wrap the yarn, he can do it no problem. Ok, well he does have one problem, he wants to wrap the yarn backwards, so I have to remind him to wrap it the other way.
I turned to help little guy with a problem he was having, handing little man his needles to hold on to, and he kept going, I’m not sure if he actually managed a proper stitch, while I was turned around, but he did slip two stitches knit-wise. I’m quite proud, baby girl wanted in on the action too, but I had to pass her off to daddy while I gave the boys some quality time, she’s not even two yet, after-all.

And while I’m working on my other knitting projects, test knitting, running my own test, and writing/grading my pattern, I am also starting to teach myself to knit continental, well, ok, to be honest, I’m starting with purling, not sure why, it just feels easier, and I don’t think it’s easy at all, it’s really really hard, it goes against my muscle memory, which is English style.
When I do knit continental, it will be lever style, I think, I learned to knit left handed this way, and it is very similar to crochet, when done left handed. We shall see, once I learn knit and purl continental, maybe I’ll be able to figure out purling left handed.

Since this is all boring, without pictures, here is one, shh, it’s from my latest test knit.

Birth Control and Birth

This post isn’t my usual style, if you are squeamish, or just don’t like this stuff, I’m sorry, maybe you shouldn’t read this today, I’ll bring a yummy recipe tomorrow, to make up for it, ok.

I thought Dh and I were done having kids, but last night, DH asked me about using an alternative form of birth control, as he doesn’t like my IUD. I personally really like it, I don’t have to think about it, and it gives me less periods, win win for me, but apparently he can feel it. So I suggested he get a vasectomy, he talked about it, the entire time I was pregnant with baby girl, but I decided that the IUD would give us a few years to be sure. When I mentioned the vasectomy last night, his first question was, “it’s reversible, right?” I ask him why he is worried about that, and he says, “in case we change our minds.” so apparently he’s not as sure about being done as I thought, and to be honest, I’m not so sure anymore that I’m ready to make a final decision on that either.
Now I am sent on a quest, a quest for a different form of birth control, little man, our second, is proof that I won’t take the pill reliably, and after he was born I went on the shot, which after 8 months, I bled for a month straight, and after that, it took another 18 months to get pregnant with baby girl.

I love being pregnant, and even giving birth, I know, most people don’t believe it, but the only experience I didn’t like of my three, was with my first. With him, my water broke 4 hrs before I went into labour, and I was totally stressed about it, and unprepared. With little man, I was no better prepared, but some calm came over me, on the hour long drive from my mother-in-law’s house, and with baby girl, I was prepared, and it was as good as it gets, considering everything that birth is, and I cried when she was born.

My container garden

So I am completely excited today, with my tomato plants, I have two, the one I bought first, was a nice bushy seedling, a patio variety, that I planted in a pot, on my deck, it has done fairly well, and today I noticed it’s first flowers are beginning to open.

The second tomato plant was quite different, it was the last one left, when I went back, after finding a topsy turvy at liquidation world for $2. I was not sure it would survive, all it’s 4 leaves had a hint of brown on them, and well, you know how neglected the plants are at grocery stores, it wasn’t all that surprising. But for $1 I took that sad little plant home, and lovingly planted it with my $15 bag of potting soil, because that is what I had at the house, well, it survived, it has even flowered, I count 5 sets of flowers, 4 of which haven’t opened up yet. In fact, I think we call this flourishing.

The before shot, rather sad and lonely looking, don’t you think?
And my pepper plant, it started off very well, I have 15 peppers, I don’t know what is happening now, the larger ones are about the size of my 2 year olds fist, and appear to have stopped growing, and now it’s dropping some of it’s flowers. There could be a few reasons for this, I tried giving it a shot of fertilizer, because my tomato plants weren’t ready for more, then a week later, they started flowering, and I forgot I had given the pepper plant some already, so I mixed it in the watering jug. When it was new.

And now.

And the last thing I am growing, is lettuce, which I dug out of the neighbors garden last week, and put in a pot, my garden, it’s it wonderful, I go out every morning to look at all my plants, and enjoy some quiet time.

Lucky to be alive

OMG, my boys did the scariest thing this afternoon I hire students to babysit in the summer, and I have a favorite, we haven’t had her over for awhile, because we havent been going out much. I’m working today, and she was babysitting. The kids had their 8 year old friend come over, and they asked her if they could go to his house, he lives on the next block over, they told her he lived two doors down. They told the babysitter that I let them go, so, with no reason not to trust my 5 year old, she let them. Well first off, this was a lie, they know they are not to leave the yard, I had left this unsaid, as she is a regular sitter, and even if she wasnt sure, my boys have been taught not to lie.

This whole thing wouldn’t have been a big issue had they gone to their friend’s house, but they decided to cross the road, which isn’t just any road, it’s a highway. I am super upset with the boys, and stuck at work still, DH is dealing with them.

We were supposed to go to the lake tomorrow, but we’ll see now, I’m not sure I want to take them now. Here is the beautiful lake lot we will be at, if we go.

If you were watching someone elses kids, at what age would you trust them to tell the truth about whether their parents let them do something?

Our First Field Trip

Yesterday was my first field trip as parent helper, first of many, I hope, there was a shocking parent turn out for this one, despite the fact that it cost us to go too, normally the parent helper price gets built into the student’s fee, but being it was kindergarten, and the teacher wasn’t going to turn parents down, it wasn’t, and we had to pay. Not a big deal, I was happy to do it. There were 18 parents, from two classes, so 20 adults total, I think there were 3 or 4 of us who just had our own kids, the rest had two each. It was a blast, despite over 3 hrs on the bus, the teachers are experienced enough with this trip, that they brought books for the kids, and the three of us without a second child had our iPhones to keep them occupied. We started off at the provincial museum, which I loved, I have a strange fondness for history museums. We saw all kinds of animals, and then did the rocks, and bugs, my son got bored at this point and wanted to go back to the animals, so I took him over to the aboriginal exhibit, for the last ten minutes before lunch.

He loved this one, for some reason, and had to look at it from both sides, our cat had brought home a rabbit that morning, which he found, and may have caused this fascination.

This is a colombian mammoth, I had a hard time getting it in frame.

After the museum we headed out through the city, and off back to the country, to the Jurassic forest, which is a big swampy forest, but they have walkways with nature information, and dinosaurs fully automated moving dinosaurs, and they taught us about them, did you know that they now believe that t-Rex had feathers.

This is their new dinosaur, they had just installed him on Sunday, and we were some of the first to see him, see feathers.
After the trails, the kids played at the playground, until the rest of the class was done, this is my favorite picture of the day. that is little guy jumping off a T Rex spine.

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