ringer around the ultrasound

today's the day. the day baby #2 stops being "the baby" and becomes "he" or "she." the ultrasound technician will know around 11 am today. if we stick to our game plan, WE will know a few hours later. followed swiftly by you (on monday probably).

.

maybe it's just because i have a child already, but i am being so 100% honest right now when i say i don't care either way what the gender is. this time, i am just focusing on all the anatomy and measurements and health stuff looking good. i took that so for granted with judah while i was busy rooting for a boy, and so my gratitude for his lifelong health has really mellowed me out about the sex of the baby and made me see what's important. *end inspirational public service announcement.*

.

continuing on my merry making trend, i wanted to make something for judah. see, if he is having a sister i probably won't be making anything for him for awhile since there is SO much more cute girl stuff out there that is easy to make. i decided that i would try my hand at something super challenging.

.

during my interwebial travels the other day when crafty inspiration struck, i found the making blog, MADE. holy cow, this chick is a baddie bad bad. she can sew like none other. i saw an awesome tutorial on her blog that shows how to take a ratty old men's t-shirt and turn it into a super adorable vintage-looking ringer shirt for baby. i can't get enough of colorful ringers on little boys and i loved the onesie-style detailing on the shoulders, so even though i was a bit out of my depth and way nervous, i went for it.

.

here's what i started with: an old t-shirt of jesse's that i had worn to bed a few times and therefore had gotten discolored a little bit from my medicated face lotion (problem skin at age 30, here i come!). for some reason this stuff only bleaches the GBIV portion of the color spectrum. even though it looked rough on jesse, there was still enough good fabric to make a judah sized shirt and i loved the bold color

the tutorial is called "the 90 minute shirt" but it took me 2 hours because i was watching the NBA finals (snooze) and i had to make my pattern from scratch (yeah, no pattern included, people! tres DIY). i am so so so shocked and proud of how it came out:

to make my pattern i deconstructed an old 9 month onesie and then measured up by guesswork using a 18-24 month shirt that we have for judah, so the dimensions are a little funny. but seriously, i MADE that!

when we woke up this morning we had to have the little guy model it:

the fit isn't too bad, though it was intended to be big enough for the fall/winter and it fits him pretty snug right now.


stone faced strutting the catwalk. he's an ambi-turner
.

so this little project was time consuming, but had just the right mix of mindless cutting/pinning paired with challenging problem solving, sewing and measuring. just my kind of task. enough to keep me on my toes and fulfilled, but not enough to overwhelm me. i can say that if i saw this style of shirt at old navy i would probably expect it to cost (and i might consider paying) $12.50. mine was free thanks to having a ton of the ribbed yellow knit already (but that would have cost about 80 cents if i had to go buy it). i will be making more of these. count on it. they maybe purple and pink, but they will BE.
.
and here's the final weekly belly picture before the fruits and veggies get a gender! 18 weeks (last saturday) and a nice bell pepper is what we're working with. (week 17 got skipped because the turnip at publix that i found was the size of a kiwi and made no sense.)

.

those are maternity jeans. i test drove them a few days ago because i finally found them and determined i am not pregnant enough for them yet. not that they are too big (oh no), but my stomach is still too soft to overpower the elastic and not just look like a floppy gut busting biscuit over the waistband

i can really feel this baby all of a sudden. with judah, i had a few weeks of little bubble-type flutters and, "was that him?" moments. but this one really just started with the swoops and squiggles that are undeniably baby. it awesome. i forgot how fun and freaking weird it is to feel a bell pepper sized human gamboling around my uterus.

.

i feel awesome. no more malaise or nausea of extreme fatigue. i do have some weird second trimester symptoms going on, the most annoying of which is violently itchy legs. like, "jesse, go get me the belt-sander" itchy. also the bladder capacity is on the way out. 5 out of 7 nights a week i have to get up once or twice in the night to pee. by the time i deliver i won't be able to go longer than 3 hours with out squeaking out a thimbleful.

.

see y'all on the other side of some tiny little sex organs.

feast or famine

after not twitching a single crafty muscle for about a month, yesterday i came surging back like an unstoppable rebel force. i was inspired by my buddy, merran (she of the ridiculously perfect first birthday party), who made some super cool stuff for her son luke. so of course i stalked her referenced blogs and got a whole boatload of ideas.

the first project i did was actually something totally random that i had found via stumbleupon last week, but once i had the creativity keg tapped again, all sorts of stuff was flowing out. plus i had to wait until i got home to do merran's project since it required an iron, but this little gem i could do at...um, well, exactly where i was. i found a tutorial for these on the not martha (you can guess which martha she's not) blog.

side-view of my lil love-mushrooms.

these are adorable, 100% customizable, highly giftable little marble magnets. after a quick and cheap trip to joann i was ready to make 20 of these for $8 (and i have plenty of leftover glue and marbles to make tons more and would only need to restock the magnets).

.

-clear flat bottomed marbles (there's like 100 of them in a pack)-$2.50

-2 ten-packs of circular 5/8" magnets-$2.58

-elmer's craft bond ultra stix all clear glue-$2.99

-old magazines-free!

some of the goods

you wanna make sure you get marbles that are slightly bigger around than the magnets (for easy gripping on the fridge), but other than that you could go any size, shape or color you wanted. there is some textural imperfect on the bottom of my marbles that i thought would screw up seeing the pictures, but the cool thing is that the clear glue fills the rough spots in so you can't even see them. also, make sure you pick a clear, vapor/odor free glue, unless you've got a score to settle with some brain cells

these were so so so easy to make. the biggest of craft-tards could pull these off with ease. the most time consuming part was finding little and cool enough pictures in all my magazines and that was totally fun. once you have them cut out (i used an x-acto knife and just traced around a magnet. doesn't have to be a perfect circle, the marble's magnifying effect is very forgiving), each one takes maybe 10 seconds to assemble. i made my 12 magnets in about 30 minutes, even with browsing the mags.

camel at sunset, hot air balloon, watering the tulip, foot, grassy field, tiny beach. love them!

i went with pretty pictures but you could so easily make an entire set of the alphabet in all sorts of cool fonts or numbers, or someone's names (for a lil gift). they are the perfect size for a choking hazard so these live towards the top of the refrigerator until judah stops eating everything like a baby goat.

leafy, wave, peacock, umbrella, flying goose, cool tree

i really liked not martha's idea of putting a set of these in a little altoids tin (metal, get it?) and giving them as gifts. i mean they aren't going to make anyone faint with rapture upon receiving them, but they are cute, handmade and one of a kind.

.

so when i got home i was in heaven. i made poppyseed chicken for dinner (a binge-favorite) and jesse took judah to a youth event thing so i had the house and the meal all to myself. i got started on the project i ripped off from merran, who found an awesome tutorial on i am mama, hear me roar.

i have done stenciling before, but never with freezer paper and always with a piece of cardstock i had to hold or tape in place. whoa baby. so much easier. i got a 75 foot roll of this amazing stuff at publix for $3.

i found a bitching webdings-esque font here that is chock full of tiny graphics that make perfect stencil patterns. i just blew up the image i wanted and put my freezer paper on my laptop screen and traced the outline (you could print it out at whatever size you needed too if you respect your computer screen more than i do). lowercase x in this font happened to be a really cool little robot, so i went with that. there are about 14 other of these graphics i can't wait to use also.

the robot stencil was blank when i first painted it on, but i wanted him to have more personality, so i added the buttons and facial features by hand and then put the little "domo" signature there cause i'm cheeky like that.

it was incredibly fulfilling to make all of these crafty wares, plus last night's dinner (which is today's lunch) and get tonight's dinner prepped and marinating while the chicken cooked all in the same amount of time that i usually just would have spent watching the office reruns. yeah the supplies for these projects cost money and i probably couldn't have done it without jesse being on judah duty (though he will sit in the kitchen an fixate on me whenever i am cooking rather than running amok), but i would probably feel tons more productive and better about myself if i could pull off just one night like this per week.

judah, show me your impression of a killer robot, come to dominate humanity with your robo-double chin. hey, nice job.

hostile takeovers aside, the robot is really quite adorable

save the date

dear jesse, mark your calendar:

when: every saturday morning of the year 2046 and on
where: the dairy section of our local grocer
attire: head to toe his-and-hers denim and white sneakers

we will spend a few minutes discussing the notes we've brought along for planning a pancake breakfast for our grand kids and adorably weigh the virtues of medium brown versus large white eggs (the couple in the pic was totally doing this).

.

we probably won't be as good-looking or firm as we are now, but then we also probably won't get in a shouting match about rice either. losing some of the passion might be a good thing.

.

we will lack muscle tone, hair lustre, and collagen, but we will have 40 years of memories and magic under our built-in elastic belts to get us by.

.

i will change the batteries in your hearing aid (size 357? no sweat) and help you tie/velcro your shoes if you'll get the mail on really hot days and keep the bird feeders filled up.

.

i promise i will love you more and gentler and deeper and quieter than i ever imagined i could back when we vowed to go the distance.

.

i'll be there if you will.