Posts Tagged With: Babies

Ceiling Fan Magic

This family just went on Vacation for the first time.  My Mother-In-Law had reserved a time share for a weekend up in Big Bear, but then ended up not being able to use it.  She offered it to us instead. And it was mostly a good time although VERY stressful.  The packing list alone, man… Also, Asher didn’t know what to think of it and refused to adhere to any kind of regular schedule while up there.  I worried.  Incessantly (he’s fine, of course.  He’s even sleeping soundly).

But we had good times amidst all my superfluous woe.  It was beautiful up there. And the weather was not a million degrees too hot to go outside.  We hiked, we swam, we enjoyed awesome Nepalese food at the Himalaya Restaurant, we strolled by the lake.

Asher didn’t care about any of that.  His favorite was the new and fancy suite to run around in.  New rooms with funky flooring!  Vertical blinds!  Oh, the remotes! And then there was his one true love, the ceiling fan.

I noticed it one morning when I had pulled him into bed with us.  He stood on the white comforter, one hand bracing himself steady on my hip, and gestured to the fan.  He stared at it, and his hands twirled.  His fingers extended out and then in again as he gestured, pulling his arm back, pushing his arm forward.

It looked for anything like he was performing magic on the fan.

So here is the question: what WOULD an eight-month-old want to summon from inside of a fan?  Or is he just trying to keep it running with his magic fingers?  He did this several times throughout the trip, too.  It wasn’t a fluke.

I don’t know, man.  I may be waiting for an owl to fly in my window in a few years with an epistle from Hogwarts.

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Weekly Round Up

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This week has kicked my butt.  I’m not exactly sick.  It’s like I never got to the “can’t get out of bed so I get to rest and watch terrible videos all day” stage.  I just went straight to the “mild headache, with mucus in Technicolor” stage.  I’ve been sucking it up and going to work anyway.  I took some Dayquil the first few days, but I forgot about Dayquil.  I always feel like I’m seeing out of too many eyes and my brain can’t quite make the links I want it to, even though it’s making most of them.  So now I’m just suffering in silence and drinking as much liquid as possible.  Hot tea for the win.  And I’m much better than I was on Monday.  I’m sure I’ll be fine soon.

I blame my misery on the weather.  I like the rain.  I like the sunshine.  But when the day swaps back and forth from pouring to shining, to pouring while shining, it does a number on my sinuses.  And it all happened mid-day, too, which meant no pretty rainbows to make up for it.

I have learned this week that there’s an award for the book with the oddest title each year.  Among those currently in the running are “Nature’s Nether Regions,” and “Divorcing a Real Witch: For Pagans and the People that Used to Love Them.”  I think those two are gonna be neck-in-neck.

Spring has come to Redlands.  I pointed out the spring-green bits on the top of the giant tree in our front yard, and Brian groaned.  “It starts…” he said.  “All those leaves to pick up next Fall.”  I’m thinking instead about the lovely deep green it turned last summer, and all the cool shade we got.  The neighbor’s plum tree lops over a bit into our yard and I can see the white blossoms through my bedroom window.  The Roger’s Reds went from looking like twisted dead twigs to sprouting little silver leaves no bigger than a dime.  I have a feeling the yard is going to start looking closer to how I want it to look in no time.

The kitten has decided that we’re writing buddies.  Or rather, that she wants me to stop writing and be buddies.  She has eaten two of the cloth bookmarks tethered to my Moleskine notebooks, skittering around the table after them.  When she realized that wasn’t working, she attempted to sit on the notebook.  When I still didn’t stop scribbling, she sat on my hand.  My aunt is in the middle of a house re-do and she gave me a tiny desk with an adjustable sloping top.  The kitten doesn’t understand why the surface isn’t flat.  There has been much snuffling, some climbing and sliding, and a bit of trying to climb underneath the mechanism.    She’s SUCH a problem.  But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Her problematic mannerisms are what make me love her so much; and that deep, throaty purr of hers.

The last news this week is that 2015 might be just as filled with babies as 2014.  First set of friends just announced they’re having a girl.  I’ll go get out the crochet hook…

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Afghans (the kind you crochet, not the kind who live in the desert)

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I always forget that crocheting goes so incredibly fast.  This is a very fortunate thing.  There has been a rush of babies this year.  Every time I turn around, someone else is expecting.  Not just family, either, but good friends and coworkers.  I like to make afghans for babies, if I can, which means that I am on the afghan train.  My “With Yarn” Pinterest board is getting well used.  I’m working on the afghans in order of due date.

I’m fairly excited about it.  This gives me a chance to make a slough of things.  I don’t have to decide on which one, I only have to decide who gets what.  I’m trying all the options, and all the options are out there.  There are boys, there are girls whose parents don’t like pink, and there are unknown genders until birth.

Amongst all of this, I have realized that my process when making an afghan is much like writing a novel.  I spend far too much time waffling about structure and color.  I stand in the yarn aisle for hours, pulling out colors and seeing how they look together, before finally coming home with a gargantuan bag full of the stuff.  Then I start hooking, absorbed in the way the pieces are coming together in my hands.

Somewhere in the middle, I look at the color scheme and the work that I’ve done and start thinking I’m crazy.  This will never come out the way I think it should.  Who thought that brown and yellow were a good idea, even with all the blue and green between?  Did I pick the correct ratio of white to other colors?  Is it baby enough? But when I finish and look at the whole thing, I usually end up satisfied.  The only way to finish anything is to trust the person I was when I made decisions, and push through.

The first one is more than 1/2 finished.  I’ve been working on it for three days.  Maybe this making 4 afghans within a few months thing will go alright after all.  Also, everyone needs to stop having babies after this so my poor hands can rest.  You’re all on notice until next year.

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With Bonus Miscellany

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Things I learned this week:

I’m not the one losing sleep at nights, but there is something about the small red tongue and dainty fingernails of an infant (wearing a gigantic bow) that makes it seem like sleeplessness would be worth it.  Especially when she is in the crook of your elbow and opens her big blue eyes to look at you.

The ukulele is infectious.  Both my aunt and a friend of mine bought one and are learning to play it. Evidently, the infection only spreads to other females.  We’re trying to convert my mother.

You know those employees you were told you really shouldn’t trust?  Yeah, you really shouldn’t trust them.

It is not editing five chapters a week that is hard.  It is making yourself sit down to write anything at all that is the real struggle.

Bonus miscellany – How can you tell you work at Disney? My boss just sent me an e-mail in which one of the lines was: “Damn chipmunks!  Always causing trouble.”

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