In praise of Fall (aka a rambly updatey post)

(Steve and Edmund are napping, Harriet is out with the relatives, and I'm going to do something that I don't have to do.)

Fall makes me so happy, really and truly.  Summer is great because it's warm and relaxed, and spring is great because I hate winter, but fall?  It's this roasty-toasty blend of routine and sweaters and lattes and football and windy days and warm-right-through-you sunshine.  It's crunchy leaves scattered all over the ground, swirling and twirling like some kind of organic glitter.  It's snuggling up with kids in their pajamas and making cinnamon swirl pancakes in the morning because we don't care if we heat the house up right away.  It's COLOR and pumpkins and carrot cake cupcakes.  And it results in a smiling me, just because.  

Plus, fall means that I can wear my favorite outfits in the whole wide world.  

Who can resist the cozy comfort of cardigans, skinny jeans, and sneakers (or flats)?  I can't.  This is the time of year when my personal fashion taste flourishes...and I learn that successful self-portraits involve a tree branch and a large rock sort of wedged together.

Okay, enough about me and my seasonal euphoria.  I realized that it's been a while since I talked about the kids in any sort of practical Real Life way, so here we go.

Oh Harriet.  Where do I begin with Harriet?  She is something else.  I think we would call this era in Harriet's life the Terrible Twos, but it feels more like the Terrible Thirteens which has me quite scared for her hormonal pubescent state.  OR, maybe she's getting it all out of her system now and that loverly transition into teenage-hood will be a walk in the park.  Frankly, I'm just glad that she is our oldest child and that she came along when I was rather young and energetic and open to reading lots of things about how to deal with such strong personalities such as the one she possesses.  

She cracks us up with her vocabulary.  

Harriet: I fell off the couch and bumped my head.

Me: Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that!

Harriet: It's okay.  I forgive you.

She is such a wonderfully sweet sister to Edmund and genuinely wants to get along with him.  She is very consistent in "trading" toys with him when she wants whatever thing he has.  She manages everybody and everything and eats lots of cheese and hummus.  And milk.  And homemade popcicles.  And cauliflower pizza.  She basically wants to spend every moment of every day either watching Veggie Tales (she knows more song lyrics than I do) or playing with the Small Aunts (who she can name in age order).  Harriet can count to ten, match shapes and colors, find all of the circles in the house, and cut playdoh with a butterknife into teeny worms and chase me around with them.  

Harriet is not confined to the popular notion of being a Princess, Cowgirl, Artist, or Mommy.  Nope, she wants to excel at EVERYTHING.  I think that if you aren't able to spend a lot of time with Harriet, but you want to know what she is really like, you should read the Olivia books by Ian Falconer.  Because that is Harriet in literary pig form.

 Goodness, we love her and we pray that she will use her passionate, persistent self to glorify God.

Then there is Edmund.  Edmund is getting teeth in a big bad way and is so horribly pathetic that I can hardly bear it.  When Harriet was getting teeth, she was just angry at the world.  I was angry at her for being so out of this world unbearable, so there was a lot of general angst until the teeth popped through.  With Edmund?  He looks at me with these sad watery eyes and just moans.  It's so sad.  We spend a lot of time physically touching each other because that seems to help the tooth problem.

He isn't crawling yet, but he is dreadfully close.  He seems to have adopted this stealth crawl thing where he quietly slides around the floor on his belly very quickly.  He also used his stealth crawl to slide quickly off of the bed, which made his mother very upset.  

Edmund loves textured food.  While pureed stuff is okay, he would much rather chomp down on muffins, beans, or avocados.  Like Harriet, he is a tremendous fan of cauliflower pizza.  He has developed a bit of stranger anxiety, but continues to be a contented and easily pleased little guy.  His smiles kill.  I can't wait to see what they look like with some adorable teefies.  I can't believe that he is going to be eight months old next week.  Seriously?

(Okay, that was a wondrously refreshing forty-five minutes of silence and productivity.  Now the pile of dishes really doesn't look so treacherous.)

Jake and the Neverland Pirates costume

A lady called me back in September and asked if I could make a Jake and the Neverland Pirates costume for her grandson, who is turning three years old, and is rather batty about this television show.  I had no idea what Jake and the Pirates was or what the Jake character looked like, but I agreed to make the costume.  Hey, I like to research and create an accurate, complete "look," so even though I knew I would have to squeeze sewing into a busy schedule, I also knew that it would be fun.

Source

So that's what the character looks like.  And here is Harriet modeling the finished costume:

 The birthday boy is a little taller than Harriet, so the costume is slightly big on her.  But I think she makes a pretty adorable pirate.  (Even if she refused to make a pirate-y face, the silly girl.)

As you can see, I just took a purchased white shirt, and cut the sleeves and neckline to make them look all raggedy.  Then I added a cross-stitched tie out of black yarn.  I made the blue elastic waist pants from this super-duper snazzy tutorial*.

The belt is tube made from grey knit fabric and made adjustable with a D-ring closure.

Bandanna?  Easy peasy.   I cut a strip of red knit about 7"x30" and serged the edges.

The vest was also really simple and loads of fun to make, thanks to this loverly tutorial.  I made a slight modification to the pattern in that I extended the front straight out from the neckline to create the collar. I made the vest out of blue felt and finished the edges with gold metallic bias binding.  (Putting on the binding was not as easy as I anticipated, since the thickness of the felt caused the binding to pull unevenly.  Just a warning.)  The huge gold buttons definitely make it look all pirate-y.

I was shocked at how quickly the costume came together and how cute the finished project turned out to be.  I hope my client's grandson is happy!

*I seriously can't say enough happy things about this pants tutorial.  They work every time, people.  Every time!  Not only do they come together in about thirty minutes, but they are so versatile.  Love!

The Antics of Harriet Alice

It's time to do a little update on the ol' HarriEd.  She is so-very-close to being nineteen months old, you see, but she acts like she's five or six or something.  Her father can't believe that she is only going to be turning two this summer.  Surely she is older than that.

Harriet has really progressed into more imaginative play over the past few weeks.  The above picture shows Harriet in her beloved "bucket" (a turquoise plastic gardening tub, to be precise) with her pillow and blanket.  She is pretending like it is her bed.  Sometimes she pretends like she is sleeping, complete with snoring noises, but she keeps her eyes open lest we fall prey to her trickiness and think that she is actually asleep.  Harriet puts everything useful into the bucket.  Today her yellow plastic table is in the bucket.  I don't really know why it is so exciting to sit on top of the table inside the bucket, but there you go.  Maybe layers of toys are just better?

In addition to the bucket infatuation, Harriet is also recently attached to these Wiggles slippers.  She found them at her grandparents' house yesterday, the slippers having once belonged to a Small Aunt, and she flat out refuses to remove them from her feet.  She calls them her silly shoes and giggles rather ridiculously as she putters around the house.  She even had to wear them over her real shoes into the grocery store.  (I win major mom-props for that, okay?)  As you can see, Harriet suffers from a rather rambunctious case of bedhead no matter the time of day.  This has to be from the Rodgers gene pool.  It has to.

The other great excitement has been the gifting of a Tunnel from her Rodgerian grandparents.  This tunnel is actually part of a lovely indoor/outdoor tent situation, but Harriet just likes the tunnel.  In fact, she greets it every time she comes into the room and cries when Steve puts it away.  Harriet likes to sit and read books in her tunnel, crawl through it quickly and make loud screaming noises, and attempt to get Flori to go through the tunnel on command.

If I could sum up Harriet in one word it would be: BUSY.  It seems like the only time this kid will stop moving is when she is watching Timmy Time, but even then I will glance over at her and see her little foot tapping in time to the theme music.  She is also very quick to point out when anything isn't right.  She repeatedly announces when things are "broken" or "stuck" or "yuck" or "messy."  Sometimes she makes the mess and then loudly says, "MOMMY! MESSY!" while pointing to the disaster.  Tonight's unfortunate pooping in the bathtub episode was rather traumatizing, however.  It was definitely a "yuck."

A fun mess to make is helping Mommy cook.  Harriet sits very safely on the counter and eagerly helps me "dump" whatever ingredients I need into a bowl or pot.  Today we made oatmeal cookies and I was glad the recipe called for applesauce instead of eggs.

I'm trying to be more intentional about our afternoons.  Harriet usually just chills in the morning and does her own thing or helps me with chores and errands.  But the afternoons can get rather testy if we don't have a plan.  Thankfully, the weather has been super duper nice lately, so our afternoons usually involve some outside time.  But when we can't do that, Harriet and I like to do some crafting.  Her fine-motor skills are astounding.  She can accurately stick foam shapes onto surfaces like this Valentine's Day card that she made for her Granmom.  She is also really good at stringing beads onto pipe cleaners.  That is my new favorite non-messy activity.

Harriet doesn't really know what to do about the idea of a Baby E yet, and I don't expect her to.  As clever as she is, it is impossible to explain the abstract concept of a Baby Edmund coming out of Mommy's tummy.  She doesn't even try to repeat my warm preparatory remarks.  She just looks at me like I'm crazy.  We pulled out all of E's clothing this evening to take inventory and she kept saying, "Edmund's suit!"  So I guess she'll be prepared to dress him.

Just a few more weeks of it being Only Harriet.  I hope we can make the most of it.

Top Five of Parenting (thus far)

I saw this neat post idea over at Maybe Matilda (check her blog out for some super cute crochet tutorials and general fun-ness) and I thought to my little self, "I need to regain some perspective on parenting the H, especially before Baby E arrives.  This looks like a fun way to go about doing it."  And in all reality, I like doing writing activities that trigger new lines of thought.  So here we go: the top five of various aspects of parenting Harriet.  These are in no real order, just as they come to mind.  I'm sure I will forget something, but who's perfect?  Not me.

Top Five Victories

1. Getting Harriet to sleep through [most] of the night and to go to bed three hours before I do.  Those of you with needy nighttime children can understand how much of a victory this is.
2. Nursing for 11+ months successfully.  Breastfeeding made me nervous prior to H's birth because I was afraid to mess it all up.  Thankfully, that didn't happen and she was more than enthusiastic.
3. Teaching Harriet to enjoy all sorts of delicious food.
4. Not succumbing to Harriet's whining when I know that I'm the Mom and I'm in charge.
5. Having a little girl who genuinely wants to be around me.

Top Five Defeats

1. Feeling pressured to do certain parenting things just because everybody else is doing/talking about them.
2. Knocking H's head on the door when I picked her up after she fell off of the bed (tons and tons of screaming).
3. Feeling like I'll never be able to do enough.
4. Letting H get away with bad sleeping habits for much too long.
5. Being inconsistent with my decisions just because I want H to be quiet for two seconds.

Top Five Awesome Things She Does

1. Harriet loves, loves, loves to sing and dance.  It is beyond adorable.
2. She loves to be around other people, especially her aunts and uncles and cousin, and genuinely expresses interest and concern for them.
3. She totally helps me cook and put laundry away.
4. She can "read" What's Your Sound, Hound the Hound? like a pro.
5. She loves to be chased and tickled by Steve and then follows up her squealing with a disapproving, "Daaaaddddy...." 

Top Five Baby Purchases

1. The SleepyWrap now-called Boba Wrap.  I would not have survived without that thing.  Not in a million years.
2. Indestructible book
3. Stroller 
4. The Baby Book
5. Hyland's Calms Forte

Top Five Conflicting Feelings

1. Wanting time for myself vs. not wanting to just plug Harriet into the Wiggles.  Again.
2. Feeling inadequate vs. knowing I'm the best mom for H.
3. Needing sleep vs. wanting to get up and spend the morning with her.
4. Loving how she loves to spend time with others vs. wanting to spend all of the time with me.
5. Thinking that I'm the only one who can parent correctly vs. letting others give me a break.

Top Five Traits I Want Her to Develop

1. Saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
2. A brain that can really think, but is able to relate to people.
3. A love of books and England and Playmobil and learning (most of all)
4. A desire to serve her family and to be a good big sister
5. The knowledge that her worth is not based on her being a good girl.

Top Five Pieces of Advice Thus Far

1. You know your own kid better than anybody else and you know what is best for her.
2. Harriet is truly a high-maintenance baby.  You aren't insane.
3. When all activities fail, read.
4. It's okay for her to scream sometimes...and it's okay for her to be weaned.
5. Use Lansinoh.

Top Five Perks of Being Harriet's Mommy

1. Getting squeezing hugs.
2. Having people notice what a cutie-patootie she is.
3. Sewing outfits for her.
4. Dancing around the house to Wiggles songs.
5. Watching her become her own unique, intelligent, insightful, purposeful person.

(January 11 - 3 yellow things that strike you as fresh mercy: my beautifully cheerful yellow walls, my yellow Fiestaware dishes, and yellow Emergen-C which perks me up when my body says otherwise.


January 12 - Something above you: the amazing stars which Harriet now points out to me.
Something below you: my sewing/crafting spot in the basement which brings so much personal creative fulfillment.
Something beside you: snuggling in the security of Steve every night - not just on four-nights-off.)

A little project

Yesterday started out rather roughly.  It actually started at precisely 3am when the illustrious Harriet decided that it was just the right time to launch into an inexplicable temper tantrum that lasted for an. hour.  Now, I don't go to bed particularly early because Steve doesn't get home particularly early - and there is something about that uninterrupted husband time that is rather vital to my sanity.  So when H started screaming when I had had about 2 hours of sleep, I was not terribly enthused.  She slept restlessly until 8am when my alarm went buzzing off under my pillow (I had neglected to turn it off after getting up for church on Sunday).  Then she started screaming again as if she were offended to discover that she had ever stopped.  Brilliant.  After whining through her breakfast and getting-dressed routine, I made the maternal decision to plop down with her on the couch and watch an episode of the Wiggles.  Oh blessed Wiggles.  Forty-five minutes later, Harriet was sufficiently recovered to behave quite splendidly for the rest of the day.  And although I was exceedingly tired, having a not cranky child was delightful.

But this post is about a project, right?  You see, Harriet slept for over two hours yesterday afternoon.  It was incredible.  I finished my schoolwork for the week and promptly marched downstairs to work on a sewing project.  I saw this bag on Pinterest and immediately fell in love.  I need a bag to tote my Jazzercise mat and weight around in and my drawstring bag was completely falling apart.

I made the bag from my absoballylutely favourite home dec fabric in the whole world...which was found on Pinterest as well.  (The fabric was actually the leftovers from my wondrous living room curtains - now I can carry my favourite fabric around with me!)This yoga bag is fully lined and has three pockets on the outside to carry keys, cellphone, water bottle, etc.  There isn't a whole lot of room for the weights in the pockets, so I roll them up inside my mat and that works swell.

As typical with Amy Butler patterns, the instructions leave nothing to the imagination and sometimes this attention to detail made the instructions not very clear at all.  I read through them, got the global picture, and then kind of took off on my own.

At one point in the process I realized that I was mentally narrating everything I was doing.  With a British accent.  That, my friends, is how you know I'm completely zoned out and in my happiest of places.

I was so excited to take my bag to Jazzercise.  When I got there I discovered that we were going to do the entire routine without the mat and weights.  Bah.  Oh well, I'll have something to show off next week.

(January 10th 
A gift that's sour: my Norwex rag smells rather sour right now, but my kitchen consequently does not.
A gift that's sweet: seeing Baby E's sweet little nose on the ultrasound this morning.

A gift that's just right: Harriet Alice.  Learn more)

What I Managed to Create Over Christmas Break

I start classes again on Monday.  Instead of taking five classes at once, I'm only taking two: The Literature of C.S. Lewis and Conflict Resolution.  This semester is going to be a breeze - a much desired breeze since the advent of Baby Edmund will undoubtedly increase my responsibility levels.  But what better way to reduce stress than by reading Lewis?  I can't think of many.

In any case, I wanted to do something purposefully craft-y before the blessed break came to an end.  I wanted to get the supplies for a project and actually finish it - something that rarely happens as evidenced by the chest of drawers and 3-4 Rubbermaid tubs stuffed with fabric and unfinished projects.  Steve remains gracious and encouraging and said that I could buy the yarn to make the H a sweater.  I found this pattern on Pinterest and bought brown yarn with a hint of a gold sparkle.  And after crocheting off and on for nearly a week, I have the final results:

Let me just say that I LOVE this crochet pattern.  The stitch pattern created a tight but flexible design which is perfect for a toddler's sweater.  It doesn't oooze and lose its shape like so many other crocheted sweaters.  The sizing was also super accurate.  I compared the measurement of the 12-month size to teeny-tiny Harriet and it was perfect.  

The obligatory Cousin Hug.  We are trying to convince Harriet that she will never remember a time when she did not have matchy-matchy pictures with Jemima.  Clara and I feel that this is only fair after all of the matchy-matchy pictures we had to endure.

Anyways, I'm really pleased with how the sweater turned out.  It feels great to have a completed project on my super cute stinker of a kid.

Five Minute Friday: Older

Harriet is getting older every day, every hour, every minute.  I've known this and observed this since she was born, but this week her growth and development seems to have exploded.  I keep wanting to tell inquiring minds that she is fifteen months (or fifteen years, for that matter) instead of almost fourteen months.

This week my sweet darling girl gained three new teefies, learned to say her cousin's name, and mastered the art of eating oatmeal with her own spoon.

But her major development was finally, finally getting over her perfectionist tendencies long enough to start walking.  It is beyond precious to see her stepping carefully away from a piece of furniture, glancing in awe at her Robeez-adorned feet, and walking confidently toward the welcoming arms of a Small Aunt.  I'm blown away every time.

People say, "Enjoy it now, they grow up so fast!"  To be honest, I'm glad that Harriet is growing up.  Each moment of her development opens up new areas for adventure...soon she'll be learning to read...and I can teach her how to sew...and she can go from being my little baby to the Friend I really want to have in my eldest daughter.

(And it also helps to know that there is another little Rodgers on the way.  That way I can enjoy watching two sweet children grow older.)

Harriet at Eleven Weeks

(How neat to have my 100th post be about my favourite little person!)

I look pregnant again.

Harriet Alice is eleven weeks old and she accompanied her parents, aunts and uncles, and grandmother on a trip to the Pumpkin Patch.  While she spent a considerable amount of time snoozing away in the wrap she did manage to get carried around by Aunt Eleanor...

Eleanor looks like an escaping movie star

...watch her Daddy do some serious pumpkin chunkin'...

Steve could actually hit the hay bale targets.

...and smile charming smiles right before spitting all over her grandmom:

Harriet continues to reach developmental milestones at an almost alarming speed.  This week's grand discovery was the ability to grab something, move it to her mouth, and proceed to chew with great enthusiasm.  She also loves to grab our fingers and pull herself up from a semi-reclining position to a upright seated position...and then get too excited and fall forward or backward without warning.  She is very interactive and likes to tell stories (especially about her trip down the big hay bale slide today).  She will also let us know with extraordinary vehemence the exact moment that she becomes uncomfortable or lonely.  Harriet definitely has her crabby moments, but she is a relatively calm and pleasant baby overall.

She is our daily delight.  That's for certain.