Our new bed: part I

Very early in the year - so, at most four weeks after we got back into our apartment following our little mold escapade - our bed died. I was in the living room, The Recruiter and Peanut were in the bedroom where she, Peanut was sitting on her toddler bed and he, The Recruiter, was putting away laundry, when I heard a very loud, very sharp "Bang!" Then silence. I called out "Is everything ok in there?" entirely expecting him to reply, "Oh yeah, fine, I just dropped a basket of clothes on the floor (we have parquet floor laid directly on concrete, so it does make very loud, sharp noises if ever we drop things). Instead, he paused and then called back in a perplexed voice, "No: the bed broke."



"The bed broke? Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

He came wandering out looking very surprised, and explained that he had been changing the sheets on the bed and rolled into the middle of the bed to reach the other side when putting on the fitted sheet when, "Bang!" and the middle of the bed simply collapsed.



After much examination (the hollow chipboard headboard had just worn out enough after only three years that the material holding the screws supporting the centre beam gave way) and deliberation, we opted to toss the bed (I'm sure that it didn't sit on outside for long and that someone scavenged it within minutes, a fact I find very comforting, thinking that someone may be benefiting from our decision not to make do with it) and put the mattress directly on the floor while we decided what solution would work best for us.



"After all," I said, "I'm not that pregnant, yet: I can still get up and down off the floor easily and this will insure that I stay really mobile!"



That was early January, at which point I was, certainly, not that pregnant, yet. But time passes and babies and the bellies they are inside get bigger and the mamas carrying them get less and less inclined to climb up and down off the floor, particularly multiple times a night for trips to the loo. So on The Recruiter's birthday - a day which he got off because his employer is fantastic - my mother gave me a ride to Home Depot and we bought sheets of mdf and lengths of 2x4 and trim and spent about an hour in the cutting area having everything cut to size for me. Boxes of screws and nails, a big bottle of wood glue and a $3 can of paint from the 'oops' cart and we headed home. And finally, at long last, I got it assembled yesterday night.



It isn't finished yet. Two of the benches still need trimming, and they'll all need puttying, further sanding and then painting before we can call this complete. But it's assembled and we slept on it last night.



It's higher than we expected, so I'm a little terrified that Peanut is going to fall and hurt herself. I suppose I'll just need to build a little stool or step for her to use to get in and out of the bed. And maybe lay down some small area rugs to cushion any falls. But we are all thrilled to be up off the floor.

The pics are all clickable and there are some others in the set and most have notes.

well lived

In just over an hour, The Recruiter and I will be off to a worship service in celebration of the life and the promise of the resurrection of a friend of ours, a fellow congregant and choir member, and our elder. We were shocked to learn early Tuesday afternoon that he had passed on sometime the previous night, found that morning by his brother, laying peacefully in his bed.

It was a life very well lived, though, to our minds, too briefly. We'll weep this afternoon, knowing what we have lost, what our community has lost, but I pray that we will rejoice in the knowledge that he is blessed and he is risen. Whenever I lose a friend or loved one, I am always surprised that my faith does not render me immune to those feelings of loss. But that's the trickiness of humanity. Even Jesus wept.

This is the second post in a row where I'm linking to one of my husband's blog posts, but it's very well written and expresses this past week entirely. It's a worthy read.

brrr...

Yesterday, I woke up to light rain and 3C temperatures. Here's what my little Weatherbug app tells me today:



Did you see the worst part? -18C isn't fun, but it's doable. But this part:



Yeah. -27 with the windchill with humidity over 50%. Ugh. My father lived in Iqaluit for a number of years, and said that, as cold as it is up north, the weather is very dry, so it's a far less oppressive and unpleasant cold than the cold weather in Ottawa.

But we really need to go out. I can't hide from the cold forever and spring could be a long way off.

It's still morning, though. Maybe if I wait a few hours...it'll get warmer?

six

Six years and one day ago, The Recruiter and I were married. It was a beautiful, gently snowy day, very similar to yesterday in our fabulous city. Since I was hosting a church youth skating party yesterday afternoon and evening, we celebrated our anniversary on Friday evening. I made a pavlova (I've been watching a rather astonishing amount of cooking shows lately, and Nigella Lawson made this and it was pretty undeniable) and we ordered in some Chinese food. This is the fortune I got in my cookie:



Not a bad sentiment for the beginning of our next year together, another year of happy and awesome, a year when our family will continue to grow.

Happy sixth anniversary, honey!

And don't feel too badly that we didn't get to spend much of our actual anniversary together: he and Peanut had a pretty fantastic afternoon together. And people ask us why we want to raise our children in downtown Ottawa - you don't just happen across experiences like this in the suburbs around here!

a little more living space

You know how I said that it was really cold today and our apartment was a mess so I was going to spend the day tidying? Guess who made good on that promise!

Since our little mold thing happened, most of Peanut's toys and books have been living in stacks on the floor. Eventually we moved them into laundry baskets. She couldn't find anything, it took up a lot of room, the living room was a disaster all the time and it was totally unsightly. Well no more: we have achieved order. The pics are all clickable and have notes on flickr.



Toy storage. Peanut's trunk holds soft toys (we purged a bunch recently, but we'll probably do it again in a little while) and the red unit holds hard toys, puzzles, blocks and books. The red unit is actually a chest of drawers we found, sans drawers, on the sidewalk in our last neighbourhood just before we moved. Until the mold adventure, it was sitting in the living room with stuff stacked on top of it and the inside entirely unused. Waste. of. space. When the mold ruined one of our two bookcases, we kept the shelves that went in it and discovered that they fit - sort of - inside the chest of drawers. We popped two of them in and had shoved it full of books that were rendered homeless by the loss of the bookcase. I had always planned to get rid of one of the sets of runners to make two shelves instead of three so that it would be a good fit for toys. I was feeling particularly industrious today (I'm going to blame hormones and nesting instincts) so I got out my tools and got rid of one of the sets of runners. It was big fun with a rubber mallet - you've got to love old school, glue-free mortised joinery!



The Christmas play kitchen and a little table and chairs Peanut uses for drawing. Before this afternoon, the red shelves were where the kitchen is now, the kitchen was where the table is, the table was where the trunk is, and the trunk was where the red shelves are now. The new layout works so well that I think we'll definitely be keeping things like this for the foreseeable future, so I'll hang a magnetic board and a magazine rack over the table to hold magnetic letters and art supplies, respectively.



Peanut in her space. She's so much happier now that she actually has room to play and can find everything, and I am incredibly happy to be able to see the floor! I still think that we have too many toys, and there's actually a wicker basket with some toys in it that hasn't quite found a home yet, but overall, this is a huge improvement and another corner of our living space looks and feels far more finished.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle the bedroom. Maybe.

shroom

It's sunny! And I'm dressed before noon! Of course, sunshine in this neck of the woods generally corresponds with pretty intense cold, and today is no exception. It's -25C with the windchill. Brr. And as you are about to see - but will pretend not to see - our apartment is a mess, so we'll make good use of this cold day, hang out inside and make things a little more liveable around here.

I've been talking about my recent knitting project for a while now, haven't I? As my dreads have finally started growing and getting longer and are no longer just shrinking shrinking shrinking (yes, dreads shrink before they grow. It makes sense if you think about it, but who thinks about that until they actually have them on their own head?) I was finding it harder and harder to fit them into my hat. And the hat that I have been wearing, Urchin, while adorable is not really intended to cover the ears or endure the deep freeze of an Ottawa winter. Enter Shroom.







I love it! I LOVE IT!! It contains the dreads perfectly with room to spare (since they're only going to get longer!), covers my ears entirely as well as the nape of my neck which was an unexpected benefit and, best of all, it's super soft and looks great.

Details:

Pattern: Shroom (and aRav link to my Shroom)
Yarn: Cascade Magnum in light green/celery
Needles: 5.5mm and 8mm, 40cm and 80cm circs respectively (magic looped it at the end)
Mods: I added an extra inch of ribbing. I thought I would add an extra repeat of the puff rib, but when I ran out of yarn I tried it on, discovered that it made it a little too big so I ripped back and did the number of repeats in the pattern. And it's perfect.
Changes I'd make if I did it again: I might omit that extra inch of ribbing. But as I noted above, it does cover my ears and neck really nicely, and it might not do so without that extra inch, so it's debatable. Ultimately, I'm really really happy with it.

And as promised, our work in progress. Feel free to ignore the mess in the background. Scratch that, you MUST ignore it: just don't see it, ok? I promise to clean up today, I do!




With a little bit of Peanut silliness in there for added fun.

a little bit of our living space

In my last post, there were some little birds that I'd spent a surprisingly long time sitting around industriously sewing. Well here is what they've become:



They're hanging from the centre bracket of our curtain rod in the living room. Because oh yeah! We have curtains! It's only taken us seven months of living here to finally hang curtains. There were venetian blinds in the window and verticals on the sliding door to the balcony, but they were horrendously ugly and a total bother. After our little mold escapade, the venetians weren't reinstalled, so we just left them down and hung the curtain rod and curtains. It's made a massive and wonderful improvement to the whole room.

We also have a "new" "lamp". "New" in that I've had it for years, and "lamp" in that it isn't a lamp at all but the parasol from my sister's wedding hung in the corner of the room with a hanging light behind it. It's hard to beat a paper product from our local Chinatown and a $5 Ikea hanging fixture for an inexpensive and fun light.



And finally, I did a little work with chalk on our large living room wall. We still haven't figured out what we'll hang over the couch, and it's a 7 foot long expanse of wall that fairly cried out for something. Our Words to Remember at church this month are verses from 1 Corinthians 13, and while I find them a little repetitive when read at weddings (generally because so many of the weddings I've attended where they were read have not seemed particularly Christ-focussed, despite being held in a church) they really are wonderful. They are a perfect reminder of the very nature of love and, frankly, I needed the reminder today. I have a cold, I'm very pregnant and I have the accompanying impatience that come with both. And I'm home alone all day with a 2 year old. So a little visual reminder that my constant love for my child demands an equally constant manifestation seemed helpful. Plus: pretty!



Some day, there will be ample sunshine and I'll actually be willing to take a picture of myself, at which point you will actually get to see my latest knitting project and my ever-expanding belly. And if it ever transpires that our apartment is in any way presentable, I'll actually give you a tour.

catching up and a new start

Another three-month delay in posting, my my! We had a little excitement in November and December, in that we discovered a rather extensive mold problem throughout our apartment. Ick! So we got to spend the first three weeks of Advent in two hotel rooms and out at my mother and her partner's place in a semi-rural village just outside the city. Skipping the long and somewhat depressing parts, we were back home about ten days before Christmas, just enough time to reassemble our living space from the utter mess it had become (dozens of contractors and a fairly significant demolition required the shifting around of most of our furniture) and clean up the fine layer of drywall dust that was covering everything. Despite the trials and tribulations of the season, though, we had a lovely Christmas.



And now it's a new year, the year we'll welcome someone new to our family! We aren't real resolution people, but I think after all the drama of our little mold adventure - and there was plenty of drama related to our landlord and certain amount of unpleasantness including some mild threats - both The Recruiter and I felt the need to do a little leaf-turning and sort of reconnect with our home. So on Epiphany we followed an old European tradition and performed a door-chalking home blessing. I can't tell you how what a blessing it is to me to see those marks of blessing over our door written in our own hand. It's very...soothing, and it's left me feeling very much as though we've reclaimed our home.



We moved in at the end of June, unpacked, and then lost our drive. By the beginning of September I was pregnant and feeling rather wretched, so out walls stayed bare, our artwork unhung, and the whole place just continues to feel rather temporary. So we're nesting. Well, I'm nesting.



I've spent longer than I care to admit stitching up these little birds to hang in our living room. The smaller, multi-coloured birds are made from random fabrics I had in my stash, and the larger red birds are made from a beautiful mohair sweater that was ruined in the laundry has been beautifully felted.

I'm 23 weeks along in this pregnancy and feeling pretty great. I'll post a picture when I've made myself presentable soon! And I knit something! It's awesome and deserves a picture in good light, which we are sadly lacking on this grey day, so it'll have to happen soon, but not today.

Do you remember?

Remember when I used to actually post?  And, you know, actually knit stuff? And do crafty, creative-type things?  Yeah, I'm not sure I really remember what that was like, either.

Anyway, it's been an interesting autumn.  We have a little brother or sister for Peanut on his or her way: we'll get to meet the new little one sometime in May.  The first trimester has been incredibly rough.  Serious, crippling nausea.  Peanut and I have watched a lot of television, I'm sad to say.  But things are getting better, and I'm starting to daydream about food, so I'm feeling hopeful.  In all honesty, it was rather depressing.  My nausea gets worse through the day, and peaks at night, so I would wake feeling pretty icky and know that, no matter what I did, it was definitely going to get worse.  Hard to stay upbeat with that sort of daily reality, but I seem to have turned a corner and things are much better and I'm feeling like myself again.

But yarny goodness!  I've been actually making, you know, STUFF out of yarn!  Not a lot, but a little.  It's gotten co-o-o-old here north of the 49, and Peanut didn't have a good winter hat for her post-growth-spurt self. So I made this:





The yarn is something I picked up five years ago to make a scarf, a scarf which never actually happened.  The ball band is long gone and the LYS where I bought it no longer carries the yarn. I think it's acrylic, maybe an acrylic blend.  It's fluffy and bulky and soft, though, so I'm happy with it.  The black is some random acrylic that my mother recycled out of a poncho (yes, a poncho!) she knitted circa 1970 or something like that.  So the black yarn predates Peanut by close to four decades, which is kind of awesome.

The deets, such as I have them:
Pattern (hat): Brrr Baby Beanie
Pattern (flower): Simple Crochet Flower
Hook: 5mm (H)
Size: toddler
Mods: I added an extra round of increases and a few extra rounds of length to ensure the hat would be big enough for as long as possible.  I plan to line the hat with polar fleece as well, to get us through the particularly frigid days of January and February in Ottawa, so the bit of extra space in the hat should help it fit even with the lining.

I've also made a tiny amount of headway on this (you'll have to scroll down).  I'll have to get a picture of it when the sun is higher today.  I'm almost finished the back piece.  If I continue at this rate, I might get it finished within a year of starting it.  Maybe it'll be ready for my post-partum self.  We can always hope!

Holy break in posting, Batman!

Yikes, three months since my last post!  Way to not post, eh?  I can't say that a lot of exciting things have happened, because that's not quite true, but neither has absolutely nothing happened. It was more that what did happen was rather disheartening, and led to my not posting.

So we were supposed to move to McLeod St.  Didn't happen.  Ass-bastard of a landlord decided he didn't like me (I'm an uppity wummun, after all, full of opinions and made of trouble) and summarily kicked us out two days after we got the keys.  We still had the place we were moving out of for another month, so we took the boxes we'd moved into the new place, moved them back in to the townhouse, and started looking again.  We put on a major press looking for a new place, and we were extremely blessed to find our new apartment in only a few days.  We're right back downtown, only two blocks from where we lived before the fire, an eight-minute walk from The Recruiter's office, and a five-minute walk from church.  We're thrilled.  Living in a highrise still feels rather novel - I've never lived with an elevator before, but we're quite enjoying it.

As a result of this little housing drama, though, we were fairly mid-move for the better part of two and a half months.  Add to that that we are pretty solidly "home" people - well, I am - and this whole ordeal really threw me off.  And that led to me not really having the time or energy to post: packing with a toddler, and climbing over the boxes takes a lot of energy!

Not a whole lot else has happened, I'm afraid.  Peanut and I spent a week up at my old summer camp two weeks ago.  I served as chaplain (it's a church camp) and Peanut served as resident two-year-old and general disrupter of all things.  The staff loved her, she loved them, and she learned to eat everything!  She started really going to town on all foods right after we moved into the new apartment, but up at camp she really figured out this whole food thing.  She ate every meal - more or less - and discovered new foods that she loves.  Pancakes are a big hit - huge, in fact - and now she'll oranges!  It's awesome.  :)

What with all the moving there hasn't been a lot of sewing, and even less knitting, but there's been a bit: more to come in that soon!

And because a post without a pic is lame-o:

2

Today, Peanut is 2.  The past two years have never ceased to surprise, amaze, delight, enlighten, entertain, educate, and bless me.  And now our little Peanut, our Gift from God, is two.  I cannot believe how quickly these two years have gone, how slowly they have passed, how much she has changed, and all the ways she is just as she was the day she was born.

So Happy Birthday, Peanut!  You have made me a mother, and you have made me the mother I am.  You are my tiny star and I thank God for you every day.

Birthday prep

Have you seen those Telus commercials with the animals?  Particularly their most recent campaign?


Well, Peanut loves them.  Adores them.  We don't watch any children's programming, so she doesn't really pay much attention to television the majority of the time, but when those '60's tunes start rockin' and that hippo starts frolickin' she howls with glee.  "Po-po! Po-po!" she cries: it's awesome.

Peanut will be celebrating her Second Birthday on Wednesday, so The Recruiter and I have been discussing what gifts might be best for our girl.  As you may have noticed, I like to get crafty, particularly for special occasions, so I took my cue from Peanut's newest obsession and came up with...

...this!




The Recruiter and I are pretty in love with this shirt.  But here's where I ask a question of you: does it need a nose and a mouth?

More birthday garments to come!

Synthesis

We GOT IT!!!  The McLeods are moving to McLeod Street!!!

I'm so thrilled to have found a home that we can live in indefinitely (surely we will someday need something bigger, but not for awhile yet) and in a neighbourhood where we can be happy.  I am also extremely glad that I can finally stop looking at apartments!  Reading ads, making appointments, actually keeping appointments while dragging a poor little Peanut along who just wants to explore and play and sleep on some semblance of a normal routine...ugh!  Such a pain.  But it's done now, and we can focus on packing, purging (we have too much stuff), decorating and moving.

Hooray for good news days and hooray for putting down roots!

A long over due post about random things

What's new? It's been awhile, eh? Here's what's going on here.

Peanut has discovered peanut butter (the synthesis is pretty awesome, isn't it?). She loves it. She calls it butter (well, "bah!" but we know what she means). She also drinks milk by the litre. She also has a taste for take-out fries and delivery pizza. No, my beautifully and lovingly homemade versions will not do: she only wants the pricey, greasy stuff. Whatever. She's eating *something*, she's packing on the pounds, and she's happy as a clam.

In other news, The Recruiter is a recruiter no longer: he's now a proposal writer. But we'll keep calling him that, since I can't think of anything remotely clever to change the title to. Today was his first day and it seems to be a great place for him to work. They even gave him some company swag. And as far as he knows they aren't breaking any laws right now, so it's up up up for him.

And we're moving! Again! But at least this year it's more on our terms than Fate's. After the fire last summer we had only days to find a place, and we were lucky to find the place we did. Most of the apartments we saw were pretty...horrifying. The condo we ended up finding has served us well, but it has also helped us learn what concessions we are - and are not - willing to make. For us, ultimately, it's a question of location. And since we rent someone's home (she's posted out of the country with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade - DFAIT - which is who the pre-fire condo works for as well) and she's due to move back in come September, we know that we need to move, but we get some control over when and how and where to. Which is good. After much looking, we think we've found a place. Now we just wait to see if our application is approved (crossed fingers and oblations to the Cosmic Rental Deities would be much appreciated!). It's sunny, it's airy, it's a good size - not too small, but not so big that we can senselessly hoard random crap the way we've been doing for the better part of our marriage - and it's in a great part of downtown. And there's a really awesome part which, if we get it, I will tell you all about. Let's just say, the McLeods need to live there.

My work with the church continues, albeit a little hesitantly. I will admit that I'm feeling rather thwarted by the fact that so many churches and church leaders seem to want my job to exist in theory, but in actuality want nothing to do with me. It's frustrating, but I keep trying to remind myself that as much as it may matter in the practical sense what those people think, in the truest sense my work has little to do with them directly. My work is about and for young people, so a certain degree of ignoring naysayers will be, inevitably, necessary.

And knitting. Yes, knitting. As you see from my last post, I made a recent splurge and set myself up with two cones of Louet Gems in Goldenrod. It is exactly the colour I hoped it would be when I ordered it from a LYS based on pictures I saw online. And my, but it is a lovely knit! Soft and springy and glossy. It will make a fabulous Katharine - cropped, naturellement. I'm a few inches into it, having just started the lace pattern, and as soon as I fix one little problem, I'll be back on track to getting it finished.

See it? Yeah, knitting while watching television and/or a toddler is best left for later in a project, once the pattern has become a little more second-nature. Ah, well. My crochet hook will get some lovin'.

And speaking of crochet, I'm loving Peanut's newest accessory. It whipped up in about an evening. As much as I love knitting, you really can't beat crochet for speed.

Gemmy goodness

Oh.



Oh yeah.



Ooohhh.



That's the stuff.



Yeah, that's nice....

Easter

What a lovely Easter we've had! This was Peanut's second Easter, but the first where we could really start building family traditions for this season.  So on Friday, after a beautiful Good Friday service at church, we dyed eggs.







Saturday we had a family dinner with The Recruiter's side of the family.  Peanut showed off her newly developed interest in food and her talent at drinking from a cup and enjoyed her brand new outdoor shoes.  I will confess that we bought her shoes with squeakers in them, purely in the hopes that they will encourage her to walk since she is so reticent to actually do so (it isn't a question of ability: she's perfectly able, just rather unwilling).  And by golly, it's working!  The weather has been stunning this weekend - sunny and in the mid-20's every day - and Peanut has been repeatedly demanding to go outside, leading me by the finger to the door and insisting that we go out for walks on the street.  Who could resist?  And she seems quite driven to walk and make her shoes squeak.  Soon she may be willing to walk without holding onto my finger!

Sunday morning we had our first egg hunt.  While I bathed Peanut (warm nights make for sweaty toddler hair) The Recruiter hid the eggs. Then, when Peanut was dressed in her most springy, glorious dress, we hunted for eggs.  She was so dear, padding around the living room in her bare feet and her party dress, holding onto the handle of her little basket.  I just wanted to sing, it was so lovely.



Then it was off to church for our Easter morning breakfast.  The hall was packed with people! Peanut nursed through much of the meal, then sat on my lap and nibbled a hot cross bun before I had to run upstairs to rehearse with the choir.  We processed into the sanctuary at 11 and the place was - truly - gloriously filled.  The pews were just full of spring clothes, families of every age, and people of every shape and colour and genesis.  It was divine.

Even the walk back to the car afterward in the sunshine was perfectly wonderful.







Happy Easter and a glorious spring to you all!

Guess what!

We ate today.




Why yes, I did enjoy my Pocky*.




Mmmm...Coffee!**

A very good day, Peanut-wise.  We're making headway on this crazy thing called eating!

*Pocky is a Chinese stick-like cookie dipped in chocolate.
**She asked for coffee.  A few drops of cold coffee with a lot of chocolate milk in her own little plastic cup, and she was happy.