A Couple of Projects

Using my sewing machine, some scrap fleece I've had lying around for ages, and this Snowblossom Fleece Hat Tutorial I made Ava a hat. It took me about an hour and a half. The tutorial is really well done, and the sizing guidelines worked perfectly.

It would be even cuter in a better color combination, but I just used what I had around. If I make a trip to a fabric store, I'll pick out colors to make another one for Ava and one for Michael too.

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I stumbled upon a picture of a project someone had done using plastic Easter eggs to make a word family activity. I decided to make some for Michael. He's really proud of being able to sound out three letter words, but he is sounding them out letter by letter and hadn't caught on to word families yet. I've only made two so far, but they work beautifully. He can rattle off seven or eight words so quickly this way. It's becoming automatic. I really need to make the time to make some more.

Sorry about the picture being so blurry, but at least it gives you an idea. First I tried glue and that didn't work so well, so with the second one I tried tape. That didn't work all that well either. Anyone have any other ideas?

Ava's Hello Bag

On our way home after being discharged from the hospital we stopped at the grocery store. Before the unexpected hospital adventure we had been postponing a trip to the store for several days and we had very little left in the house to eat. So we had to stop by the store just so we could feed everyone lunch when we got home.

I was carrying Ava around the store keeping her happy while my husband did the actual shopping and Ava spied something in a clearance bin that made her perk up. It was a Hello Kitty lunch bag. I pulled it out of the bin and told her she could carry it as long as she walked. It worked. She walked around looking at all sorts of things. But she never let that bag go. She was in love. We decided to bring it home.

Now I expected her to use the bag for all kinds of things. As it turns out, only two things ever go in the bag.

Compartment 1: Mama Kitty

Compartment 2: Baby Kitty

Ava carries her kitties in her kitty bag. It's adorable. They are in there and nearby all the time. They go up for nap. She takes the kitties out to sleep with them and then carefully returns them to their compartments and brings them downstairs with her when she wakes up. The bag and kitties travel from room to room with her and then go up for the night where they get to leave the bag to cuddle with her at night. Then back into the bag they go in the morning to come back down. So funny.

Home again.

We spent the night at the hospital with Ava. It was the first night we had spent there since the hospital stay when Ava was born. I would have been all right without having to do that again, but it was necessary. The nurses in the pediatrics ward were just as great as the nurses I'd had in the maternity ward.

I was worried we'd have another night as bad as the first and need another breathing treatment, but the oral steroids finally kicked in and the stridor improved through the night. We all got a decent night sleep all things considered. The nurse had to wake us every four hours so we could help her check Ava's vitals, but aside from those 10 minute awakenings we all slept through. Any mother of a newborn would think that's a great night's sleep.

And so we're home again. Things aren't quite back to normal, but we're heading there.