2.15.2010

bibbly

i am gonna wait a while on posting the snow pictures from this weekend so that i can look back fondly on them when i am a few days removed from the stiff crusty pants-hems left behind after the 6 inches of wetness have dried (pet peeve!), the fishtailing cars performing triple lutzes around us the and orgy of soggy coats that is still decorating our dining room table. by then perhaps i will simply choose to remember the day our town became narnia and forget all the mayhem that descends when snow comes to georgia.
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like feeling a stray hair tickling the back of your arm that you are constantly absent-mindedly reaching for but never putting your full attention into searching for until eventually you realize that you are losing your mind seemingly for no reason but it's actually because you have been enduring the incredibly subtle yet effective prolonged chinese hair torture for 2 hours, i have been stressed from several sources recently. none of these things is enough to impel me to take action because they are such fleeting annoyances that simply graze the back of my brain. but over the course of a few weeks of enduring these daily nigglings i reach a breaking point and it's time to turn the all seeing eye of sauron onto eradicating these stress sources...fly you fools!
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#1: i never seem to have enough bibs when i need them even though i know we own about 30 of them. judah used to just secrete pure, sweet baby drool so we could just wait for a bib to dry and use it again and again, so we didn't really need that many. now, we are onto lots of self-fed solids which has turned his sweet mouth and hands into wet cracker/cheerio/bread paste-making machines. this paste will dry to an impenetrable crust on anything it touches, which renders bibs useless beyond one snacktime unless you count cheerio-mâché mold-form as a use. fun fact: paper mâché literally means "chewed up paper" in french. judah actually crafts some of this too whenever i leave my couponing "glossies" laying within his army-crawling little inchbug grasp. yesterday i pulled a soggy 42" LCD tv on sale at best buy out of his mouth. wet paper is another of my nemeses...so sick.
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#2: we WAY over-registered for receiving blankets (there are SO many cute styles) and never use them. i think i was under the impression that they would be "receiving" vomit and not the baby himself and then it turned out that that was incorrect. and as far as receiving him, judah was busting out of their swaddle by 4 days old so we moved on to a velrco swaddler and whenever we need to actually keep him warm with a blanket we use a heavier one. so our precious collection of about 20 of these are now taking up valuable shelf space in judah's room and acting like little guilt-gremlins that pop out and remind me what a Wilhelmina Wasteful i am every time i open the closet.
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#3: frugal february does not include a craft budget so my sewing has stalled since i can't buy new cool fabric. i have a few yards of really great fabrics on hand right now, but i am too into them to actually cut them up and make them into something. psychotic? yes. but i have a pile of perfectly folded, untouched little fabric squares to keep me warm in the psychiatric ward at night.
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well i took these 3 very different little stressors and wadded them up into a little play-dough ball of heart-attack waiting to happen then squeezed them through of the fun factory spaghetti-maker of my ingenuity and ended up with delightful little bunch of tri-colored worms of fun (i have rapidly lost control of this metaphor). so instead of thinking of the receiving blankets as wasted goodwill from our friends who gifted them to us and which never get any use, i am now seeing piles of soft, free, adorable fabric just waiting for me to turn into treasured items. yes!
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home made bibs! these are reversible, machine washable and super soft. i just traced a store bought bib over two layers of different fabrics and one layer of microfleece then sandwiched the fleece between the other two, stitched around and added a little velcro (soft part on the strap so judah doesn't get scratched). these former blankets were given to us by judah's godparents, the fortunatos, and our great friends stevie and kristen. huzzah for upcycling!

judah LOVES the new bibs. he was positively drooling over/on them all day. (so lame, so wonderful)

sporting the flip (clean) side of the elephant bib while playing his cheerio tambourine and standing up by himself with just a little help from the hearth.

cheesing it up with daddy.

awesome faces!

7 comments:

  1. so adorable. go keight go!

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  2. I had never heard the phrase "Wilhelmina Wasteful," but I like it. I also had never heard the 'n' word that you used, so I had to Google it to make sure it wasn't a bad word. I can always count on reading your blog to be an educational experience.

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  3. Coupon update... I spent $107 and saved $12.34. Baby steps... and I'm happy with this new system!

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  4. Best Lord of the Rings reference in a blog; it filled me with delight.

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  5. Thanks for all your comments - so glad someone is reading now that I'm back! :) OK - some of my favorite posts that need to go in the "best of" link - the Sleep Training is very important... I have sent that blog post to lots of my friends who have little babies to help them to sleep through the night... you just laid it all out there so much better than I can explain it! So - that's my vote.. another post I like that I can remember off the top of my head was the one where you met MacMama... and... what else... of course the marriage one... very important. As I think of more I'll let you know :) XO

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  6. oh - and I nearly forgot! do you still have your old sewing machine? i may try to start up this craft of sewing this summer... I'm contemplating it... and don't want to BUY one until I try it for a few months... i will buy your old one form ya! i could get it when i see you at ash's wedding in may! let me know.. xo

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  7. Hey all of you!

    It seemed necessary to say hello to you all. I hope that that we all will have great conversations together!

    So Hey!

    -Jon

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