Sunday, January 1, 2012

A New Year

A new blog: No promises; they’re too easily broken. But I’m attempting to “restart” my blog this year. And the focus will be slightly different that it was almost 18 months ago when I last posted anything. Instead of only talking about Judith here, and having a separate blog for baking, I’m going to combine it all. Judith will probably show up most often, but I’ll also be blogging about baking, crochet, gardening, and life in general. I hope that will give me plenty to blog about!
An update: I intend add a few detailed blogs regarding milestones that Judith’s reached in the last 18 months, but here’s a quick overview: she’s 3 years and 5 months old; she’s 3 feet tall, and nearly 35 pounds (at least, those are the stats from her August checkup). Her hair is extremely long, and she prefers to wear it down whenever she can...it gets everywhere! Happily, she accepts the “rule” that she’s not allowed to eat without a ponytail.
Her favorite color is PINK, and she’d like to wear pink every day. Fortunately for my sanity, she only has a few pink outfits, and demands for pink can be mollified by adding a “twirly” skirt to anything she’s wearing.
She’s been potty training (for the second time!) since August, and she goes through cycles of being dry all day for days, and then having an accident every time she has to go. It’s definitely the hardest aspect of parenting I’ve experienced yet!
She’s been in a big-girl bed for a year, and she loves it, but...

A new habit: Until December 30, 2011, Judith did not get out of her bed unless we were there. We’re not entirely sure how that happened, but we’ve been taking it for granted. Then, on the evening of the 30th, she threw a tantrum at bedtime, and we ignored her. To our absolute shock she actually got out of bed on her own, came out of her room, and found me in the kitchen. She said she had to go potty, and I took her and put her back to bed. I thought at the time that it would be an isolated incident, but she’s since done the same thing the past two mornings. I’m trying to establish the rule that she may only get out if she has to go potty, and then must go straight back to bed...we’ll see how that works!

A new project: I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that I am, for the first time, making an afghan for us! In September I made one for a relative who was getting married, and I was so thrilled with it that I decided I wanted one for myself. So with some Christmas money I bought yarn and I’ve started on a new blanket for our bed. (The current quilt is one that I made during our first year of marriage, and it’s kind of coming apart.) The afghan I made last fall was a star pattern of pieced diamonds. As I began planning for our blanket, I googled “diamond quilt patterns” and discovered the “tumbling blocks” pattern. Lance declared his preference for that pattern over the original star, so I designed one for us! I was thrilled to find “tumbling blocks” graph paper (http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/tumblingblock/) and I had a great time coloring in patterns until I found one I liked. Then I got to pick out yarn! And I’ve been piecing the bottom row together to find out if I designed it big enough. Here’s what it currently looks like (in case you can't tell,  there's red and green and blue in there as well as the tan and brown):

I promise to post a picture when it’s all done. :-)
TTFN
Barbara