spring may be springing...

... but I've just created this treasury of cosy cushions over on etsy.  Ah, it's amazing what you can do with one hand when you have a baby in the other!

mellow yellow

Just in case you haven't seen enough babies or cardigans round these parts (ha!) here's a few snaps of Dulcie in some amazing hand-knits from this weekend.  This hat and cardigan were a present from my friend Bernadette.  After years of failed attempts at learning to knit (she's left-handed - that's her excuse and she's sticking to it!) she thought outside the box and commissioned a knitty friend to make these instead.

How gorgeous? (No, I don't mean me!)  I especially love the hat, which makes Dulcie look like a little wartime baby.

And here is the obligatory crying in hand-knitting shot, but she's worn this hat and cardigan four days in a row without being sick on them (miracle!) so I can tell she loves them really.

Dulcie had her second round of immunisations today.  She was doing her best smile as the needles went in, poor thing.  Much red-faced screaming followed.  She has been curled up in a little ball asleep on my chest ever since we got home.  Bless her.

buttons at long bleedin' last

My mum's been visiting the last couple of days.  We were too busy having a nice time (going to the cinema, out for lunch, snuggling up with babies) for me to get many of my planned jobs done, but I did manage to find and attach buttons on all the cardigans I had made for Dulcie when she was still just Beyonce-Buble to us.  They're all still a bit big for her, but only just, so it's good that the buttons will be ready when she is.

birdsong

wedding party in prospect park, a photo by annwood on Flickr.

I am sitting in our living room listening to birds twittering through the baby monitor. It's very pleasant. I've noticed the birdsong reappearing just this week when I've been up feeding Dulcie in the wee small hours. It makes me excited about the onset of spring.

After a few weeks of hard work and psychological wrangling (i.e. getting to know what our baby means/wants when she is grunting or shouting and then giving it to her) Dulcie has become a champion sleeper. I feel like a different person these days, getting what was a whole week's worth of zzzzz in one continuous block every night. Last night Dulcie went to bed at 11pm and got up at 4 and 7.30. I think she might not be far off sleeping through the night, which would be amazing. Things are so different from how they were a few weeks ago and I am chalking this up as a parenting success. Yay!

I hope I didn't just jinx things by blogging about it...

smiling

This book about faces is Dulcie's favourite thing in the world right now.  She can look at it quite happily for ages and enjoys stroking the crinkly pages.  This weekend she used the mirror on the front cover to practise her newest trick - smiling.

 

Success!  Well, sort of.  She's actually been smiling quite a bit but this is the closest I've come to capturing it on camera so far.

Doesn't she look like James Dean in this outfit?  All she needs is a packet of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of her T-shirt.  I'm loving her tiny jeans.  They're jeggings really (tiny jeggings! hee!) but they are still a little on the large side for her.  Every time she has her nappy changed by her dad she comes back with teeny-tiny turn-ups to match his.

Hmmm, I really don't want this place to turn into a baby blog, but I spend 100% of my time with this little lady now, so it's baby or nothing, I'm afraid.  It won't be like this for ever!  (Will it?)  My mum is coming to visit this week, I think, so I might utilise her babysitting skills to try and find the time to dig out some easy craft projects.  I am itching to make something (anything!) but all my supplies are buried in disorganised piles that I can't get to in the time it takes Dulcie to realise I'm not holding her and start screaming.  Talking of which...

something fishy

Fortune Fish, a photo by Mykl Roventine on Flickr.

Last night I ate two thirds of a fishcake, the first dead animal I have consumed in over 20 years. I have been psyching myself up to try eating meat and fish for a few years now as I'd like to be able to eat them occasionally to make life easier, although I'd still plan on being 99% vegetarian as vegetarianism is just right for me and sits best with my view of the world etc. I think having Dulcie has given me that little extra push to stop just thinking about it and start changing my ways. Not having eaten meat for so long has given me kind of a phobia of it and I'd like to be OK with eating it by the time Dulcie might be able to pick up on these things. We don't intend to bring her up as a vegetarian. I was quite surprised how easily I ate the fishcake last night and was giving myself a little pat on the back and feeling very pleased with myself. I thought about it a bit too much halfway through and couldn't finish it, but it was a very successful first attempt. A few hours after eating it, though, I started to sense the death in my belly and have felt quite ill ever since. Today I am still struggling and kind of wish I hadn't eaten it. There's dead flesh inside me. Shudder! Might be a while before I take the next step.

she loves it really!

This is kind of old news now, but my new niece is no longer a nameless wonder.  She's called Lexie Elspeth.  Aw!  Here's Dulcie modelling the cardigan I crocheted for her.  It had turned out a good bit smaller than the other two I made (different wool, I guess) so I tried it on Dulcie just to make sure it would fit.  I think it will fit Lexie, who is just a little bit bigger than Dulcie really, but probably not for long, so we posted it off to her quick stylee even though I wanted to keep it as soon as I had seen it on.  How cute?!  As you can see, Dulcie didn't look too impressed, but she cries all the time (all... the... time...) so I'm sure she loved it really, despite the screams that might suggest otherwise.  And she might have been crying because I was making her wear her emergency MC Hammer pants.  You can't touch this!