Bed head, berets, and webkinz

This was the conversation in Kylie's bedroom first thing this morning:

Kylie: Momma sleeping?
Me: Yes.
Kylie: Wake her up!
Me: (chuckling) Later.
Kylie: (sighs deeply) In a minute. (which makes me realize how much I use that phrase)
Me: Love you babe.
Kylie: Yes!

Girlfriend had some serious bed head this morning.


Rather than have me brush it, Kylie agreed to wear this beret I knit for her.


I'm tickled that I finished it and that it fits. It has quite a bit of seed stitch which has been the bane of my knitting existence. I totally mess it up all the time. And this hat has some seed stitch mistakes but none worth ripping back for. If I had it to do over again, I would have knitted it a bit longer (the pattern calls for decreases to begin at 4.5 - 6 inches. I started at 5" and now I wish I had knit to 6"). It would have made it more pouffy and slouchy.

For my knitting friends, the pattern is "slouchy springtime beret" by Catherine Herzog and can be found for free on Ravelry. The yarn is Louisa Harding Grace hand-dyed.




Karen was stuck in the Denver airport yesterday and while missing her sweet daughter happened upon a display with the Webkinz Love frog and monkey. So she bought them for her. These are the first Webkinz we've bought. And I have to say I'm curious to log in and "discover their virtual world". Of course this won't mean anything to Kylie right now. She only knows that it's "New Toys!" and from her Momma.

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

Right now,

Right now I am:

loving....the purple sunrise this morning.

not loving....all the static in the house.

glad....that I cleaned Kylie's clothes closet last night.

listening....to Amos Lee and Garth Brooks.

knitting...a red beret hat for Kylie and a scrumptiously, soft afghan.

scrapping....December and January photos like these:Caught the light


Kylie is:
Sitting at the table like a big girl. She's started to refuse to wear a bibster.

She's squirmy but very well-behaved.

She devours an apple a day. Just gnaws on it down to the core. She's in love with this new monkey. And she's got a serious static halo/afro here.

She's obsessed with sliding cars down this chair.

And of course, sliding herself too!

Have a fun weekend everyone!

Energy

This series of pictures amuses me. These were taken Monday and are straight from the camera.


Kylie has started making faces when she wants me to put the camera down.



Lately I've been running low on my tank of energy. By the end of the day, it seems like I'm running on fumes. I'm used to having an abundance of energy. So it's disturbing to me to be so tired and uncreative. The usual things to recharge myself aren't working. So blogging friends, what do you do to recharge yourself? I could really use some fresh ideas.

It's no wonder that when I went to process my latest photo-a-day pictures, that I chose to use these soft black, white, and brown tones.

Kylie flips through books throughout the day. Lately, she has wanted us to tuck two blankets (always two) around her during reading time.

I love that Kylie asks for hugs throughout the day. She'll say "Hug!" and if you don't get to her quickly enough, she'll start hugging herself.

That's all for now. Have a great day everyone!

Ducks, bears and boxes

On Saturday, as we were heading out the door for the duckpond, Kylie saw both her moms grab their purses and promptly insisted on carrying her own. Of course she used hers to carry sticks and rocks that she found on our adventure laps around the pond.

I have to say that I love Kylie's coats but I've gotten rather tired of photographing them. So I was tickled that it was warm enough to dress Kylie in just a shirt and sweatshirt. In this picture, she's mimicking someone walking by and talking on the phone. This was my favorite picture of the day.

Although there are signs all over the park asking patrons to not feed the ducks, the ducks are fed by visitors all the time. So when Kylie and I took a play break on the bench, a handful of ducks came by to see if we had some food. When they saw we didn't, they waddled back into the water. I fired off this quick shot before lurching after my daughter to keep her from following the duck into the pond.

We made a quick, late afternoon trip to the zoo. It was one of those trips when there weren't any animals in sight. So we improvised by showing Kylie some statues. She didn't seem to mind.

She likes to see the people and other kids as much as the animals.


On Sunday, we dressed and went to church. Here's Kylie trying to walk in my shoes.

We had a laid back Sunday afternoon playing both at Munchkin Playland and our house. Earlier last week, I bought some collapsable boxes/bags on sale from the Container Store to hold Kylie's toys. Kylie has LOVED playing in the box. She can spend an hour tossing stuffed animals in and out and rolling around in it.




It was a sweet weekend. I hope yours was too.

Photo Friday

Here are some pictures that made it onto Flickr this week but haven't been posted on the blog.

Monday- leaving the playground

Tuesday- before driving to swim class.
Kylie grabbed my running hat and put it on. I love the defiance in that one raised eyebrow of hers. It's like she's saying, "Do you really want to take this away from me when you want to get me in the car? Do you feel that lucky?

Thursday-playing with blocks.

And some scrapbook pages.
Christmas Eve

Christmas Day

Red Hat

Stroller drama and coat sucking

Yesterday I thought I would try something new. You see, on sunny days, Kylie likes to walk to our nearby park and play on the swings. The park is about a half a mile from our house so I'm very proud that Kylie can walk that distance. But she really doesn't want to walk home after playing and I really don't want to carry her. So we usually call Momma K to come get us. It only takes about five minutes round trip. But I don't like pulling Karen away from her work like that.

So I decided to try something new. I thought Kylie and I would walk to the park and I would carry the little umbrella stroller to push her back. I got the stroller all ready. I even put a little bungee cord around it so that I could push it collapsed. I packed my little bag with ipod and headphones, camera, cell phone and raisins and off to the park we go.

Except.

That Kylie SAT DOWN in the driveway and refused to walk. She wanted to ride in the stroller. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Do you want to go to the park?
Kylie: Sobs "yes"
Me: Then let's go.
Kylie: Sobbing harder "Stroller"
Me: Honey, we are going to walk just like we always do. I'll push you back in the stroller. So come on. Let's walk to the park.
Kylie: STROLLER!
Me: Sigh. And load her in the stroller.

The whole time I'm walking her in the stroller I'm thinking, "Well heck! I ran today! I don't need the exercise. Dang! this bag is heavy. Why do I carry all this stuff? Why are these umbrella strollers so dang short? Why didn't we just drive? This is crazy."

Anyway, we got to the park. Kylie decided to suck on her coat for a while. I don't know if her teeth hurt or if she was soothing herself from the stroller drama. But I have a bunch of pictures of her sucking on her coat like this:

And this:

Some boys (a 2 yr old and a 3yr old) came to the park and finally Kylie stopped sucking on her coat long enough to go on a pine cone hunt with them. When she was good and tired, she wanted in the swing.

I don't know how you can ignore the person pushing you in the swing but my daughter manages it.

By the way, I called Karen to come pick us up. She heard about the story and promptly drove me to Starbucks. Like I've said, my wife is brilliant.

Little things

The other day, Kylie was rummaging in her fake food bin and found a small toy mouse. She squealed with glee and promptly started dumping out the toys to see what other treasures she could find.

That little mouse that Kylie hadn't seen in a while got so much playtime for the rest of the day. She talked to it and moved it from place to place, fed it, told it to sleep. It was sweet to watch her enjoy the little mouse so much. She popped part of it in her mouth and then looked at me mischievously. "Get that mouse out of your mouth silly girl", I teased. She grinned even bigger and ran behind one of our chairs to "hide". She's very into hiding right now. I grabbed the camera and snapped this.


Yesterday we had a great swim class. I got her a $1 squishy toy as a pool bribe. You know a "please don't scream as I take you out of the pool and get you dressed while there are a bunch of women in the dressing room" bribe toy. I have to say that it worked like a charm. When we got home, she plopped down right by the door to show Momma K her new toy and to finish her snack.


This one is blurry but I just love it.

A little mouse, a swim toy, a post-swim snack--these are the little things that make her happy.

Five little things and tons of pictures

1. When I walk into Kylie's room first thing in the morning, she gets out of bed, turns on her light, opens the top drawer of her dresser, throws in her socks and says, "Socks In!"
2. We're hearing a lot of "Hold it, hold it" from Kylie. She wants to hold her Desitin tube, my lip balm tube, her cup, and so forth.
3. Karen created a "still as a mouse" game with Kylie to keep the little one from wiggling so much during diaper changes. Karen is brilliant.
4. I'm contemplating making a simple handmade Valentine gift with Kylie.
5. After 3 false starts with 3 different patterns, I think I've found a pattern to knit Kylie a beret hat.

And now, on to the pictures. I have a lot!
Thursday afternoon. After washing her hands, Kylie decided to eat nilla wafers in the windowsill and watch our neighbors walk by.


From Friday.




From Saturday.


I love this one so much that I processed it black and white too. In fact, I think I made about 8 different versions of this one photo is Photoshop. Whoops! There went Kylie's entire nap time and I hadn't taken a shower. But playing with this photo was too much fun.

The kisses, the laughter, the holding of her thumb. Oy! This one delights me.

From Sunday.



A lot of my free time has been taken up with playing with Photoshop actions for my pictures from The Pioneer Woman and the IttyBitty Actions Sweet Set. So I'm not completing as many scrapbook pages. But I did manage to finish this one tonight-Kylie's Christmas Eve .